NLIHC’s Summer of IDEAS event series concluded on August 4with a panel discussion moderated by Melissa Harris-Perry about the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. The panel included author and New York Times reporter Andrea Elliott, advocate Chanel Sykes (who is featured in the book), and James Perry, president and CEO of the Winston-Salem Urban League and former member of NLIHC’s board of directors. The discussion focused on a range of themes from the book, including poverty, homelessness, systemic racism, housing insecurity, and addiction. View a recording of the discussion here.
Invisible Child follows Dasani Coates, daughter of Chanel Sykes, and her family as they navigate life in New York City homeless shelters over the course of eight years. The author, Andrea Elliot, uses the story of the family to bring attention to the homelessness and housing poverty crisis in New York City, as well as the history and evolution of the homeless and welfare systems.
The event began with opening remarks by Melissa Harris-Perry, who discussed the importance of advocacy work, the centrality of poverty and housing insecurity, and the ways these problems are embedded in the U.S. social system. “Poverty is a feature of the American system,” she explained. “A core ingredient baked into our national life. A part of that is housing.”
The panel discussion started off with a question posed to the audience and panelist Chanel Sykes from Professor Harris-Perry: “What images, ideas, words, or feelings come to mind for you when I say the word ‘home’?” While the audience flooded the chat with different answers such as “comfort,” “security,” “sanctuary,” and “ownership,” Chanel answered, “distant.” She said, “I don’t have a home yet. If I don’t own it, it’s not mine…The word ‘home’ for me just seems so far away…I grew up in a home, but for me and my children that’s something we dream to have.”
The panel discussed the question: “Why are people poor?” James Perry said, “Some folks will say people are poor because they don’t work hard enough, they don’t apply themselves. The classic rhetoric people say is that folks need to ‘pull themselves up by the bootstraps’…But other groups of people will have some type of systemic response. They’ll say that it is a system. And [that system] varies: some people will say that it’s the educational system. Some people will say it’s the criminal justice system. We have poverty because it’s by design. When the system is working, when capitalism is working, that’s when you have poverty. Chanel Sykes responded, “these systems are set up to block you from even thinking ahead. We get access to pantries, to all these things that are unhealthy, because what you put in it is what you get out…Poverty starts from the system that’s built to stagnate you.”
When asked, “What would be true today if we had a just and fair economic system?” author Andrea Elliot said, “We wouldn’t be living in a world where you’re breathing polluted air as a child and unable to sleep through the night because of the noise pollution, which is another form of disruption closely related to poverty.” Elliott expanded on the severity of child poverty in the United States, recounting that “we were coming on to the 50-year anniversary of LBJ’s War on Poverty, and I saw that the child poverty rate in this country was the highest in the developed and wealthy super-power world. So, we have the worst child poverty rate…It seemed like such a stunning thing that it hadn’t changed, that the needle had moved so little over this large expanse of time, that we were still in such a dire situation when it comes to the future of this country.”
The conversation wrapped up with further discussion about poverty in America, with Sykes and Elliott addressing the history of structural housing discrimination by discussing the experience of Sykes’s grandfather, a decorated World War II veteran and war hero who came from the South to Brooklyn after the war. Redlined out of homeownership, he was barred from working in his chosen profession and had to mop floors to make ends meet. He was also forced to rent a home at a time when white veterans were gaining homeownership and other privileges through the GI Bill. Elliott expanded on this history, remarking that in the bill “we saw the engine of creation of American middle-class homeownership. That American dream…is the emblem of not just a dream but it is the vehicle of wealth in this country. We always talk about intergenerational poverty. We never talk about intergenerational wealth. What happened in the ‘50s – the predominantly white suburbs that were created in large part fueled by the GI Bill – is what resulted in white families having 10 to 11 times the median net worth of Black families.”
The Summer of IDEAS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-racism, and Systems-thinking) is a free virtual event series aiming to showcase and amplify stories about the social and economic issues facing marginalized communities in the U.S. The series pairs narrative and new media projects with discussions on topics such as housing disparities, race and poverty, environmental racism, and voter suppression led by prominent voices in these areas.
Learn more about the Summer of IDEAS event series and stay tuned for what’s next here.
View a recording of the live discussion here.