Kozol’s Amazing Grace: Trials And Tribulations Of Everyday Life Essay, Research Paper

Kozol’s Amazing Grace: Trials and Tribulations of Everyday Life

Introduction

Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace is a book about the trials and

tribulations of everyday life for a group of children who live in the poorest

congressional district of the United States, the South Bronx. Their lives may

seem extraordinary to us, but to them, they are just as normal as everyone else.

What is normal? For the children of the South Bronx, living with the pollution,

the sickness, the drugs, and the violence is the only way of life many of them

have ever known.

In this book, the children speak openly and honestly about feeling ?

abandoned’, ?hidden’ or ?forgotten’ by our nation, one that is blind to their

problems. Studying the people themselves would only get us so far in

understanding what their community is really like and why they feel this way.

Jonathan Kozol really got to know the people individually. We can take his

knowledge and stories to try for a better understanding of the environment in

which they live. By doing this, we can explore the many reasons why the people

have problems, what some levels of intervention could be, and possibly find some

solutions to making the South Bronx a healthier and safer place for these

children and others to live.

Problem Identification

The environment in which we study these people can only be defined by

first taking a look at possible reasons why the people have problems. Some of

the problems discussed in Amazing Grace have festered throughout the United

States for some time now. The high numbers of drug users in the community, the

high amounts of gang-related violence, and the numerous cases of people who have

contracted the AIDS virus are just some of the problems that have arisen in this

ghetto. There are many differences between this community and others in the

United States, one of which is that the government has grouped these people all

together and made a ghetto of the lowest income families. This has ostracized

them from the rest of the nation. It has given them many abandonment issues to

deal with, while also telling them they are not worthy of living among the

wealthier population.

Environmental factors are involved in the problems arising in the South

Bronx. Pollution, for example, could be the biggest source of the high number

of children in the community who have asthma. Asthma is a condition in which

one has trouble breathing. Without clean air, breathing for an asthmatic is

almost impossible. A waste burner in the middle of the South Bronx causes a lot

of pollution and makes the air the people breath, below safe levels of

cleanliness. Another environmental factor that affects the resident’s healths

has to do with how most of the buildings in these neighborhoods are run down and

infested with rats. Many of the buildings have no working elevators. This

causes people to have to walk several flights of stairs each time they want to

leave their apartments. This is very time consuming and tiresome. Then, when

they find that there is so much violence and drugs in the street, that it is not

safe to be out there anyway, they usually end up staying in their apartments for

most of their free time.

The cultural differences between these people and others of higher

income communities is also a reason why they may have problems. Racism is very

obvious to the people of the South Bronx, especially when they go outside of

their district. If a woman from this area goes to a hospital outside of her

district, a hospital that is more than likely wealthier and cleaner, she is

usually turned away and told to go to a hospital in her own district. Others,

who are admitted into these hospitals, are put on a special floor, mainly for

the lower income or Medicaid patients. (Amazing Grace, p. 176)

Another way the government discriminates against them is how they are

housed. Most of the residents are living in government housing where the

government pays their rent. When the government helped the people to get off

the streets and out of homeless shelters and then put them into low cost housing,

they put all of the residents in the same area. This created their ghetto and

kept them segregated from the rest of the world.

Level of Intervention

If we look at these people through an exosystem, or ?a setting in which

a person does not participate but in which significant decisions are made

affecting the person or others who interact directly with the person,? we would

ask the questions ?are decisions made with the interests of the person and the

family in mind?? (Social Work and Social Welfare, p.79) Did the government

really think of the people of the South Bronx when they grouped all of the sick,

troublesome, and low income families together in the same community? What kind

of opportunity structure can people have when the government puts them into

never ending situations such as giving them only enough money to get by, but not

enough to get out of poverty? Some people say that it is not the government’s

responsibility to get people out of poverty, but then whose fault is it that

they got there in the first place? No one asks to be poor, no one asks to be

homeless. Cultural differences are an excuse some use for treating people of

different backgrounds differently. But can the government also participate in

this obvious form of racism? Our nation has tried for many many years now to

stop racism and prejudices, but the problem is still prevalent in communities

all over the world.

We could also look at the people and their problems using a macrosystem,

or the ??blueprints’ for defining and organizing the institutional life of the

society,? (Social Work and Social Welfare, p.79) to decide if some groups are

valued at the expense of others and do these groups experience oppression? As

we have seen, the people of the South Bronx feel abandoned, this is a type of

oppression. They are pushed away from the rest of society, where the only place

they can turn is to this community that is filled with crime, violence, disease,

and poverty. The residents have shared assumptions about what the government

wants and expects from them. The government’s attitude towards these people is

such that the residents feel devalued and not worthy of being seen or heard.

Without much hope of financial stability, many have turned to selling and/or

using drugs. Selling drugs is seen as an easy way of making some money, and

using drugs keeps a person on a high so they do not have to face reality. This

just continues the cycle of problems they face since selling drugs to others

keeps those others high, and staying on a drug induced high only prolongs the

problems.

Discussion and Recommendations

Because of all the trials and tribulations they go through, you would

think that everyone in this community would lose hope. This is not true for

many of the children that Jonathan Kozol talked to and became friends with on

his many journeys into their neighborhood. The children speak of their problems

with great maturity. Many of these children are far older than their years on

Earth, for they have felt true abandonment by our nation. Many of the issues

they have had to deal with are not ones which we think of as children’s issues.

AIDS, for example, is not something that many think of as an issue that children

talk about or even think about. For the children of the South Bronx though, it

is a major issue. With ?one-fourth of the child-bearing women in the

neighborhoods where these children live testing positive for HIV,? (Amazing

Grace, inside cover) pediatric AIDS takes a high toll. The numbers of children

who have had one or both parents die of AIDS in the South Bronx and surrounding

areas is the highest among the nation. If the government keeps sending the low

income and troublesome families into these neighborhoods, ?it is likely that

entire blocks will soon be home to mourning orphans, many of whom will follow

their own parents to an early grave.? (Amazing Grace, p. 194)

The government’s placement of a waste burner in the South Bronx is

another prime example and a reason why the children feel like they are being ?

thrown away.? Many residents believe that the waste burner is to blame for

their health problems. Many children in the community are only able to breathe

with the use of a breathing machine because their asthma has gotten so

bad.(Amazing Grace, p. 170) Why then would the city decide to put one there?

Did the city have the residents in mind when they built the waste burner in this

community? The residents do not have much of a say in city, state or

governmental issues. Positions in government are held by wealthier and more

powerful people who more then likely have no first hand knowledge of life in a

low income ghetto. How can we change this?

To change a whole community involves much more then direct practice with

individuals. Counseling people on an individual basis gives individual responses.

The problems of the South Bronx are not with the individuals themselves, but

rather community organizational problems. Changing the social policy of the

community is of utter importance in making it a better place to live. The norms

for the people in these neighborhoods have gotten to be that of violence and

drugs. These are not healthy norms. To change them, the communities could use

more education on social issues in the schools and communities to help the

people learn to live healthier lifestyles, to get the word out that violence and

disruptance are not all right, and to help the people obtain some community

unity. Getting some of the well known community members involved in politics is

another way they could get their voices heard and let the government know their

needs and desires. Support groups held for people with AIDS, for people who

have lost loved ones, and also for people who just need a place to talk about

their emotions and get their frustrations out, would help the community as a

whole and get more people involved in the healing process of that community. If

the people in the South Bronx would act as a community bound together to help

themselves and each other, there would be less tolerance for deviant behavior

among it’s members. Then the ones who act defiantly could be out-numbered, and

the good citizens of the South Bronx could reclaim their homes and their lives.