The World Bank’s book 'Voices of the Poor' is an attempt to represent the majority of humanity as The Poor. This othering, argues this paper from the website Red, produces The Poor as a category of people who are politically inert, largely responsible for their own circumstances and whose suffering justifies the position and work of The Bank and other social forces with similar agendas. The paper suggests that there are connections between this approach and colonial discourses that sought to other people via a process of racialisation. In contrast, a book like Aswin Desai's 'We Are the Poors', which details struggles against neoliberal policies in South Africa, does not objectify its subject.