Post Assessment

Gloria Ho

Professor Breech

English 120 L13

18 December 2014

Diana George "Changing the Face of Poverty" Post Assessment

Poverty is an issue that occurs in many forms throughout the world however only a few of these forms are represented and recognized in society. In America, extreme forms of poverty that occur around the world are spread throughout the media in order to catch the attention of citizens and hopefully motivate them to become a part of the solution. In the article “Changing the Face of Poverty: Nonprofits and the Problem of Representation” the author, Diana George, conveys how poverty in America is ineffectively and inaccurately projected towards the public. She illuminates the various forms of poverty in the Unite States, establishing that not only those who are homeless or in horrible living conditions, are considered poor and in need of help. Through personal observation George explains that while nonprofit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity have created an image for the public to what poverty looks like, it works against their objective. Overall, George’s argument of addressing poverty based on individual situations presents an accurate solution that can help towards eliminating poverty in the nation.

Throughout the article George illustrates the importance of respectively treating cases of poverty. She argues that poverty represented in mass media are only of people and families who are in “dirt and rags and helplessness” (543) and therefore creating an image of what poverty supposedly looks like in the minds of the public. In turn, this causes the poverty commonly seen in America; people receiving state aid without jobs or young homeless people who are physically capable of making their own money, are viewed as undeserving of help compared to what “true” poverty looks like such as those in Third World countries. Although it is through such extreme forms of poverty that help nonprofits successfully attract and catch the sympathy of the public in United States, it does not encourage them to help those who are struggling financially in their own neighborhood, community or even country. Ultimately, George suggests that such organizations should instead bring to light the more common and less represented forms of poverty that “can be dealt with by volunteers on an individual basis” (550). This would be an effective and cost efficient way to improve the situation of poverty in America. In order to successfully fight against poverty in the U.S and even around the world is to alter the public’s perspective on the poor and focus on the common and individual faces of poverty in America.

Poverty in America is misinterpreted and has been for years. As I too viewed poverty in stereotypical way, I have come to realize that it is rather unjust to compare one form of poverty to another. Though it is incredibly easy to do so with public media repeatedly telling the masses again and again that poverty is a “worldwide problem” (545) and because it a worldwide problem the poverty seen in America is compared with the extent of poverty in other countries. By doing this it makes the situation of poverty in America seem not as critical and thus creating the mindset of “they don’t need or deserve as much help”. However, such mindset is wrong. While poverty commonly seen in America consists of situations such as ones mentioned in the article, where unemployed young men and women, who are physically and mentally able to make a living, receives aid from the government and end up spending that money on material goods they cannot afford (548), it is still a problem and a situation that needs to be confronted and is deserving of help (just in a different way). While media has imprinted a misrepresentation of poverty in American society the first step to change is to develop a new meaning and understanding of the poverty that exists exclusively in America.