As we explore the state of hunger and homelessness in the United States, we lend focus to the working poor. Pushing past opaque and formal language, we take a look at people who work an incredible number of hours (if they are lucky enough to get them), in unacceptably unstable environments, who do not have the luxury of making \u201crational\u201d decisions, and must employ an unparalleled level of non-traditional knowledge to simply survive in the wealthiest country on earth.<\/p>\n
In the effort to survive, these people sacrifice their voice \u2013 both in their rightful place in their<\/em> democracy and in the stories that are told about them. Thus, elected officials and policies are disconnected from the needs and realities of this growing group which fosters a system that is increasingly hostile to them. Yet, this group isn\u2019t even afforded the luxury of being ignored. They become Reagan\u2019s unifying enemy: the welfare queen. A term that evokes images of ease, relaxation, and luxury which couldn\u2019t be less representative of the 13,251,400 Americans who were food insecure in 2017.<\/p>\n Between the loss of control over their own narrative and the physical barriers our society puts between the poor and everyone else, we must actively combat the seductive narratives that it\u2019s solely the fault of the poor that they got there or remain there. This course has offered us several resources to deconstruct the narratives that have been created about the poor including the Invisible People YouTube site, Barbara Ehrenreich\u2019s popular book – Nickel and Dimed<\/em>, and many well-written articles. The pathos in these people\u2019s life story combined with a structural look at the mechanisms of poverty paints a much more complete and empathetic understanding of what it means to be impoverished in the United States of America.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we explore the state of hunger and homelessness in the United States, we lend focus to the working poor. Pushing past opaque and formal language, we take a look at people who work an incredible number of hours (if they are lucky enough to get them), in unacceptably unstable environments, who do not have … Continue reading Sacrificing Voice and Fighting False Narratives of Impoverished People<\/span>