In chapter 1 of Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace, he talks of a neighborhood in the South Bronx that is one of the most dangerous and deadly places in the United States. He states, “In speaking of rates of homicide in New York City neighborhoods, the Times refers to the streets around St. Ann’s as ‘the deadliest blocks’ in ‘the deadliest precinct’ of the city. If there is a deadlier place in the United States, I don’t know where it is. In 1991, 84 people, more than half of whom were 21 or younger, were murdered in the precinct. A year later, ten people were shot dead on a street called Beekman Avenue, where many of the children I have come to know reside. On Valentine’s Day of 1993, three more children and three adults were shot dead on the living room floor of an apartment six blocks from the run-down park that serves the area” (Kozol, 4). Kozol gives even more examples than the ones I listed of the amount of death and violence that occurs in this specific neighborhood. This specific example is significant because it shows that this neighborhood is violent due to the fact that there is no willingness by others to help this community. Kozol uses this example to show the readers that because nobody is willing to help this community, the people of the South Bronx can do whatever they want to. As readers, we need to see this point that Kozol is trying to make and we need to see that a difference needs to be made in this community.
In chapter 2, Kozol references when he talked to a school in children in this neighborhood in the South Bronx. The children tell him about the things that they experience everyday, whether it be people getting murdered in their neighborhood everyday and night or the fact that they can not even go to the park and play because horrible things could happen to them. They tell Kozol that they do not trust the police because they know the police will not help them. But I think that the piece that sticks out to me the most is this quote, “I pray that someone in my family will not die” (Kozol, 38). This example is important and it stuck out to me so much because no kid should be that jaded to violence that the only thing they can do is hope and pray that a member of their family will not be killed.
In chapter 4, Kozol speaks of a conversation that he had with a woman from this community in the Bronx. The woman he talks to tells him about the number of rats that are alive in their community and how she believes that signifies that Armageddon is coming. Kozol states, “The rats, she says, have a frightening meaning for some of the more religious people in the neighborhood. ‘This Puerto Rican lady says that rats are s’posed to come before Armageddon. You hear a lot of people talkin’ of Armageddon. Bible says that there will be 10,000 rats for every person.’ I ask, ‘Do you believe that?’ ‘I ain’t sayin’ that I believe it. I’m just sayin’ what the Bible says… 10,000 rats per person.’ Smiling, she adds, ‘If that’s the truth, we must be gettin’ close” (Kozol, 129). I found this particular conversation interesting because a community should not have to deal with that many rats. The fact that she even jokes about there community being close to having 10,000 rats per person is just insane, they should not have to deal with that amount of rats, and they would not have too if the government was willing to help their community.
In chapter 5, Kozol quotes a woman who was in charge of education at Rikers Island, a massive prison just of the cost of New York. Among this passage, I found this quote very unsettling, she states, “Without this island, the attractive lives some of us lead in the nice sections of New York would simply not be possible. If you want to get your outcasts out of sight, first you need a ghetto and then you need a prison to take pressure off the ghetto” (Kozol, 159). When you think about this quote, it makes your stomach turn. The people who live in the wealthier neighborhoods are more concerned with keeping people that they feel are inadequate out rather than helping said people improve their lives, it’s disgusting. These people have no interest in helping others, they just have interest in what makes their lives easier.
While reading Amazing Grace, I found that the specific stories that Kozol gave shed light on the main point that he was trying to make. Each story that he told gave another layer of reasoning to his argument that this neighborhood needs to be helped. Throughout Amazing Grace, Kozol had the purpose of showing that this community is treated like it’s not even there by our government, and that as a nation we need to work together to help this community. So as readers we need to hear what Kozol is saying and stand together and make an effort to make a difference for the communities in our nation that are not given the help they need. Kozol changes the “single” narrative about this underserved community by showing us that the people who live in the South Bronx do not like they way they live, they just feel that they will not receive any help to change the way they live. Each person has a specific responsibility in society, so when their own individual responsibility interferes with their social responsibility, that is where their individual responsibility, or actions that they can choose freely, ends. As a result of this, both individual and social responsibilities are in a dynamic relationship. So, as a person’s social responsibility changes, so does their ability to decide what they want to do (individual responsibility).
Works Cited
Kozol, Jonathan. Amazing Grace: the Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. Broadway Paperbacks, an Imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a Division of Random House, Inc., 2012.