Monday, November 7, 2011

Wallace Article

The financial fact may be one of the reasons why non-whites in USA don’t put their elderly in group home because being able to afford good group homes with good care is so expensive for them, but the biggest fact is that most of non-whites have large families therefore chose to help each other and take good care of their elderly instead of sending them to cheap group homes with bad care. This is due to conflict theory where power and inequality plays the big role. The other fact is the culture of non-whites that requires people to take care of their elderly till their death. Most of immigrants (especially refugees who were forced to leave their countries) feel like USA is not their home and they always seek the pride of dying in their countries, therefore they come to America, go to school, make money and go back home before they get old and this is related to structural functionalism.

Other immigrants may not feel comfortable with food that is provided in group homes because they normally eat their traditional food and don’t like American products. There is a funny story of a Latino elderly woman who was in a group home and around 3:00pm, a staff member knocked at her and said “Marie I have a snack for you here”, but instead of snack Marie thought staff said “snake” then immediately Marie got out of her bed running. In her life it was the first time for Marie to hear the word “snack” all she knew was “snake” and she was afraid of it. This is an example of how differences among whites and no-whites can prevent each of them being comfortable in the other one’s society.

1 comment:

  1. Do whites typically send their families to homes, though? It isn't as common overall as we might think...what might happen during this economic crisis, when nursing home care may be out of the question financially?

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