Poverty/Privilege

A Reader for Writers

Connie Snyder Mick

Poverty/Privilege

A Reader for Writers

Connie Snyder Mick

Description

Read. Write. Oxford.

In order to understand why people are poor, we must also look at why people are wealthy. Poverty/Privilege: A Reader for Writers examines the social, cultural, and political forces that offer-or deny-opportunities to people based on race, gender, age, and geography. By helping students understand how poverty works, this survey makes them aware of the problem and encourages them to become part of the solution.

Developed for the first-year composition course, Poverty/Privilege: A Reader for Writers includes an interdisciplinary mix of public, academic, and cultural reading selections, providing students with the rhetorical knowledge and compositional skills required to participate effectively in discussions about poverty and privilege.

Poverty/Privilege: A Reader for Writers is part of a series of brief single-topic readers from Oxford University Press designed for today's college writing courses. Each reader in this series approaches a topic of contemporary conversation from multiple perspectives.

Poverty/Privilege

A Reader for Writers

Connie Snyder Mick

1. Definitions. What Is Poverty?
John Iceland, "Early Views of Poverty in America." Poverty In America: A Handbook
Barbara Ehrenreich, "How We Cured 'The Culture of Poverty,' Not Poverty Itself." Mother Jones
"Penury Portrait: The Consensus on Raising People Out of Poverty is Relatively Recent." The Economist
Ray Offenheiser, "Poverty at Home." Politico
Vivyan Adair, "Reclaiming the Promise of Higher Education: Poor Single Mothers In Academe." U.S. Senate Committee on Finance
Greg Kauffmann, "By the Numbers: U.S. Poverty." Moyers and Company
"Definition and Resources for Poverty." Census Bureau
"About Human Development." Measure of America
Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?" The Heritage Foundation
Robert Haveman, "What Does It Mean to Be Poor in a Rich Society?" Focus
Charles Kenny, "In Praise of Slums." Foreign Policy
2. Causes. Why Are People Poor?
Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, "Perspectives on Poverty." Creating an Opportunity Society
Sarah Burd-Sharps and Kristen Lewis, "Inequality: Shifting the Spotlight from Wall Street to Your Street." Oxfam America
Jeff Sessions, "Memo on FY14 Budget Process." Senate Memo
Kai Wright, "Young, Black, and Buried in Debt: How For-Profit Colleges Prey on African American Ambition" Salon
Michelle Alexander, "The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent Undercaste." Race, Poverty, & the Environment
Joshua DuBois, "The Fight for Black Men." Newsweek
NPR, "'Life, Death, and Politics': Treating Chicago's Uninsured."County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital
"100 Questions About Poverty: Identifying Research Priorities for Poverty Prevention and Reduction." Joseph Rowntree Foundation
3. Consequences. Who Is Poor?
Gabriel Thompson, "Could You Survive on $2 a Day?" Economic Hardship Reporting Project
Mary Bauer and Mónica Ramírez, "Injustice on Our Plates: Immigrant Women in the U.S. Food Industry." Southern Poverty Law Center
"Map the Meal Gap." Feeding America
Monica Potts, "Pressing on the Upward Way." The American Prospect
Bernie Sanders, "Poverty in America: A Death Sentence." Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
Sonja Livingston, "Shame." Ghostbread
Laura Sullivan-Hackley, "Speech Pathology: The Deflowering of an Accent." Kalliope
Sherman Alexie, "Why Chicken Means So Much to Me." The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Crystal Gammon, "Pollution, Poverty, and People of Color: Asthma and the Inner City." Environmental Health News
Maria Shriver, "The Female Face of Poverty." The Atlantic
Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson, "The Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty." Pathways
Roger R. Blunt and Paul D. Monroe, Jr., "We Have a Wealth Gap, and the Military Is Poorer for It." Oxfam America
Maura O'Connor, "Subsidizing Starvation." Foreign Policy
4. Privilege. Who Isn't Poor?
Courtney Martin, "Moving Past Acknowledging Privilege." The American Prospect
Teju Cole, "The White Savior Industrial Complex." The Atlantic
Gene Marks, "If I Were a Poor Black Kid." Forbes
DNLee, "If I Were a Wealthy Suburbanite." Scientific American
Tressie McMillan Cottom, "Why Do Poor People 'Waste' Money on Luxury Items?" Talking Points Memo
James Webb, "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege." Wall Street Journal
Adam Serwer, "Webb and 'White Privilege'." The American Prospect
"The Rich Are Different from You and Me; Wealth, Poverty, and Compassion." The Economist
Anthony Zurcher, "'Affluenza Defence': Rich, Privileged, and Unaccountable." BBC News, Echo Chambers
5. Rhetoric. How Does the Media Represent Poverty?
Simon Kuper, "Poverty's Poor Show in the Media." Financial Times
Dan Froomkin, "It Can't Happen Here: Why Is There Still So Little Coverage of Americans Who Are Struggling With Poverty?" Nieman Reports
Emily Brennan, "Reporting Poverty: Interview with Katherine Boo." Guernica
Rebecca Solnit, "When the Media is the Disaster: Covering Haiti." Huffington Post
Noel King, "American Presidents and the Rhetoric of Poverty." Marketplace
Nazneen Mehta, "Opposing Images: 'Third World Women' and 'Welfare Queen'." Women's Policy Journal of Harvard
Miriam Meltzer Olson, Khadijah Muhammad, Laura Rodgers, and Mansura Karim, "Picture This: Images and Realities in Welfare to Work." Affilia: Journal of Women in Social Work
"There Are 8 Things Maria Wants to See Happen Before 2015" and "The United Nations Has Picked a Group of People to Eliminate World Poverty." United Nations Development Programme Posters
6. Solutions. What Should We Do About Poverty?
Dean S. Karlan and Jacob Appel, "Introduction: The Monks and the Fish." More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty
Peter Buffett, "Charitable-Industrial Complex." The New York Times
Paul Theroux, "Africa's Aid Mess." Barron's
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, "More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World." Foreign Policy
Peter Edelman, "The State of Poverty in America." The American Prospect
Ai-jen Poo, "Building a Caring Economy." Huffington Post
Lori Sanders and Eli Lehrer. "Don't Forget the Poor." The Weekly Standard
Muhammad Yunus, "Nobel Peace Prize Lecture." Nobelprize.org
Sasha Abramsky, "New Help for the Poor: Cash Grants, Through a Web Site." The New Yorker
Phil Garrity, "Measuring the Immeasurable." Partners in Health
David Bornstein et al., "Solutions Journalism Network: Questions and Checklist." Solutions Journalism Network

Poverty/Privilege

A Reader for Writers

Connie Snyder Mick

Author Information

About the Author

Connie Snyder Mick is Director of Community-Based Learning and Co-Director of the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor through the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame.