While Barbara worked in Maine as a maid she noticed how convenience store clerks, who made $.65 less than she made an hour, look at her and her coworkers as if they were beneath them. Another example of this was when she stated that everywhere she went people looked at the uniform and instantly regarded her and her coworkers as lower class citizens. People saw there green and yellow uniforms like the white and black stripes of a convict and that their style of life isn’t as good as people in their social class. One particular instance when she bought a beer from the grocery store she could feel the cold stares that implied that the reason she had that maid job was because all her money was going to support her alcohol habit; even though Barbara has a PH.D and probably made more money than many of them all they saw was a lower class…
“No one ever said that you could work hard—harder even than you ever thought possible—and still find yourself sinking even deeper into poverty and debt.” This is a quote by Barbara Ehrenreich who wrote “Nickel and Dimed,” she is a journalist with a PHD in biology and writes about her own story as she chooses to change her entire lifestyle, face the hardships of being a part of the working poor class just to see if she can survive. Throughout the book she illustrated the different jobs she endured and the struggles that came along with the jobs. Her story highlights the social inequality she experienced based on her status, working poor class, routine lifestyle, her experience living on the edge and the stagnant pay she received. There was a lot of social inequality in her journey that many Americans seem to overlook on the poor working class.…
Too often than not, when an individual hears the word “poor” unsettling images of destitute poverty and homelessness are the disturbing, and at times inaccurate, depictions that come into one’s mind. Another common image that tends to come to mind when speaking of people in the poor community is the pitiful imagery of a lazy group of people looking for handouts from the government. It seems as if the admirable image of a group of low-wage working citizens attempting to move into better living conditions to support their families, is unrealistic. Stereotypes tend to make that depiction nonexistent as an option. Stereotypes favor the images of drug dealers or public assistance riders, rather than an honest working person in an unfortunate economic…
As you read bell hooks’s Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor, it’s hard not to ask yourself the question, how do I see the poor? In her writing, she declares that issues like stereotypical thinking and negative cultural portrayal are the downfall of this economic status. hooks, herself, came from a background of poverty and thus, through her study, sets out to battle the stigma that is associated with being poor. I believe that hooks has a valid point and that within my lifetime, we can change the way the poor are viewed.…
When I watch TV over my dinner at night, I see a world in which almost everyone makes $15 an hour or more, and I'm not just thinking of the anchor folks. The sitcoms and dramas are about fashion designers or schoolteachers or lawyers, so it's easy for a fast-food worker or nurse's aide to conclude that she is an anomaly — the only one, or almost the only one, who hasn't been invited to the party. And in a sense she would be right: the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment. Even religion seems to have little to say about the plight of the poor, if that tent revival was a fair sample. The moneylenders have finally gotten Jesus out of the…
in the quote mentioned opens the eyes of many middle class Americans that assume that the poor…
To begin with, the media portrays false images of how poor the lower class is, how lazy they are as a result of their own life choices.We see similar portrays of false images in Bell Hooks essay “Seeing And Making Culture: Representing The Poor” . For instance, Bell Hooks describes how the lower class is portrayed incorrectly through social media based on personal experience when she states the comments of her peers and professors, “they almost always portrayed the poor as shiftless, mindless, lazy, dishonest, and unworthy” (Hooks 484). This quote is a prime example of how the lower class are expected not strive and work as hard as other people and are seen as not good enough.…
In her second jobs as a waitress at Jerry’s she notices that “though no one, I notice, ever brings up anything potentially expensive, like shopping or movies (page 36). Based on what she saying, we can see that they are really poor. They can't afford to buy expensive things and seem to be invisible to the rich world. At first she was worry that she too overqualified for the job she has because she has a PhD degrees and an upper middle class. She thought that she has higher education they not going to hire her but it turn out she “under qualified” because the…
In order to make arguments more evident, Hooks uses her own experiences as examples, to connect with her readers. As she claims that, “Culture critics rarely talk about the poor.”(para. 1) So to point out this issue, and take her stance on how poverty is displayed, she mentions how her family taught her to not judge others if they are poor or not. But to understand of what are the fortunate things she has and others can’t have. Hooks wants to convey to her readers that it is wrong to judge the book by its cover. Meaning that, no matter how poor people may be shown in media, it is not right for the audience to discriminate the poor. Hooks mentions the society, “always portrayed the poor as shiftless, mindless, lazy, dishonest, and unworthy,” (para. 5) Since she learnt that there was no connection between poverty and an individual’s integrity. Considering that a poor…
