Bum or Human

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AusCA28efa0&feature=youtu.be
In this blog post I would like to reflect on the video that I liked above. The video documents someone interviewing a homeless man. I am going to talk about our views of homeless people by the general public and then I want to talk about how we can help homeless people.
In this video, the homeless man gets very emotional and upset because he talks about how badly people treat him and how terrible some of the things people say to him are. We, as a general population, treat homeless people very badly because of stereotypes. Many people do not want to give homeless people money because they are afraid that they are going to go spend the money on drugs and alcohol and not actually use it to buy food and shelter. Some people also do not like to help homeless people because they think that they have become homeless because they are too lazy to go get a job. As Ronald Davis, the homeless man from the video, says, some people walk past him and say go get a job, you bum. This upsets him a lot because he is trying to get a job but he can't get the job because he doesn't have enough money to buy nice clothes, so they don't hire him. We are just making his life and the lives of other homeless people worse when we make fun of them instead of helping them.
I think the best thing to give to a homeless person is food. The 2 main things that homeless people like Ronald Davis need are food and shelter. He talked about this in the interview. A homeless person still needs money to buy a room, but giving them food is half of what they need. Of course giving a homeless person money is a lot more helpful to them, but then you run the risk of them spending it poorly. We need to help them out in whatever way we see most fitting. If you aren't comfortable giving money to the homeless then you should at least give them food. Giving them bad looks and saying mean things to them only makes things worse for them and makes their life harder than it already is. The little things that we do to help a person can make a world of difference to them.