Urban ethnography and the myths of the poor

Poverty like the works of Lewis has shown that in urban society there are such things and it’s shocking if there aren’t any.  How the people in the poverty culture cope with their problem is not how Lewis proposes. He believed that the poor people having the behavior as savages because they are out to survive. Instead the people in poverty are planning this all out according to what they want. People from middle and rich class sees the poor as uneducated but truthfully they are not are pretty bright.

            There are many people that seek jobs and attempt to have a better life, drug dealers don’t want to always live their lives selling drugs. When they attempt to look for jobs they tend to fail, since they are going for an office job that is high in requirements. Somehow they will end up in selling drugs again, it’s like they plan this and know the expectation offices have and that they don’t meet that requirements. There are other jobs that’s, “high risk, high-turnover, low-paying, dead-end segment of the labor market” (Goode 188) . Judith Goode shows that the people in the poverty have a way of thinking and there is more than the eye sees.

            Women in poverty are explained a lot throughout the essay. Goode wrote how the women are the center of the household. The women’s part in the home is more important than the role of the guy. Goode explain that there is an important for the role of the male in the relationship and when both parents are absent the child is in the care of the father’s relative. Goode wrote, “First, Fathers often retain a presence in the life of their children. In addition, a mother may rely on her own male relatives to help raise her children” (Goode 190). Goode is saying that if the father of the child is not present in the child’s life, the father’s family will help out so the mother is never left alone to take care of the child.

            I think that there is a lot of way how poverty lives in urban society. In Lewis he explains how the people in poverty live their life isolating themselves from other people and do what he has as a way to survive. While in the Goode’s essay she makes a good point that how people that live in the slums chooses this life for reasons unknown but they know how to retain their lifestyles. I believe that both author is correct, there is a possibility that the people in the streets are trying to keep them alive. They could be out there being mentally unstable and self-absorbed to keep themselves safe. There are also people in poverty that are really smart, that they can retain getting to where they are.