In "Serving in Florida," we meet Barbara Ehrenreich, a woman who courageously stepped into the shoes of minimum-wage workers, determined to understand the harsh realities they face. As we read her vivid descriptions of the physical and emotional toll of these jobs, the constant battle to make ends meet, and the lack of basic dignity, we can't help but feel a deep empathy for the individuals whose lives she depicts. We imagine the ache in their weary bones, the desperation in their eyes as they search for work, the longing for a better life. Bruce Schneier's essay "The Court of Public Opinion Is About Mob Justice and Reputation as Revenge" sheds light on the human cost of public scrutiny and the potential for mob justice to undermine due process. …show more content…
As we read Dargan's vivid imagery and raw emotion, we can almost hear the anguished cries, the defiant refusal to be silenced or diminished. The poem resonates with the experiences of Ehrenreich's low-wage workers, reminding us of the shared struggle for dignity and justice. Mahmoud Reza Banki's memoir "From Princeton to Prison: The Rise and Fall of My American Dream" is a poignant exploration of the elusive nature of the American Dream. As we follow Banki's journey, from the promise of a prestigious education to the harsh realities of incarceration, we can imagine the shattered hopes, the disillusionment, and the resilience that must have sustained him through his ordeal. His story serves as a powerful reminder that the pursuit of success can be fraught with unexpected challenges and setbacks. In contrast, the "Agreement Between the U.S. and the Spokane Indians" and Annette Gordon-Reed's "Growing Up with Juneteenth" offer glimpses of the resilience and perseverance of marginalized communities in the face of adversity. These works highlight the ongoing struggle for recognition, self-determination, and the preservation of cultural identity, even in the face of systemic oppression. We can sense the pride and determination of these communities, their refusal to be erased or
Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within himself.
...Even with the pitfalls in Ehrenreich's research, she managed to shine a light on the everyday plight of the low wage worker. She achieved employment at several different low wage service jobs and she also achieved friendliness with the coworkers there. Unfortunately, she could not achieve her goal of making enough money to pay the following month's rent at her accommodations, as she dictated to be her sign of success at the beginning of the project. Without this success, she can truly say that the plight of the low wage worker and the women leaving welfare is an extremely difficult one with great hardship and lack of fulfillment as these participants of the lower class work day to day to keep their chins up and make do with what, even if little, they have.
Within Lakota Woman, by Mary Crow Dog, a Lakota woman speaks of her story about growing up in the 60s and 70s and shares the details of the difficulties she and many other Native Americans had to face throughout this time period. Although Native Americans encountered numerous challenges throughout the mid twentieth century, they were not the only ethnic group which was discriminated against; African Americans and other minority groups also had to endure similar calamities. In order to try to gain equality and eliminate the discrimination they faced, such groups differed with their inclusion or exclusion of violence.
Life is full of hardships, ups and downs, and everywhere in between. Barbara Ehrenreich took on this life experience of working a minimum wage job and only living off what she earned. All the work she did was the for her book Nickel and Dimed, or the excerpt from Serving in Florida. I have worked a minimum wage job and understand how hard it could be to try and live on what little you earn. In Ehrenreich’s Serving in Florida, she first expresses, “ Picture a fat person’s hell, and I don't mean a place with no food. Instead there is everything you might eat if eating had no bodily consequences- the cheese fries, the chicken-fried steaks, the fudge- laden desserts- only here every bite must be paid for, one way or another, in human discomfort” (394). At first all I could think
Nevertheless, in the author’s note, Dunbar-Ortiz promises to provide a unique perspective that she did not gain from secondary texts, sources, or even her own formal education but rather from outside the academy. Furthermore, in her introduction, she claims her work to “be a history of the United States from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective but there is no such thing as a collective Indigenous peoples’ perspective (13).” She states in the next paragraph that her focus is to discuss the colonist settler state, but the previous statement raises flags for how and why she attempts to write it through an Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz appears to anchor herself in this Indian identity but at the same time raises question about Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz must be careful not to assume that just because her mother was “most likely Cherokee,” her voice automatically resonates and serves as an Indigenous perspective. These confusing and contradictory statements do raise interesting questions about Indigenous identity that Dunbar-Ortiz should have further examined. Are
In today’s society the idea of “American Dream” has become a controversial and widely interpreted issue that awaked opinions and research from professionals in fields such as Economics and Journalism because of the concept that in general the American dream involves. In his essay, “Hiding from Reality,” Bob Herbert examines how the achievement of the American dream is affected by the economy and quality of education in American society, and the effect of the inadequate utilization of the sources by the politicians will impact future generations. Despite his diverse points of view to determine if the American dream is still a viable element in today’s US society, the restauration of the American
