Blue Collar workers today are looked down upon by most of society. People think that if you have a blue collar job you aren’t smart and not successful. But in my opinion, blue collar workers are the backbone of our society, and deserve the same amount of respect as white collar workers. “Blue Collar Brilliance by Mike Rose” explains how blue collar workers are very smart and use a lot of brainpower to get their jobs done. Both his Uncle and mother were blue collar workers and that’s where he got his inspiration to stand up for blue collar workers around the world. He gives us examples of how his own family members were blue collar workers and how they were smart and how they excelled at their jobs. He uses his own experiences to show us that blue collar workers are in fact smart, able to adapt to many different situations, and deserve respect. In Rose 's essay he gives personal examples of his own life, in this case it’s his mother who works in a diner. “I couldn 't put into words when I was growing up, but what I …show more content…
Rose uses very detailed description of what his mother did on a regular basis to get a point across to his readers. He wants us to see that working a blue collar job requires a tremendous amount of brain power. And the reason he is so successful, is because of the detail he uses. When I read this specific paragraph I honestly can imagine what Rosie used to do while at her job. How she adapted to new situations. How she was able to remember what each person ordered out the nine tables she was in charge of. To being able to know if something was taking too long to cook and check-in with the chef to see if there was a problem. These are just some of the problems Rosie would face each day while working as a waitress. I believe that even today waitresses are looked down upon by most people. But they are hard working people and deserve respect for what they
Alice Walker’s “Roselily”, when first read considered why she decided to use third person. Especially when the story is in such a private line of thought, but then after my second time reading the story I decided that Roselily would not be a strong enough woman to speak about the social injustices that have happened to her. One key part of the story is her new life she will be facing after she is married in Chicago, while comparing it with her old life she is leaving in Mississippi. In Chicago she will no longer have a job, but instead be a homemaker where she will be responsible for the children and home. Also, in Chicago she will become a Muslim because it is what her new husband will want her to be, but back in Mississippi she was of the Christian faith. One of the more positive outcomes of her marriage is that she will go from extreme poverty, to not having to worry about money on a day to day basis.
Rose used her willpower to fight for what she believed in with a very stern tone. She wanted to get her point across, unlike Sacks who had used a very warm and lighthearted tone throughout his essay. Sacks’ essay was very personal and was based upon himself and his own experience of aging opposed to Roses generalization of women aging as a whole. By talking about women aging as a whole, it opened up how i really viewed aging and why it is important to stop all of the negativity towards older women. Sacks focused more about living and dying compared to Rose focusing on how women lose their siginificance as they age. Although both of the essayists viewd aging as a very beautiful thing and displayed it in a very convincing maner, rose was more successful at reflecting my ideas on aging. As Rose would say “Lets own every line of our lives” and “Carpe the ass out of the diem and own each precious
Early in her life, her father was murdered by his African American slave. As a result, the newly orphaned Rose was sent with one of her sisters to live with her aunt in Washington, D.C. There she attended a private school run by her aunt in the Old Capitol building. There in D.C. with her aunt, she met many important people and
Rose Mary is an inattentive mother. When her daughter Jeannette was only three years old, she was hungry and decided to make herself some hot dogs. She was wearing her favorite tutu but got distracted by feeding her dog one of her hot dogs. Shortly after she gave the dog the hot dog she caught on fire while she was under no supervision of her mother who was painting in the other room. Another instance was when Rose Mary was sleeping and Rex was at a bar. Rose Mary and Rex keep the windows and doors open to keep the air flow in the hot house while all of the kids were sleeping, but Jeannette woke up by “someone running his hands over her private parts” (103).
The book starts off with Jeannette, a successful adult, taking a taxi to a nice party. When she looked out the window, she saw a woman digging through the garbage. The woman was her mother. Rather than calling out to her or saying hi, Jeannette slid down into the seat in fear that her mother would see her. When asking her mother what she should say when people ask about her family, Rose Mary Walls only told her, “Ju...
In his article, “Blue-Collar Brilliance”, UCLA Professor, Mike Rose, encourages society not to perpetuate the stereotypes that suggest people who work blue-collar jobs are less intelligent than people who work white-collar jobs, by failing to acknowledge the vast array of skills required of a person working a blue-collar job. An additional issue Rose brings up is the assumption many people make, that intellect is defined by the level of education a job requires. Rose addresses this naive assumption when he states, “Affirmation of diverse intelligence is not a retreat to a softhearted definition of the mind. To acknowledge a broader range of intellectual capacity is to take seriously the concept of cognitive variability” (283). Basically, Rose is advocating for society to accept that wisdom and knowledge are not only gained in a classroom, but through everyday experience. Ultimately, Rose is attempting to bring awareness to and eliminate these stereotypes. I agree with Rose’s school of thought on eliminating these inexcusable stereotypes against blue-collar workers intelligence, working to dispel the concept society believes that higher education is better than on-the-job training which is mastered by years of experience, and I personally identified with the fact that some of the smartest people I have ever known have been blue-collar workers.
