Poverty shares traits with the Shawshank State Penitentiary: a rare few find a way out but more often than not, those who begin the escape get caught and sent back to the same place they started. The path out exists, but it may require help from outside influences or having to digging away at a hole with a rock hammer for years. Unfortunately, not every impoverished American shares the triumphant tale of Andy Dufresne. The Other Wes Moore tells the story of two men of the same name and beginnings who have disparate futures. The author, Wes Moore, ended up on a path to success while the other Wes Moore remains in a jail cell for the rest of his life. The author’s rock hammer was access to a quality education and removal from a rough neighborhood. …show more content…
In the study “Racial and Class Divergence in Public Attitudes and Perception About Poverty in USA: An Empirical Study,” professor Francis O. Adeola analyzes existing data to determine if people themselves or a structural influence causes poverty (Adeola 56). Building upon the idea of structural poverty, Adeola contends “poverty rates tend to persist in the same neighborhood over many years” (61). For the other Wes Moore, this neighborhood was the Murphy Project Homes: one of the most dangerous places in Baltimore (Moore 18). Furthermore, he examines how “[t]he poor form a unique subculture,” reinforcing aspects of poverty (Adeola 61). The subculture that surrounded the other Wes Moore included the normalization of the presence of drugs and …show more content…
Adeola claims the growth of poverty in the United States pushes a “disproportionate burden . . . on African-Americans” and single mothers (75). Both of these factors are a part of contribute to Wes’s story. Wes’s mother, Mary, continues the trend of generational poverty as“the first in her family to even begin college”(Moore 14). Mary losing her Pell Grant is another example of oppression Adeola discusses (Moore 17). The study outlines how “[the government] has long been raging war against poor people using a variety of weapons (Adeola 76). For Mary, she lost her grant after President Ronald Reagan passed a budget that gutted funding for the entire program (Moore 17). If Mary would have been able to finish school, a complete education could have been an expectation for Wes. To her son’s misfortune, the government actions that disrupted Mary’s educational career indirectly harmed Wes’s opportunities with the reinforcement of generational poverty. With an impoverished family, an absent father, and a rough neighborhood, Wes’s likelihood of success further declined. As a high school dropout with a criminal record, Wes’s search for a high paying job became nearly impossible (Moore 140). Wes tried to overcome his poverty riddled life by joining the Job Corps with his friend Levy (Moore 139). Through this, Wes hoped to find a steady income without the danger of being in the drug
This essay, largely drawn from Elijah Anderson's forthcoming book, Code of the Street, offers an ethnographic representation of the workings of the code of the street in the context of the trying socioeconomic situation in which the inner-city black community finds itself, as jobs have become ever more scarce, public assistance has increasingly disappeared, and frustration has been building for many. The material presented here was gathered through many visits to various inner-city families and neighborhood settings, including carry-outs, laundromats, taverns, playgrounds, and street corners. In these settings, Anderson conducted indepth interviews with adolescent boys and girls, young men (some incarcerated, some not), older men, teenage mothers,
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
In Tony Went to the Bodega but He Didn’t Buy Anything, Martín Espada shows how culture shock can affect someone who is a minority. The poem starts off by telling us “Tony’s father left the family” (line 1) and immediately I felt sad for Tony, but then it goes on to say that he was a boy who was “nine years old who had to find work” (lines 4-5). Not only does Tony not have a father figure growing up, but due to his financial situation, he now must find a job despite being so young. This is not uncommon because race and socio-economic status are tied, so many minorities have to find jobs at younger, even illegal ages to support their families.
In the article “How I Discovered the Truth about Poverty” Barbara Ehrenreich gives her view in poverty and explains why she think Michael Harington’s book “The Other American” gives a wrong view on poverty. She explained that Harrington believes that the poor thought and felt differently and what divides the poor was their different “culture of poverty.” Ehrenreich goes on to explain on how the book that became a best seller caused so many bad stereotypes on the poor that by the Reagan era poverty was seen as “bad attitudes” and “faulty lifestyles” and not by the lack of jobs or low paying jobs. And they also viewed the poor as “Dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to “defer gratification,” or possibly even set an alarm clock.”
However, the outcome of Vance’s life was different as he was graduated from Yale Law School, able to get a well-paying job and currently living the American Dream with his wife Usha. The purpose of the author in this memoir was to understand the reader of how social mobility feels and more importantly, what happens to the lives of the white working-class Americans, in particular the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. J.D Vance provides an explanation for the loss of the American dream to poor white Americans living in a toxic culture in this Ohio steel town.
