As a kid growing up in the Bronx, I have seen, heard, and felt first-hand
             the issues of injustice, racism, poverty, and gender inequality in my own
             neighborhood. I attended segregated schools; as Kozol states, "segregation"
             is not a word used often in the popular press or in the common vernacular,
             but there is no doubt that schools in the Bronx are racially segregated. As
             a boy with half African-American roots, I fit in fine with my brown and
             black schoolmates. We didn't quite know what to make of the few white kids
             at our school and I rarely associated with them. My neighborhood and my
             school were poor, as poor as many of the places Jonathan Kozol describes in
             his book Amazing Grace. Although the writer was an outsider, a white
             journalist interested in the perspectives of minority youth in one of the
             poorest areas in the nation, Kozol does an excellent job of describing for
             his readers the situation in the Bronx. In fact, it might take an outsider
             to objectively observe and describe the disparities, disillusionment, and
             despair that is very real in the lives of many people who live in the Bronx
             and other similar areas in the United States. Chapter Five of Amazing Grace
             deals with almost every aspect of life: spirituality and religion;
             education; health care; motherhood; crime; poverty; drug abuse; AIDS.
             Although Kozol does find the real hope that exists in "ghetto"
             neighborhoods, he acknowledges the harsh truth that heroism is rare;
             despair is far more common and most people who grow up in abject poverty,
             to drug-addicted mothers, see no way out. The mothers who give birth to
             their children while in prison is testimony to the sense of feeling totally
             trapped and hopeless. From the deplorable school system to the commanding
             presence of prisons like Rikers, to the negligent health care system,
             Chapter Five of Amazing Grace touches on significant sociological issues
             that can be boiled...