“Just the way it was”. That was Anne W. viewpoint of poverty when she was growing up and going to school. Anne and I met working for the same school district. She was born fifth of eleven children and started her schooling in the 1960s. Although Book’s writes about poverty in a more modern time a lot of what she writes was still true to Anne’s schooling. Her mother stayed at home and her father was a farm cropper, but never owned his own land. Book’s reminds us that poor people are working people. She reminds us to “Consider the role of the working poor in a market economy. Unable to support their own families, they provide a wealth of services to others.(Chamberlin 1999)” (PG. 29) The GI bill payed for her childhood home. She grew up in rural farm town of 1,600. When Book’s wrote about the demographics of poverty in chapter 5 I was surprised to learn that poverty is higher in rural areas.
Growing up Anne admitted to not knowing she was “poor”. She thought her family did the things they did because that is what all the families in her town were doing. Her family had a box that the community would put their hand-me downs in for Anne and her ten siblings. They got to take a bath once and week and shared water with all of her siblings. Wearing the same socks for multiple days was common as long as they turned their socks on inside-out. Anne and her sister’s made their dresses and each had three total - two dresses for school and one dress for church. Anne’s
The author starts by explaining a question that many people ask about the odd behaviors in poor people and their purchases. She helps to explain this by giving background information on her own family when she was growing up. An event she describes is when her neighbor was unable to obtain benefits to raise her granddaughter after a year, the authors mom dresses “expensively” or nicely to gain an upper hand when asking for their benefits. This is done to further her belief that people buy these things to belong and to gain more privilege. She ends her essay by stating a person cannot judge what a poor person does until they’ve been poor themselves.
The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader of a real problem, media misrepresentation, and to try to have the reader change the way the think, feel, and perceive the poor. She gives examples of encounters she has had that are a result of the damaging depiction and conveys to the reader why those thoughts are wrong by using her own personal experiences. She mentions that before entering college she never thought about social class. However, the comments from both other students and her professors about poverty were alarming to her. Other people viewed the poor as, “shiftless, mindless, lazy, dishonest, and unworthy” indigents. Hook opposes that stereotypical image of the poor, referring back to being taught in a “culture of poverty,” the values to be intelligent, honest, and hard-working. She uses these personal experiences to her advantage by showing she has had an inside look at poverty.
In Diana George's essay "Changing the Face of Poverty," she explains how the issue of poverty in the United States is misinterpreted. Diana argues that organizations with the primary goal of eradicating global poverty may be the ones contributing to the problem they're fighting against. I can agree with George that Americans have some over simplistic views and stereotypes which then “often fail to overturn cultural commonplaces that represent poverty as an individual problem that can be addressed on an individual basis.” (678) In order to overcome poverty organizations such as Habit need to move past using “the most common understandings of poverty in America." (680)
As said in the film Many has always been poor. It is heart wrenching to me to think that there are people our there skipping meals to feed their children. However, it is happening every day. In a way, society enables people to live in poverty. Mary states that if she gets a job she may loose her medical coverage.
In the article, “What’s So Bad about Being Poor” by Charles Murray, Murray states that “One of the great barriers to a discussion of poverty and social policy in the 1980s is that so few people who talk about poverty have ever been poor”. He discusses how, contrary to present day, in America up until the 1950s those in positions of influence and power included a sizable amount of people who had been raised “dirt-poor”. Murray states that, because of this, many Americans with their lack of exposure to such people, they develop a skewed perspective of what poverty is. On account of this, Murray challenges the reader with several thought experiments which he uses to help the reader come to certain conclusions that convey his message.
