Poverty and Injustice

For many people this would not be such a big deal, but when thinking about the group, or subculture, that one belongs to, the description is clear. For me however, this is not exactly the case. So I read through some of the other articles about subcultures to try and get a better feel of where I might belong, and I still see many problems. Since the only group that I seem to belong to is poor people, then I will call that my clique. Notice that I did not say “click” as most other people do, and that is because I know the difference between how something sounds, and how things actually work. Maybe I am too smart to belong to any clicks, but too poor to belong to a real clique. So we will stick with poverty stricken as the name of my subculture.

Some of the language that comes with belonging to the poverty stricken clique are words like food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, TANF, case worker, gas money, low life, loser, drug addict, lazy, and several other expletives that one might use when referring to describe people that belong to the subculture that I am a member of. Some of the common values that my group holds include doing what we have to do in order to survive. Whether good or bad, we make sure that our needs are met. This brings us to the next point of the experiences that only members of my group will experience, that non members simply have no idea about.

So you can see the injustices that are brought upon my clique, you should know about a test that my family and friends ran on the “system” in order to see who can get help the fastest: a white family with children, or a single black man who got drunk (on purpose). We went into the “food stamp” office (in Cleveland, Texas) separately and applied for benefits. The white family had a black case worker, and was issued an appointment to come back for a separate interview after 6 weeks. The drunk black man, who had a white case worker, was in the office for less than 30 minutes and came out of the office with a food stamp card that already had money on it. If that does not give insight into how the poor are treated, then you should stop reading this right now.

The group identity affects my individual identity in an extremely negative way. It depletes any good feelings that I might have had about our government, and what it does with the tax money that I pay into it. Politicians are too worried about being “politically correct” to simply be “correct” in the things they do. No wonder why our country is going bankrupt and unemployment is at an all time high. I have not been able to find anybody to hire me for a job ever since Bill Clinton was the President, and even though my neck is broken in 2 places, I cannot get disability benefits because it is my responsibility to pay into it, not to collect it. So that brings us to the last point of what people get out of belonging to this subculture, and I really cannot think of anything good, unless you are a drunk black man looking for some free government money. Other than that, the only thing you will get from belonging to this group is cast from society and labeled all kinds of things that cannot be repeated in this venue.