This article is about...
- The poor life of many people in the South Bronx.
- What some people go through and live with in their every day lives.
- How depression is common among many children and adults.
- Fair and anxiety is very common among many people of all ages and gender.
- How many people carry illness and are spreading to one another.
- People not being able to afford good medical care and not being treated properly.
- The things that children have to face on the streets every day.
- Murders occurring constantly and people dieing of disease almost every week.
- People not caring for one another.
- Drug addicts and prostitutes living on the streets.
Kozol argues that these poor people are sent to live in the South Bronx, being the worst part of New York only because they are not as wealthy as everyone else. They live there with diseases, murders, deaths, and robberies occurring all the time, and no welfare nor medical help available to them. Children are exposed to this in their every day lives and it is not good for them, both mentally and physically, to really see this because they will grow up living a life of fear and without safety and support from the people around them.
Evidence:
- I ask how many people in the building now have AIDS. "In this building? Including the children, maybe 27 people. That's just in this section. In the other building over there, there's maybe 20 more. Then, there's lots of other people have it but don't know, afraid to know, and don't want to be tested. We're living in a bad time. What else can I say?"
- "I went to the hospital and, when I get there, it's six hours before they can put me in a bed. Then, when I go upstairs, the room is not prepared. the bed is covered with blood and bandages from someone else. Flowers are scattered all over the floor. Toilet's stopped with toilet paper. Bed hasn't been made. I'd been through this once before. Either you wait for hours until someone cleans the room or else you clean the room yourself."
- "Most of the addicts and prostitutes are black. Some are Hispanic. But they're all people of color. It made me feel frightened for my race. The men are killing themselves with needles and the women are laying their bodies down with anyone they meet, not knowing who they are."
My question is, why is the title of this article called "Amazing Grace" if all he is doing is pointing out the bad things that occur in the world to people? That is what I do not understand. This article to me was very depressing. It made me very upset to hear about all the murders and robberies and all the bad things that occur in poorest parts of the world to many people. It is an awful thing to know that most people are sick enough to behave like this in reality and that there is not much that we can do to help them. But, then and again, I guess it is a good thing for us to read something like this in order to inform us that there are things like this that are occurring in the world and not just in the South Bronx, but all over. It opens up our own eyes as to what is going on in the world and in the societies that we do not know of nor had any experience with. This can relate to the other texts that we have read and discussed because it basically talks about people of different race, gender, and age going through tough times together and having little children experiencing hardships at young ages. This also relates to some of the children in todays societies dealing with welfare.
