Analysis Of Evicted By Matthew Desmond, And Hillbilly Elegy

Poverty. Unemployment. Potential foreclosure. Words all too familiar to Americans everywhere. The PBS Frontline documentary, Two American Families, is the heartbreaking, yet hopeful look at the struggles of two Milwaukee families, the Neumanns and the Stanleys, over roughly two decades, 1991 to 2012. While ideally the concept of meritocracy would indicate the efforts of these hard working families should influence their social standing, the reality of social stratification remains, with their wealth, power, and prestige, or lack thereof, used to cement their place, and primarily that of their children, in society.

The article Being Poor, Black and American: The Impact of Political, Economic, and Cultural Forces written by William Julius Wilson is about the struggles and inequalities African Americans living in poverty encounter. Wilson discussed political, economic and cultural forces that have an impact on American impoverished communities. The author suggested the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina brought the media and world attention to poverty in the United States. Prior to Katrina, the author believes Americans did not focus or sympathize with poor communities. This unsympathetic attitude stems from the belief that people are poor because they did not work hard enough, or are not doing anything to get out of that situation. After Katrina, Americans started to notice and care about the impoverished communities because the hurricane was a natural disaster and out of their control. Overall, the author explains how politics, economics and cultures forced many families into poverty, and diminishes the idea that people live in poverty because of their own shortcomings.

Evictions have a mental price on kids, who will remember that event for the rest of their lives. Desmond shows the huge impact it takes on the children who are not responsible for their upbringing and can ingrain the “poverty mentality” early on. An

There were a lot of touching stories throughout the book titled Evicted written by Matthew Desmond, one story that really stuck out to me was the story of a man named Lamar. Lamar lived in a housing unit owned by Sherrena. Lamar is hard working man, who lives his life in a wheelchair, and recovering addict. Lamar’s story seemed to have a lot of similar characteristics to what I might expect for someone to have a hard life.

The setting of a rundown house in a poor neighborhood gives the impression of their struggle to survive as African Americans. The shabbiness of the exterior suggests their low social status. “A relatively recent addition to the house and running its full width, the porch lacks congruence. It is a sturdy porch with a flat roof. One or two chairs of dubious value sit at one end where the kitchen window opens on to the porch. An old fashioned ice box stands silent guard at the opposite end” (Wilson, setting description). While the newly added porch may represent an attempt to

A suburban life is a paradise full of shopping, colorful gardens, and well-groomed homes. Despite all these benefits, a suburban life is an isolated life. People living in suburbs are rarely exposed to miseries in society. One of these conflicts is homelessness. When living in an environment surrounded by homes, individuals often have difficulty imagining not being able to sleep in a warm bed, eat a proper meal or even receive necessary medical attention. This grim situation is depicted in the writings of Jeannette Walls. In the autobiography The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls accurately portrays homelessness by explaining its causes, its impact upon daily life, and its effect on victimized families.

“The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, whereas children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised” (Desmond 2016, 293). Evictions! The root of poverty? Matthew Desmond’s novel “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in America City, portrays the lives of tenants, landlords, and house marketing on the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee. Desmond gives the reader overwhelming evidence and revealing testimony illustrating the major impact of inadequate housing on individuals, local, and national level. Desmond’s analysis and observation of his case study enables him to portray the reality of poverty, and to persuade the readers that evictions are a major consequence, and primary contributors in the relentless cycle of poverty. Desmond build his argument using two Aristotelian rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos and inductive reasoning to illustrates the importance of ending the cycle of poverty.

We saw prejudice and discrimination throughout the book. For example, when Lafayette’s was charged with a crime due to hi, been associated with who did it. When LaJoe lost her benefits from the state due to her on and off husband using her home address and when collecting unemployment benefits which LaJoe did not claim as income coming into the home. In both instances, the Rivers were treated as if they were liars and criminals. Because of Lafayette being from the inner city, there was this predetermine thought about any youth that lived in the inner city from the court system. LaJoe was treated with disrespect by the welfare office because of the prejudgment they had formed about people that lived in the inner city. Due to the location in which they stayed, the importance of healthy living condition was not a priority to the city. They were forced to live in the vicinity of garbage, broken sewer systems, dead animals, etc. Also, the children were forced to either stay in their apartments or play on the railroad tracks because the city had only a few areas for them to play. These areas had become run down and it was unsafe for kids to play in. It is unsure why the was such neglect for those areas of the inner city, but one could only think that it had to do with how this race has been treated for years.

