In Holtzman Chapter 3, I found it interesting how the author points out that the poorest neighborhoods, example used being Compton, CA, will have more than triple the interest rates on a short term loan than that of a not so poor neighborhood. My reaction when reading this was one of sadness, but also one of anger as I thought of a few things. You would think first off that the poorest neighborhoods would have mostly state government housing (here in South Dakota it is called Section 8 housing) to where things like a home loan wouldn’t be needed, but then you would also think there would be rules on this lending practice that would make it illegal for someone to jack up the interest rates on a home? I also enjoyed reading the section where the author used different phrases from John Scalzi to bring home the point that we don’t always understand what the poor goes through, and sometimes maybe it is even hard for us to describe. Some of the phrases used I have witnessed firsthand growing up—I have had the friends that were scared to go through the lunch line because they had to tell the lunch worker that they are on the free lunch program, and I even related one phrases to my current situation of managing where I …show more content…
I do think that we are more acceptable of a society than ever before I mean, you have LGBT genre shows and movies as a category on Netflix, and you have hosts like Thomas Roberts of MSNBC anchoring news broadcasting. I do think if you go through time you will see how the messages have changed—having watched an old sitcom from the 70’s called SOAP, you see how the attitudes of the other characters are to the gay/crossdressing Billy Crystal are. Today though, take the show Modern Family and how accepting characters and viewers alike are of the idea of this Modern Family, this LGBT
Poverty is difficult to fully understand without experiencing it directly. Sociologist Matthew Desmond attempts to provide a different perspective on this issue through the lens of those struggling with poverty. This ethnography covers the lives of eight families and many others living in the College Mobile Home Park, a poverty-stricken area in Milwaukee, one of the poorest cities in the U.S.; Desmond lived there for one year, diligently taking notes and recording the experiences of the people he encountered. In Evicted, Matthew Desmond describes the interconnectedness of housing and poverty and highlights the exploitation of the poor through the scope of eviction. Throughout the book, he describes the factors contributing to the cyclical nature
The poverty is so high already in the area, it is more likely to be called a ghetto. Still, this area waited the longest time to receive help. ” And who claimed him or her? Who grieved over 1 Dead in Attic and who buried 1 Dead in Attic?”(p.1,ll. 71-72)
In the book How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, Jacob describes in his book on the systems of tenants of housing had failed due to greed and neglecting wealthier people. Also he shows that a correlation between the high crime rate, drunkenness and reckless behavior from the poor and it also shows that they lack of owning a proper home. It mostly focuses on slum conditions of the lower East side of Manhattan, where many immigrants like Jews, Italians, Chinese, Germans, and Irish were packed in tenements. Many of them had no windows, no ventilation, and tried to prevent overcrowding, crime, diseases, filth and most of all poverty. He also exposes the kind of conditions poor people live in.
The idea of equality for all people, regardless of their race, is instilled in the American society of today. Unfortunately, this idea has not always been present, which ultimately has caused many issues for America’s society in the past. As discussed in the book Our Town: Race, Housing, and the Soul of Suburbia, David L. Kirp focuses on the inequality that was found between the low-income blacks and the middle class whites in a South Jersey town, Mount Laurel. At the time, the whites had a goal of running the blacks out of the town by making the costs of housing expensive enough where blacks could not afford it. This lead to unequal treatment for the blacks who lived in Mount Laurel compared to the whites when it came to housing opportunities.
According to The Editorial Board New York Time’s, “The Housing Crisis Lives on for Minorities” December 26,2016, mortgage companies such as Fannie Mae are discriminating and being racist towards African-American and Latino homes. The writer emphasizes the neglection Fannie Mae had towards these minority homeowners and specifies the contrast between white areas and black areas. The mortgage crisis that ravaged the economy eight years ago, is a driving factor of the editorial. The writer is informing New York Times readers, educated citizens, and intellectuals about the racial allegations towards Fannie Mae. The Editorial Board affectively convinces their audience that there is an unjust gap between white and minority homes through the use of
Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, reveals the dire reality of renting leading to evictions and poverty by telling the stories of multiple people. There are multiple issues within this topic that Desmond focuses on such as discrimination. Desmond tells the stories of people from different backgrounds, of different genders, and of different races. The book is all about poverty, human nature, human relationships, and human hopes. Due to the nature of this book, it is crucial that the events are examined through a socio-cultural lens.
