Tom Perrotta on American Gloom | Big Think

Tom Perrotta on American Gloom

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In terms of entertainment, the first Presidential debate was robust. In terms of bread and butter issues that matter to lower income families, it was less so. This year and last, we’ve heard a lot about protecting the middle class from tax increases, saving young learners from outrageous student debt, and giving big corporations a tax break, but there has been little to no discussion, from either side, about families and individuals who are trying to climb their way up to the middle class. There hasn’t been a silence this awkward since the self-awareness vacuum that was Mary J Blige singing to Hillary Clinton

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C. NICOLE MASON:

C. Nicole Mason is the author of Born Bright: A Young Girl’s Journey from Nothing to Something in America and heads up CR2PI at the New York Women’s Foundation. Her commentary and writing have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, POLITICO, The Nation, The Progressive, Spotlight on Poverty, Marie Claire Magazine, USA Today, ESSENCE Magazine, The Huffington Post and on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and NBC, among other outlets. Nicole is the Executive Director of the Center for Research and Policy in the Public Interest (CR2PI) at the New York Women’s Foundation. Nicole is also the creator of the Lead The Way Initiative for emerging women of color executive directors and mid-level managers working in the social sector. Since it’s inception, more than 100 leaders have cycled through the program including a Presidential Appointee and a MacArthur Foundation Genius.

For more than two decades, Nicole has worked on a range of pressing social issues from violence against women to reproductive justice to economic security. She is also the former Executive Director of the Women of Color Policy Network at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. There, she held the distinction of being one of the youngest scholar-practitioners to lead a major U.S. research center or think tank. Under her direction, the Network became a leading authority and voice on public policies impacting women of color, low-income families and communities of color. Nicole is also an Inaugural Ascend Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a Patricia Roberts Public Policy Fellow and received the Dillon Award in American Politics. Nicole lives between Brooklyn, New York and Washington, DC and is mom to twins Charli and Parker and two dogs, Anderson & Sofia.

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TRANSCRIPT:

C. Nicole Mason: The issue I see in the election right now is that we’re not having the conversations that matter to people and families across the country. We have moved so far away from the bread and butter issues that families want to talk about. So we haven’t heard a lot about poverty. We haven’t heard a lot in this election about bringing and making sure that we have a strong social safety net not only for low income families but for middle class families who are still fragile or straddling between being financially secure and close to the edge in terms of falling into poverty. And we’re just not having those conversations. We’re talking about things that matter but when we talk about building a society where all people have a fair shot we’re not talking about the issues that will make the difference for them.

We don’t talk a lot about white poverty and I think we should because I think if we talked a lot more about the way poverty impacts different groups I think we would not see it as an issue that’s out there and doesn’t impact me or it’s a black issue or a Latino issue. We would see it as an issue of lack and people not having the resources that they need to be able to live a quality and a productive life. What we know though is that black and Latino people are more likely to live in poverty and white people are also poor. But we’re not, again we’re not talking about those conversations. And we’re not even writing about those conversations so when we’re not talking about rural communities and rural whites. Those people are invisible in media and culture when we talk about poverty. And so until we can really wrap our minds around the magnitude of who’s living in poverty and what poverty – the face of poverty and what it really looks like we’re not really going to be able to make policies that will reach the people who are really impacted or affected by it.

One of the things I think is unique about American pover...

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