This image will be reinforced on a daily basis by teachers, counselors, TV news, and by parents. It makes no difference if they live in air-conditioned homes with multiple bathrooms and a multitude of foods in the freezer, along with such luxuries as CD players, VCRs, and microwave ovens. In their own minds they are the losers of society because their friendly neighborhood government has branded them as such. Now officials connected to the Census bureau suggest that the poverty line, which has been raised often, be raised again - apparently because the government feels that it is important to let another group of Americans know what losers they really are, in an attempt to help them. One official even suggests a governmental outreach program to find people and let them know that they are in poverty.
Discrimination is something that an individual or a group can survive.
It is something outside yourself, committed by stupid or mean people. But the brand of poverty, with its underpinning notions of failure and incompetence, is personal to you and goes deep inside your own mind and shreds your very soul.