As authors Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox point out in their blistering, deeply researched book, “,” the fact that financial insecurity has become a way of life for millions of Americans is none of the above. Neither laziness nor lack of education, nor a matter of morality, our widespread poverty is a result of decades of U.S. policy that has shaped a society in which people can be trapped in poverty by something as simple as a kid’s bad case of strep throat or a mechanical failure of the family car. Or by the mere fact of not being able to afford to keep a baby in child care so the parents can have a job.

The authors’ bona fides in the field are unimpeachable and the solutions they offer are borne of deep, direct experience. Goldblum has spent her career working with and advocating for families in poverty, first as a social worker and then as the founder and CEO of the and the founder of the , both of which address the hygiene needs of low-income people. Shaddox is a print and radio journalist whose credits include contributions to the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio and America magazine, among others. She has worked with nonprofits on projects devoted to getting children out of adult prison, ending juvenile sentences of life without parole and limiting the shackling of defendants in juvenile courts.

If we want to address poverty, the authors posit, we must first see it. Economic, social and racial segregation underpin the mechanism that keeps poverty invisible, the authors write. They then set out in the book’s first section, “Basic Needs,” to provide a clear-eyed, devastating view of how that balkanization of the economic classes came into being, what it really means to be poor in this country, who impoverished Americans are and what their lives look like, on the ground, in reality.

A large study by the finds that a full 38% of people in the U.S. have trouble consistently meeting their basic needs; the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 11.8 million residents were living in poverty in 2018, according to the federal poverty threshold. The gap in those statistics occurs because the federal poverty guidelines are irrationally low, based on a methodology from the early 1960s when fewer women worked outside the home. The cost of child care, transportation, and clothing and hygiene expenses don’t figure into the government’s definition of basic necessities. In their section on “Basic Needs,” Shaddox and Goldblum expand the definition to include water, food, housing, power (utilities), transportation, hygiene and health, including health care. This broader view of need provides a searing portrait of poverty that puts the broken in “broke.”

In the second section, “Forms of Oppression,” the authors present a comprehensive look at the policies and prejudices that have made home ownership and generational wealth a pipe dream for racial and ethnic minorities whose high rates of housing foreclosure and inability to finance homebuying are, you guessed it, not due to “bad choices” but to bad policies. They break down why “women’s work” in the U.S. is a recipe for poverty: The concentration of women in low-wage jobs may benefit the employers and owners of the nursing homes, hospitals and fast-food restaurants that hire them but does little to provide some of our society’s hardest workers with access to a decent standard of living.

In their section on political power, Goldblum and Shaddox present a powerful case that the United States’ vaunted government “of the people, by the people and for the people” comes with a silent modifier: “except the poor people.” The government that low-income people encounter is far more likely to take rights away rather than protect them, from the intake worker who decides they don’t quite qualify for aid or the child welfare worker who questions how good their parenting can be if they’re working two jobs and still can’t afford diapers. Poor people in the U.S. generally do not find themselves spending quality time in the halls of Congress where the average wealth of members is more than $500,000; the Center for Responsive Politics reports that about 48% are millionaires. Electoral politics are a sport for the wealthy, Shaddox and Goldblum say, and officeholders are often oblivious to working-class and low-income concerns.

The real pleasure of “Broke in America” is that it is not only descriptive but prescriptive, providing concrete strategies answers to the question, “Yes, but what can I do?” A lot, as it turns out. As the authors write, poverty is not gravity. It isn’t something that has to be accepted with a shrug as “just the way it is.” It has causes and it has solutions. At the end of each chapter, Goldblum and Shaddox have included a section titled “What Can I Do?” offering practical suggestions that can make a difference, and conversations to be had with legislators and political leaders that can alter the policies that glue poverty in place. It’s important to remember that it’s glue, not granite, that keeps poverty in place, and the book is chockful of suggestions to dislodge it.

