Tuesday, February 21, 2006

I just got through rereading the excerpt, "Serving in Florida," from Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickle and Dimed:On Not Getting By In America in which she details her account of going undercover to work in the minimum and low-wage paying jobs around the country. Econmics is so important. Even more so class. Class is definitely one of the most important factors in American society. We are definitely behooved to be aware of class and those who are oppressed within this society. We should all be aware of our privilege.

Further on thinking about class, I overheard two black girls on the bus today talking about one of the locals who is homeless, an eighteen year old Latino kid named Joshua, who with his father, Abraham, are regular sites all around town. Their conversation was interesting and somewhat amusing. To paraphrase, the conversation went something like this: "GirlThat boy Joshua is a mess! To be homeless he lives better than me! He's always dressed in nice clothes, and he's got that portable CD player which he is always walking around with--which means that he can A: afford the batteries and B: buy the CDs!" Other Girl--"Honey I saw him the other day at McDonalds--somebody had bought him an ENTIRE breakfast!"

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