Summary Of The Logic Of Stupid Poor People

Racial oppression in the United States has been present for almost a century now. Although slavery was abolished in the 1860s, people associated in target groups are still being mistreated by racial oppression in different ways. In the article “Being Poor, Black, and American” written by William Julius Wilson, a sociologist and professor at Harvard University, Wilson shows that political, economic, and cultural forces are the primary forces that contains the distinction between target and agent group positions. From the immigration policies, the workplace policies, and stereotypical views portrayed by society, these all have an impact on how an individual can live their life. Altogether, these forces ultimately keep people in check with society’s rules and regulations on what is right and wrong and keep them from stepping out of their place.

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.

The institutional and cultural influences that generate these ideas of privilege and oppression are derived from the cycle of socialization. Before children are even able to comprehend what race is, the cycle of socialization is already shaping their views on society and social identities. Bobbie Harro illustrates the cycle of socialization by stating, “the socialization process is pervasive, consistent, circular, self-perpetuating and often invisible” (41). This makes the cycle extremely influential for the creation of our social identities in our society. In my personal experience, I vividly remember my parents taking extra precautious in poor black communities when I was younger to ensure my safety. Although their only intention was to promote my wellbeing, indirectly they established the notion that poor black people are dangerous. Obviously it’s erroneous to claim all black people are dangerous, but this is evidence of the beginning stages of the cycle of socialization taking action.

This includes a story of her mother who waltzed into a social service agency dressed in an impressive outfit to set straight an issue that her elderly neighbor had trouble with over the past year in a single day (Cottom 1012). To elaborate, she justifies why poor people ordinarily make the choices they do, while conversely questioning them. In her text, “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, Cottom declares that “We want to belong” (1013). I agree that we want to belong, if you belong you are safe. At one point, her first professional job manager decided she was accordingly “. . . too classy to be on the call center floor.” (Cottom 1014) This proves that putting money into a brand name suit can have a positive influence on others, in this case she gained a high pay raise and her workload was decreased. If poor people spend money on classy outfits, the rich people will perceive them as their own.

For example, in an article titled “Inequality, Race, and Remedy” for The American Prospect, Alan Jenkins states “Poor people of color are also increasingly more likely than whites to find themselves living in high-poverty neighborhoods with limited resources and limited options” (Jenkins). This illustrates that an individual’s race can completely affect their home, job, financial situation, and overall way of life. According to this article, person of color has a higher chance at living in poverty than a white person does. This example shows that colored people aren’t given as many opportunities and as a result, it may be harder for them to succeed in life. The oppression they face is all because of the color of their skin, not because they are any less smart or human than others. The poor lifestyle is a result of racial identification and false labeling. People automatically stereotype and judge black people because of their skin color and often times it has a negative outcome.

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

At its core, white privilege is described to be an “invisible package of unearned assets” (McIntosh, 2002, p. 33) for white people. There are many layers explaining the manifestation of white privilege and even more explanations pertaining to its dominant presence in today’s world.

The genocide of the Aboriginal peoples and enslavement of black people resulted in a massive influx of natural resources and cheap labor, greatly profiting the white class and securing an influential position of power in the imposed capitalist structure (Reich, 1974). Such economic stratifications are still visible in contemporary society, and are defended by democratic racism which permits the coexistence of liberal and non-egalitarian beliefs (Tepperman& Curtis, 2009). Through this vein of thought, the free market is excused as providing everyone an indiscriminately equal chance of financial success, illustrating poverty as a consequence of laziness and inadequacy instead of a product of systemic oppression and exclusion of those historically disadvantaged within capitalist society. (Tepperman& Curtis, 2009) Visible minorities, in particular blacks, are stereotyped as a financial burden to society, and are depicted as problematic, untrustworthy, and dishonest, increasing negative attitudes towards visible minorities out of the white class’s fear of losing their own

I disagreed with this statement above because it is almost as if even though she know much about poverty as a woman in middle class she’s looking beneath them. I am not saying that what I interpret from this text is how she thought, but it is what I was lead to believe. She also mentions how no one acknowledges that she was a writer from my perspective, it was almost as if she felt that they should have been plastered with questions. She hid the fact that she was a writer with the exception of telling a few as if that would have changed the way her coworkers viewed her as a person. The question that stumbled upon me while reading this selection made me wonder why would a middle class woman wants to come back to experience the life of a poor person as if it was some sort of mockery. It seemed almost as if being poor living off of minimum wage is a choice whether a life decision. Does everybody believe that everybody can get out of poverty and become a part of the middle class or

Mrs. Harrison believes that black people have to earn the white people’s respect, trust, freedoms and equality. Mrs. Harrison says to Bob, “You mustn’t think in terms of trying to get even with them, you must accept whatever they do for you and try to prove yourself worthy to be entrusted with more” (52). She states that if black people work hard enough, the white people will reward them. She also wants the black community to wait for the white people to “give” them something better, to accept what the white people “do for them.” She compares the idea of black and white people equality to communism. She tells Bob that he needs to make himself worthy of respect. “You know yourself, Bob, a lot of our people are just not worthy, they just don’t deserve anymore than they’re getting” (52). These comments illustrate how class has a great influence on Mrs. Harrison’s point of view on race. Without having to work and being rich, she is ignorant of the racial discrimination that a day to day skilled worker of Bob’s color has to go through. Like her daughter Alice, Mrs. Harrison has been given special treatment by the white people for her lighter skin, and her social and economic class.

However, we hope to gain information about the Black woman experience in increasing their net-worth. This information can add to the literature that investigate the wealth gap. This adds to the body of knowledge by not merely looking at empirical data of the wealth gap and the numerical trends of the individual experiences of building net worth held by Black Women. Yet this qualitative method gives Black women wealth builders the chance to share their experience of entrepreneurship and empower others to consider further into their economic statues and ambitions as it pertains to economic freedom and generational wealth. This study also sparks conversation about the institutional factors of sexism, racism, and classism that continual to perpetuate the wealth

The article “Poverty, Wealth, and Having the Right Feelings,” by Alex Pabellon, brings awareness to the idea that our status can affect our ability to empathize with others. First, it explains a movie in which ethnic tensions are high, and when a black man is strangled and killed by the police, another African American man, Mookie, throws a trash can through his white employer’s window and starts a riot. Pabellon says he struggles to side with Mookie as he knows his actions were wrong. He took his anger out on his employer who had treated him fairly, rather than the police. Frequently, it is white people that have this perspective as well.

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?

The class inequality has been an issue for quite some time; the levels of this are the elite, middle, and lower class tiers. But even within these three major tiers, there are sub tiers, but mostly within the United States, society tends to rate women within the Middle to Lower class. This is true within the professional world of women, seeing as how they are considered on the weaker, lower class tier, Collins refers to an “outsider-within status” (1986), which “ exists with one is located on the boundary between two groups statuses—one with potential power and the other with little power” (2001). African American women have been affected by this “outsider-within status”, more than their Caucasian counterparts because even though “technically they have membership in a high status group, as black women, they are a part of a group

Every person can be identified as rich or poor regardless of their other status be it in terms of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or age. The author explained even in the most predominant White race, there were class divisions and the least fortunate were the so