In this essay Rose talks about his mother and father, and how his mother Rosie who had to drop out of school to take care of her siblings in the seventh grade and his father only completed 1 or 2 elementary grades before quitting. Rose’s mother is a waitress
To be intelligent means to be able to apply what we learned in school and use what we learned in our everyday life to achieve a goals that is sit or one that we are accomplishing without knowing. Many people think that a person is intelligent because they went to a university, got a degree, and have a good paying job, so they must be smart and know everything however thats not always true. If we would ask a teacher or professor the chances of them knowing how to fix a car are slim. So why do we think teachers are so intelligent? We think teachers are intelligent because they know everything about their subjects, know how to teach it and know how to apply their knowledge to their everyday lives.
Blue collar jobs are typically manual labor jobs that do not require “formal education” like white-collar jobs. Rose fascinates over how underrated the blue collar worker’s intelligence is by society. Rose recalls his observations of his mother when she was working at a local diner, and how much intellectual work goes into waitressing. Rose’s mother was able to multitask; remembering tables and orders, knowing how to satisfy a customer’s or fellow worker’s needs, and how to navigate around the diner in an efficient way. Rose further explain how any blue-collar worker can learn how to solve problems through cognitive skills (reading, writing, remembering, paying attention, trial and error, etc). I think Rose’s idea should be heavily stressed to everyone, especially people who work or are interested in working. It’s unfair to blue-collar workers to assume that because they have not received formal education like college/university or vocational schools, that they don’t use or develop intellect in their work areas. The physical work that is performed on the job should not take away from the fact that blue-collar workers use cognitive skills to ultimately solve problems on that job. Rose concludes with the points that society should not think that people who have blue-collar jobs are not intellectual and that it should be acknowledge that there are many variations of intellect across the blue-collar
To work is to solve problems. To solve problems is to learn. To learn is to become intelligent. However, those who work, who solve problems, who learn are considered less intelligent because of their work. Blue collar jobs are frowned upon because of the misconception that they require no intelligence. Blue collar workers learn to work smart by working; they learn to make every move count. The work requires both brain and body.
We, as a society, feel the need to draw imaginary lines to separate ourselves whether it’s the line between color of our skin, our religion differences, our political beliefs, or the status of our class. As much as I wish there wasn’t a defining line between high class and the educated vs. low class and uneducated, there is. In Mike Rose’s narrative essay “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” he describes his mother’s lack of education and her hard labor work which is the quote on quote the blue collar working class.
She knows that they picked cotton in North Carolina before coming north a short time before she was born in Washington but she doesn 't know much else. As the firstborn girl Rosa Lee’s role was set by the Southern traditions. For the older daughter, her mother is so dependent on her account in the household that the younger ones will have opportunities that Rosa Lee never had. Most of Rosetta’s other children don’t share the same views of their mother as Rosa Lee. They remember her as a woman working hard to keep her family together under difficult conditions. While Rosa Lee was still in the early years at Giddings Elementary school, her smoldering resentment caused her to silently reject her mother 's vision of her future she was determined that domestic work was not going to be the way she survived. Rosetta gave birth to twenty-two children some of them died before reaching adulthood. Rosa Lee became accustomed to bedrooms crammed with too many people and living rooms with no room for private conversation (Dash,
The report of Robert Reich: “Why the Rich are getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer,” is an eye opener and a warning for society regarding unemployment that it will be facing and is currently facing due to a lack of technology and education. It clearly articulates that the jobs of routine producers and in-person servers have vanished totally as modern techniques have replaced them. The author has stated that the only people whose jobs are on the rise are symbol analysts. As stated in the report, symbol analysts are the real problem solvers. Their skills are highly in demand worldwide because they are the ones who first analyze the problem and then solve it. The Hart Report, on the other hand, also states the same problem of unemployment and the global recession which has left employers focusing on employees not only with specialists’ skills but also a “broader range of skills and knowledge” (page 6-7). The Hart Report clearly reflects what the needs of contemporary employers are, but the question is whether it is the universities or the students themselves who fail to cope with the requirements of the contemporary world which is filled with technological advancement and critical thinking. The Texas Work Source has also played an important role in examining what is actually missing in today’s generation and the reasons behind such a great decline in employment. The central
Furthermore, Mary’s father was abusive in the family home to both Mary and her mother. A lifelong criminal, who was known to commit violent armed robberies, was not a good influence for Mary. Billy was often out of work, depending on earnings form Betty to sustain the house. It must be noted that there is some question if Billy is actually Mary’s father, given Betty’s profession; chances are great that Billy was just another victimizer in Mary’s lif...
Many are aware of the high qualifications necessary to get a - especially high paying - job in current times. In Source E, Hedrick Smith stated that in the seventies, “High school graduates were in demand” but today’s high school graduates are fortunate if they can find a job without any college degree. These opportunities are not only rare, but exclusively limited too! According to Source F, “there are gaps by race, gender, and children’s circumstances at birth.” The already limited opportunities available are going to those with privileges and advantages which are the people who need the opportunities the least. This is why the gap continues to