Roedah Mansour

GEOG 331/HONORS 231

January 30, 2015
Exercise 1: Representations of Poverty
In American popular culture, the poor are represented as people in need of
help, aid, cooperation, education, change and empowerment. In Unconventional Ways
to Fight Poverty, writer Amyx emphasizes breaking out of the cycle of poverty by first
changing how we talk about it. This, obviously, had me convinced that this article would
be relational by changing how we talk about poverty and how we look at impoverished
persons from those in need or in lack, to poverty being a brokenness. In saying poverty
is the brokenness of relationships, we have all experienced poverty and therefore, this
deconstructs the residual us v. them way of thinking, and builds a slightly more
socially relational approach, challenging residual poverty discourse. There is only one
picture in this article and it is of two dirty hands clasped together in a universally
understood sign for in need and/or spare change?please give me money. It is the
exact type of representation/expression of poverty that the article tells us to avoid. 3
key terms in this article are change, lack of hope and connection. Change how WE as
a collective whole think (not how they think), re-instill hope in the poor, and connect
with them as well.
David Frums article, Immigration Reform is Partly About How Much Poverty to
Welcome discusses how the US immigration policy has significantly increased poverty
in America. From the headline of the article, poverty and immigration seem to be
directly related immigration would only bring poverty. I thought that this article would
take on a relational poverty discourse, blaming immigration reforms for the poverty that
immigrants face and often find themselves stuck in. Rather, the article takes on a much
more residual poverty discourse as it brings blame to immigrants for bringing in poverty

to the states, increasing poverty rates as if the poverty is inherent in immigrants. The
article has a picture of a young Latina without shoes and holding her hands to her chest
as if in prayer. It is a dismal portrayal of how a child should look. She isnt smiling; she
looks as though she is saddened by something, desperate for something, missing
something it is a portrayal of what many think poverty is with a residual discourse:
dirty, poor, unable to afford more (or enough) because they, the people, have brought
on their own problems. There are also two graphs on this article: one graph shows that
more births to unmarried women occur amongst Hispanics than other groups which
contributes to a greater amount of young Hispanics living in poverty; the other graph
depicts that even though immigrants make progress the longer they live in America,
they still lag behind natives, contributing to the national poverty levels greatly. 3 key
terms used in this article are: badly, unskilled, and accept. The use of badly, in
context, was to describe how immigrant groups fare in America obviously painting a
view of struggle, pain, and simply, a lack of positivity. The use of unskilled as to
describe immigrant workers which reflects a residual discourse as immigrant workers
are now blamed for the poverty they meet because they, themselves, are lacking the
skills necessary they, themselves are inadequate. Lastly, accept is used almost
mockingly the debate over how much immigration to welcome is also a debate about
how much more poverty to accept equating immigration directly to poverty and
discouraging either for the sake of the country. It ultimately reinforces residual poverty
discourse.
In When Poverty was the Enemy, not the Poor, Tom Emblen stresses the
importance of structural adjustments to social, political and economic institutions in
eliminating poverty. The title of the article identifies that now, the enemy has been
made out to be the poor, rather than the issue of poverty blame has been put on the
people. The headlines state that the only way for issues to subside to help a

generation of families was to get people to work together all across the board. It was
about giving the poor a voice in decisions affecting their lives, the article states. This
piece takes a very relational approach as the solution to poverty is found in the
restructuring of institutions (not the targeting of the people). There is only one picture;
it is an image of older times, black and white; it can be inferred that the people in the
photo are impoverished but it is important to note that they are white: already, this
breaks through a stereotype of the poor being minority groups especially immigrants.
3 key terms are theres a difference between welfare and economic opportunity
(which cuts through the accusation of the poor being free-loaders, and that they can be
self-sufficient when given the opportunity), hand up (the War on Poverty wasnt a
handout, but a hand up, and again, this shows that the poor just need to be empowered
to succeed), and there are no silver bullets (it wont be easy, nor will it be quick).
I currently am performing my service learning with ReWA, which is
governmentally funded to provide ESL classes, job search, and other aid to refugees and
new immigrants to America. The organization reframes residual representations of
people in poverty so as to be the provider of aid to groups who need it automatically
an assumption is made that immigrants WILL need help in order to succeed and if left
without help, they will not themselves find progress or success. Some of the workers at
ReWA I encountered (the only few I met who werent prior immigrant participants of the
program) actually speak this way, saying that they are the primary institution helping to
enable these immigrants and refugees create sustainable lives in America (without hope
in these groups of people). Its a really tricky situation to determine whether or not the
program takes on a more residual or relational program, because it IS help via an
institution, not necessarily blaming the people for their conditions for they are new to
the country.

Article #1: Unconventional Ways to Fight Poverty (Elise Amyx,

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/reject-apathy/poverty/unconventional-ways-fightpoverty-0)
Article #2: Immigration Reform is Partly about How Much Poverty to Welcome (David
Frum, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/hispanic-immigration-andpoverty/361523/)
Article #3: When Poverty was the Enemy, not the Poor (Tom Eblen,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/when-poverty-was-the-enemynot-the-poor)