Institutions

In Push, by Sapphire, it is clearly shown that throughout many cities in the United States of America, and throughout the world, there are social institutions that are not doing an adequate job of performing their roles for the people within the community. These institutions are state funded and should have the capability to help the underprivileged families that live within the surrounding community if they are not taken advantage of.

Some social institutions that I am talking about are social services, welfare, schools, hospitals, and the police. All of these are mentioned in Push and they all play a part in Precious’ life. Within inner cities, there are underprivileged families that coast through life through welfare checks, and a perfect example of this is Precious’s mother who is obese and has turned into a shut-in. When people take advantage of welfare it decreases the motivation to work or to find a job because they are being given money from the state. Precious even notes it in her writing when she says that she doesn’t want her mother taking her own welfare checks.

Then you have the police, who are seen by Precious’ mother and neighbors as terrible people who take good people away to jail. In actuality, the police are there to keep the community safe but from the perspective of her mother, she is raised with a jaded view towards law enforcement. This view is something that Precious can grow away from as she expands her knowledge. But through this book you can see the sort of negative views that are expressed towards the lax from the inner city community. Along with the negative views towards the law, Precious also has similar views towards the hospital and its workers after she has her second child. Because of how the police take away people in her community she gets scared that the workers in the hospital are going to take away her child, and since this is the first thing in her life that she truly has a emotional attachment to, she becomes very scared and frantic.

At first when this book starts, Precious is completely against the principle and for the most part the school system she is apart of, but as the story progresses she begins to appreciate the efforts that her new teacher is willing to give towards the individual success of her students.