Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America

Mixing fond and harsh memories, Lalami opens “Caste” with a description of her first apartment and the various issues with it, such as a cramped bathroom and fleas in the carpets. She likens the fleas in the carpet to the association of parasites with the impoverished, a comparison drawn from critiques of social welfare programs paid for with taxpayer dollars. This association led California to restrict welfare access, which decreased the proportion of people in need who actually received assistance. Lalami notes that most of the people living in her diverse apartment complex were poor, and the landlord was generous. In 1994, Pete Wilson, the governor of California, introduced a bill to restrict access to social resources for undocumented immigrants, a movement that was not popular in Lalami’s neighborhood.

Discussing poverty further, Lalami notes that the impoverished have always been excluded from American political affairs. Initially, only wealthy white men could vote in the US, and poll taxes and voting restrictions have kept women and people of color from voting into the modern day. Lalami suggests that the poor have always been excluded from politics, but modern American conceptions of poverty portray the poor as choosing to be poor.