Rev. William Barber: Poor & Low-Wage Americans Are the Real 2024 Swing Voters

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, we turn now to the issue of poverty in America, which our next guest argues is often racialized and marginalized as a black issue, ignoring millions of impoverished white people. In his new book, esteemed civil rights campaigner, Dr. Reverend William Barber aims to expose myths about race and class in order to reconstruct American democracy. And he joins Walter Isaacson to discuss the causes of poverty and the policies that can address it.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Reverend Dr. William Barber, welcome to the show.

REVEREND DR. WILLIAM J. BARBER II, YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL AND AUTHOR, “WHITE POVERTY”: Thank you so much, and we’re glad to be here with you.

ISAACSON: You’ve written a book called “White Poverty.” It’s based on a lot of travels around the country. Very vivid. Why is a black man writing a book called “White Poverty”?

DR. BARBER II: Well, you know, if you look at the book, you’ll find that I (INAUDIBLE) own being black, but also on the early struggle that my father went through when he tried to get the people in the hospital to own all that I am. And what I’m trying to say to America is I’m a black man writing about white poverty because I believe the mythology around poverty, the racist image that are often put in front of any time we try to deal with poverty, black mothers on welfare, dominate the mythological imaginations of America. And it not only demeans black people and suggests that poverty is a black issue, what it does is it leaves out millions and millions of white people. And until we face the reality of white poverty in America and all poverty in America, this book is written to say, we must truly look at all of the poor in our nation, not make it a marginal issue, but a central issue. Because in the richest nation in the history of the world, the poverty that we have now that’s undoable — that you can change, that’s abolishable, is in fact one of our greatest immoral realities.

ISAACSON: You write that the numbers that we use, the names that we use on poverty are not only a lie, you call them a damn lie. Explain that to me.

DR. BARBER II: Well, it’s really bothersome. I made it in public administration and public policy. And when you talk to the average personal fact that they the government person, they’ll tell you, oh, poverty is only 30 some million people. Our nation actually says that if a person makes $7.25 an hour, they’re not poor. We know that that’s not true. The best economists know that not true. When you look at those who would be in poverty if there wasn’t some form of government assistance, if you look at those who are in poverty, no wages is because they make less than $15, $16 an hour, they make less than a living wage. And look at the fact that we’ve not raised the minimum wage for 14 years, since 2009. When you look at the fact that waiters and waitresses for instance make $2.13 cents an hour by law, and what you recognize is the poverty numbers are much higher. In fact, our numbers show that they’re around 135 million for and low wage people in this country. And every time we suggest any way, this 30 some million is primarily a black or brown issue, it is a lie. It’s a damn lie in the sense that the ancient prophets damned situations and said they were just wrong because it’s a lie. And poverty is not an anomaly. It’s a feature, it’s a central feature of our economic system. Over 41 percent of our adults are poor and or low wealth, and almost 50 percent of our children, and we must deal with it wholly by recognizing it.

ISAACSON: Wait, wait. You said it’s a central feature of our economic system. Do you think it just baked into what American capitalism is?

DR. BARBER II: Well, they’re not as baked in or not, it is a reality. It’s a reality that’s consistent and persistent. The reality is, year after year after year, we have these numbers for poverty. And what’s happening is we’re not dealing with it. One group of politicians want to say poverty is the moral feeling of poor folk. The other — or it’s just a minority issue, primarily black and brown, when in fact, in raw numbers, there are 66 million poor and low wage white people, something in the neighborhood of 26 million poor and low wage black people. Now, that 26 million black is 58 to 60 percent of black people, and that 66 million is 30 percent of white people. But the problem is, we don’t even talk about that. And so, what we have is a situation where now poor people are dying at a rate from poverty, according to a recent study, of 800 people a day and over 290 some thousand people a year are dying from unnecessary abolishable poverty. The fact that we can have time and time again, presidential election, Senate election, and the debates go on and on, and we never talk about the 41 percent of our Americans that are in poverty, there’s not a state where poor people are not at least 30 percent of the population, in some states, over 40 percent, and we don’t even talk about it. We don’t even debate it. That’s what we mean by it’s central, but it’s being treated like it’s a minor issue when, in fact, it is a major issue.

