Summary Of The Logic Of Stupid Poor People

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

Designer clothing, luxury cars, flashy handbags. These are just a few of the status symbols that differentiate the rich from the poor. These items are often used to determine the who’s who in today’s society by showing off wealth and status. Although others should not be based solely on their income, this judgement is sadly commonplace. The rich and the poor are segregated both by accident and on purpose in many situations and the lower class is the one that deals with the brunt of that discrimination.

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.

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 excerpt Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption, Diana Kendall outlines the various media frames on social classes and analyzes how each frame contributes to the portrayal of each class. Kendall describes and explains eight different types of media frames and illustrates the impact on their cultural perceptions. She demonstrates America’s distorted view of inequality through the media frames’ construction of a “socially constructed reality” that is not an accurate reflection of America. She also argues that people still have the ability to develop other frames that better explain who we are and a more accurate reflection of our nation regarding class. Kendall is writing to an audience of high-educated, middle aged men and women, and it is assumed they want to read on social class injustice. This is made clear because of her academic profession, and the placement of the excerpt in a textbook.

Wealth is a symbol because the two Black men think of wealth as security, not being hungry anymore, warmth, and HAPPINESS.” But wealth is a two-way street. The white man, Edward, thinks of wealth as something to waste, and UNHAPPINESS.

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).

Poverty is a main part of life for many people in the world, more importantly the United States. Jeanette Walls shows how big of a problem poverty is in her memoir “The Glass Castle”, with her stories of how she grew up and her family’s struggles. How her family was treated along with what the people living around them found important clearly shows their economical class. The problem of food scarcity, or not having the bare necessities are some of poverty’s main problems. In “The Glass Castle”, the issues of poverty are displayed through not having the basic necessities, not being able to provide for children, and how there is not always enough food to feed everyone in the family.

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

The axis of inequality that will be focused throughout this paper is the social class. Social class is defined as a group of individuals who are categorized according to class (i.e. poor, middle, and upper) due to their income, wealth, power, and occupation. Social class is socially constructed by the way we view how much income and wealth a person possess (Ore, 20011a, 10). In reality it is much more than that. According to the text, poverty is not only the shortage of income, but it is the rejection of opportunities and choices that leads a person to a standard way of living (Ore, 2011a, 10). Stereotyping also contributes to it being socially constructed. These stereotypes influence us by defining who is who based on their principles in each class category. This can cause some to feel worthless.

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 his book Elijah Anderson tries to describe how life is, living in a black poor community in an American town known as Inner-city. In this area everyone is struggling financially and seem distant from the rest of America. The main social class in this town is the “decent” and the “street” families as the community has labeled them. The labeling by the local is as a result of social contest between the inhabitants. The line between a decent and street family is usually very thin, it’s based on a family evaluation of itself labeling itself decent and the other street. The irony is that families bearing a street label may value itself as decent and still valuing other families’ street. However, this labels form the basis of understanding inner-city community lifestyle. The community has many of the white society middle class values but they know the values don’t hold water in the street. They say it does not provide the attitude of a person who can take care of themselves in the street.

Goods/possessions All the sources use the idea of goods and possessions helping determine social class. All of the sources relate back to the story “The Great Gatsby” In the article “ What Would Veblen say?” David Scott said “ Elites In Veblen’s day would have probably giggled at the irony of the phrase “stuff girls need… for so much less!” Then again,advertisements such as this are not intended for people who need not worry about their budget.”

In chapter sixteen, “Social Class and Inequality” the essays show different cases in which being rich, poor, smart or middle class can affect a person. In the writings of Angela Locke in “Born Poor and Smart” (338-339) Angela summarizes her life of what it was like growing up with a poor, yet smart mother. However, in “When Shelter Feels like a Prison” (374-376) Charmion Browne writes about being poor, and living in homeless shelters. Somethings in life, are no more than learning experiences, and only you can change it.

What is the value of two dollars? To some, this ‘small’ amount of money doesn’t cross their mind as their bank accounts are much larger. On the contrary, “over six percent of the US population, including 7.1 million children,” (Brookings source 1) rely on this amount of money each day to provide food, water, shelter, medicine, education, and more for themselves and often times, their loved ones. Citizens in the United States under these conditions have been described as living in ‘absolute poverty’. Statistics from Urban Institute show that “12 percent of African Americans” are included in this underprivileged group. Moreover, individuals originating from these living situations that have been “arrested, convicted, and imprisoned were then, as they are now, males under the age of 25 from families in which the parents had little education and low incomes and held inferior jobs or no jobs at all, (National Council of welfare). This relates to James Baldwin’s “A Letter to my Nephew” when James writes to his 15-year-old nephew explaining that “this innocent country set [him] down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that [he] should perish.” (Baldwin something). Living in the slums of Harlem, the family was uneducated, lived on low wages to the point of living in absolute poverty and lastly, was born and raised under conditions involving crime and poverty rates nationally ranked one of the highest in America. Thus showing that daily income may play a role in the