Competitiveness in the work force has been and currently still is an ongoing battle. Wealth and prosperity or strife and deficiency, what everyone is fighting for? In the book, Nickel and Dimed, Mrs. Barbara Ehrenreich conveys this harsh, yet, inescapable point to her audience. I think that Ehrenreich has done a remarkable job in bringing the reality that people of color and/or, minorities are still at "war,"" just hoping to reach the point which we call poverty.
I feel that Ehrenreich should have gone one step further and, instead of searching for a job in a place where she is a majority, go somewhere where she herself is a minority. Personally, I think that she should have gone to an urban area where a white female would seem a little out of place, so that she could get another bite of what .
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people of color must endure in "her society,"" "Maybe, it occurs to me, I'm getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black."" (100). Making herself a minority would not have only shown her the difficulties in getting by in America but it would make it more apparent to her and some of her nave audience that minorities are generally worse of than she is in her own "white washed- society.
The only real concern that I had with this book is that Ehrenreich chose the easy way out. "I chose Maine for its whiteness it made the perfect place for a blue-eyed English-speaking Caucasian to infiltrate the low-wage work-force, no questions asked.""(50). Minorities or poor whites generally do not get the chance to choose a specific place or community to work in. They take what ever is available to them and make the best of it, " Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as the so often do."" (121).
In this book Ehrenreich even pulls out the preference of the "traditional work-force,"" " with posters illustrating how to look professional' (it helps to be white and, if female, permed).
