Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol

There are so many great quotes in this article, but I was able to choose just three of my favorites:

“"The truth is, you get used to the offense. There's trashy things all over. There's a garbage dump three blocks away. Then there's all the trucks that come through stinking up the air, heading for the Hunts Point Market… Then we get illegal dumpers. People who don't live here come and dump things they don't want: broken televisions, boxes of bottles, old refrigerators, beat-up cars, old pieces of metal, other lovely things”” (6-7).

This woman is saying that not only is the Bronx an extremely poor neighborhood, but it is also made even worse by the people who look down upon it. People from other areas come to the Bronx just to dump their unwanted things there. Although the woman did say that they sometimes get rid of nice things that the people living there could use, they mostly get rid of old and broken things that just fill the area with more trash. The richer people are taking advantage of the poorer people by dumping their old trash on them, when their community is already having a hard enough time as it is.

“”Once you're in bed, if you call the nurse, you wait for half an hour. 'You know, Mrs. Washington, you've been here before,' they say. 'You know that we are understaffed.' How do they know, when someone calls, that you're not dying?”” (15).

This quote talks about the hospitals in the area. Each of the three nearby hospitals are terrible. The emergency room wait could take days, and even after you get a room, you are not treated right away. The hospital doesn’t seem to care about these people enough to hire more staff members in order for each patient to be treated in a timely manner. Maybe they just figure that the poor are not as important, or that they would not be able to help them anyway, or maybe they just do not have enough money to hire a bigger staff. Whatever the reason, it is unacceptable that the hospitals are in this horrible of a condition.

 ““I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil. 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”” (23). 

This quote actually relates back to Delpit and her 5^th aspect of power, which states that “Those with power are frequently least aware of- or lease willing to acknowledge its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence” (Delpit 24). The boy who says this is aware that he has no power, and that the rich have it better than he does. He also feels that the rich are pretending that they don’t have power and that they are evil. The rich people are refusing to acknowledge the existence of this power, and therefore are not doing anything to help the poor, even though they have the ability to. This quote really sums up how the poor feel about the rich and connects perfectly to Delpit’s 5^th aspect of power.

Political Cartoons are cool. This one really highlights one of the points that Kozol brings up. 

Also, open question: do you think we will have class tomorrow?