What's Killing Poor White Women Summary

Critique of “What’s Killing Poor White Women”
The author of this article, Monica Potts, writes for the American Prospect magazine. She has work that has been published in the Connecticut Post, the Stamford Advocate, and the New York Times. Her article, “What’s Killing Poor White Women”, first appeared in the July/August 2013 issue of the American Prospect. She starts out her essay by making her claim that, “For most Americans, life expectancy continues to rise- but not for uneducated white women. They have lost five years, and no one understand why” (591). There are three main points that make her claim ineffective and they include that: her emotional appeals are ineffective, her logical appeals are correct, but have no true impact on

her claim, and she commits a logical fallacy by trying to persuade her audience what is killing poor white women but doesn’t have the evidence and logical sense to back up her claim. I believe that Pott’s claim is one to consider, but through her ineffective use of emotional appeals, the unimpactful use of logical appeals, and her mistake of making logical fallacies, I cannot agree with her claim of what is killing poor white women today.
Before you can critique Pott’s work, you must look at her main points that she discusses.

Her first main point is that the life expectancy of white women who do not graduate high school have declined dramatically over the past 18 years (593). She says this to call attention to the fact that these white women that aren’t staying in school, which she then assumes is leading them to their death coming upon them a lot earlier than it should. Later, she also explains that research shows that the more educated of society are better at forgoing pleasurable and possibly risky behavior because they have learned to look ahead to the future (596). Pott’s says this to put emphasis on the fact that these white women need to stay in school and not drop because it can lead to them having a longer and happier lives. Pott’s second main point is the theory that low-income white women smoke, drink, and abuse prescription drugs like OxyContin and street drugs like meth more than black women (603). She says this to show that the low income white women may be doing a better job at killing themselves than black women and she wants people to be aware of that. The last main point that Pott’s makes in her article, talks about the low- income white families of the south. She talks about how the women in this society have a lot asked of them and have many responsibilities. “In low income white communities of the South, it is still the women who are responsible for the home and for the raising

of the children, but increasingly they are also raising their husbands” (604), Pott’s says this to show that the low income women of the families in the southern part of the country are asked too much of. She also states that women do the emotional work for their families, while the men just take the advantages and benefits of being in a marriage (604). She says this to show the women in this society are being used and are taken advantage of, and this is causing them to be overwhelmed and is leading to an earlier death than is necessary. Her main purpose for writing this article is for the audience to understand that the low income white women are more likely to drop out of high school, smoke, drink, abuse prescription drugs, and especially in the southern parts of the United States, women are asked way too much of themselves involving responsibilites with the children and husbands and the all-around emotional support.
Now we can get into the analysis of Potts’s article which includes her use of emotional appeals, logical appeals, and logical fallacy.

Pott’s uses an emotional appeal when she says, “Crystal dropped out in the 10th grade because she had married. That was the way things were. None of Crystal’s siblings finished high school. Instead, they became adults when they were teenagers. Crystal would spend the rest of her years as a housewife to a husband who soon became ill and as a mother to a daughter who would grow up as fast as she did” (598). This emotional appeal is not affective because Pott’s is trying to make us feel sorry for Crystal for dropping out of high school, becoming an adult as a teenager, for her husband’s illness, and her daughter having to grow up so fast but it doesn’t have a true impact on the audience. This is not an effective emotional appeal because it was her decision to drop out of high school, she did not have to do that, and all of the other issues occur after that decision. Another example of an emotional appeal Pott’s uses is when she talks about Crystal wanting to start a family. Pott’s stated that, “Crystal wanted to start a family as soon as she was married but couldn’t. Her first three pregnancies, in the early ‘90s, end in miscarriages” (600). There are two reasons that this emotional appeal is not effective and they include that. The first is that it is irrelevant to the fact of what is killing poor white women and the second is that

we can’t really feel sorry for her because she never once went to the doctor to try and figure out why she was having miscarriages. Next, we will look at how Pott’s uses logical appeals. She incorporates a logical appeal when she stated that, “In March, two researchers from the University of Wisconsin reported that women in nearly half of 3,140 countries in the United States saw their death rates rise during the same time period that Olshansky studied” (603). This is a logical appeal because it presents a claim and has evidence to back it up, but it doesn’t have a true impact towards her main claim which is why it is not an effective appeal. Another example of a logical appeal Pott’s uses is when she stated that “Better-educated women are the most likely to work and to achieve parity with men: Seventy-two percent are in the work-force, compared with the 81 percent of the male counter-parts” (599). Once again this is a logical appeal, but it has no relevance to Potts’s main claim which makes it not an efficient logical appeal. Lastly, we will look at where Pott’s endures logical fallacies. Pott’s stated that, “The rural South is a place that often wants to remain unchanged from the 1950s and 1960s, and its women are now dying as if they lived in that era, too” (604). This is an example of a logical fallacy because Pott’s is trying to persuade the audience into thinking that women today are dying today because they are living the same way they did over 60 years ago. This is not logical and in return a fallacy, because times have changed drastically sense the 1950s and 1960s and Potts provides no solid evidence that these women still live this way today. Another example of a logical fallacy that Pott’s commits is when she stated, “She is one of a demographic-white woman who don’t graduate from high school- whose life expectancy has declined dramatically over the past 18 years” (593). This is a logical fallacy because Pott’s is trying to persuade the audience that white women who don’t graduate from high school can expect to die earlier than their counterparts but it’s not logical because there is no evidence of this occurring or any examples of how you could even prove this was a true statement.
Some people may disagree that the poor white uneducated women are not losing years off their lives, and contrary to the author Monica Pott’s, I am one of those people. I believe that there is a problem with poor white women being uneducated, but due to Potts’s ineffective use of emotional appeals, unimpactful use of logical appeals, and her mistake in making multiple logical fallacies, I cannot agree with her claim that uneducated white women have lost five years on their lives.