In Urban areas the emphasize of poor and homeless falls onto the laps of a large number of African Americans. Desmond, focused on the Milwaukee area and explained that during the second half of the twentieth century, manufacturing jobs moved overseas because of cheaper labor, this affected countless African Americans because half of them had jobs in manufacturing (24). Lamar, who lost his legs and lived in an apartment that was falling apart, was unable to get SSI and could not find decent job in his condition. With no decent income and a rent to pay how does one survive? Gathering enough money to pay for a roof over one's head is a huge priority in Evicted.
Anderson begins the section by explaining that there are two separate cultures in inner-city neighborhoods. The first are the “decent” this group is defined by commitment to “middle-class values,” (101). However, they are not mainstream in that they
(38) – The film The House I live in, is an extraordinary film that gives light to one of the biggest problem in the United States, and that problem is the war on drugs and how such creates sociological problems such as mass incarceration. Throughout the duration of this documentary, a Correctional Officer by the name of Mike Carpenter is interviewed and gives his opinions on the ideologies governing our society. He strongly believes, that people in prison are paying for the fear that we as Americans have created over the years. In my interpretation, what Officer Carpenter is trying to get to is basically this whole idea of blaming those who are inferior. The war on drugs created the impression in our society, that those responsible for many of our problems were young African Americans; what did we do in return?
The novel, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives by Sasha Abramsky is about how he traveled the United States meeting the poor. The stories he introduces in novel are articles among data-driven studies and critical investigations of government programs. Abramsky has composed an impressive book that both defines and advocates. He reaches across a varied range of concerns, involving education, housing and criminal justice, in a wide-ranging view of poverty 's sections. In considering results, it 's essential to understand how the different problems of poor families intermingle in mutual reinforcement.
The impoverished conditions in which the residents of this community live are difficult based on the surrounding violence and discrimination they face. Tre, Ricky’s best friend, is able to survive the surrounding violence and discrimination through his father’s sensational leadership; he therefore knows what to do in situations he faces among his friends. However, his friends are not so lucky. For example, Dough doesn’t have great leadership or a father figure, but is raised by a single mother who is determined to get her children to succeed; nevertheless, her main focus is Ricky because he has the most potential; he is an
Life constantly bombards us with series of twists and turns which we inevitably have to battle. In these times of struggle, we often look up into the light for small glimmers of hope that helps motivates us to push forwards. While we struggle, hope has always been by our side. In Stephen King’s novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, and its film adaptation, directed by Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption, the theme of hope is perpetuated through Red’s character. It tells a life story about Andy Dufresne, a life sentenced convict who proclaims his innocence, who is sent to Shawshank prison.
The article that I chose to do my paper on was an article by the authors from University of California and New York University, Heater E. Bullock, Karen Fraser Wyche and Wendy R. Williams. This article was published in the New York Times and it was called “Media Images of the Poor”. This paper contains research that has looked at the content of stereotypic media images of the poor. Research that examined televised images and print media. As well as classist, racist and sexist imagery is provided.
Beside the terrifying horrors, written by Stephen King, the realistic and deeply psychological novel “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank redemption” seems very unusual. It lacks horrific clowns or extremely dangerous viruses, but still attracts the reader’s attention. Despite the powerful psychological background, the social motives in the story-line prevail. Through the images of Andy Dufresne, description of in-prison social reality and lesser characters, the author depicts the entire American society with the wide range of its internal problems, values and concerns.
Synopsis Shawshank Redemption is a novella by Stephen King which originally appeared in his collection, Different Seasons. Shawshank Redemption film depicts the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker who is charged and sentenced to two consecutive life term in prison at Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. The movie was set in the 1940s, demonstrates how Andy, with the help of his new formed friendship in prison, Red, the prison entrepreneur, turns out to be a most eccentric prisoner. After the murder of his wife, hotshot banker Andy Dufresne is sent to Shawshank Prison, where Andy experiences and deal with the ropes of prison (how the crooked prison system operates), brutality,
Not only would that person be interested in unemployment, but the affects it has on the black community. By reading this book, it would not only make the readers’ knowledge stronger, but it will also give them an idea of how joblessness had an effect on inner-city