American History

Poverty in America is antithetical to the ideals of the American Dream. The American Dream purports that everyone, regardless of race, age, or religious persuasion, has a chance to succeed and to live prosperously if they work hard for it. However, in an ethnographic study to examine the lived experiences of the working poor in America, Barbara Ehrenreich finds out how this is assertion is not true in her book Nickel and Dimed. Ehrenreich insists that despite the common notion that being employed provides dignity and a sense of belonging in productive society, Americas working poor remain an invisible speck. Ehrenreich says that despite literally breaking her back on manual jobs, at the end of the day, the working poor feel outcast and detached from mainstream society. She laments at how the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment (117).

Based on what I have read and experienced, I have to agree with Ehrenreich that America refuses to see its poor. Michael Harrington, writing in The Other Side of America echoes the same sentiments, that the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform what is much worse, they are not seen (124). Poverty is not pronounced in American culture. The cultural themes that are spread through mainstream media such as radio, television, and the Internet relate to themes of affluence, wealth, glamour, luxury cars, high-paying white collar jobs, and worry-free living. The television provides us with images of what one should be to belong in America. This could be, in Ehrenreichs view, the fabulous anchors we see on TV, the well-sculpted images of blondes and brunettes in the soap operas, the glitz of Hollywood, and recurring themes in the movies which glamorize and romanticize poverty. David Shipler explains that one reason why the working poor remain invisible in America is that geographically, they are located in areas beyond the horizon of middle-class social experience (138). The tendency to look down on blue-collar jobs in the 1960s and 1970s, You are a chump if you take a job sweeping floors is not very different to the discrimination meted out against some occupations such as toilet-cleaning, janitorial jobs, and taking care of the elderly. Ehrenreich illustrates the experience of house cleaners or maids,

Maids as an occupational group are not visible, and when they are seen, they are often sorry for it. Ehrenreichs co-workers agreemaids are looked down upon, if they are seen at all. Were nothing to these people. Were just maids. Even convenience store clerks, who are 6-an-hour employees themselves, project attitudes of superiority (221).

What Ehrenreich attempts to refute is the myth that Everyone who works hard in America shouldnt be poor (Shipler 21). On the contrary, those who work extremely hard, do backbreaking, dangerous, and hazardous jobs are those who experience poverty to a greater extent. Unfortunately, their experiences are often overlooked by policy-makers and glossed over by cultural institutions. Katherine Newman wrote that the poor have attracted very little attention. They do not impinge on the national conscience (46).

Ehrenreichs argument that the working poor remains invisible sends a strong statement on the social inequality in a supposed democratic society like America. There exists a caste system where your belongingness in society is dependent upon how much your job pays or how you measure up to the ideal American way of life. As a result, culture is dictated by the ruling class who control the power and wealth of the country. The idea is that the working poor does not fit into the American way of life. Consumerist America is about purchasing power, which the working poor do not have. America considers the poor a minority despite the fact that the percentage of the working poor in the country is increasing (Both et al 65). Sociologists D. Stanley Eitzen and colleagues opined that the American government, stripped of its pretenses, is a government that functions to protect the interest of the rich, hence a plutocracy (30). According to Eitzen and his colleagues, Americas institutions are built in order to benefit the rich and discriminate the poor. To illustrate, it is the poor who are drafted to war in order to fight American wars of aggression. It is the poor who perform the tiresome and dangerous jobs. In a sense, America is structurally built to leave the poor with few choices in life.

The disadvantage of Ehrenreichs arguments however is that it defeats the concept of social mobility. It judges that institutional structures in place in American society do not permit the working poor to occupy the upper tiers in the workforce. Essentially, she is saying that society is designed to ignore social inequality, not address it. A critique to Ehrenreichs assertions was established in an experiment conducted by Adam Shepard in Scratch Beginnings Me, 25, and the Search for the American Dream where he examined what America would be able to provide to him if he starts with just 25 (Smith). At the end of 10 months, Shepard was able to acquire a vehicle, an apartment, and over 5,000 in savings. However powerful Ehrenreichs arguments are to highlight social inequalities in American society that ignore the plight of the working poor, most Americans tend to blame the person instead of the system for poverty. It remains difficult to make Americans accept and confront the reality of poverty because media images offer a romanticized picture of it. As Harrington says, Clothes make the poor invisible. America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known.