Maya Wesby Why The Rich Stay Poor Analysis

What causes poverty? A question such as this is important to consider when trying to determine why the income gap in America has increased so greatly. Based from Maya Wesby’s article Why the Rich Stay Rich and the Poor Stay Poor, the key determinate to someone’s financial success is related to the environment in which they are raised. It is essentially the privileges of being born or brought into a wealthy family that gives them the advantage over the majority of the population. The most interesting part of this to me is that those who are privileged enough to have these advantages in life often do not see themselves as so. Using myself as an example, When I was a child I never thought of myself to be more privileged than any of my peers around me, but at the same time I was raised in a home that put a lot of time and money towards letting me have a brighter future. I think the cause for this is that those who have additional advantages in life are raised in a way that it seems very normal, that the privileges they possess are unnoticed because there is not much to contrast them against.

This makes sense, but it only continues to bring issues to the table concerning social justice. If we back track multiple generations in the United States, we’d be able to see that the majority or power and wealth belonged to and was shared amongst white families, while people of color were far less fortunate and had little to pass down to their families. The issues revolving around racial differences continues to prove itself present in today’s culture. In the Iceland reading on page 90 the author describes that in 2013 African Americans were not only making less money, but also had an unemployment rate that was nearly double that of a white male or