Social Inequality And The Boy In The Mirror

Imagine coming home to a house that has no warmth or food. Constantly feeling like you are in a place you can’t get out of. This is how poverty may feel to others. The expeirences from the author Jo Goodwin Parker in the story “What Is Poverty” and the McBride family from the novel “The Color Of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute To His White Mother” show that there are various effects of living in poverty that include emotional problems, adolescent rebellion, and

In the article, The Original Underclass Alec Mcgillis discusses how after the Trump election, people began to place blame on low-class Americans for his successful election. In the article, Mcgillis explains why Donald Trump would appeal to this many Americans. Mcgullis starts his point by stating, “low-income whites were starting to mimic trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans” (Mcgillis par. 2). Mcgillis explains that even though “blacks and Hispanics” were not flourishing this helped create the narrative of “white woe”. He sues these points to connect low income people across the board throughout time. Mcgillis uses two novels White Trash: 400-year Untold History of Class in America and Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir

I wholeheartedly endorse what Cottom calls “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, that poor people buy status symbols to survive in this world. She demonstrates that, as a middle class black girl, her family had a way of turning the tables in their favor in multiple aspects in order to supply their needs and wants. Poor people buy expensive items, sometimes depriving themselves of their other needs, just for the respect of others. These items are 21st-century status symbols, they can single-handedly determine the fate of your everyday encounters. The author uses personal experiences to support her argument, persuasively changing your entire perspective and broadening your mind to another individual’s lifestyle.

In the article, "Stupid Rich Bastards", the author, Laurel Johnson Black, gives an insight on her life and upbringing in a "poor" family, the effects it had on her, her life goals, and dreams. Black’s article was published in the book This Fine Place So Far from Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class in 1995. Throughout the article, Black gives an explanation of the conditions in which she and her family lived in, which include her parents having to take on various jobs such as her father being a plumber, junk man, car salesman and her mother—a cook, school crossing-guard and a McDonald 's counter worker as well. With all these jobs, Black also mentioned that the income was still inadequate. Being that her family 's way of living was not the best, her parents decided that one of their children has to make it or go to college, and Black was the one who was going to be the one to do that. She did this with hopes that she would earn more money, be able to make a better life for her and her family, maneuver along with the "stupid rich bastards", talk like them, learn their ways but not be like them, and explain to her family about the lives of the same "stupid rich bastards", people who had or made more money and had better lives or felt better than others. Along with her telling her story, the main purpose of Black’s story is to bring to our attention that she is trying to “keep the language of the working class in academia” (Black 25).

Affluenza is a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. It is a powerful virus that has infected the American society, threatening our wallets, our friendships, our families, our communities, and our environment. Since the United States has become the economic model for most of the world this virus is now flowing freely on every continent. The costs and consequences of this disease are massive even though they are often concealed. Left untreated however, it can cause permanent discontent. Affluenza is based on our culture and how it encourages its citizens to measure their worth by financial success and material possessions. The media such as the

The PBS Frontline documentary “Two American Families”, produced by Bill Moyers, follows two middle class families in Milwaukie, one black and one white, for over a decade as they struggle to achieve the “American Dream”. This documentary mirrors the struggle of so many American families who work hard and play by the rules, yet fall victim in a struggling economy to a series of policy decisions made. The hand of policy ineffectively steered the lives of the two families featured, the Neumann’s and Stanley’s, despite their hard work ethic and sincere determination to succeed. Many policy implications played a role in the documentary, including those around education, institutional racism, taxation, overseas jobs

Does money control today's society? The Younger family is an African American family in Chicago in the 1950s. The family lives in a small and ratty one window apartment. They are an “average” family who receives the proceeds from a $10,000 life insurance policy from the death of Walter Lee Sr. Everyone in the family has their own idea of what they want to do with the money, if it was up to one of them. The author's story setting is in the apartment surrounded by various conflicts, conversations and actions of the characters. The story line is only a couple of days, but in that time the author is able to show how poverty can have a negative effect on the Younger family.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America was the first book of its type that I’ve ever read, a real life analysis of what its like to “live in poverty,” working minimum wage jobs trying to make ends meet day in and day out. It was an intriguing story of how a woman with plenty went on to document how she lived without and I found that Ehrenreich’s commentary throughout the book offered a refreshing perspective to the usual conversation that surrounds poverty; she never thought that she was better or better off than those she met working low-paying jobs, and she was always conscious of how race intersected with class throughout her so-called field experiment.

