Laurel Johnson Black's Stupid Rich Bastards

describing how outsiders are poorer and unable to have the funds for the luxuries that

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.

Whoever could share pencils and afford them was better liked than kids who couldn’t. Even then, I knew that my financial status wasn’t a just reason that other kids were shunned or even laughed at for buying value school supplies. Yet, the teachers weren’t any better: those who could afford tissues and hand sanitizer were praised for “caring about their classmates,” while those who could not were scolded for not following the rules or specific list of what to buy. After school, I had everything I could want to eat, had all the clothes I wanted—my closet was overflowing—and never understood buying not-brand name anything. I never was hungry at night or didn’t have warm clothes in winter. Even now, I’m able to buy art supplies, go after my goals, and have the financial security to know that I’ll still come home to food I can eat and not worry about going hungry. It’s unfair, and I’ve always known that, which is why I often go out of my way to pay for other people who show signs of low income. As a kid, this meant buying pencils just for others to use, as an adult, it means sliding someone twenty dollars so they can eat lunch

Bringing awareness to poverty is important, and this essay has done a fine job in doing so. Not only does it touch on poverty but also on passing judgment on individuals when we really don’t know what they could be going through. When Scheller describes how the children at school react to others who don’t have much, it causes me to think about how blessed the majority of the population in America really is and also provokes the question, what can we do to help those in need of what we like to call “basic necessities”?

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.

Beegle begins her essay with references and personal stories from her childhood. She emphasizes on the gap of middle class and the class of poverty that she grew up in. Beegle says, “In school, I did not know the middle-class life examples teachers used to explain academic subjects. I was unable to understand and speak in their middle-class language; I said “ain’t,” didn’t know whether to use “gone” or “went,” didn’t know a difference between “seen” or “saw” (Beegie,342).” Her middle class teacher could not relate to her and Beegle could not relate to her peers or teacher. The lack of knowledge between the two classes as well as barriers pushed Beegle to quit school. The middle class had a different perspective on how a future with education looked

While living in a first-floor apartment on the South Side of Chicago, Bray was one of most African American children to be raised on welfare. Through much darkness in Bray’s adolescence, her mother was perceived as a symbol of light. Her mother’s nurturing nature, spiritual hymns and voice of reason was a sense of security for Bray. As a family trying to make ends meet, Bray was surrounded by fear and uncertainty. Even the difference of losing a nickel could consume her with “the feeling of terror” as “it was not just the fear of getting a beating for losing the money. It was the anticipation of my mother’s disappointment…” (pg.14). Even desperation consumed a bright girl like Bray to sneak money from carelessly left wallets around school. As a young girl, Bray’s parents wanted to fight back the poverty and ignorant lifestyle that followed them. Bray’s early passion for reading along with her parents strict rules gave her the endurance to succeed. With the acceptance of a scholarship from Yale University, Bray was in the top percent of blacks to have been given this opportunity. The expectation of a family on welfare usually prohibited this sort of positive fortune she received. Yet, Bray demonstrated her achievement of contributing to a cultural understanding to all generations on welfare, that being raised on very little served as no reason to be misheard or misrepresented as a

It seems to most that those who have money have it all. They should buy all the unnecessary “junk” that one might find pleasure in owning, take everything for granted and view lower-class individuals as a group of wanna-bes. Think again. S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders, very important propositions are portrayed through the writing techniques which link to another piece of writing “Poverty and Wealth” written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Just because you have everything, doesn’t mean you understand it's worth. Different classes have different experiences, allowing elaboration on the different characters.

During the summer after I turned thirteen, I went on a vacation that changed my entire perspective on life. “Americans are so spoiled.” I remember hearing my mother proclaim this numerous times growing up. I would shake my head or roll my eyes every time, since I never quite understood what it meant. Of course, I had nothing to compare it to. I grew up in the suburbs in a middle class family. I never wanted for anything. I heard the stories of my mother and her siblings growing up; they lived in filth, they occasionally skipped meals, all seven kids slept huddled together on concrete floors. I heard those stories as if she was saying, “…I walked a mile to school, uphill both ways…” I never could have imagined the reality of what the stories truly meant until I visited my birthplace, the Philippines, for the first time.

