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Tressie Mcmillan's Essay The Logic Of Stupid Poor People

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While reading both the Tressie McMillan’s essay “The Logic of Stupid Poor People” and Scott Russell Sanders essay “The Men we Carry in our Mind”, I thought about the social identity (us-them) theory which states that we have all divided the world into an "us" and a "them"; a root for all stereotyping and prejudice present throughout society. The "us" is one's view of an in-group and the "them" are the out-group. When we split society into these two organizations, the in-group begins to discriminate against the out-group leading, inherently, to stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. This is clearly present throughout the two essays in that McMillan was taught that she was part of “them” and in order for her and her family to be more accepted …show more content…

We see an aspect of stereotyping brought about by the organization of his surroundings in groups of "us" and "them". While the majority of people throughout the United States felt that the opposite of his early formed opinion, we are meant to realize that many men and women go through tough times of hard work and limited opportunities based on social status and opportunities available in a small town. He continues to use the idea that men had two choices: hard labor and a better chance of staying alive as a factory worker, etc. or little hard labor and a high chance of death as a soldier. Because neither of these professions are desirable to the men (the predominant laborers in this particular town), this seemed worse than staying at home and running errands or taking care of the children. While I do not agree with the woman who Sanders is having a conversation with in the beginning of the essay who states that she “think(s) it’s a lot harder for men”, I do agree that the male and female sexes should be treated with equal respect and opportunity which is not present in this town during the time period Sanders describes within the

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