Jonathan Kozol's "Amazing Grace" is about the poorest area of New York, and some may argue the most destitute in the entire country. The worst thing about reading this was not the devastating conditions people were in, but rather the fact that the city had basically given up on them. The city just moves people here that they feel cannot make it any longer and try to provide help for them, but not the help that could ever get them out of the neighborhood. The city sends electric blankets, sleeping bags, electric heaters, condoms, and new needles to help keep the people safe and warm. While I'm sure these things are appreciated and somewhat necessary, where are the tools to help these people survive economically? The city should be sending people to help educate the residents, or help them to find jobs, or just steer them in a direction to help make their lives better. Instead, they are allowing these people to continue down the same path with no light at the end of the tunnel. "Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people-- that is my idea of evil" (Kozol 23). The city has power over who receives welfare, SSI, what buildings are put in that neighborhood, and apparently who lives there. They have all this power, yet claim they cannot fix the situations of these people. Denying their power, is evil and is only reassuring the fact that they have given up on these people. In Lisa Delphit's "Will it Help the Sheep?" she mentions Dr. Robert Moses, who worked with children from poor neighborhoods and gave them the attention and tools in order to succeed. He developed new ways in order to teach them including after school and summer programs and allowed these students to grow and prosper. He did not want them to just become another statistic of a child coming from poverty who never saw their full potential. In Pink Floyd's music video "Another Brick in the Wall" ( http://youtu.be/YR5ApYxkU-U ), he refers to the education system as a factory, and we are making education uniform to every child and they are just becoming another brick to fit into society. The teachers in the video actually frown upon creativity and have the students put on a mask so they are all the same. They don't really care about the education of these children, but rather that they get all the students ready to be molded into society. It is only at the end of the video where the children rip off their masks and destroy the school/factory that we see their disapproval of the system. It seems to have taken some time for this to happen, and maybe one day the citizens of these poor cities in New York will also rise up and convey their disgust with the way the system around them works. Maybe one day, they will have a city that hasn't given up on them.
It is very sad that people would rather forget about this city than try to help it
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you on this argument and I really liked the multiple connections you made to the text between the article last week and to Pink Floyd. It shows that this problem has been addressed multiple times through many outlets and it's sad to see that people are still ignoring the issue.
ReplyDeleteI mentioned some of these points in my blog too. I believe our society purposefully limits their resources because they are afraid that if "the poor gets richer, the richer will get poorer". Unfortunately, the poor are relying on the rich since they acquire all of the power and there is no way to address this issue without having both groups working together to end poverty in America.
ReplyDeleteAn unfortunate hierarchy that does not seem to have an end in the near future.
DeleteI completely agree with you. It seems like everyone only care for themselves and ignore the fact that there are people who are far less fortunate than they are. In order to make a society grow and prosper the rich has to help the poor to steer them into the right path instead of just giving them things to "keep them safe".
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned about the electric blankets and space heaters and sleeping bags, I think that is terrible that people have to do that and Kozol painted that image of people in hates and coats huddled together in those sleeping bags it just breaks my heart that we take for granted what we have and people have so much less than any of us could even imagine.
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