Connections between Coontz and Currie

We always stood on our own two feet: self-reliance and the American family by Stephanie Coontz brought a lot of new interesting facts to the table (new to me at least). What I think she is trying to say is that American families think they can succeed on their own but in reality when we look back how society was, it all started with some help. Help should not be looked down upon because we all will need it sooner or later and to think one can conquer everything on their own is just foolish to think. One quote that really caught my eye in this article was when "Politicians are especially likely to fall prey to the convenient amnesia that permits so much self-righteous posturing about how the "dependent poor" ought to develop the self-reliance and independence that "the rest of us" have shown." I do not comprehend why anyone would say this and not think for one second that he or she did not receive any help what so ever. As a society we can't think like this because that is when I feel that hate starts to appear in our minds when we think about poor people. So now this is when The Futile War on Drugs by Elliott Currie comes in. The belief that the individual has failed in moral character, changes in society as a whole, and other things I guess that leads them to drugs because they think it will solve some problems. Failing morally and because some can't adapt to the society as a whole is crap. Society has not changed to better poor people, it has changed to keep them poor. This country has lost billions of jobs over the years and we think the problem of people selling drugs are their morals? We clearly have a problem understanding why people have escalated to the point were they think they need to sell drugs. Just to make things clear now, I'm not justifying the act of people selling drugs. It is illegal and it is wrong, we get that. But when we connect this to the Coontz, apparently their are people that think some should develop some self-reliance because that is an American value. Obviously many more factors are involved with subjects like this but I honestly think that as a society, things as set up for others failures. Maybe one day things will change but for now things will be the same for the LONG time.

Media Magic

At one point or another I do believe that every single one of us has had a negative view on poor people. That is the perfect example of how the media does tend to create negative and stereotypical thoughts in our minds. Many of us can grow past such thoughts and become more aware of actual facts and form better educated opinions on such topics. Throughout this reading I found some pretty interesting quotes that I believed helped me better understand and also was able to do some connections as well.

First quote: "In this essay, we will examine the way the mass media shapes how people think about each other and about the nature of our society."

So the first thing that came to my mind was the way that we see each other. When we see somebody poor or homeless we don't tend to feel bad anymore (some do but not all) and that is because of the media. For example, sometimes when my family and I go grocery shopping it sometimes tends to fall at the end of the month and the beginning of the new month. My parents absolutely hate it. We usually shop at our local price rite in Central Falls so most of the time we see shoppers with two or three carts filled with massive amounts of food (not all healthy) and three or four kids on the side. My parents never fail to form a negative opinions of such shoppers. That is only because media has made them think that all poor people are on welfare and are good for nothing human beings. Then once they have seen it on TV or read about it in some article it all seems to be true when you come across people who buy tons of food and their total is around $400 and just swipe the welfare card. I also believe that because we live in this city it is hard to not form negative opinions because it is a constant thing that we see everyday.

Second quote: "there is enough wealth in our nation to eliminate poverty if we chose to redistribute existing wealth or income."

If there is enough wealth to go around to eliminate poverty why don't we? Because we benefit from others misfortunes. It is sad to say but true. If we didn't have the working class nobody would take jobs that start at $5.40 an hour. Big companies need those people to get the job done and at a cheap wage. That is how they see profit. It just goes to show that we as a society need poor people to do things that middle/upper class would never do.

Third quote: " But the upper class and the middle class do not share the same interests or worries."

The universal thought that we are all middle class is ridiculous. If we were all middle class I guess we would have all the same worries but since we are not all middle class we don't. It make sense that upper class people think about stocks, profit, and their children going to private schools. They have the money, it makes sense that they use it well. It makes perfect sense that each class has different concerns if not I guess we wouldn't be discussing that class actually does matter. I think that the media conceals the poor so much for the better part of society. And what the media has showed us is a lot of negative aspects of the situation. That is why stereotypical thoughts exist because the media only shows us what they want us to see and not other stories so we don't feel bad, don't feel the need to give to the homeless, but yet again we see it everywhere.

Homeless Timmer and Negative Kozol

Talking about poverty and homelessness is not an easy subject to tackle. When I see a homeless person on the streets I do tend to give a buck or two because I feel guilty if I don't. And I know I shouldn't because it is not my fault but I ALWAYS (whatever the situation my be) say to myself, what if that was me. I can't help myself by switching the roles in my head and it seems to break my heart every time I do something like that. However, that does not mean that I don't think that they can use the money for drugs or alcohol. After I give what I can, I'd like to think that they will use it for good and not evil but of course that would be foolish of me to think all the time. As a society we have stereotyped anything that can be stereotyped. Including the misfortunes of others. As a result of those misfortunes, people begin to live life like that. Just like Cliffies mother said "The point is that they put a lot of things into our neighborhood that no one wants". Did it insult her? At first it most certainly did, but after she said, "The truth is, you get used to the offense". So what does this tell you, it tells me at least that people begin to live day to day with such horrible conditions and stop caring and this issue shouldn't be like that. I feel like no article touched based on hope of some sort of relief to such issue. Hope may not be the best term in this case because I do believe hope can be paralyzing at time. However, it may also be all one may have to offer. It was disturbing reading about all this because we don't think about it, it's somewhere in our subconscious. No one solution is going to change these issues but I do believe multiple solutions will help our society improve, it will take time though, lots of time.

A Brief Intro

Hi Guys!!!
I am really excited to take this class, I have never taken anything remotely close to this subject and was curious what I class like this would consist of. So far so good. I am a freshman and I am a theatre major concentration in performance. I did need to take a history class to get a history credit but I will put my heart and soul into anything that I find interesting. Especially a class like this because I love when we can all just express our opinions without being judged, and this class is just perfect for that same reason.