What's Killing Poor White Women Summary

Critique of “What’s Killing Poor White Women”
The author of this article, Monica Potts, writes for the American Prospect magazine. She has work that has been published in the Connecticut Post, the Stamford Advocate, and the New York Times. Her article, “What’s Killing Poor White Women”, first appeared in the July/August 2013 issue of the American Prospect. She starts out her essay by making her claim that, “For most Americans, life expectancy continues to rise- but not for uneducated white women. They have lost five years, and no one understand why” (591). There are three main points that make her claim ineffective and they include that: her emotional appeals are ineffective, her logical appeals are correct, but have no true impact on

Her first main point is that the life expectancy of white women who do not graduate high school have declined dramatically over the past 18 years (593). She says this to call attention to the fact that these white women that aren’t staying in school, which she then assumes is leading them to their death coming upon them a lot earlier than it should. Later, she also explains that research shows that the more educated of society are better at forgoing pleasurable and possibly risky behavior because they have learned to look ahead to the future (596). Pott’s says this to put emphasis on the fact that these white women need to stay in school and not drop because it can lead to them having a longer and happier lives. Pott’s second main point is the theory that low-income white women smoke, drink, and abuse prescription drugs like OxyContin and street drugs like meth more than black women (603). She says this to show that the low income white women may be doing a better job at killing themselves than black women and she wants people to be aware of that. The last main point that Pott’s makes in her article, talks about the low- income white families of the south. She talks about how the women in this society have a lot asked of them and have many responsibilities. “In low income white communities of the South, it is still the women who are responsible for the home and for the raising

Pott’s uses an emotional appeal when she says, “Crystal dropped out in the 10th grade because she had married. That was the way things were. None of Crystal’s siblings finished high school. Instead, they became adults when they were teenagers. Crystal would spend the rest of her years as a housewife to a husband who soon became ill and as a mother to a daughter who would grow up as fast as she did” (598). This emotional appeal is not affective because Pott’s is trying to make us feel sorry for Crystal for dropping out of high school, becoming an adult as a teenager, for her husband’s illness, and her daughter having to grow up so fast but it doesn’t have a true impact on the audience. This is not an effective emotional appeal because it was her decision to drop out of high school, she did not have to do that, and all of the other issues occur after that decision. Another example of an emotional appeal Pott’s uses is when she talks about Crystal wanting to start a family. Pott’s stated that, “Crystal wanted to start a family as soon as she was married but couldn’t. Her first three pregnancies, in the early ‘90s, end in miscarriages” (600). There are two reasons that this emotional appeal is not effective and they include that. The first is that it is irrelevant to the fact of what is killing poor white women and the second is that