"So there is, in fact, no escape for these children. East St. Louis will likely be left just as it is for a good many years to come: a scar of sorts, an ugly metaphor of filth and overspill and chemical effusions, a place for blacks to live and die within, a place for other people to avoid when they are heading for St. Louis."
             This quote is Jonathan Kozol's conclusion to a very powerful chapter reveling what could be the very worst of poverty in America. In poverty of this degree, only a child that is gifted with the site of a bigger picture could rise from the immediate scene surrounding him/her. Even then, he/she must find a doorway to escape the walls of inequality. In a society that uses the inequalities of race, class, and gender as the building blocks of power the doorway is easy to find, but proves to be impossible to open.
             Using passages from Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol and Not Just Race, Not Just Gender by Valerie Smith, I intend to prove that the existence of inequality serves as a lock to the gateway of true equality and that "there is, in fact, no escape."
             "Every freshman at New Trier is assigned a faculty advisor who remains assigned to him or her through graduation. Each of the faculty advisors-they are given a reduced class schedule to allow them time for this-gives counseling to about two dozen children. At Du Sable, where the lack of staff prohibits such reduction in class schedules, each of the guidance counselors advises 420 children."
             Potential at New Trier runs high. The students attending are from upper class well educated families. With the amount of attention each New Trier student receives from their advisors, it's safe to assume that they're guided along a path that will best complement their potential. When New Trier students attend the first day of their college carrier they will have an edge on their peers. This is true because they have been p...