The last section, “Solutions,” presents the possibility that the poor do not always have to be with us. People are poor because they don’t have sufficient money to pay for the things they need — a straightforward problem requiring a range of approaches to solve. The past year has served to hold the economic and social fissures plaguing our country in high relief. More and more people have slipped from “making it” to “barely hanging on,” and those who were barely hanging on before the pandemic now find their economic circumstances frighteningly diminished. The poisonous effects of racism and the glaring inequalities baked into our political, economic and social structures have never been more visible. If ever there were a time for Americans to reevaluate and regroup, this would be it. “Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty” is both a primer and a roadmap for how to go forward.

It isn’t for the faint of heart: the facts it presents are unsettling, indeed, heartbreaking. But for anyone who wants to see things change, the facts are the place to start.

Unfortunately, this seemingly positive result comes at a high cost. Family separation is devastating. after finds high levels of developmental and psychological problems in the lives of children who have been taken from their parents—and the trauma is both more severe and more common with Black children.

The human cost is great, and so is the financial toll. While states and cities generally administer family services, it’s telling that the federal government spends on foster care and adoption than reuniting families.

The story we tell ourselves leaves out a lot, and placement with a foster family doesn’t always result in a happy ending.

A new project launched by the (CSSP) in conjunction with the , called , seeks to highlight the racial inequities in the existing system and to bring about structural change. Kristen Weber and Alan Dettlaff from upEND share about the initiative, especially as it concerns babies and toddlers. (According to , almost 200,000 children, or more than a quarter of those in the system, are three years old or younger.)

“All of our systems suffer under a racist society,” says Weber, CSSP’s director of Equity, Inclusion and Justice. “We formed upEND to dismantle the current child welfare system that is entrenched with racist history, policies and practices. And we have committed to working with parents, advocates and others to reimagine new ways to keep children safe and support families without relying on interventions that are coercive and can result in family separation.”

Weber, an attorney with years of experience representing children in the child welfare, juvenile justice and educational systems, says upEND’s design work involves not just listening to the voices of those affected but partnering with them on reimagining systems.

The “foundational intervention” of the current system, University of Houston’s Dettlaff explains, is taking kids away from their families. “There’s a myth that the system is helpful, and the media perpetuates the myth by highlighting only the extreme cases.” He acknowledges that instances of brutality and deprivation exist but maintains that the majority of cases represent neglect that is better addressed by means other than separation, which should be considered a last resort.

“We know that neglect largely stems from poverty,” he says, “so direct payments to parents could be more efficient and beneficial than stipends paid to foster parents.”

UpEND is asking existential questions: Why does state intervention come first? Why not partner with families and communities?

“Children belong with their parents,” says Dettlaff. As currently configured, the system “causes harm to children every day.” He notes that Children and Family Services “acts as an arm of the police”—a circumstance that, for many observers, links it with larger systems plagued by racism.

Weber and Dettlaff are two of six authors of a recent paper in the Journal of Public Child Welfare with the blunt title It presents damning evidence of a chain of consequences jeopardizing the well-being and long-term prospects for Black children.

• Black children are more likely to be reported for suspected maltreatment than white children.
• Allegations involving Black children are more likely to proceed to investigation and significantly more likely to be substantiated than those involving white children.
• Black children are more likely to be removed from their homes and placed into foster care than white children.

Too often, what we desperately want to believe as the “end of the story” is a mirage. found that young children involved in the welfare system, those most in need of developmentally appropriate education and care, often are denied these supports.

In the alternative orientation promoted by upEND, communities are “first responders” for families in crisis. This approach is patterned after Black and Native American communities that historically have shown resilience and resourcefulness in addressing maltreatment, often when government agencies have turned a blind eye. By shifting the government’s involvement upstream to providing the benefits and work supports proven to reduce maltreatment, upEND’s policy recommendations could be both more humane and more cost-effective.

UpEND was already in the works before the current wave of Black Lives Matter protests and calls to defund or abolish the police in the wake of George Floyd’s death, but the climate gives new momentum to a mission that goes back to Brenda Scott’s 1994 book Out of Control: Who’s Watching Our Child Protection Agencies, which called for scrapping the system. Dorothy Roberts’s Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (2001) equipped activists and advocates to understand the racial dimensions of the crisis.

“The word abolition can be scary,” Dettlaff acknowledges. “But it’s not just about tearing down. It’s about creating new systems, new structure, a new society.”