The photograph on the last page of this essay is the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine. The picture depicts a poverty-stricken child crawling towards a United Nations Food Camp, located a kilometer away.
The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. this picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, not even the photographer Kevin Carter, who left the seen right after taking the photograph.
Three months later, Kevin Carter committed suicide due to depression 1.
When I think of poverty, I instantly imagine a child from Africa or India, so skinny you could see his ribs, ready and willing to do ANYTHING for even a morsel of raw food, let alone cooked food. I have even seen photographs of children in African countries using plastic bottles as slippers, the ground as their writing board, and sitting with bowls that have been empty for days. Truly, poverty is extremely rampant around the world. However, this is not actually how poverty actually is thought of in today’s world. Diana George noticed that.
In Diana George's essay, titled "Changing the Face of Poverty", we read about how the media influences the public by misrepresenting poverty. This essay shows the different levels of poverty and what kind of problems each level goes through. At first, we see a few images that "represent poverty". I use the quotes because being in torn clothes and starving is just an extreme form of poverty. It's just the media that shows us only the worst cases of poverty, which led to the formation of the "haves" and "have-nots". The "haves" are people living in developed and forward countries that get through a regular day easily, by working, relaxing and even eating proper food. The "have-nots", on the other hand, are people who live in developing countries and live in a spectrum on getting through a day, varying from "just getting through a day", to "surviving on garbage. According to Diana George, we have to actually see the people in bad situations before considering them to be poor. But then a question arises. Who decides who is a have or a have-not? The public cannot certainly decide on that ; we do not have that high a level of authority.
One of the major topics of discussion in this reading is the organization called "Habitat for Humanity". According to Habitat for Humanity's official website, we (the public) would be "helping families break the cycle of poverty and build long-term financial security." 2 George accuses this organization for giving itself the power to choose which "have-not" deserves shelter or not; a power that they this organization clearly should not have.
Moving on to the next reading, which was a poem composed by Maggie Anderson, it depicts how Walker Evans, the photographer known for documenting The Great Depression, shows a family that has been living a life of poverty. While reading the poem, one notices how Evans did not want to take pictures of the family, but was more focused on taking pictures of objects that represented poverty, such as "clapboard houses, meshed roofs, and slanted gables" 3. Evans focused on the bad parts in and around the family's house, and not the cheerful and content personality of the family, despite the fact that they were living in a state of poverty.
The next readings, articles written by Anna Deavere Smith and Barbara Ehrenreich focus on two different aspects of poverty. Barbara Ehrenreich's article tells us about how the increase in poverty has lead to an increase of violence and criminalization. Anna Deavere Smith, on the other hand, tells us about how she had interviewed a majority of women in the Maryland Correctional Institute, which was a sort of penitentiary for women who have committed a crime. However, it was sad to read that a majority of them were convicted for a crime they did not commit.
In a way, I feel that the essays and articles of George, Smith and Ehrenreich are sequential. Diana George opens up the topic of how poverty is misrepresented by the media. Poverty leads to violence and criminalization, which is the topic of Barbara Ehrenreich's article. Due to violence and criminalization, a majority of the poverty-stricken population is sent to prisons and correctional institutes, some of them women, which is the basis of Anna Deavere Smith's article.
In order to help the needy, we must stop segregating people into haves and have-nots. Another unconventional method of helping was to literally experience what these people have to go through to make it through a day, which would help us understand that these people really need a lot more help than we actually believe. A third option to help reduce poverty would be talking to the people, and understanding a personal view of how they got into such a situation, and what provisions and requirements they would need to just live a daily life.
One method of helping the poor would be to literally experience what these people have to go through to make it through a day, which would help us understand that these people really need a lot more help than we actually believe. However, one of the most important ways to help the needy would be to be compassionate and caring, as well as understanding. As Mother Teresa said, "We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” 4
No comments:
Post a Comment