In the Rusty Belt of America there a minority group of people whose income level has surpassed the poverty line. Inside the state of Ohio lies the poorest white American which describes themselves as hillbillies as they reside in the eastern Kentucky. In his personal analysis of culture in crisis of hillbillies, J.D. Vance tries to explain, in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, what goes on in the lives of people as the economy goes south in a culture that is culturally deceptive, family deceptive, and in a community, whose doctrine of loyalty is heavily guarded. Like every poor Scot-Irish hillbilly in his community, Vance came from being poor, like the rest of his kind, to be a successful Law graduate from Yale Law school. As result of this transition and being the only child in his family to graduate from a highly respected intuition in the country, Vance thought out to analyze the ostensible reason of why many people are poor in his community.

For far too long, African Americans have been neglected the rights to decent and fair housing. In “In Darkness and Confusion,” William Jones expresses his discontentment with the almost cruel living conditions of the ghettos in Harlem as he stated, “It ain’t a fit place to live, though” (Petry 261). William was especially motivated to move to a better home to protect his wife, Pink’s, ailing health. William and Pink searched high and low for more decent places to live – however, they simply could not afford decent. Though marketed to those with lower than average incomes, the ‘better’ housing for blacks were still deficient and extremely pricy. In

The book Hillbilly Elegy is a story about a man that achieved things he never thought possible. J.D. Vance grew up in an extremely small town in Ohio which did not present much opportunity to him. Most of his family members had worked in places like steel mills in the past where physical labor was done in return for low wages. Throughout his childhood, J.D.’s mom battled a drug addiction and was emotionally unstable. Eventually J.D. moved in with his grandma, Mamaw, who saw the potential J.D. had to succeed. She encouraged him to do better with his life in many ways, one being giving him his first calculator. This motivated him to learn math and was the first step in achieving his goals. J.D. soon went on to graduate high school and

In recent months, New York City has planned to steadily open homeless shelters to combat the growing population of people living on the streets. In spite of these plans, numerous shelters have failed to open, citing causes such as lack of available space, failure of safety inspections, and most notably, a lack of funding. This dysfunctional system demonstrates the true passivity and lack of concern contributing to the oppression of the poor. Injustices towards those in poverty aren't just recent happenings. Throughout the Great Depression during the 1930's, the gap between socioeconomic classes widened greatly. The affluent gained more riches and the impoverished lost what little wealth they had. Physical separations were created as well, as classes could be differentiated mainly by the areas of their city in which they lived. This rift in society, both economically and physically, provided a platform for discrimination and prejudice towards the

Katherine S. Newman is an anthropologist who has carried out extensive and highly respected research on poverty and urban life. Previously at Columbia University, she is currently Ford Foundation Professor of Urban Studies at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is the author of several books; Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream, 1993, and Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence, 1999. Her writings are on middle class economic instability, urban poverty, and the sociology of inequality. She previously taught at the University of California (Berkeley), Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton (Bibliography of Newman, Katherine, 2010).

Martin Luther King Jr.’s failed housing campaign and the Bronzeville Project exhibit this disjointedness through black middle class Chicagoans ignoring the socioeconomic class divisions within Bronzeville by using institutionalized racial barriers as a conduit to produce a narrative of collective discriminatory practices faced by all blacks preventing social and financial equity for the race. However, these

Poor, rich, young, old, competent, incompetent, faith, heart, courage, hope and lost of hope as well as lack of faith and respect to the system. The conditions in urban communities are low income and no help of money, culture and values. The differences of helping the weak or the strong, in the society of those who have power. The streets or the nihilistic that exist in the world by inner-city and black poor neighborhoods, which is better to have in the world to come through-depending for society to help or being independent and making similar rules as juice and the codification of the streets. Anderson said "expect in the most general sense, it is wrong to speak of "America" cultural as if it was a single entity (p1). West said this "viewpoint involves a subtle historical and sociological analysis of slavery, Jim Crowism, job and residential discrimination, skewed unemployment rates, inadequate health care, and poor education" (p1). The differences and similarity concept of society or the people in low income communities and its values, culture on one 's beliefs to live and the support to low income families. The people with more power are caught up with the structure of the world and how to properly maintain the situations besides focusing on both citizens that are poor and the benefit of the homeless people. An the concept of the subculture of the larger picture of American culture. The poor to rich or rich to poor that live in a stage of series that combine us apart