Title: 5 Lies That Dehumanize Poor People - Everyday Feminism
Headings: 5 Lies That Dehumanize Poor People
5 Lies That Dehumanize Poor People
People who feel the shame-inducing scrutiny of many judgmental Americans aren’t paranoid.
Silenced, Closeted, Poor
1. The Bootstrap Myth
2. Poor People Are Unemployed
3. Poor (Read: Lazy and Uneducated) Equals Black
4. Poor People Refuse to Work
5. Education Necessarily Remedies Poverty
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Content: The Census reported that, in 2010, 7% of those aged 16 and older who worked some or all of the year were in poverty. And the Department of Agriculture reported that 30 percent of households receiving food assistance had earnings in 2010; 41% of food aid beneficiaries lived in a household with earnings from a job. Nearly a quarter — 21.8% — of non-elderly adult food stamp recipients were employed. Of course none of this is surprising to those who know from experience what it means to work for $8 an hour. Working for 40 hours a week at that rate yields a $17,000 annual salary. Increasingly these poverty-level-wage jobs (retail, fast-food, etc.) are the most abundantly available to Americans. But with so many people out of work, even those jobs are hard to come by. And just as being poor is a source of shame for many Americans, so is being out of work, or working a low-end, thus devalued, job.