Kozol and All Lives Matter

Tiffany Scoco
Dr. Corinne McKamey
FNED:346
19 September 2018

Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol
"There are children in the poorest, most abandoned places who, despite the miseries and poisons that the world has dumped into their lives, seem, when you first meet them, to be cheerful anyway."
This quote is relevant to the text because the author is talking about South Bronx and the horrors that some children and families face everyday while living there. The author is talking about how even though these children's lives are filled with everyday horror they still seem happy when you first meet them. This is really sad when you think about it because that means the horor in their life has become so normal that these children can still put a smile on there faces and go on with there day like nothing is wrong, when actually there is a lot wrong.

“A small and wiry women wearing blue jeans and a baseball cap, a former cocaine addict who now helps addicted women and their children, she tells me that more than 3,000 homeless families have been relocated by the city in this neighborhood during the past few years, and she asked a question I will hear from many other people here during the months ahead, ‘Why do you want to put so many people with small children in a place with so much sickness?”’
This quote is relevant to the text because the author is talking about South Bronx and the horrors that these children and families are facing. The government is trying to help these people but it doesn’t seem to be working, the plan they have doesn’t make sense. They are putting a lot of people with the same symptoms and problems into a small space and there are children mixed in, which is not a good idea.

“The pastor tells me that the place known as ‘children’s park.’ Volunteers arrive here twice a week and give out condoms and clean needles to addicted men and women, some of whom bring their children with them. The children play near the bears or on the jungle gym while their mothers wait for needles.”  
This quote is relevant to the text because the author is talking about South Bronx and the horrors that these children and families are facing. It’s absolutely horrible to think that the number of addicts in this area is so big that they try to cut down on HIV and aids by handing out free condoms and clean needles. I feel extremely bad for these poor children who did not choose this life but are forced to deal with the consequences of their parents choices everyday.

Points to share/Thinking question:
Kozol blames the government for poverty and racism because the government has grouped these people all together and made a ghetto out of the lowest income families. This has excluded them from the rest of the nation, giving these people abandonment issues to deal with, while also telling them they are not worthy of living among the wealthier population. Environmental factors are also involved in the problems in the South Bronx. Pollution is a huge environmental problem that could be the biggest reason for the high number of children with asthma. Another huge environmental problem is the waste burner in the middle of South Bronx which causes a lot of air pollution making the air toxic to breathe. Another major issue is that there is so much violence and drugs in the street that it’s not safe to be outside. And to top it all off there are major race issues. Racism is very obvious to the people in South Bronx, especially if they leave their district because they immediately get treated differently and told to go to back to their own district.

Link to reading:


All lives matter by Kevin Roose
“The real issue is that, while strictly true, ‘All lives matter’ is a tone deaf slogan that distracts from the real problems black people in America face.”
This quote is relevant to the text because the author is talking about Black Lives Matter and how people tried to change the Black Lives Matter slogan to All Lives Matter which does not have the same effect. The Black Lives Matter slogan was created to try and stop racial violence towards African Americans because there have been a lot of shootings and arrests made for little to no reason. There is an extremely high rate of African American police shootings and arrests. The Black Lives Matter slogan was made to try and stop this from continuing or getting worse. People of other races do not have numbers as high as African American police shootings or arrests, so All Lives Matter do not have the same effect.

“Imagine that you're sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don't get any. So you say "I should get my fair share." And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, "everyone should get their fair share."
This quote is relevant to the text because the author is talking about racism and the fairness of life, which there isn’t any because life is completely unfair. This quote is talking about how everyone in life wants their fair share and to be given equal opportunity.The sad fact is that this isn’t true, we are not all given equal opportunities and we are not given our fair share.
“There is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it's generally not considered "news", while a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate — young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don't treat it as anything new.”
This quote is relevant to the text because the author is talking about Black Lives Matter. This is another sad fact, African American people who get killed aren’t even considered newsworthy but for some reason white Americans are. This makes absolutely no sense to me, why does the color of your skin even matter to other people? On the inside we are all the same, we have organs, blood, a heart and a brain. Why does the color of your skin matter?


Points to share:
“‘All lives matter’ as a direct response to "black lives matter" is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.”
See the source image
I agree with this quote, by saying All Lives Matter you are intentionally ignoring the problem. The entire point of making the Black Lives Matter slogan was to try and stop African American police shootings and arrests for no reason. See the source image

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