OTM 2: The Poverty Tour

Brooke Gladstone went on a poverty tour in Ohio and interviewed welfare advocate Jack Frech. Frech suggests that the poverty crisis in America has less to do with liberal or conservative politics and more to do with the American popluation that does not want to change their mind about poor people. For so long many people including myself have been indoctrinated in the idea that poor people are poor because they are lazy or stupid. If they only were willing to work hard or if only they were capable of making smarter decisions they wouldn't be poor. Frech says this those are the misperceptions that Americans deal in all the time when it comes to poor people.
I am taking a sociology class this semester and in that class we talk about what things in our society are contributing influences to human behavior. This OTM illuminated the social context in which Frech and Gladstone were speaking about America's poverty problem. If we're seeing the poor as products of their own poor choices or as products of their unintelligence than we're not seeing a bigger problem which is the lack of support these the poor receives in our country. The true solution to this problem will be found after we as an American society understand that it may not be the poor that need to change as much as the wealthier middle and upper class does.