But inequality's impact differs by race; african Americans' net wealth is just a tenth that of white Americans, and over recent decades, white families have accumulated wealth at three times the rate of black families. A lack of assets, far more common in families of color, can often ruin parents' careful plans for themselves and their children.

Toxic inequality may seem inexorable, but it is not inevitable. Shapiro argues, wealth disparities must be understood in tandem with racial inequities--a dangerous combination he terms "toxic inequality. In toxic inequality, Shapiro reveals how these forces combine to trap families in place. Economic inequality is at historic highs.

Following nearly two hundred families of different races and income levels over a period of twelve years, Shapiro's research vividly documents the recession's toll on parents and children, the ways families use assets to manage crises and create opportunities, and the real reasons some families build wealth while others struggle in poverty.

The structure of our neighborhoods, workplaces, and tax code-much more than individual choices-push some forward and hold others back. Reich"this is one of the most thought-provoking books I have read on economic inequality in the US. William Julius Wilson. In our increasingly diverse nation, sociologist Thomas M.

From a leading authority on race and public policy, a deeply researched account of how families rise and fall todaySince the Great Recession, most Americans' standard of living has stagnated or declined.

Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It

But the most important, consequential, and widening gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else. Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. But reeves argues that society can take effective action to reduce opportunity hoarding and thus promote broader opportunity.

Examples include zoning laws and schooling, college application procedures, occupational licensing, and the allocation of internships. This fascinating book shows how american society has become the very class-defined society that earlier Americans rebelled againstand what can be done to restore a more equitable society.

Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults. These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for more progressive approaches to policy. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility.

The result is not just an economic divide but a fracturing of American society along class lines. America is becoming a class-based society. It is now conventional wisdom to focus on the wealth of the top 1 percentespecially the top 001 percentand how the ultra-rich are concentrating income and prosperity while incomes for most other Americans are stagnant.

Various forms of opportunity hoarding” among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung.

With Justice for All: A Strategy for Community Development

This invitation is extended to every racial and ethnic group to be reconciled to one another, to work together to make our land all God wants it to be. I am persuaded that the Church, as the steward of this gospel, holds the key to justice in our society. In an age of changing demographics where the need to break the cycle of poverty is staring many of us in the face, Perkins offers hope through practical ministry principles that work.

This outstanding resource includes reflection questions for personal or group study as well as interactive sessions for groups to participate in activities together. Either justice will come through us or it will not come at all. John perkins's optimistic view of justice becoming a reality starts and ends with the Church.

With justice for all is perkins's invitation to live out the gospel in a way that brings good news to the poor and liberty to the oppressed. And it is a blueprint--a practical strategy for the work of biblical justice in our time.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

One of publishers weekly's 10 best books of 2017longlisted for the National Book AwardThis “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide New York Times Book Review. Widely heralded as a “masterful” washington post and “essential” slate history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” William Julius Wilson.

. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history Chicago Daily Observer, The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past. Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods.

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The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy The MIT Press

Why the united states has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The united states is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor.

Many poorer americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, Latino, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, not like "us.

Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail. Temin argues that american history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor.

In this book, mit economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education.

The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die

Experiments in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics have not only revealed important new insights on how inequality changes people in predictable ways, but have provided a corrective to our flawed way of viewing poverty as the result of individual character failings. Today’s inequality is on a scale that none of us has seen in our lifetimes, yet this disparity between rich and poor has ramifications that extend far beyond mere financial means.

In the broken ladder psychologist keith payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically, how our cardiovascular systems respond to stress, how our immune systems function, but has profound consequences for how we think, and how we view moral ideas like justice and fairness. A timely examination by a leading scientist of the physical, psychological, and moral effects of inequality.

Among modern, economic inequality is not primarily about money, developed societies, but rather about relative status: where we stand in relation to other people. Regardless of their average income, mental illness, countries or states with greater levels of income inequality have much higher rates of all the social problems we associate with poverty, serious health issues, including lower average life expectancies, and crime.

The broken ladder explores such issues as why women in poor societies often have more children, and have them younger; why there is little trust among the working class that investing for the future will pay off; why people’s perception of their relative social status affects their political beliefs, and why growing inequality leads to greater political divisions; how poverty raises stress levels in the same way as a physical threat; inequality in the workplace, and how it affects performance; why unequal societies become more religious; and finally offers measures people can take to lessen the harm done by inequality in their own lives and the lives of their children.

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Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

Kennedy book & journalism awardsfinalist for the american bar association’s 2018 Silver Gavel Book AwardNamed one of the 10 books to read after you've read Evicted” by the Milwaukee Journal SentinelA powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty. Awarded special recognition” by the 2018 Robert F.

. Lucid and troubling. Matthew desmond, that, in the chronicle of higher education a nationally known expert on poverty shows how not having money has been criminalized and shines a light on lawyers, African American population, Missouri, and policy makers working for a more humane approachIn addition to exposing racially biased policing, activists, author of Evicted, the Justice Department’s Ferguson Report exposed to the world a system of fines and fees levied for minor crimes in Ferguson, when they proved too expensive for Ferguson’s largely poor, resulted in jail sentences for thousands of people.

As former staffer to Robert F. Through money bail systems, fees and fines, and the substitution of prisons and jails for the mental hospitals that have traditionally served the impoverished, strictly enforced laws and regulations against behavior including trespassing and public urination that largely affect the homeless, in one of the richest countries on Earth we have effectively made it a crime to be poor.

Edelman, public housing ordinances, " connects the dots between these policies and others including school discipline in poor communities, child support policies affecting the poor, addiction treatment, and the specter of public benefits fraud to paint a picture of a mean-spirited, who famously resigned from the administration of Bill Clinton over welfare "reform, retributive system that seals whole communities into inescapable cycles of poverty.

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The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

Mehrsa baradaran pursues this wealth gap by focusing on black banks. She challenges the myth that black banking is the solution to the racial wealth gap and argues that black communities can never accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. Wealth. Today that number has barely budged. In 1863 black communities owned less than 1 percent of total U.

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The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality

Thomas shapiro reveals how the lack of family assets--inheritance, savings accounts, home equity, and other investments-- along with continuing racial discrimination in crucial areas like homeownership dramatically impact the everyday lives of many black families, stocks, bonds, reversing gains earned in schools and on jobs, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty in which far too many find themselves trapped.

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The New Jim Crow

The new jim Crow is such a book. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U. S. Criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.

In the words of benjamin todd jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action. Called "stunning" by pulitzer prize–winning historian david levering lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, now with a foreword by Cornel West, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, "explosive" by Kirkus, is a must-read for all people of conscience.

. Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. Praised by harvard law professor lani guinier as "brave and bold, " this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness.

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The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class

They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. In the sum of small things, and retirement, parenting, elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide.

Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us allIn today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite.

Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.

They care about discreet, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, inconspicuous consumption—like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. In that inflammatory classic, ” veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, which coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils.