Blog # 3 Zane Hinely Section 1070

“…although she was not the only poor person in the class, no one else wanted to identify with being poor for fear this stigma would mark them, shame them in ways that would go beyond our class.”(Hooks 198).

            The reason why I chose this line is because it’s a line that I can identify with as being from a low income background. Although my economic status has since changed in adulthood from what it was growing up, I remember the embarrassment of being labeled as “poor”. When I was child I grew up in government assisted housing despite my single mother working long hours to make ends meet. I remember going to the foodbank weekly and having the knock off brand of clothes, shoes, etc… It’s due to this despite not being able to tell people our income status my clothes did that for me labeling me as “the poor kid” in grade school.

            I remember keeping the fact that we got food from the food bank to myself in grade school. I was the kid that had to approach the teacher after classes to admit we could not afford whatever fee for the field trip. I hated field trips because it always meant that awkward conversation. Like what Bell Hooks explains in her book Outlaw culture from which this line is taken from. There was this stigma attached to being poor a stigma so powerful that it could be obvious to a young child. Although I admit that lower income individuals are at higher risk to repeating the cycle of poverty or ending up in our prison system. Thus why social programs have been created to help prevent this like for example, there was programs at my school that offered tutoring that I personally did not need but was required to go to and miss class to go to these tutoring session. Just the name itself made me feel stupid because I was identified as low income and required to go because the school needed its money from the state. I wonder how programs like this created this feeling for others that felt stupid and started to slide into the roles that society had created for them. The media portrays low income like a leech on society thus being poor feels like you are burden to everyone else. Even social programs that are meant to assist feel like a back handed complement. Luckily for me the U.S. Military that recruits and preys on lower income areas for recruitment was an access point for me to escape this cycle. To help this stigma we need to find a better way to render assistance in a dignified way and break the stigma.  Misconceptions of lower income individuals portrayed in culture need to change to end this cycle.