The authors in the book the rich and the rest of us visited one of poorest county in
Mississippi, although the population is about eight thousand people; it shares
history with Martin Luther King. Surprisingly it was where he started the Poor
People Campaign. “Affirming poor people ais dangerous…We are forced to consider
can this happen to me?’(Pg.72). When we affirm what is around us it forces us
to feel as if we need to take action but how can we take action when we are
putting our own lively hood in jeopardy. In today’s media the poor is
stereotyped as money sucking leaches that are detrimental to our society, when
in reality the view of the put was put upon us decades before the poor had a
chance. Many people benefit from government assistance for their basic needs
but as we all know there are some people who should not be on welfare. “Methods
to control welfare fraud are as old as the system itself” (Pg. 77). While Regan
was in office he came up with the “war on drugs” phrase to crack down on drug
use in the mid-eighties and most efforts were geared towards black
neighborhoods thus giving us the stereotype that all people on welfare do
drugs. When you have stereotypes like that what motivation does that give you
to be a contributing member of society? Social security numbers are scanned
across many government databases to make sure the applicant is not a criminal.
Most Americans choose to segregate themselves from poverty and the stereotypes
can be described as curtains to separate many of us from many of them.
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