Bill O'Reilly vs. Tavis Smiley and Cornell West

  Nakisha Thompson

English 4 Daraja

10.8.13 de Wit

Bill Vs. Tavis

  According to Bill O’Reilly on his opinion about poverty, is to be a social problem. Cornell and Travis differ from this matter saying that its not a social issue, its an economic issue. Bill O'Reilly believes that the war on poverty is a personal option, meaning that people that are in poverty choose to be this way due to addiction and not want more for themselves. He states “people that are in poverty is because it’s a personal problem.”  If that’s so, then this population that he is referring to is not all minority. The new poverty consists of whites and middle class as well.

          Poverty is a political issue according to Tavis Smiley and Cornell West. I believe this, because poverty was only an issue when it hit the working middle class families, which are mostly whites. Poverty has always been a problem that has been overlooked for many years, and it’s sad to say that now its become a “Political” and an “Economic” issue. It hit the working middle class families when the great recession hit, which lead a lot of people to become unemployed.

Jobs were cut, and the unemployment rate continues to rise.  “There are nearly 150 million persistently poor and near poor people in America who are not responsible for the damage done by the recession. Yet they pay the price” (169). O’Reilly says that Poverty solely consists of the 15% that are poor and the 9% that are poor and have a personal addiction. This addiction can be of substance abuse, shopping, or spending money on unnecessary things that you cannot afford. Tavis and Smiley continue to argue that this poverty tour was not because of people that have an addiction, its because it has now hit the middle-class families, who have no addiction at all. Now that the new poor are the ones that we would never imagine to be, republicans like Bill O’Reilly believe that poverty is social, not political. Poverty is a political issue that can be portrayed as a social issue due to the 9% of Americans that are addicts, but the other percentage is over looked.