Kozol's Amazing Grace

This chapter out of Jonathan Kozol's book Amazing Grace paints such an vivid image about what goes on in the "Ghetto".  The descriptive verbal illustration made it seem like I was right there with him.  He drove his point home that these places exist and it almost seems like they are just shipped into this neighborhood and left for dead.  I think that it is horrible. It reminded me of the piece that we read called the Silent Dialogue. The people in this neighborhood don't even bother to speak up anymore because they know they wont be heard.  For example the women Kozol talks to named Mrs. Washington she says "My doctor said that I should be on SSI.  He said, if I have to start all over, that's the program that I should apply for.  I told him I applied for it before, when I had cancer, but they said I wasn't sick enough. He said I needed to go and try again.  I don't know how sick you have to be to qualify for SSI"(Kozol 20).  She then goes on to say that her friend finally got money after she had died and that nobody know at the records office.  Come on now that is just wrong.  It's like they set you up to fail.    I knew places like this exist and I know they are terrible but I wasn't always like that.  There was a time in my life where I had no idea about what really went on in these types of neighborhoods and I got a dose of reality when I went on a business trip to Cincinnati.  This is like what Tanya's story in her blog is like.  I went there to work with my friend Kurt and he lives just on the outskirts of the city in a nice neighborhood but his mother and family live in the city.  He took me into the city and showed me around just like the little boy Cliffie did in the book and when I got there it was like a whole new world.  There were factories pumping out pollution into air, run down houses and housing project stacked side by side just like Kozol was talking about in NY.  No matter how sunny it was outside it always looked gloomy to me and had a atmosphere of just something totally different than what I was use to.  But the funny thing was that people had some positive attitudes and kids would play and run and there was a buzz a very different buzz but there was some positive energy. 

It saddens me that the kids suffer too.  They don't have a shot to make it out of the place they live and make a better life for themselves.  Mrs. Washington's daughter never moved out of the city just out of her mothers apartment.  And then this was stated too, "At the elementary school that serves the neighborhood across the avenue, only seven out of 800 children do not qualify for free school lunches.  Five of those seven, say the principle get reduced-priced lunches, because they are classified as only poor, bot destitute."(Kozol 3).  This reminds me of a project that myself and Kurt started to work on with other people he knew from his childhood neighborhood who had beat the odds and did well for themselves and moved out of the neighborhood.  The project was geared towards children in the inner city and they wanted to create a drop in center for youth to come and do afterschool programs, have computer access, tutoring, study hall, counseling, life coaching ect.  It was going to be set up to give kids in the area hope that they could get out of the "Ghetto" and be anything they wanted to be.  Now because it was a non profit it has to go through all the channels of the government to get funded.  And wouldn't you know it got denied.  It's just like in Kozol's book they group these people together and give them nothing and don't allow them to try and succeed.  In my opinion it's just awful.  And here I was growing up that everyone was equal and that is so not the case.  It's just what McIntosh was talking about in her piece. 

I'll end with this.  One part of the story really bothered me when Mrs. Washington was talking about the 15 year girl who died and earlier in the chapter it was mentioned that the uncle was trying to raise money for her funeral.  He didn't raise enough and this is what was said.  "The girl who died, the city had to bury her.  Her uncle couldn't raise the money for a funeral.  That means that she don't get no stone over her grave." "What do they put on it?" "I ask.  "They say she gets a number, she replies.  City don't have the money for the living.  I guess they think: Why waste it on the dead?" (Kozol 20,21).  That right there is the worst thing I have heard in a long time.  That was a human being she had a name lived a life yes a short life but it was her life and she had a name and the city can't even put it on where she is buried she just gets a number.  That's what these people are to them just a number just another number.  It is like we never moved out of slavery.  I cant believe that that still exists is appalling.  That is something I would like to talk about further and see who else it bothers or is it just me.