In Tressie McMillan’s “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, it changed people’s views on the threat of keeping up with society, and the status symbol people think they must maintain. Society classifies it as Middle class, suburbs, or simply rich and poor. People feel threatened when someone looks better than them, or has something that they do not have. This story killed all reasons to even feel this way. McMillan also linked this story back to her own personal childhood. Their family was a classic black American migration family, with rural Southern roots. During this time most African Americans were considered as poor. Her family

It is evident that there are still a number of falsehoods that contribute to the adversity many people of color have to overcome in this country. Yale Law School professor, Harlon L. Dalton and Sociologists Naomi Gerstal and Natalia Sarkisian dissect two such falsehoods in their respective essays. In his essay, “Horatio Alger” Dalton takes on the rags-to-riches myth commonly portrayed in Horatio Alger’s works of fiction. Likewise, Gerstal and Sarkisian’s study on Black, White, and Latino families reveals data that debunks the widely held belief that families of color are weaker and more disorganized than their white counterparts. While both essays examine myths that negatively affect Black and Latino people, the authors often use different

In ‘Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor’ by Bell Hooks, issues involving the poor and the rich in the society are brought to light. Hooks addresses issues such as how the poor are viewed in the community, common assumptions about the poor, and how the poor are represented in the media. In her analysis, it is evident that those living in poverty are grossly misrepresented. This misrepresentation affects these people’s daily lives.

To begin, the first pivotal revelation is the concept of white privilege. White Privilege, as Peggy McIntosh specifies in her essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, is a set of unearned assets which a white person in America can count on cashing in each day yet they remain oblivious to. This theme resonates as prior to this course, though aware of certain advantages as a seemingly “white” person in society, I was unaware of its official terminology. Also, as a person with one quarter American Indian blood I’m classified as a minority, however, I’m

Tressie McMillan Cottom, the author of “The Logic of Stupid Poor People” writes about her life experiences and the inequality that she was able to overcome because of the example of her mother and how she was able to obtain access to opportunities that would otherwise be not available to her. Her argument in her article is that how an individual will dress and act makes a difference in what opportunities he or she will be offered. Although everyone would agree that they would hire the best looking person for a job to represent their company, she only declares about the black community. The author of this article, Ms.Cottom has many fatal errors that make her argument invalid and occasionally contradicting herself. In theory, this article was supposed to explain that poor people buy luxury items to fit in, but on the contrary, next she states that this still may not work if the individual happens to be black. In reality, this article is not about being poor; this article is about being discriminated for being black.

In a study conducted by Oscar Lewis, he claims “the low-income population of San Juan and New York and found a widespread way of thinking that he called fatalism” (Macionis 2013:88). He determined people who are raised in poverty are more likely to have, “low self-esteem, limited aspirations, and a sense of powerlessness” (Macionis 2013:88). Some ethnicities, mainly the minority, are described as “oppositional culture” when they succeed or portray stereotyped white characteristics of prosperity in order to discourage advancement. People raised in poverty can find it hard to believe in a better life with education and success if they are only exposed to below average condition of living, education, income, and health care. Poverty is not only an issue of income, it also has negative effects that are detrimental to a person over time.

By associating the potential existence of racism with consumption, a form of rationalization is that we now live in society that does not recognize and reward race, but merit. In turn, whites do not inherently realize the privileges that they are born with. Peggy McIntosh actually used the terms unearned entitlement and unearned advantage to describe disproportionate lead that whites have over blacks (McIntosh, 103). The fact of the matter is that most white people are in denial that they have been born with unearned entitlements that minorities do not have and according to McIntosh this is because they have been taught not to recognize it. As much as white people have been taught not to recognize that they have been given white privilege, blacks and minorities recognize that they do. Although many believe that the playing field is now level, is apparent that there is an uphill struggle for people of color. But how should one first recognize this struggle?