Blog 3: Quotes from Kozol's "Amazing Grace"

In his piece "Amazing Grace", Jonathan Kozol shares his experiences from the conversations he's had with people from Mott Haven, an extremely poor community in South Bronx New York. Through these conversations Kozol learns and explains the oppression and power that have created hard-to-break cycles of poverty within the community, specifically targeting people of color. Three important statements that arose from Kozol’s conversations are:

1. In the context of being asked if the treatment of her community is being used as a dumping ground, one mother said “It used to... The truth is, you get used to the offense. There are trashy things all over. There’s a garbage dump three blocks away. Then all the trucks come through stinking up the air, ... Drivers get their drugs there and their prostitutes.” This quote illustrates how this woman has just become accustomed to the poor treatment of her neighborhood. If this were to happen in the richer white areas of New York this problem would be addressed immediately but since it’s a lower-income, more diverse area they are stuck living in those conditions. They become used to that offense because it’s all they have ever known so they don’t have the burning desire for better.
2. “I don’t know how sick you have to be to qualify for SSI. My girlfriend died from AIDS in March. She never did get SSI. After she died, the checks began to come. Now they keep on coming, Her boyfriend cashes them. She’s dead!” This quote comes from an older woman Kozol talks to who has AIDS and has just lost her welfare and SSI (assistance checks). She can’t get these checks but her dead friend keeps getting them. It illustrates how broken the system is for them to not give the support when the woman was alive and now that she’s dead the money is going to places it shouldn’t. This illustrates the brokenness of the system in place that’s main priority should be assisting people in those cycles of poverty yet cannot even get itself order for it to be fixed.
3. “I believe that we were put here for a purpose but these people in the streets can’t see a purpose. There’s a whole world out there if you know it’s there if you can see it, But they’re in a cage. They cannot see.”- This comes from the son of the woman from the previous quote. In his conversation with Kozol, he speaks about his community and how they struggle to stay away from dangerous lifestyles because it’s all they have ever known. It’s the only way they know how to live their lives and they’re so resistant to change because as the text continues to reinforce this is how they’re surviving so they cannot try to chase loose strings hoping they eventually tie together in a way that leads them to a better life.

To take away from these quotes, how are we supposed to convince people that their is a better opportunity and life out there for them when all they know is a system that continuously fails them. Can we take away their short-sight and help them find a way to find progress and development within their lives. The article Social Security disability system is broken talks more about the problems mentioned with quote two. The essential question Kozol creates for me is how can we change the system to do the job it was created to do and how can we convince people to regain trust in the system?