Pathos dominates the article when Ehrenreich allows her nephews mother in law, grandchildren, and daughter to move into her house. The situation focuses on pathos because in Ehrenreich’s personal story she includes that “Peg, was, like several million other Americans, about to lose her home to foreclosure” (338). She is effective in her writing by appealing to the readers’ emotions through visual concepts and personal experiences. When I read the article, I felt emotional because the working poor are not fortunate to know if they will have a house or food the next day. I agree with Ehrenreich in which the poor are as important as the wealthy group who get more recognition.
“In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters” In the article, “In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters,” by David Leonhardt (2013), he discusses the social gaps between different areas of America. The article begins recounting the daily occurrences of Stacy Calvin, a resident in the Atlanta area. Because of the geography and economic issues, life for Stacy is not easy as she travels countless hours and jobs to provide for her family. This issue is a common occurrence in the city of Atlanta, is one of the most economically slanted cities in America; partially because of highly affluent areas surrounded by large areas of poverty.
Class Stereotypes Stereotypes are seen as overgeneralized ideas, images, or beliefs of a person based on a group of people. Stereotypes can either be taken or said in a negative or positive way but mostly seen in a negative way. Stereotypes are formed on a life experience, idea or a belief a person may have towards one person based on the person’s gender, race, religion or social class. The most common stereotypes are of the social classes which are the: upper, middle and lower class.
Inequality in the accumulation of wealth in the U.S.’s black population stretches back to times of slavery and lack of reparations for their group’s enslavement to the Social Security Act and the Federal Housing Act (GIB 1). Racial discrimination lurks in the U.S.’s housing market from its very conception after WWII, when GIs began to return home in search of a new home (RTPI). Although, the Federal Housing Administration by no means a starting point for the cause of wealth inequality, it certainly exacerbated the gap. White suburbs like “Levittown” created a white exclusive ideal neighborhood which devalued black and other nonwhite homeowners. Housing discrimination prevented blacks and nonwhites from accumulating wealth like whites would
Wealth is one of the factors why residential segregation is an increasing problem. Golash- Boza explains, “Residential segregation happened when different groups of people are sorted into discount neighborhoods” (271). It is because of housing segregation
For bringing the home within the reach of a black purchaser, however, the speculator extracted a considerable price.” (Jamelle Bouie,How we built the ghettos, page 2) This is like when Lena the mother of Walter and beneatha bought a new house and only had to put a small down payment on it in order to buy the
(Davidson 353). Dashka Slater combats this argument by stating “A 2005 study by Lance Freeman, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University, found the chances that a poor resident of a gentrifying neighborhood would be forced to move were only 1.5 percent—compared to a 1 percent chance of that same resident being displaced in a nongentrifying neighborhood.” she then adds “This is partly because poor people tend to be transient anyway, and partly because poor neighborhoods tend to have high vacancy rates.” (Slater
Matthew Desmond’s Evicted takes a sociological approach to understanding the low-income housing system by following eight families as they struggle for residential stability. The novel also features two landlords of the families, giving the audience both sides and allowing them to make their own conclusions. Desmond goes to great lengths to make the story accessible to all classes and races, but it seems to especially resonate with people who can relate to the book’s subjects or who are liberals in sound socioeconomic standing. With this novel, Desmond hopes to highlight the fundamental structural and cultural problems in the evictions of poor families, while putting faces to the housing crisis. Through the lens of the social reproduction theory, Desmond argues in Evicted that evictions are not an effect of poverty, but rather, a cause of it.
Homosexuality was once considered sacred in ancient Rome, albeit being treated poorly since the middle ages. Like this, homosexuality has been suppressed for a long time and thenceforth, the public opinion towards it has been on a downward road until recent years when LGBT groups started stepping up front and coming out along with the increasing controversy towards their rights. The subject of homosexuality has always been polemical. Every once in a while a news article would come up saying something like "Manny Pacquiao provokes storm by calling gay people ‘worse than animals’" or "Sam Smith Talks Coming Out As Gay".