Amazing Grace-Jonathan Kozol

• "The 600,000 people who live here and the 450,000 people who live in Washington Heights and Harlem, which are separated from the South Bronx by a narrow river, make up one of the largest racially segregated concentrations of poor people in our nation. Brook Avenue, which is the tenth stop on the local, lies in the center of Mott Haven, whose 48,000 people are the poorest in the South Bronx. Two thirds are Hispanic, one third black." ~p.3

  This is a huge population of extremely poor people. It is mind-boggling that so many people in the United States can be so poor. What ever happened to the American dream? What are the factors that add up to these people being so poor and having to live in such terrible conditions? And it's even more intriguing that at such a level of poverty there is still segregation. Is it segregated because they are poor? Does this prove Johnson's theory of white privilege and power in that the majority of people living in poverty seem to be nonwhite?

• "Depression is common among children in Mott Haven. Many cry a great deal but cannot explain exactly why. Fear and anxiety are common. Many cannot sleep." ~p.4

It is one thing for an adult to be poor and struggling, but it is a completely different ballpark when it concerns children. Children are born innocent and have no control over the world in which they are raised. It is very unsettling to know some of the conditions in which these poor children grow up. It is these underprivileged children whom it is most important to educate. For without an education, how can they ever hope to escape from the hell within which they are forced to live? This links directly to Delpit's point about white teachers needing to understand the differences between the children they teach in order to effectively educate them. A white teacher from a suburban neighborhood could not walk into a school in the South Bronx and use the exact same teaching methods and expect to deliver a quality education to the students there. These children need to be understood and to be shown compassion in order to reach them at a level that can affect them in a positive way.

• "The pastor tells me that the place is known as "Children's Park." Volunteers arrive here twice a week to give out condoms and clean needles to addicted men and women, some of whom bring their children with them. The children play near the bears or on a jungle gym while their mothers wait for needles." ~p.12
  

I can't even begin to describe how sad and disgusted I felt when I read this. I think the sentence pretty much speaks for itself. Children should not be subjected to such conditions ever. Children who are brought up in such a way are automatically at a disadvantage in terms of living in a white-privileged society and learning or knowing the codes of this society. Delpit argues that children need to be taught the rules of the culture of power, but how can children who are brought up in this 'other world' be taught the rules of middle class white society?


This article turned out to be very difficult to read, not in terms of vocabulary or my ability to comprehend the material, but because of the horrifying graphic descriptions of the violence and conditions of the neighborhoods described. When I started reading it, I got about one and a half pages in and then I had to stop. I just could not keep reading about all those terrible things that had happened. I didn't want to read it. Eventually I got through the entire article, but not without being emotionally affected. After I finished the reading, I was unsure about how it related to education or any of the topics we'd covered in class. I mean, it was a good reality check about the real and devastating conditions in which many poor children are living in. But I still couldn't figure out how that could be linked directly to issues of education. Then I started writing this and I started to see some connections.
In the beginning of the article Kozol talks about one of the poorest neighborhoods in the nation, made up entirely hispanics and blacks, no white people. So there is segregation not only in middle-class America, but in the most impoverished communities as well. Or is the reason why there are no white people there because of the privileged aspects of the white race according to Johnson?
The conditions of these children growing up in the poorest neighborhoods are bound to have an effect on the education of the children. Many of these children have home lives that are not only not conducive to learning but often unstable. According to Delpit, it would be their teachers' responsibility to teach them all not just the normal curriculum, but also the codes of the privileged white society. But how can these children learn such skills when they can barely walk down the street without getting shot?