When engaging discourses that concern poverty (be that urban or rural), hegemonic narratives tend to pathologize individuals for their impoverishment and lack of social mobility. As evidenced in The Intersection of Poverty Discourses: Race, Class, Culture, and Gender, poverty within the United States is commonly given a black and disreputable face, which ultimately comes to be both ignored and demonized. This forms part of a larger legacy of institutionalized racism that obscures the complexity of poverty’s demographics, causes, and consequences (Henderson and Tickamayer, 2010). However, as illustrated through the various components of this project, poverty is not a phenomenon that is solely restricted to African-Americans. Indeed, members of rural America and Appalachia (the large majority of which are white) also suffer from the disparaging effects of poverty. Media coverage of poverty also follows a familiar script: surprise and discovery, followed by efforts to classify victims and victimizers, deserving and undeserving, laced with a little sympathy for the former and moral outrage at the latter (Henderson and Tickamayer, 2010).

The goal of this project sought to shift the overarching narratives of poverty. The former is an issue that impacts various communities in the United States, therefore it deserves mass recognition and should be addressed. Similarly, this project expanded upon the multiplicities of poverty identities, locations, and control mechanisms. In doing so, we hope our audience gathered that poverty manifests itself in various forms, and that those who suffer from poverty are as deserving of empathy as anyone else.

Debra Henderson and Ann Tickamyer, “The Intersection of Poverty Discourses: Race, Class, Culture, and Gender,” in Bonnie Thornton Dill and Ruth Enid Zambrana, ed., Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender (Rutgers UP, 2010), 50-72.