Aaron Freitas Homeless/hunger quiz

 

The first article I will discus is "The 'Homeless Problem' and the Double Consciousness" by Jason Adam Wasserman, Jeffrey Michael Clair and Chelsea Platt. This article delves into how society perceives people who are homeless and how that effects the way the homeless individuals perceive themselves.

The authors collected their information through personal interviews and conversations with homeless people. The point of the interviews was to identify how the homeless individuals see themselves through the lens of American society.  The authors wanted to know if W.E.B. DuBois's theory of a double-consciousness could also include other groups of disenfranchised people. The double-consciousness theory is the idea that an individual will see and judge themselves by an outside standard not set by their own group or themselves. Usually, this standard is a negative belief held by a dominant social class about a subordinate social class. 

What the authors found was that homeless people often hold negative ideas about themselves that match up with what society believes about them. These things include the ideas that the homeless are lazy, have substance abuse problems, mental heath issues and are homeless due to their own personal failings. Often the authors would report that the people interviewed would claim that they wanted to work but that other homeless people didn't or that they could choose to stop being homeless if they wanted to. These beliefs mirror the commonly held beliefs of American society about the homeless. It is also of note that almost every homeless person was also very patriotic, holding no negative beliefs about America or its policies.

In conclusion, the authors believe that as a society we must combat negative views about the homeless, not only in society, but with special attention to the homeless individual themselves. To begin to solve what has been called "the homeless problem" we first must get rid of the idea that the problem lies with the homeless person. This would be to the benefit of both society and the individual. 

The second article is titled "A Decade of Change: Measuring the Extent, Depth and Severity of Food Insecurity" By Kelly Stamper Balistreri. The study in this article aimed to evaluate how food insecurities have changed over the last decade, from 2001 to 2013.

The date range used came from two different surveys conducted on food insecurities over a span of multiple years. The data showed both expected and unexpected result with regards to food insecurity among Americans. As expected food insecurities rose greatly across the board from 2006-2008 during the Great Recession. What was less expected was that the rates of food insecurity among Americans has not gone back to the levels seen before the Great Recession, even though the economy has largely recovered. One reason for this is the cost of food has steadily risen whereas wages have stayed the same. The study also found that low-income families with children are the most likely to have food insecurities and black low-income families have the highest prevalence of food insecurities with little change over the time span evaluated. Low-income Hispanic families however showed little change in the prevalence of food insecurities, but for the families that did have food insecurity, the severity went up 5-12%. White low-income families showed the most rapid increase in food insecurity during this time span. In conclusion, food insecurity overall in the United States has continued to climb across all low-income peoples.