ISAACSON: One of the themes of your book, the core theme, is a core theme of policy in American history, which is the notion that blacks and whites could be together in a war on poverty as in the old progressive movements and what Dr. Martin Luther King tried to do. But nowadays, blacks and whites are pitted against each other instead of unifying in a war on poverty. Why has that happened?

DR. BARBER II: Well, what we say in the book is there’s a history of division. It’s not recent or new. It’s a continuing of the divide. There was the welfare rights of women, black and white women, who went to Dr. King and said, we needed a Poor People’s Campaign. And one of the things Dr. King talked about was (INAUDIBLE) Americas that exist, one flowing with milk and honey and all of the things needed for a life of prosperity. And then, the other one sort of church (ph) and pain. What we know is, down through history, whether it was the effort to break apart the coalition of black — former slaves and free men and poor and low wage white people that came together after the Civil War to reconstruct America, or whether we saw the — see the efforts of the Southern Strategy in the late ’60s that decided that they were going to engage in intentional polarization and they were going to split out black and white people, (INAUDIBLE) in the south so that those persons would not come together and form a powerful voting bloc that could shift the economic architecture of the country. We have seen, down through history, this attempt to separate the very people that should be together. In our book, we talk about myths. One myth is that pale skin is a shared interest. In other words, that skin color outweighs the ability for people to unify around policy and around saving their lives, and we believe that’s a mythology. Only black folk want change in America. We want (INAUDIBLE) that that is not true. The fact of the matter is, over 60 percent of Americans want to see the raise, the minimum wage to a minimum wage.

ISAACSON: In your book, you have a lot of examples, politically, where you’re around the country and you can see how low-income whites and low-income blacks could work together on policy, could — and have voted together at times. Describe that and why is that not more common?

DR. BARBER II: Well, what we’re seeing, and it’s not often talked about, the real swing vote in this country is poor and low wage people. It’s the largest block of voter where you could have an expansion of the voting population. First of all, black and white and brown and whatnot, poor, the low wage people do vote. You know, you often hear they don’t, but they do. 57 million in the last election. And when you look at the exit polls, they voted in the majority for progressive ideas. They voted in the majority for candidates that represent them, somewhere in the neighborhood of plus 54 percent, 55 percent. What we know is that so often the attempt is to suggest the division cloud (ph) where folks want to suggest this is just something that’s happening to black people. And therefore, black people or black women or poor folks are getting something and you’re losing something. And that’s used as a whiz. When, in fact, people figure out that’s not the case, they come together. Take, for example, in Kentucky. We went to Eastern Kentucky where predominantly white, Harlan County, Kentucky with Harlan County, USA., when Lyndon Baines Johnson actually started the war on poverty. And we met — I met with 200 or 300 poor and low wage, mostly white people who were minors, who no longer have human rights because when the powers that be allowed multinational companies to take over the mines, they didn’t ensure that they would have their human rights. And on that day, we put up a chart of where state legislators stood on issues like anti-gay, anti-abortion, and fairness for all (ph). Then we put up a chart showing where legislators steward on minimum wages and union rights and labor rights and health care. And when we step back from that chart, one of the guys who I talk about in the book, Mickey McCoy (ph), said, we’re being fooled. We’re being bamboozled. He said, these folks are coming to us and they’re telling us there’s a family value because they’re anti-gay and anti-abortion, but on the other hand, they’re voting against our minimum wage, they’re voting against our union rights, which means they’re voting against Harlan County. In 2018, when black and white folks found that out, and Brown and King together, they unseated an incumbent government. And several of those counties that we were in, they actually went from so-called red to blue. I don’t, to me, rationally, that we even know what a red state is or a blue state because we’ve never seen a full pushing of the electorate that’s possible. And we’ve certainly never seen poor and low wage vote at the same level that wealthier voters or middle class or wealthier voters do.

ISAACSON: Yes, but you look at both Democrats and Republicans, I mean, even Democrats that were supposed to be part of this movement, they’re not doing a lot of that talking. Why’s that?

