I'll have to put "The Wire" on my ever-growing list of things I don't have time to watch :) I suppose you're pretty much right about everything here. But with

I'll have to put "The Wire" on my ever-growing list of things I don't have time to watch :) I suppose you're pretty much right about everything here. But with my eastern-connecticut goggles stuck irremovably over my eyes I still have trouble accepting that it can be so hard to get someone to hire you. I don't think I know anyone under 60 who would object to a girl based on her having a tattoo on her neck. While in college, working various jobs to pay my tuition, I worked alongside a variety of poor individuals, both rural "white-trashy" types and urban people of various races (It's a pretty rural area, but a bunch of people would take a 1-hour shuttle ride from Hartford to throw boxes around at the Fed-Ex distribution hub). These people varied widely in intelligence, charisma, criminality, and work ethic. I got to know many of them and had a fairly good sense of what each was capable of. If I am ever in a position where I'm hiring a receptionist or a construction crew or a store clerk or a plumber for my own house, and I get an applicant that looks like one of those guys I used to work with, I will certainly give them a serious interview and determine as best I can whether they are both reliable and capable of doing the job. Of course, the job will go to the most promising applicant and it doesn't seem unlikely that another candidate with a middle class upbringing would demonstrate better literacy or communication skills or critical thinking abilities (or maybe even work ethic?) and I don't deny that this places the poor at a disadvantage in a competitive job market. But it's not clear to me that this is the same thing as a systematic bias against those who "smell poor".