A Small Place-Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place is a narrative that talks about her native country, Antigua. Her narrative speaks about tourists and what they see verses what is reality. The people of Antigua are impoverished and are presented with no opportunities. At one point Kincaid says that tourists are actually lucky that they are only there for a mere vacation, the natives of Antigua are envious of the tourists; however, their hatred does not come from personal conflict, it is simply a want for what the tourists have. The Antiguans are stuck in their own impoverishment because they have no chance to escape. That in itself is a violent crime.

Jamaica Kincaid says that "Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere.... they are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place that they live..."

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

"In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color."

A high percentage of impoverished people are actually people who lack privileges due to their race. These people have to deal with unnecessary circumstances in their day to day lives, which includes living in a constant fear, experience violent acts against themselves or in the environment around them and so on. Peggy McIntosh shows how the so called "white privilege" is actually contributing to the violence because it is depriving others of such privileges.

Mantsios' Media Magic: Making Class Invisible

"...Poverty also impacts dramatically on the nonpoor. It has a dampening effect on wages in general (by maintaining a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed anxious for any job at any wage) and breeds crime and violence (by maintaining conditions that
invite private gain by illegal means and rebellion-like behavior, not entirely unlike the urban riots of the1960s)."

The poor people aren't the only ones that suffer from the effects of poverty. Impoverished people soon become angry and frustrated which results in outbursts and/or riots (as mentioned in the above passage from Gregory Mantsios). During suchs riots many innocent people are harmed in an act of violence as the impoverished try to make themselves known.
It is important that we as citizens realize that there is indeed a lower class and that the distribution of wealth within our country is extremely uneven. In fact, America actually has enough wealth, if distrubuted correctly, to allow everyone to live comfortably.

Impoverished Resort To Dangerous Methods

Poverty leads people resort to violent and extreme methods of acquiring money. In many impoverished countries, such as Columbia, the people resort to drug transporting a.k.a "mule work". The reason that people resort to such things is because they do not have any options when it comes to work. (As seen in Maria Full of Grace when the protagonist, Maria, had no other job except the flower plantation.)


Mule work consists of transporting drugs within a persons body from one country to another. This is something extremely dangerous to do because the "mule" always runs the risk of having a drug pellet burst in his or her stomach (this would result in death).





Such was seen in the movie "Maria Full of Grace"

After a drug pellet burst in the "mule", Lucy, the drug cartels killed her by opening up her stomach to remove the rest of the pellets that she did not pass out of her system. The reason they did this was because of money. Each pellet of drug is worth a lot of money so leaving them inside of Lucy's body after she died was not an option.

Mules fall into this job so easily because they are persuaded by large amounts of money. One character, Blanca, became a mule because the recruiter started to fill her mind with fantasies of having enough money to lift her family from povery and even buy her family a home.

Our Position

Resolved: Poverty Is Violence

After some thought, our group members have determined that this is most likely true. We have come to this conclusion because of personal experiences, media and neighborhood influences.

While considering the different sides of this statement and reviewing movies, articles and stories read in Women’s Studies, we indeed have concluded that ultimately poverty does lead to violence.