Poverty and Biases Related to It

Poverty is a very common social issue that affects millions worldwide. No matter one’s income, unemployment or not, there will always be people who are homeless or hungry. Despite living in one of the richest countries in the world, the United States still struggles with poverty. Today people still battle to find shelter, feed themselves and families, put clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads.

There are several social problems correlated with poverty. Many in which will have various impacts on different institutions and individuals. Now when talking about poverty many personal biases come into play. Personally for me my three main biases when discussing poverty are: poor people are lazy, even with high levels of poverty, no one is starving and that young children who live in poverty will not do good in school. During writing this essay and doing some research I found a couple things that refuted my biases. When talking about poor people are lazy I have always just had this thought behind my head. Ever since I was young I can remember seeing homeless men and woman standing on the side of the streets holding signs asking for money or food. I always thought to myself oh they are just doing that because they are lazy and don’t want to go get a job. Now that I’m older I’ve got more sympathetic I guess and thought what if maybe they just can’t work or find work. And after researching into this that’s exactly what it is. Many poor people are either too young or too old to work, or suffer from a disability. It’s not that they don’t want to work they are unable to. I also found out that just because someone lives in poverty dissent mean they all get help through the government with food stamps or charity donations. Many are barely scraping by and when an unexpected bill or random illness approaches they are left with no money for food at times. And there are individuals out there starving whether we know it or not.

This information has reinforced what I already believed. I knew America wasn’t as great as it’s made to be. Our system isn’t just being shaped in these ways that seem to be distorting around race, they’re also discrete by poverty. We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. And yet, we are okay and comfortable. Many don’t really like to talk about their history. And because of that, we don’t really have an understanding what it’s meant to do those things historically. It seems that we actually don’t care about the difficult things. We love our technology, and entertainment but those shadow suffering, abuse, and degradation. All in all, everything is hidden behind the truth and reconciliation, and we need to think about the poor and integrate it into our lives.