As a social experiment, we as a class lived as a homeless person would for one hour in downtown San Luis Obispo. Since this was a change of social class from my upper middle class status to a status of poverty, it caused me to be ostracized by the mid-aged higher class people around me who deliberately ignored me by looking the other way. This drastic change made me feel uncomfortable because when I underdressed, the people of downtown treated me differently, as if I were less human than them. As the experiment progressed, I noticed that the homeless individuals were more generous than the wealthy upper class who generally walked by and at most, gave me a smile to show that they recognize the issue of the immense amount of homeless people in downtown.
For this activity, I decided to be passive by sitting on the ground and trying not to disturb anyone as I held up my sign to support the homeless. We completed this activity in a semi-populated area adjacent to clothing stores. Since this was done in the early hours of the day, only a few people walked by, and a fair amount of cars and bikes passed as well. San Luis Obispo is fairly wealthy town, so their are structured inequalities between the social classes. Many of the homeless are born into their social class of poverty, so it is rare for them to have social mobility because of the negative…
I also noticed that the women of the group tended to receive more help than the men because the social construction of gender roles have shown that women need more help because there is inequalities between the genders. Even though we have progressed to having a equal incomes, men and women are still not seen as equal in this patriarchal world. Although I did not receive any money, my partner Jasmine got support from a homeless man. From my viewpoint, it looked like he gave her all the money he had, so it really touched my…