In her narrative, “Serving in Florida”, she describes life as low income American through her experiences as a hotel maid. Ehrenreich vividly describes the inhumane working conditions in which many Americans must endure in order to survive. Employees are fearful of losing their jobs if they do not meet the certain demands of managers who unfairly exert control on them. In addition, Ehrenreich addresses a common misconception among Americans, that those living in poverty are not hard working people, she proves this to be an unfair portrayal of the underprivileged. Ehrenreich works alongside Maria, a Hispanic woman who is the housekeeping manager and Carla, an African American woman who is also a maid. Carla and Ehrenreich are given nineteen rooms to clean with one half hour break. Carla suffers from joint pain which causes her to move slowly. Ehrenreich notes that Carla’s slow pace will probably result in the loss of her job at the hotel because of the other immigrant workers who are much faster than she. Even Carla is fully aware that she is not valued as an employee, “She broods, too, about all the little evidences of disrespect that come her way, and not only from management. ‘They don’t care about us,’ she tells me of the hotel guests; in fact, they don’t notice us at all unless something gets stolen from a room— ‘then they’re all over you’” (277). Individuals such as Carla are extremely hard working, but despite their strong work ethic, low income citizens are seen as disposable by their employers. Not only are they looked down upon by their employers, but they also are treated with disrespect by the people in which they serve. The guests make automatic assumptions because she is from a lower class standing. They assume that she must degrade herself to theft in order to survive because she is not as fortunate. The
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
The systematic racism and discrimination in America has long lasting effects that began back when Europeans first stepped foot on American soil is still visible today but only not written into the law. This racism has lead to very specific consequences on the Native people in today’s modern world, and while the racism is maybe not as obvious it is still very present. These modern Native peoples fight against the feeling of community as a Native person, and feeling entirely alone and not a part of it. The poem “The Reservation” by Susan Cloud and “The Real Indian Leans Against” by Chrystos examine the different effects and different settings of how their cultures survived but also how so much was lost for them within their own identity.
Welfare reform caused many families surviving with the help of the government to go out and look for jobs despite their need for childcare that they could not afford. Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist with a PhD, decided to find out what life would be like living on minimum wage labor. During her journey, we see that labor has not changed majorly because laborers are not paid fairly and they are declining their rights. Although women are allowed in the workplace, an eight hour work day is established, and we have a minimum wage, many are still struggling to make it because the system simply does not work unless you are running the show. Her journey begins as she begins applying at many places in Key West, Florida, where she lives.
In this book, we get just a glimpse into some facets of the life of a low-wage worker. We never read of car repair issues or meet anyone who uses public transportation to get to work. We also never hear of childcare issues, often a major problem for single mothers. Overall, it was an in-teresting read. However, anyone can learn much of this same information and more by simply talking to the “invisible” people who serve us every day.
In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich, a prominent and prolific journalist in Florida, posed an interesting question to her editor: “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled” (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 1). In this idea, Ehrenreich set out on a journey to discover just how “the other half” lived on the low wages that they receive. During her project, Ehrenreich set out playing the role of a divorcee hoping to re enter the workforce by taking on the task of finding an unskilled, low paying job in hopes to see just how the poorer class made it with such low pay. Throughout the book, Ehrenreich takes jobs that pay typically between 5to 7 dollars per hour. It is interesting to look into how the attitude of Ehrenreich changes in respect to the
“Reclaiming Culture and the Land: Motherhood and the Politics of Sustaining Community” is about a mother who is a Native American activist who has two children, she wants them to be raised and go to school in an Indian community. “I put my children in that school because I wanted them to be in the Indian community.” She explains that she is not sure if her children know what she is doing is common, but they know that what she is doing is right. “My children do have the sense that what I do is not necessarily common. Recently my daughter started asking me if I’m famous.” She has fought for her children to have a good life, full of community, ritual, and an understanding of who they are and where they come from.
Students will partake in a seven week and seven lesson series on marginalized groups in America, these groups include- Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Women, Arab Americans, and Children. Lessons will take place the last two months of school, once we reach the 1960’s in American history. This is in an effort to have students realize that there is not merely one group that has seen racism, discrimination, and a near destruction of their culture. The following lesson will be on Native American portion of the unit. The goal of this lesson is for students to understand that each period from colonization to self- determination had causes of historical context and can still be felt today by many Native Americans.
In most American families parents are overjoyed as a result of the happiness and success of their teenage children. Across America teenager are enjoying their “rite of passage”, such as friends, after school activities, sports, vacations with their families and their first car. At the same time, little is known of the extreme poverty and despondency existing within the reservations of the Native American communities. Many Native American families are still struggling with the pain and anguish their ancestors suffered during the ethnic cleansing and forced relocation of the 1800’s such as the Trail of Tears.