Poverty In The United States: Article Analysis
The Faces of Poverty “Don’t look down on a man if you can’t help pick him up” –Ms. Bailey.
Poverty in the United States tends to conjure up images of homeless people living under bridges, people with signs begging street corners, and soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Throughout history, poverty has been a pervasive issue in the United States; it is an issue that has managed to survive despite government’s the countless efforts to eradicate it. As a result, it has spread and affects a wide array of people in the United States. Regardless of poverty’s wide reach, many people still imagine it as only affecting certain minorities or people who refuse to work and live off government assistance. This negative perception of poverty in the United States has increased throughout the years. Regretfully, this stereotype of people in poverty has profound negative effects on impoverished people and demonstrates the need for society to learn the true diversity of poverty in order to better empathize and help the nation’s poor. In order to debunk the negative stereotype associated with poverty, it is necessary to present relevant information to fully demonstrate the complexity of poverty. First, research will be …show more content…
In his article, he recounts his shock at hearing one of his African-American students blatantly say, “Everyone knows that black people are bad. That’s the way we are” (Elrich 12). His shock was furthered as he realized that his student’s statements were widely accepted by his class as a whole as they all agreed that minorities were inferior to their white counterparts and that was just how things were. As a result, his classroom helped elucidate on the innate racial undertones of poverty; as it tends to disproportionately target minorities compared to the white majority in the United States (Elrich,
Poverty in the United States tends to conjure up images of homeless people living under bridges, people with signs begging street corners, and soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Throughout history, poverty has been a pervasive issue in the United States; it is an issue that has managed to survive despite government’s the countless efforts to eradicate it. As a result, it has spread and affects a wide array of people in the United States. Regardless of poverty’s wide reach, many people still imagine it as only affecting certain minorities or people who refuse to work and live off government assistance. This negative perception of poverty in the United States has increased throughout the years. Regretfully, this stereotype of people in poverty has profound negative effects on impoverished people and demonstrates the need for society to learn the true diversity of poverty in order to better empathize and help the nation’s poor. In order to debunk the negative stereotype associated with poverty, it is necessary to present relevant information to fully demonstrate the complexity of poverty. First, research will be …show more content…
In his article, he recounts his shock at hearing one of his African-American students blatantly say, “Everyone knows that black people are bad. That’s the way we are” (Elrich 12). His shock was furthered as he realized that his student’s statements were widely accepted by his class as a whole as they all agreed that minorities were inferior to their white counterparts and that was just how things were. As a result, his classroom helped elucidate on the innate racial undertones of poverty; as it tends to disproportionately target minorities compared to the white majority in the United States (Elrich,