Esoterica
 
 
 
latimes: Caught in the cycle of poverty: Choices, challenges and chaos keep undermining a woman’s attempt to escape the struggles her mother and grandmother faced. She wants to provide a better life for her children but seems not to know how. “My mother struggled, my grandma struggled and I am struggling,” Cole said. “Hopefully they will see what we went through as a family and it makes them want to be better and go to school and graduate so they don’t have to struggle.” Their struggles often involve housing. Cole and her family have briefly stayed in an old van, in a motel and, for one night, on skid row. “I try not to cry in front of my kids,” she said. “I cried.” Late last year, Cole was paying $400 to rent a room in South Los Angeles, where the whole family slept. But the roommate complained about the noise and the mess, and she eventually kicked them out. Photo: Cole, in relief and joy, embraces boyfriend Juan Sena after learning that they had gotten the new one-bedroom apartment. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times
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latimes:

Caught in the cycle of poverty: Choices, challenges and chaos keep undermining a woman’s attempt to escape the struggles her mother and grandmother faced. She wants to provide a better life for her children but seems not to know how.

“My mother struggled, my grandma struggled and I am struggling,” Cole said. “Hopefully they will see what we went through as a family and it makes them want to be better and go to school and graduate so they don’t have to struggle.”

Their struggles often involve housing. Cole and her family have briefly stayed in an old van, in a motel and, for one night, on skid row. “I try not to cry in front of my kids,” she said. “I cried.”

Late last year, Cole was paying $400 to rent a room in South Los Angeles, where the whole family slept. But the roommate complained about the noise and the mess, and she eventually kicked them out.

Photo: Cole, in relief and joy, embraces boyfriend Juan Sena after learning that they had gotten the new one-bedroom apartment. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

 
 
 
 

Anonymous asked: Yo, our school board did a survery, and turns out 89% of the kids on free lunch because their parents are on welfare, are black. Doesn’t that make it a fact that blacks are poor in my community? Therefore okay to joke about, because it’s the truth, not just a stereotype.

yoisthisracist:

Yo, hey fuckhead, seriously, what joke are you so burning to make at the expense of disproportionately poor children? I’m actually kind of curious why someone who’s that big of an asshole even cares if they’re racist or not.

 
 
alexandraerinr: Question for liberals

stfuconservatives:

liberalchristian:

stfuconservatives:

thetruthisouttheree:

Okay, so I know that one of the major criticisms Democrats make about Republicans is that we don’t care for the poor.

How do you figure that? You’re right that we don’t want the government to do…

 
 

esprit-follet:

titotito:

weexist-weresist:

thegoddamazon:

daniellemertina:

karnythia:

Ever notice how there’s no mention of the psychological damage done to communities of color by colonialism, imperialism, or slavery? No mention of any syndromes that might be created by an ongoing message of genetic & social inferiority constantly beings spoonfed to kids? Gee, I wonder why there’s no discussion of the long term harm that could be done to a community as a result of systemic dehumanization & oppression.

I was just thinking this the other day. Between the media/ educationally inflicted messages of our inferiority there has to be some psychological ramifications. I know sociology has words like “internalized stereotype threat” and “internalized racism” (although that is only discussed when a black person literally hates other black people when there is far more to that).

I find it interesting that people have theorized about the psychological ramifications of rich people who don’t get attention from their parents, or people in unfulfilling white collar jobs, but NOTHING about the dehumanizing effect of the combination of poverty & blackness. Or just blackness.

They’re afraid of what effects the inescapable truth they are destined to uncover will have on the world. Better to keep the masses ignorant than have them aware that their lives are not okay.

Here are some links to get some discussions started:

Racism and Asian Mental Health

Mental Health Problems More Common Among Kids Who Feel Racial Discrimination

Racial Battle Fatigue and Blacks

Muslims and Mental Health

Depression Among Minority Children

Racism and Mental Health of Children

Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain

Model Minority Myth + Stress

Mental Toll of Racism

Asian Women and Suicide

this list is accessible articles, a quick scholarly search yields thousands of complicated studies for brainiacs who are interested

Helpful links! Thanks for the compilation!

I would say there’s discussion on it in academia- as shown- just not so much in the mainstream.

When I wrote the first post I was thinking of the mainstream. The media & the government’s response to the need for social programs in particular, since the few discussions I’ve had on it in academia have been more focused on it in the abstract & not the concrete ramifications on living breathing communities. And of course the fact that it isn’t discussed is part of the framing of problems in our communities as a sign that we are inferior.

