
" Tragically, the well-off and the poor are often united in
capitalist culture by their shared obsession with consumption.
Often the poor are more addicted to excess because they are the
most vulnerable to all the powerful messages in media and in our lives
in general which suggest that the only way out of class shame is
conspicuous consumption. Propaganda in advertising and in the culture as
a whole assures the poor that they can be one with those who are more
materially privileged if they own the same products. It helps sustain
the false notion that ours is a classless society. When these values are
accepted by the poor they internalize habits of being that make them
act in complicity with greed and exploitation. Who has not heard
materially well-off individuals talk about driving through poor neighbourhoods and seeing fancy cars or massive overeating of junk food?
These are the incidents the well-off emphasize to denigrate the poor
while simultaneously holding them accountable for their fate."
bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class-Matters, read the entire book here
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