Quotes "Meida Magic"

“Unnoticed are four million poor people in the nation, a number that equals the entire population of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New York combined.” Wow I don’t know about anyone else but this quote here grasped my full attention! I knew poverty rates were high, but I had no idea poverty rates were THIS high, I guess I too was a victim of “Media Magic”. After reading the text entirely I took a few minutes to look back and think about why I never imagined poverty being so high, then it dawned on me when I think of poverty, I think of homeless people, dirty, minorities and drug addicts/alcoholics which of course are in that predicament because they rather have the drugs and the alcohol instead of working to provide themselves with food, a roof over their heads and a better life. I feel terrible now! Mantosis’ article was a huge eye opener to me. All of what he says in his essay really makes sense to me. He argues that the poor population is stigmatized. The media portrays the poor to be there horrible people that don’t even deserve out pity because they have created their predicament all on their own. The media doesn’t tell us that the majority of the race that accounts for the poor population is actually white, not minorities as we see or hear about whenever there are talk about the poor.

“But poverty in the United States is systemic. It is a direct result of economic and political policies that deprive people of jobs, adequate wages, or legitimate support. It is neither natural nor inevitable: there is enough wealth in our nation to eliminate poverty if we chose to redistribute existing wealth or income.” This quote answered my question as to why poverty is an issue in a country where there is so much government/federal help. The media paints the picture that if you’re poor it is your own fault, you did this to yourself, there is no one to blame but yourself which in my opinion is mentally and emotionally damaging to hear when you are in that situation. This quote also brought into mind the reading Oxfam Media Briefing where it is explained how extreme wealth and extreme poverty hurts us all, even the middle class people. There is so much wealth in this country yet the poverty levels are so high, there has to be something wrong here!

The wealthy are us, “Its message: the concerns of the wealthy are the concerns of us all.” I don’t know about most people but I, as a working class person really do not care about the stock market and the weather at ski resorts or dresses that are $2,000, I cant afford any of that! Actually, part of the reason some of the material covered in this class is a little difficult to comprehend is because I have never paid attention to any of the stock market information or anything that is categorized as upper class/wealthy because I haven’t had the time to. Since I was sixteen I have been working, most of the time two jobs and have been enrolled in school full-time and the issue of classism has never been discussed in any of my classes or my jobs. I have never focused on the economics of anything.