Besides, let’s admit it: Segregation poisons our minds and souls. When affluents live, work, play, and worship mainly alongside fellow affluents, they can grow insular, quite literally forgetting the poor. It brings out the worst in us, feeding our prejudices and spreading moral decay. Engaging with one another in integrated communities allows us to recognize our blind spots, de-siloing our lives and causing families well above the poverty line to become bothered by problems that affect those below it. As Nietzsche wrote, “One must want to experience the great problems with one’s body and one’s soul.” And I’d count poverty among the great problems. Integration means we all have skin in the game. It not only disrupts poverty; on a spiritual level, over time it can foster empathy and solidarity. This is why opposing segregation is vital to poverty abolitionism.

— Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond