David Gregory, Period 7, 12/7/22

- What are your thoughts and feelings about issues of inequity, oppression, and/or power?
- How do you reflect critically on your own beliefs, assumptions, values, and experiences, and how these can influence your perception of self and others?

    I thought I had my origin story figured out. I was the child of Eastern-European parents who fled from communist policies with very little to their names and created a successful life for themselves. I was comfortable with the notion that any person could make it as long as they worked hard and played by the rules. 
    In my sophomore year, I researched the effect of stimulus checks distributed during COVID. I walked onto the project brandishing the opinion that stimulus checks only served to make the population work less and become dependent on handouts. The survey seemingly reinforced my belief that cutting off aid would make people find better jobs and support themselves more effectively. 
    However, I could not have been more naive. After the project, I learned that my mother lived on welfare for some time, a program that was vital to her as she finished her undergraduate degree. This degree allowed her to find a stable job in a pharmacy to support my family when my father was out of a job. My mother is anything but lazy, in fact, she is one of the hardest-working people I know. That didn’t line up with a person receiving government aid in my mind at the time. Going back into the data, I now saw something that my confirmation bias had caused me to ignore: a very large number of survey respondents had either lost their jobs due to COVID or were now working two jobs. Even though most of them didn’t qualify for welfare, they were still just barely scraping by in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Those payments were crucial to them, just as they were crucial to my mother at one point.
    I still can’t find a simple explanation as to why my parents made it out of their situations while so many others continue to slip through the cracks. I am forever grateful for the vantage point which allowed me to rethink and find sympathy toward people who are in need of assistance. I no longer look at people who are struggling as if they are doing something wrong, but I can truly see the disadvantages in those situations. I will use my new understanding to combat unthought-out stereotypes and help communities help the people who need it most.