The poverty cycle was introduced in such a way so that a message of how the significance of the quality of education affects the fate of an individual. An example of how a lack of quality education perpetuates the poverty takes place when Moore narrates “My grandparents agreed…My grandparents took the money they had in the home in the Bronx, decades of savings and mortgage payments, and gave it to my mother so that she could pay for my first year of military school.” (Moore 95-96). The distress for an education of higher quality is present in this passage because Moore’s mother and his grandparents were willing to sacrifice large sums of money in order to change Wes Moore’s fate through a better education. Wes Moore uses this passage in order to convey the message that an individual’s environment plays a significant role in determining one’s fate. In contrast the other Wes Moore was not able to pursue a higher education because of a dearth of the opportunity to do
Thousands of Americans use some type of help from the government, whether it is finical aid or food stamps and more than half of those Americans have children that they are trying to feed but barely getting by. It must hurt those thousands of people prides that they can’t put food on the table to feed their own children by themselves without help from the government hoping that one day they can support them; but they do what they must do to provide for their families, they put their pride aside and their responsibility first. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeanette’s parents Rose-Mary and Rex Walls have trouble doing this, they don’t accept hands outs or any form of charity because they think they can take care of their children by
“A Question of Class” focuses on Dorothy Allison’s struggle of identifying herself as a poverty stricken individual, and breaking free from her predetermined destiny while simultaneously accepting her past. Allison understands the prejudice that comes with being poor with the statement, “I have learned with great difficulty that the vast majority of people pretend that poverty is a voluntary condition, that the poor are…less than fully human…” The quote fundamentally means that society does not view the poor as their equivalents to the world, and one chooses to live in such conditions. Although the remark was made in the 1950’s, it still rings true in the societal ideology of present time. Changes have not been
The book “The Other America”, written by Michael Harrington, describes poverty in America in the 1950s and 1960s, when America became one of the most affluent and advanced nations in the world. The book was written in 1962, and Harrington states that there were about 50,000,000 (about 25% of the total population) poor in America at that time. The author did extensive research with respect to the family income levels to derive the poverty numbers, and used his own observations and experiences to write this book. This book addresses the reasons for poverty, the nature of poverty, the culture of poverty, the blindness of Middle Class America with respect to poverty, and the responsibility of all Americans in addressing the issue of poverty in America.
Poverty is a main part of life for many people in the world, more importantly the United States. Jeanette Walls shows how big of a problem poverty is in her memoir “The Glass Castle”, with her stories of how she grew up and her family’s struggles. How her family was treated along with what the people living around them found important clearly shows their economical class. The problem of food scarcity, or not having the bare necessities are some of poverty’s main problems. In “The Glass Castle”, the issues of poverty are displayed through not having the basic necessities, not being able to provide for children, and how there is not always enough food to feed everyone in the family.
More than 800 million people in the world are malnourished, 777 million of them are from the developing world (Raphel, S., 2014). Poverty is an issue that must be addressed to the population loud and clear or everyone will end up suffering. There are many families trying to survive and live from paycheck to paycheck. Unfortunately, there are some families that are unable to support himself or herself or any family member. One important key issue of poverty in the United States is inequality. Many Americans blame the poor people for their own fate but you should never judge a book by its cover. There can be many reasons why an individual or families end up in poverty. For example, low wage jobs, discrimination and social inequality, vulnerability to natural disasters, war and political instability. Another big issue we face today is child poverty. This is a very critical issue because these young children are our future. If we let these children live in poverty, there is a higher chance they will drop out of school, look for work in order to support their family, or give up in life.
While it has proven to be difficult to end poverty in America, Peter Edelman is optimistic. In his book So Rich, So Poor Edelman makes a call to action. There are four prominent ideas that underpin Edelman’s reasoning throughout the book: (1) More people must understand why poverty is still so prevalent in America; (2) extreme poverty must be taken into consideration as a shocking 6 million Americans’ sole income was food stamps in 2011. This fact alone creates a sense of urgency that drives Edelman; (3) increasing income inequality should be treated as a moral issue; and (4) bold political action will be required if substantive progress will be made in alleviating poverty.
Jo Goodwin Parker’s essay, “What is Poverty?” is about Parker who has personally experienced rural poverty. She explains her story from childhood to adulthood. Parker’s struggles are overwhelming; look at any sentence, the evidence of her daily struggle is there. From her underwear to living arrangements, and everything in between, Parker resides in poverty. In her essay, she says to listen to the story of what poverty is. Then she talks about the different aspects of poverty. Parker talks about the lack of health conditions she and her three children suffer from. She decides to be a mother even though she has no ability to provide
American factories can comprise of about up to 1000 workers. If American factories are shut down and moved to other countries, this takes many American people out of work. Companies are now also importing jobs. This is where employers hire people such as immigrants to work less than minimum wage. For that reason, many Americans are stuck with the other minimum wage, and low-paying jobs that barely get them through life. Because of this, many Americans are working full time jobs that are below the Federal poverty line. These types of people are often called the “working poor”. Due to this the working poor have to run to welfare. This affects all Americans because taxpayers are the ones paying for welfare. The more jobs that are taken
Poverty and inequality exist in every developed culture and often are only patched in order for society to continue upwardly. Poverty and inequality in the United States exists for many reasons; reasons that very from the prospective lens. Interpretive theories in particular ask us to question our reality and its constructs. Interpretive theories require us to looks at the world as a social realm, one that we created and constantly change. Interpretive theories study the relationship between power and the construction of social roles as well as the invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up domination, (Delgado & Stefanic, 2001). Susan Kemp argues that the view of the world is dominated by the experiences of white western