Representing Poverty
What does poverty look like in modern America? In her article, Diana George shares her belief that many charities depicting the poor use visual representations that categorize the poor on the same level. As a result, these narrow representations continue to feed a false viewpoint of the poor. Diana George and the other individuals that she quotes believe that there needs to be a re-evaluation of how charities like Habitat for Humanity present the poor and how people perceive the poor. I believe, the poor in America are often misrepresented. George starts off her article “Changing the Face of Poverty: Nonprofits and the Problem of Representation” by commenting on how many notifications we get in the mail for various charities. From here, she starts focusing on those dealing with the poor. George discusses the way in which these “poor” are represented by terrible conditions in melancholy pictures and other media sources. She then focuses in on Habitat for Humanity’s work and their representation of the poor. She points out Habitat for Humanity is an “elegant” cause, whose goal is to build homes for the less fortunate who cannot afford a decent place to live. In addition, she also points out serious weaknesses in their media outreach which can be harmful to their…show more content… Through examples based off of Habitat for Humanity’s media videos, George is able to convey her message that America needs to change this serious problem of misrepresentation in order to help more individuals in poverty. Likewise, I also agree with George that this is a serious problem. I believe her views on the topic to be accurate and thorough because the poor do tend to get, as she says, stereotyped by this faulty representation. Accordingly, I believe George and her sources are right to call for