Free Lunch Isn’t Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry
A Links entry from Friday, February 29, 2008Free Lunch Isn’t Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry
Lunchtime “is the best time to impress your peers,” said Lewis Geist, a senior at Balboa and its student body president. Being seen with a subsidized meal, he said, “lowers your status.”
This is why people hate student body presidents.
Trish
It seems like what these students want is subsidized or free junk food and other so-called luxury items. It is not enough that the taxpayers give them a free meal. They want to show off. If the stigma of free lunch is so great than they should get an after school job, buy groceries and make lunch or spend less on clothes and sneakers. Welcome to the world of those of us who did not qualify for free lunch.
Bryan Klausmeyer
Trish, your perspective is not only wrong, but also lacks any kind of historical conditioning. In fact I would go so far as to say that it perfectly encapsulates a kind of quintessentially individualist American ideology.
Your argument relies upon the notion that food is somehow a luxury item. It appears to me that the way you avoided the trap of such a ridiculous notion was by labeling it not as food, but as junk food.
Your capitalist, entrepreneurial mindset is also quite absurd. Why should we expect that underprivileged children should work twice as hard for the sake of not only starting their adulthood in the sense of careerism at such a young age, but to simultaneously expect them to get into a good college while managing this? Such a plan would entail that these children would likely opt out of high school in favor of the pittance they would earn on minimum wage to put food on the plate for both themselves, as well as perhaps their families. This is no way to boost any sort of socio-economic equality. And this isn’t even factoring in issues of discrimination.
Lastly, your idea that these children, whom we should admit are likely black and latino, are “lazy” simply constitutes another example of post-modern racism. A racism that doesn’t “see race,” but simply sees people in terms of some abstract notion about “work ethic,” etc. It’s either, “These people are lazy and simply living off of my hard-earned money,” or it’s, “These people aren’t even human because they work so hard and plan on taking my job, too.” It’s either too little, or too much. It is the kind of discourse that Republicans thrive off of.
To conclude, this mindset of guilt associated with so-called “handouts” (welfare, in any normal country) actually occurred during the Great Depression as well. Starving families who couldn’t get jobs refused to take handouts out of shame. When they did, they would often hide them from their friends and neighbors so that no one would know. This is what happens when people internalize the kind of ideological framework that you, Trish, embody. You are not only part of the problem, but the problem.
Bryan Klausmeyer
bryklaus@umich.edu
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