 
 
The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes

strugglingtobeheard:

JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States.  JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.  JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes.  Yes, you read that correctly.  When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money.  In the video posted below, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton admits that this is “a very important business to JP Morgan” and that it is doing very well.  Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan’s profits in this area have soared.  But doesn’t this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?

We were talking about poverty being profitable. When you get paid for every time you handle a food stamp case and the amount of people who are on food stamps has risen from a recession/depression, which was caused in part by the same institution raking in money off of food stamps, that is the epitome of cashing in on poverty. 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/OccupyTheHood

 
 
information addict: On Center Stage and the Children of Recession

peecharrific:

notyourkinddear:

pastimperfection:

tessastrain:

Today is the last day the camp classic coming of age ballet drama (not enough genre signifiers for this delightful trash) Center Stage will be available on Netflix Instant. Feels like the end of an era, doesn’t it? In more ways than one.

Right now members of the “99 percent”…

Why I hate this entire discussion in one silly fluffy pop-culture fetishist post.

It is not selfish or immature to expect that your economy will give you a job if you are willing to work.  It is definitely unrealistic, and it is sad that the middle class is only now waking up to escalating curve of our current capitalist system.  But the people who are complaining that they learned and trained and prepared and now are not even permitted to enter the workforce?  They have a point. 

It’s ludicrous that an entire generation of eager workers are shit out of work, despite all their discounts and liabilities.  Despite the fact that they’re cheaper than the generation before them.  Despite the fact that they’re hungry and scared.  It is to our shame and sorrow that we ever accepted the idea that some people were unemployable.  But more people haven’t somehow become unemployable overnight. 

Nor is it just the—I’m not even going to bother with the stupid Center Stage thing—mediocre young people who have lost their jobs.  The strivers are not thriving.  They may be a little bit better at scraping a living together out of scraps, but they’re also getting laid off.  They’re wasting all that entrepreneurial, can-do, independent spirit on figuring out how to work five jobs at once.  Businesses have gone way past trimming the fat, assuming arguendo that they were at one point eliminating bad workers rather than engaging in ritual corporate bloodletting.  

They’ve decided that workers are so much wasted money.  The most committed and diligent workers, the ones who never asked for anything, the ones who never left, court disaster during a round of outsourcing.  They are, after all, the least cheap.  The quarter-century veteran, the woman who never expected to quit?  She was the one out on her ass.  Not the perky intern willing to work for a line on her resume. 

And this is the problem.  We in the United States honestly believe that a job is a handout.  Did you happen to see one of the interchangeable blondes on Fox News the other day, talking about taxing the billionaires, saying that they “give back to the community” by creating jobs.  Remember when giving back to the community meant building a community center or something?  Planting a tree?  Lecturing to a scout troop? Chunking a toy into the bin at the firehouse each Christmas?  Giving? 

But no: a job is welfare.  A job is charity.  A job is a gift.  And we should all feel grateful for the chance to show up to work every day, work all day, and then at the end of the month collect some sort of compensation from the company who hired us.  That is a favor.  To us. 

Now it’s not nearly enough to simply do your job.  It’s not enough to be competent, professional, and active.  Those people get cashiered.  Those people do not deserve to work.  We have to be special.  And we should have known.  What did we expect?  Of course it makes sense that getting a job at any given office company, putting paper away and ordering staples, should be just as competitive as an audition for a nationally-renowned ballet company in a movie.  How else would you expect a society to function? 

Bolding mine (notwithstanding the “interchangeable blondes” comment which I don’t care for, though I agree with the point).

just the commentary. perfect commentary.

also what kind of fuckery is it to compare the current financial situation in america (and the world) to a movie… about ballet? are you serious? these people…

*smh*

 
 
Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.
Christopher Hitchens, Heilbringer:  (via cocknbull)
 
 
Separate, Unequal and Ignored

alotofbastards:

In 1971, the Gautreaux case was still inching along in Judge Austin’s courtroom. In March, a month before the mayoral election, the CHA complied with Austin’s order to plan public housing in white neighborhoods as well as black by listing 235 proposed sites in white neighborhoods. But the sites needed city approval. Mayor Richard J. Daley quickly called the proposal “detrimental” and said the units “should not be built.” His Republican opponent, Richard Friedman, declined to guarantee to block the units if elected, noting instead that open housing was “the law of the land.”

The Independent Voters of Illinois called Daley “racist” because of his opposition to the sites. But Daley knew “racist” was better in Chicago than “integrationist.”

He trounced Friedman.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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