Amazing Grace
The South Bronx is the poorest congressional district in the UnitedStates; it lies on one end of a New York Subway line that within minutestraverses the richest congressional district in the country. These ThirdWorld conditions right in the United States are what author Jonathan Kozolhopes to bring to light in his book Amazing Grace. Specifically, Kozolfocuses on the children of the South Bronx, children who struggle tosurvive, thrive, to find joy and spiritual connections amid the turmoil ofthe ghetto. Although nihilism, hopelessness, anger, and violence runrampant through the neighborhood, the children with whom Kozol speaks andbefriends exhibit an "amazing grace." Kozol writes, "There are children inthe poorest, most abandoned places who, despite the miseries and poisonsthat the world has pumped into their lives," appear cheerful (6). Racialsegregation is one of the root causes of the problems in the South Bronx,and Kozol treats this issue and its concurrent problems with poverty,drugs, and violence. To do so, the author interviews local police,teachers, and church pastors to form an accurate, holistic vision of thecommunity and to discover possible solutions for the problems therein.
Along the course of his research, many children Kozol meets die, manyof whom are victims of gang violence. Although Kozol describes the cheerfulness that often appears on thefaces of the youth in the South Bronx, he also notes that bitterness andanger, shame and resentment also characterize the emotional lives of manyof the youth here. It is easier to pretend that segregationand ghettos are relics from the past; now the South Bronx is considered tobe a sort of rogue district, one which stews in its own problems that aresomehow disconnected from the outside world. White families havepulled most of their children from local public schools due to acombination of bigotry and mistrust in the educational system. Trauma permeates their lives; thirteen-year old boys tryto commit suicide. When a house is robbed, the cops don't show. Here, the author documents the boys andgirls that are victims of America's urban ghettos. Dealers roam the streets and night and addicts line up for aneedle exchange by day in a local park. Furthermore,the schools have become totally racially segregated. Ironically, the "founding father" of the community, Richard Morris,built the South Bronx on profits gleaned from slavery: he had owned aplantation in the Caribbean. To drive home how many children areinadvertently or deliberately killed, Kozol includes an "In Memorandum"chapter at the end of the book. Moreover, Kozol notes that the mass media andthe government fails to capture the raw emotionality of this harsh reality. Local schools provide little or no hope for the children. Raciallysegregated and poorly funded, the teachers are often not even certified butrather are permanent substitutes. Furthermore, Kozolconcludes that this is one of the many media tactics used to promotesegregation, to endow children in the ghetto with a "sense of'differentness'," (34).
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Acceptance Essays
