Analysis Of The Article Seeing And Making Culture: Representing The Poor By Bell Hooks

In the article “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor” by Bell Hooks, one of Hook’s primary purposes for this article is how people view the poor in a negative connotation because of the media. In the article Hooks views the lower class and the higher class different than most. She starts off her article talking about the poor are now being represented. One of her first arguments is talking about the labels the poor has and how poverty places a part in that.

Growing up in a poor community Hooks never saw herself as poor. She viewed her family as working class. She viewed it this way because in her point of view, her family was poor, but they had enough to make ends meet. She said she did not see herself as poor but more felt this

She starts talking about how she started to see herself as poor. She had no money for school, and the only way she went was by loans and scholarships. She thought of the world as two categories, who had money to spend and who did not. Hook talks about how she went to college knowing there was no connection between poverty and personal integrity. She relates this word poverty to an experience she had in her past. This encounter took place in her college classrooms. She pointed out the professors and even the people in the class viewed the poor as unworthy. Some labels were put onto the poor such as laziness. College also came with stereotypes against the poor. Hooks was so shocked to see that people believed these stereotypes and listened to them. The poor people soon began to feel worthless they became ashamed of where they had come

She brings past experiences of her life in so the reader can understand that biases and racial misinterpretations can affect poor citizens on a personal scale regardless of the fact that the intrinsic dignity that was placed upon them in their upbringing blatantly opposes the media’s opinion of them. The poor are now heavily judged. They are viewed as unworthy because they do not have as much as the middle to upper class. Media controls more than we know especially when it comes to the way we think and view things. The way the media talks about the poor is horrible. We think of homeless people or the people on the streets. There is so much more to than just being poor. The media needs to stop placing people by what they have but who they are. Integrity plays a much bigger place. I believe overall Hooks was trying to get these ideas across. She wants change and it is up to us to bring it. The article has great points supported and Hooks makes you want to take a stand and change other perspectives on the