Before you find yourself in 3R mode (reflexive reaction of revulsion) at the title of this article, I’m sharing a link here to one of the finest think pieces on poverty that I’ve read in awhile. The author is Tressie McMillan Cottom, an African American scholar who describes herself this way on her website at tressiemc.com:

Woman. Friend. Daughter. Scholar. Armchair activist. Hell-raiser. Intellectual Catfish.* Not particularly in that order.

I am also a PhD student in sociology at Emory University where I study education, inequality, and organizations. My research has surveyed for-profit students and the organizational mechanisms of the for-profit college sector. My questions are less who and what and more why and how. Why are so many black students enrolled in for-profit colleges? So many women? How do status competition and stratification processes intersect with labor and economic structural change to produce these patterns?

As of Fall 2013 I am a Graduate Fellow at the Center for Poverty Research at UC-Davis. I am examining poverty policy and credential seeking. I cover highered debates at Slate and write about inequality, race, gender from time to time.

In my role as Gran Bufon, I want to share links like these from time to time to give fools everywhere an opportunity to dig deeper into multiculturalism, poverty, and the many identities that we bring to the table on our journey toward the consciousness of the fool. In The Logic of Stupid Poor People, Tressie unpacks the role of presentation in upward mobility and deconstructs popular myths about the behavior of those who struggle with poverty. Her thoughts reflect a powerful combination of lived experience, scholarship, and superb writing.

A tip of the foolscap to Sam Dennison of the Faithful Fools for sharing this gem.