Poverty Stereotypes

Roeder 1

Jessica Roeder

Professor Williams

English 1A

December 22, 2013

Stereotypes

            In America, due to numerous reasons, it’s not only extremely difficult to achieve the dreams that we desire but it’s nearly impossible to be above the poor status.  It used to be a lot easier to achieve what we desire, our hopes of a good education and then a good steady, secured job.  But now, it isn’t so easy and in this essay I am going to explain why this is and what we can do to fix it.  Authors Tavis Smiley and Cornel West give numerous examples of poverty, how it’s increasing and how we are fooled by the government and the rich in their novel The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.  The stereotypes pertaining to the poor keep us from seeing the real issue, it has blinded us into thinking there is a different reason to our poor status.

            As we walk along the streets of America we have all seen a homeless person.  So many questions run through my mind when I see a homeless person, “Why are they homeless”? “Why don’t they just get a job”? And the assumption that, “Oh, they’re just lazy, they choose this lifestyle”.  However after reading The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto it has changed my mind about this.  I’ve come to realize that maybe they can’t get a job and that there is a million things holding them back from doing so, people who have graduated college and gotten their degrees have a hard enough time finding a job themselves, what would make a homeless person be able to find a job over a college graduate?  It is nearly impossible for a homeless person to go back to school because of the amount of money it costs, the books, the classes, everything costs money.  Then another thought crosses my mind.  What if the government took away from them all that they did have? “They went after them, they went after their homes.  They moved their jobs overseas.  They took their healthcare away.  They made it so that their children would be the first generation in the history of the country who would be worse off than their parents’ generation” (152).  We look down at the homeless people and judge them fiercely with the belief that they’re simply just lazy and do not care to find a job.  However it just may be that this “homeless” person once was like you and me, with a home, a family and a once thought to be secure job.  It is easy to judge others and stereotype them based on what we see, not what we know.  This just keeps us further away from the real truth.

            Stereotyping the poor keeps us from seeing the real truth that lies right in front of our faces.  Because we stereotype the homeless and see their living conditions we think that we are not on their level, that we are above them and therefore we are not considered to be poor.  However this is extremely incorrect.  Just because we are not living on the streets like a poor person doesn’t mean that we are not poor.  This creates a gap between us who have a home and those who don’t.  Furthermore “we want to pin the tail on any available donkey that will keep us from having to define poverty as ‘being unable to make a living because we can’t find a job’” (171).  In simpler words we are in denial about what being in poverty truly is because we are stuck on the idea that being in poverty means being a homeless person living on the streets.  This keeps us thinking that the homeless is the enemy and not the rich and or government.  This fake illusion that we are not poor like the ones on the streets tremendously blinds us.  We are unable to see the real truth and we are unable to join with the homeless to try and solve the issues that we both face.

            Sadly these stereotypes will not stop, they will only get worse.  Even when the ones who are keeping us in this poverty are caught red handed, it doesn’t stop, “What’s amazing is that in 2008, when Wall Street created a worldwide disaster, these CEOs, these titans of finance that nearly wrecked the world, said, ‘What? Me? No, we want the government bailouts, give us a trillion.’ Then with that money they paid themselves more billions of bonuses the next year” (154).  Although some may fight against the government and the rich there’s not much we can do.  They are powerful but we are not, they hold the fort down and most of us are still too blinded too see what the real truth is, but those that do know, do not really have any way of changing it.  So instead we continue to stereotype the homeless and believe that we are not in poverty because we are not like them.  Instead we look down upon the poor instead of looking down upon the government and the rich.

            In conclusion if Americans ever could find a way to distribute the wealth so everyone was equal and that there’s equality it would all start with us being nice to one another.  If we could be nice to the homeless, learn their story, what allowed them to be this way and the troubles that they face then maybe it would open up everyone’s eyes and see that the problem is the Government.  Maybe then we could work together to slowly but surely resolve this issue.  Because of the government and the rich we do not have as many opportunities as we used to, because of their selfishness and them wanting power, we are all in poverty and there is no longer a middle class.  We have been tricked and fooled and it will only get worse if we don’t all work together to find a way to fix it.  Soon enough if we do not come up with a solution to this massive problem we will all be living on the streets, we will no longer be able to stereotype others because we will finally learn that we were all in the same boat the whole time and that we too are that homeless person living on the streets.

U.S. Prisons: Myth Vs. Mayhem

U.S. Prisons: Myth Vs. Mayhem

This article is about the prisons and how they do not necessarily “punish” the inmates but in a way it encourages their bad behavior and the expenses of keeping a prison going.  When someone commits a crime they should always be punished for what they do, even gang members.  However there are some defaults to this including the fact that they are encouraged to be violent and watch their backs constantly while still having the intuition of becoming the so called alpha in the prison.  In a way it does not “punish” them but it puts them in an environment in which they were already in.  They have rival gangs in the prisons and are constantly looking for a way to get to the enemy and kill them.  To make a prison more successful I strongly believe that any man or woman in prison should not be able to do anything except eat sleep and exercise to their own will.  Yes this seems harsh and inhumane but what they did themselves was inhumane and thus should be punished for it.  No books or any entertainment should be welcomed in their cells.  Prison is supposed to be horrible, supposed to be a punishment, if we are allowing prisoners to have an enjoyable life in there what would keep them from wanting to commit crimes? Nothing.  Men and woman become so attached to prisons and enjoy them that they will actually commit a crime just to be in a prison cell again.  This sends all kinds of red flags and it does not stop the crime or punish those who have committed them.  It’s as if we are rewarding these offenders for their bad behavior.  Something I learned about this article that really stood out to me was the amount of money we spend on prisoners.  One thing that I just can’t fathom is the fact that we are spending thousands of dollars on prisoners who committed crimes.  In my opinion, they are basically living a free and careless life, all of their expenses paid which is just sickening.  Something that was mentioned in this article that confused me was the fact that someone said that we should put only the extremely dangerous people in the prisons. What makes someone extremely dangerous? And are we to just let the people who aren’t as dangerous roam the streets and commit the crimes that they have before with no consequences?

Low Achieving Schools

Roeder 1

Jessica Roeder

Professor Williams

English 1A

October 1, 2013

Low achieving Schools

            The schools in the book and in the Bay area seem to have the same thing in common.  There are poorly funded schools, hiring and firing of teachers a lot, and a lack of materials for the students to achieve their highest potential.  The hiring and firing of teachers constantly causes an unbalanced environment at the schools.  Students are constantly getting new teachers and teachers are constantly jumping around from school to school not knowing what it’s like there, how to cope with it, and what kind of troubles the students face.

            Plenty of schools are poorly funded because of their dramatically low test scores.  The test scores in these schools do not seem to get any better and if they do it’s not good enough.  In return the schools are getting poorly funded and there is a lack of necessary materials for both the students and teachers.  Without these materials students are not able to achieve their highest potential because they lack the necessary materials in order to do so.  Just as one of the teachers mentioned in the book, she has no choice but to use an old textbook to teach her class.  There are many problems with this, textbooks are constantly changing with new learning material, what she’s teaching them could be very out dated and they may be missing information that they need to know.                                 

            In the book and in schools in the Bay Area there is a constant hiring and firing of the teachers.  This also causes some difficulties for both the students and the teachers.  Sometimes students have one teacher for part of the year and all of a sudden they get a new teacher.  A teacher just gets thrown in there with a whole new class of students that he or she doesn’t even know and not knowing the certain students struggle with in that particular subject.  This discourages both the students and the teachers in a big way.