DR. BARBER II: Which is why we question it, right? Well, we say that Republicans are wrong when they suggest that poverty is a moral failing of individuals and not an issue of policy. Because it doesn’t matter how moral you live, if you only make $7.25 an hour, you’re still coming out poor, and that’s a policy issue. Democrats do often talk about middle class, and they talk about lifting some of the middle — or they talk about those who are trying to get into the middle class. What we are saying to both sides is stop talking in low light and talking for and low wage people. Speak —

ISAACSON: Well, wait a second. When you talk about talking to the middle class that way, getting into the middle class, it sounds like Joe Biden. Are you blaming him too?

DR. BARBER II: This is an American — it’s not any one particular president or administration. What this book points out is far too long that we made politics some marginal issue. And when we do talk about it, we tend to — let me make up a word, we tend to blackenize it. And when we do talk about it might be one day on the news, then it goes away, or we only talk about homelessness. What we’re arguing, whether it’s Biden, or Trump, or Obama, or Clinton, or Bush, or whoever comes next, that we as America must face this issue. We must face poverty. We must face the wounds of poverty to black people and white people. When eight Democrats and all the Republicans voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, we didn’t care if they were Democrat or Republican, that was wrong. And not only is it wrong based on our constitutional claim of justice for all, it’s wrong based on (INAUDIBLE) and religious traditions. And all of these politicians, they put their hands on Bibles, they swear to uphold the constitution, when inside of that bible, that bible says that whether it’s from the Jewish tradition or the scriptures that Jewish, Muslim, and Christians that all honor or whether it’s from the New Testament, that the poop must be at the center of how we handle and build our society. In fact, there’s a great scripture I use often, Isaiah chapter 10, verses 1 through 3, woe onto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights and make women and children prey, P-R-E-Y. Both the bible and our constitution says that poor people, those on the margin, have a right to justice. They have a right to a just society. They have a right to the kind of policy that will allow them to come out of the unnecessary, abolishable, damnable, and death killing reality of poverty.

ISAACSON: You talk about policies that are needed to bring us out of poverty. You talked about minimum wage, that’s one. Are they specific policies like that, or is there something larger you’re pushing for?

DR. BARBER II: Well, that’s one of them. One of the things that we have on about June the 29th, we’re having a massive — mass poor people’s low wage march on Washington and to the poll. And they are poor and low wage people at the — on principle and then third in the nation’s capital, by the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands online, poor and low wealth people will take the mic. Not people speaking for them, but we’ll have white women from West Virginia and black women from the Delta standing together. And they’re going to outline 17 agenda items that we’re saying to both parties, if you want these votes, they already have told you that the number one reason people don’t vote is because they don’t hear that what you brought up, the reality of talking about it, then you need to say, if you — if I get the majority, if my group gets the majority, here’s what we will do. We will stand against poverty being the fourth leading cause of death and seek to end that reality. We will push for a living wage, a — of at least $15 an hour (INAUDIBLE) and index it with inflation so we don’t have to keep coming back to it. We will guarantee healthcare for all. We will ensure the full funding of public education. We will ensure that we deal with environmental justice because poor and low wage people feel the brunt of environmental catastrophes. This — we will ensure — we will restore the Voting Rights Act and expand voting rights because voting rights is not just a black issue, it’s an American issue. And what we know is that when voting rights are suppressed, it hurts black people, it hurts white people, it hurts working people. So, we need a restoration of the Voting Rights Act. We need to expand voting rights and we need to be against voter suppression. We need to support and say, they need to say that they feel — they will guarantee that they will support women’s rights. Because when there’s a chokehold put on women’s rights, poor women, poor women get hurt the most, poor women get hurt the most. And so, we have a 17-point agenda. In fact, we have something called the third reconstruction ending part of as resolution that was promoted by several legislators and Congress, over 30 signatures. And it lays out, it says, who has the resolve to address this issue? During COVID, we passed Child Income Tax Credit, and 60 percent of child poverty was done away with. We gave people extended Medicaid expansion and we saw millions of people now have health care. But what did we do after about six months? Those same legislators turned around and took back Child Income Tax. We took back Medicaid expansion. And now, millions of people are being thrown off the Medicaid rolls, and those children are thrown right back into poverty. But what it showed us is we can fix this if we are willing to engage with kind of policy. And lastly, we show that it doesn’t cost us — it actually costs us more to allow this kind of poverty to exist.

ISAACSON: Reverend Barber, thank you so much for joining us.

DR. BARBER II: Thank you so much for having me.