No One Cares About the "Man in the Box" by Keissa

No One Cares About the "Man in the Box" by Keissa - July 2017 Scholarship Essay

"No one cares about the man in the box. The man who disappears".

- Christopher Priest

"No one cares about the man in the box. The man who disappears". A famous quote taken from a 2006 drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, 'The Prestige'. The film takes the audience through a series of sentiments. Some of which include surprise, desire and even contentment- but almost never doubt. This is due to the fact that the magicians tried their endeavor best to put on a show that will drive the audience's focus away from what is actually happening; a show that leaves little room for doubt. As extraneous as this analogy may seem, I see this intertwining with those affected by poverty more ways than not. If I were given the opportunity to give an educational Ted Talk, I would use it to touch base on an issue that I believe has not been mitigated as much as it is bombarded with false misrepresentations of those that live in "the box". My aspiration would be to expose the stereotypes made against those living in poverty and to inform Americans, and other countries that are affected with poverty globally about the effects poverty has on the average American.
Poverty has been a major issue debated upon ever since the Great Depression in 1929. More people are being added to the poverty line and several are turning a blind eye to what is causing this to happen. Those that refute may say that government officials are doing all they can to combat poverty and that the individual affected should make wiser decisions. Although I do concede that some of those afflicted by poverty should hold some level of accountability for their circumstance, I also believe that there are many that are born each day without having a chance. What do you say to the mother of a child born in poverty that was also raised without the proper means such as education. According to the Institute for Research on Poverty, "in 2014, children represented 23.3% of the overall U.S population, and 21.1% of all children living in the United States, were poor". The statistics are atrocious. According to Jill Rosden, a child's future well being can be greatly influenced by the family that they are born into. Children are the future of this nation but how can this nation continue to excel when there are so many children that are forced to live in poverty; unable to learn due to the lack of resources in schools in poor neighborhoods and having to live in a world where there are people that are unable to see beyond the externals of a child that lives in the box.
We have all seen the distress signs; the "I'm out of work, please help"- on the sidewalk, or have found ourselves passing through neighborhoods where there are an influx of dilapidated homes and cars. Shamefully, we have, in one way or the other, looked down upon these individuals and most of us have also possessed the same single story for those living under these harsh conditions. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls this using a single story. Adichie addressed an audience at a TED talk about her experience moving to America from Africa to attend college. She spoke of her roommates' surprise having learnt about her preference for Mariah Carey music rather than "African tribal music", as presumed by her roommate. She proceeded to say that her roommate had a single story of Africa; ruling out all the possibilities of them having anything in common. According to Adichie, "That is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become". According to Adichie, "the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and start with, "secondly”. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with “just another black or Mexican boy dropping out of school” and not with the school lacking the necessary learning materials, and you have an entirely different story. According to Taniesha A. Woods, Beth-Kurtz Costes and Stephanie J. Rowley, our single mindedness about the poor has an influence on our sympathy towards them.
Many adults and children have a single story of who is affected by poverty. According to Melissa S. Kearney and Benjamin H. Harris, poverty denies opportunities for those that live through these relentless hardships, but its negativity goes far beyond that. Kearney and Harris describes how children living in poverty are most likely to drop out of school and engage in criminal behavior that can lead to juvenile detention or incarceration. The Center for Poverty Research argues that "poverty burdens the US society and robs it of its economic potential". Burdens are placed on our society when money is allocated for public expenditures such as poor health and crime committed by the poor. The expenses paid out superfluously to the poor can be used to supply expenditures for the non- poor. Restating this issue is momentous because it gives everyone a chance to see the big picture- poverty affects those that lives in and out of the box.