Poverty and Discrimination in the Midwest

I am reading two new non-fiction books which deal with poverty and racism: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (Mar. 1, Crown; 432 pages) and The South Side by Natalie Y. Moore (Mar. 22, St. Martin’s Press; 272 pages).  Both of these books offer excellent, if disturbing and often surprising, looks at housing, poverty, and racism in two Midwestern cities.

Moore (a journalist for Chicago’s NPR station, WBEZ) begins The South Side by sharing statistics related to the city’s overall diversity (7^th best out of 100 most populous US cities) and the segregation amongst its neighborhoods (a diversity index that ranks 82^nd out of 100). She recounts her family’s own experiences in Chicago enclaves like Chatham and Beverly and also tells the story of how playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s family was forced to move. After quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., “as long as there is residential segregation, there will be de facto segregation in every area of life,” Moore broadens her argument to encompass the prevalence of violence (in a chapter titled “We are not Chiraq”), local politics (“Searching for Harold”), and comments on recent events like Sandra Bland’s death. Highly readable and engaging, The South Side received a starred review from Kirkus.  I agree and know that teachers and students will be very interested in the personal stories and interwoven facts that Moore shares about an area that is local and yet far removed from their daily experiences. 

So, too, are some of the scenes described in Desmond’s Evicted.  The Milwaukee I know is full of beer houses and restaurants, shopping, music, gardens, and a zoo. Instead, Desmond follows eight families and relates their attempts to find housing in Milwaukee in 2008 and 2009. I was moved by his accounts of the individuals involved and by statistics such as “in a typical year, almost 1 in 5 poor renting families nationwide missed payments and received a disconnection notice from their utility company.” Overall, Evicted is a powerful and sobering read written by a MacArthur “Genius” and Harvard sociologist, Matthew Desmond who points out how evictions disproportionately impact women and children.  Each year, New Trier students have a tradition of building a house through Habitat for Humanity; we should be encouraging advisors to share and discuss excerpts from this book. Recommended by editors at both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Evicted also received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.