Life happens in ways you cannot control. People have hard times to achieve an education due conflicts they have no control over. Many statistics show the many ways of what will most likely happen to people that are born into a certain class. In the articles, “Homeless on Campus” by Eleanor J. Bador, “Fremont High School” by Jonathan Kozol, and “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” by Joseph E. Stiglitz, show many ways of how society forms one person’s life in a way they cannot control. America displays their citizens as equal, but these reports published by the authors suggest otherwise by explaining the unequal lifestyles of the high, middle, and low class of America.…
“For the most part, class avoidance of class-laden vocabulary crosses class boundaries” (Mantsios 304). There are measurements in salary, physical appearance, and education to determine class. Mantsios studies showed that 34 percent of America’s wealth is held by the one percent, and almost one of every eight people are living below the poverty line ($19,307 dollars for a family of four in 2004). But it is not getting any better, since it has increased approximately $4,000 since then. One of the biggest reasons people are in poverty is because people cannot afford proper education to become well-sustained. It is all dependent on factors beyond our control. Mantsios compared class backgrounds of a life of a white male, whose father is a manufacturer and an industrialist who was enrolled in a prestigious preparatory school, and a black female, whose father a janitor and mother a waitress who lives in the ghetto. Who do you think has more of an advantage in life? The white male, as a result of opportunity handed to…
Many critics of the poor believe that they should take personal responsibility for their substandard living conditions; they only live in these conditions because of their own life choices and poor attitudes. However, according to Tommie Shelby’s Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto, the social conditions of the poor are due to failure of the government and affluent citizens to improve the underprivileged lives of the ghetto poor. If a person is criticized for turning down a menial job at low wages and applying for small welfare payments instead, Shelby would argue that the critic should not demand labor from those who do not receive the same benefits as the rest of society, because the social system is inequitable. In a fair system of social cooperation, there is reciprocity between people who regard each other as equals (page 127). This should be taken into consideration when criticizing the poor. Why should they be expected to play their part in social cooperation if they do not get to receive the same benefits? The poor are clearly not regarded as equal, in terms of granted opportunities, to a person from a higher class in society.…
Now in days, television shows and movies depict the poor as people with no ambition, no dignity, people who cannot be happy with themselves while living in poverty. These negative stereotypes often fill people with a stigma of being or becoming poor. Many of us in this generation, who grew up in poverty or with blue-collar workers as parents, have dealt…
Most Americans are insulted from the poor; it is hard to imagine the challenges of poverty, the daily fears of victimization, the frustration of not being able to provide for a child. Poverty is something that not only effects adults, but children as well. When we think of poverty in America what is the image that comes to mind? An old dilapidated shack in southern Alabama? or a rat infested tenement house in New York City? According to the book Faces of Poverty, the author, Jill Berrick says that "Both images are correct, for poverty exists in the backwoods of Appalachia as well as in the heart of the inner city" (1). In homes across America poor parents are raising poor children. Even in our own back…
Though John Scalzi never reveals his own experience with poverty like Jeanette, his biography tells us that he was spent his childhood in California in poverty and was able to work out of it similar to Jeannette Walls. John takes on a “no tolerance” attitude when it comes to stereotypes about the poor, especially victims of hurricane Katrina that hit in 2005. The reason he wrote “Being Poor” was because of the people asking why everyone did not just leave when they were told to and avoid the hurricane. He answered in his essay indirectly that these poor southern people do not have reliable transportation, live hand-to-mouth, and have nowhere else to go even if they had the means to get there. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane in the history of the United States, and the sixth strongest overall. The severe destruction left many losses of life and property damage, but for the poor it was the worst. John Scalzi wrote this essay for the ignorant people wondering why the poor in New Orleans did not just leave when the hurricane came. The details he gives describe on an everyday basis what these families are going through. “Being poor is clutching that box of Raisin Bran and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last” gives many details in one line. Raisin Bran is a simple type of cereal and one that can be off-brand. Trying to make the kids understand it has to last is showing that many times that box might be all a whole family has for a month. This was the largest natural disaster in the history of the United States, and people are asking the poor why they did not leave. Many think that it is easy to move out of poverty, but they have never experienced true poverty before. Many families are single-parent households who wake up and work all day,…