Short response 11-02-10

The articles in "Listen up" were very interesting to me and gave me insight into what it is like for women who have circumstances fighting against them succeeding. In both articles these women were not very well off and struggling to make ends meet while trying to make their lives better. "Knowledge Is Power" by Maria Cristina Rangel featured a young with a kid trying to make a better living for her and her kid. She felt especially mad at the government because she felt that they were patronizing her. To her they made it seem like she wanted this life and that it's her fault it's like that. She says that "the whole system is based on the assumption that you are trying to screw the DTA over" (Rangel 192). I can see how this would upset her because no one wants to be treated like their low class, but I can see where the government is coming from. The truth of the matter is that a lot of people do take advantage of the system. Look at the move Precious, the mother was pretending that she lived with a special needs child to get the financial benefits from the government. it's good that they check up on people. Yeah they can probably do it a better way, but some people are just condensing like that. I feel like it's easy to put the blame on the people when you haven't been in that situation. A lot of people think that people growing up on welfare, do it because they don't work hard, they truth is that a lot of them weren't born into situations like upper-middle class people. When you look at education costs today for college it's ridiculous who could afford a 50,000 dollar tuition, I know if it wasn't for my basketball scholarship, I would not be at Colgate. It just sucks that some people like, Aisha Hakim-Dyce, have to consider stripping in order to pay the bills. It's just sad because she was seriously considering and coming up with ways in which she could cut off her emotions so she could do the job. No women should ever have to that, unless she wanted to. Life is hard for people coming from the bottom, we hear about all these success stories like Oprah and Denzyl Washington and people think that any person from unfortunate circumstances can rise above it. But the truth is that those stories are very rare. I look at my dad and he was one of thirteen and only he and one of his brothers made it out of their area. Most of his family still live in the same neighborhood on welfare. Hopefully in the feature, we figure out a way that everyone has equal opportunities to succeed in this world.