PositiveAtlanticReaders expecting more of the rich narrative texture of [Evicted] will be disappointed. Unlike Evicted, which was grounded in years of fieldwork, Desmond’s new book contains little in the way of original ethnographic research and, though it has its share of startling statistics, lacks a vivid cast of characters. Working in a very different register, Desmond instead offers a passionate and provocative argument fueled by his dismay about the extent of poverty in America—and by his dissatisfaction with conventional explanations for how little has changed ... Desmond’s mission is to disabuse the better-off among us of the illusion that they are mere bystanders with their hands tied ... Desmond sometimes sounds less like a dispassionate social scientist than a missionary, convinced that the privileged can be moved to act if only they open their eyes and acknowledge how implicated they are in the suffering of the poor. Yet Desmond’s own map of the entrenched ways we keep the disadvantaged down can’t help but raise doubts about how many converts he will persuade to join such a crusade ... Getting affluent people to engage in rhetorical hand-wringing over inequality is easy enough. Persuading them to yield some of their entitlements is a lot harder.
Matthew Stewart
MixedNew York TimesUnfortunately, Stewart’s portrait of the 9.9 percent draws on few firsthand interviews with members of this class. He relies instead on examples culled from sources like Slate and on made-up characters such as \'Ultramom,\' a cartoonish figure ... Such caricaturing may resonate with the popular anger at elites. But it fails to lend much insight into what Stewart calls \'the mind of the 9.9 percent,\' or for that matter, to demonstrate that such a uniform thing exists ... In contemporary America, the lives of the wealthy bear increasingly little resemblance to those of working-class people, much less to those who are poor. Stewart is surely right to view this as a problem and to question why it has generated so much less outrage and concern than the obscene fortunes of the superrich. But the growing chasm between the 9.9 percent and the rest of society only underscores why pushing beyond reductive stereotypes to explain how affluent professionals think about, and justify, their wealth and privilege is important. Doing so can help illuminate both how deep the economic disparities in America have become and how inequality is validated and sustained.