What the Rich Won’t Tell You by Rachel Sherman, published in The New York Times, September 8, 2017. It is a recent study that the real life and feeling from the rich. The thesis of the article states: “The ways these wealthy New Yorkers identify and avoid stigma matter not because we should feel sorry for comfortable rich people, but because they tell us something about how economic inequality is hidden, justified and maintained in American life.” The purpose of the article is by using research results, to express the idea that rich people are normal, what they trying to hide is their financial situation, they want to hide their social status and maintain a normal life as others. The rich won’t tell anyone how many money they earn, how many

In her article, “The Price of Parsimony”, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc talks about her life experienced in spending and saving money when she was living in C-town in the Bronx and in Massachusetts. Also, she was comparing the way of spending money between her family and her friends. In the article, LeBlanc cared deeply for her friend Lolli. She was a teenager, pregnant, homeless and already the mother of two children. She saw Lolli going crazy on shopping food from the food store. The author said “Didn't she know she was poor?” by saying that, it shows that the Adrian Nicole cared about Lolli and was surprised about how she was spending too much money on food when she could buy few items and keep or save the rest of the money in spending it on other

Wealth is measured by assets such as properties, bonds, savings, and checking accounts minus debts and these assets provide a sense of privilege that can last for generations. For example, the name Kennedy is an asset because the name can open so many opportunities for a Kennedy even if they are not worthy of the opportunity. One of the biggest inequalities in the inner city is property inequality. People in the inner city cannot afford to own any property of their own and if they manage to own a home their mortgage loan is higher than their white counterpart due to “predatory lending practices in the United States”. (Massey and Rough) People in the inner city were identified and exploited by these banks by providing these loans they knew they could not afford. (Porter)

To two boys in suburbia, a friend of mine named Mather and myself, the worries of money and safety, of tight finances, were far off. Not only in age but in distance. These two suburbanites lived in a care free world padded by a comfortable life style, blessed to be free of the normal uncertainties of life which allowed for them to become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Looking back at myself as a semi-spoiled child I can finally understand how this easy going lifestyle truly effected my character as well as my personality. While I look back at my childhood now and smile and laugh at the nature of things there was a time when certain events would cause me to suck in my teeth, shake my head, and cringe at the mere thought of my actions.

Amazingly the poorest people are the people with the biggest heart and value. Success can rot the minds of even the most beautiful people. I have always promised myself that I would never let money corrupt who I am as a person. Honestly I could be the poorest person ever and I’d love everything about it as long as I had people that I love. Peers are so oblivious to see that riches don’t bring out the good in them but instead bring out the evil deep within them. This leads me into how I will use the better of my education to make me the best person Lawrence has ever came across. Money isn’t everything, I could be thousands of dollars in student loans and paying them off and I’d still be the most generous person

In Changing the Face of Poverty: Nonprofits and the Problem of Representation, Diana George questions, “How do we identify those ‘deserving’ of our help?” The idea of “deserving” vs “undeserving” poor in Chop Shop is interesting. When selling candy to people on the subway, Ale made it clear that he was “deserving” by saying “I don’t even go to school” (Bahrani). This makes the others on the subway feel bad for him and makes them buy candy because a poor child who is not even going to school is deserving of their money. On the other hand, when Ale stole a woman’s purse, she was left thinking that Ale is not one of the “deserving” poor. She believes that Ale is just a bad person who does not deserve help as he is a thief, even though she has no idea about the rest of life or practices. The layout of the movie causes the viewer to see Ale as one of the “deserving” poor. Though many of the people he interacts with are in a similar situations, he is the one people watching Chop Shop care about. This perpetuates the idea that some poor are “deserving” and some poor are “undeserving” which is harmful to efforts to try to eradicate poverty in the United States.