РефератыИностранный языкThThe Role Of African Americans In The

The Role Of African Americans In The

Civil War Essay, Research Paper


Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace is a book about the trials


and tribulations of everyday life for a


group of children who live in the poorest congressional


district of the United States, the South Bronx. Their lives


may seem extraordinary to us, but to them, they are just as


normal as everyone else. What is normal? For the children


of the South Bronx, living with the pollution, the sickness, the


drugs, and the violence is the only way of life many of them


have ever known.


In this book, the children speak openly and honestly about


feeling ‘abandoned’, ‘hidden’ or ‘forgotten’ by our nation, one


that is blind to their problems. Studying the people


themselves would only get us so far in understanding what


their community is really like and why they feel this way.


Jonathan Kozol really got to know the people individually.


We can take his knowledge and stories to try for a better


understanding of the environment in which they live. By


doing this, we can explore the many reasons why the people


have problems, what some levels of intervention could be,


and possibly find some


solutions to making the South Bronx a healthier and safer


place for these children and others to live.


Problem Identification


The environment in which we study these people can only


be defined by first taking a look at possible reasons why the


people have problems. Some of the problems discussed in


Amazing Grace have festered throughout the United States


for some time now. The high numbers of drug users in the


community, the high amounts of gang-related violence, and


the numerous cases of people who have contracted the


AIDS virus are just some of the problems that have arisen in


this ghetto. There are many differences between this


community and others in the United States, one of which is


that the government has grouped these people all together


and made a ghetto of the lowest income families. This has


ostracized them from the rest of the nation. It has given


them many abandonment issues to deal with, while also


telling them they are not worthy of living among the wealthier


population.


Environmental factors are involved in the problems arising in


the South Bronx. Pollution, for


example, could be the biggest source of the high number of


children in the community who have asthma.


Asthma is a condition in which one has trouble breathing.


Without clean air, breathing for an asthmatic is almost


impossible. A waste burner in the middle of the South


Bronx causes a lot of pollution and makes the air the people


breath, below safe levels of cleanliness. Another


environmental factor that affects the resident’s healths has to


do with how most of the buildings in these neighborhoods


are run down and infested with rats. Many of the buildings


have no working elevators. This causes people to have to


walk several flights of stairs each time they want to leave


their apartments. This is very time consuming and tiresome.


Then, when they find that there is so much violence and


drugs in the street, that it is not safe to be out there anyway,


they usually end up staying in their apartments for most of


their free time.


The cultural differences between these people and others of


higher income communities is also a


reason why they may have problems. Racism is very


obvious to the people of the South Bronx, especially


when they go outside of their district. If a woman from this


area goes to a hospital outside of her


district, a hospital that is more than likely wealthier and


cleaner, she is usually turned away and told to go to a


hospital in her own district. Others, who are admitted into


these hospitals, are put on a special floor, mainly for the


lower income or Medicaid patients. (Amazing Grace, p.


176)


Another way the government discriminates against them is


how they are housed. Most of the


residents are living in government housing where the


government pays their rent. When the government


helped the people to get off the streets and out of homeless


shelters and then put them into low cost


housing, they put all of the residents in the same area. This


created their ghetto and kept them


segregated from the rest of the world.


Level of Intervention


If we look at these people through an exosystem, or “a


setting in which a person does not participate but in which


significant decisions are made affecting the person or others


who interact directly with the person,” we would ask the


questions “are decisions made with the interests of the


person and the family in mind?” (Social Work and Social


Welfare, p.79) Did the government really think of the


people of the South Bronx when they grouped all of the


sick, troublesome, and low income families


together in the same community? What kind of opportunity


structure can people have when the government puts them


into never ending situations such as giving them only enough


money to get by, but not enough to get out of poverty?


Some people say that it is not the government’s responsibility


to get people out of poverty, but then whose fault is it that


they got there in the first place? No one asks to be poor, no


one asks to be homeless. Cultural differences are an excuse


some use for

treating people of different backgrounds


differently. But can the government also participate in this


obvious form of racism? Our nation has tried for many


many years now to stop racism and prejudices, but the


problem is still prevalent in communities all over the world.


We could also look at the people and their problems using


a macrosystem, or the “‘blueprints’ for


defining and organizing the institutional life of the society,”


(Social Work and Social Welfare, p.79) to


decide if some groups are valued at the expense of others


and do these groups experience oppression? As


we have seen, the people of the South Bronx feel


abandoned, this is a type of oppression. They are


pushed away from the rest of society, where the only place


they can turn is to this community that is


filled with crime, violence, disease, and poverty. The


residents have shared assumptions about what the


government wants and expects from them. The


government’s attitude towards these people is such that the


residents feel devalued and not worthy of being seen or


heard. Without much hope of financial stability, many have


turned to selling and/or using drugs. Selling drugs is seen as


an easy way of making some money, and using drugs keeps


a person on a high so they do not have to face reality. This


just continues the cycle of problems they face since selling


drugs to others keeps those others high, and staying on a


drug induced high only prolongs the problems.


Discussion and Recommendations


Because of all the trials and tribulations they go through, you


would think that everyone in this


community would lose hope. This is not true for many of the


children that Jonathan Kozol talked to and


became friends with on his many journeys into their


neighborhood. The children speak of their problems


with great maturity. Many of these children are far older


than their years on Earth, for they have felt


true abandonment by our nation. Many of the issues they


have had to deal with are not ones which we


think of as children’s issues. AIDS, for example, is not


something that many think of as an issue that


children talk about or even think about. For the children of


the South Bronx though, it is a major


issue. With “one-fourth of the child-bearing women in the


neighborhoods where these children live


testing positive for HIV,” (Amazing Grace, inside cover)


pediatric AIDS takes a high toll. The numbers


of children who have had one or both parents die of AIDS


in the South Bronx and surrounding areas is the highest


among the nation. If the government keeps sending the low


income and troublesome families into these neighborhoods,


“it is likely that entire blocks will soon be home to mourning


orphans, many of whom will follow their own parents to an


early grave.” (Amazing Grace,


p. 194)


The government’s placement of a waste burner in the South


Bronx is another prime example and a


reason why the children feel like they are being “thrown


away.” Many residents believe that the waste burner is to


blame for their health problems. Many children in the


community are only able to breathe


with the use of a breathing machine because their asthma has


gotten so bad.(Amazing Grace, p. 170) Why


then would the city decide to put one there? Did the city


have the residents in mind when they built the


waste burner in this community? The residents do not have


much of a say in city, state or governmental


issues. Positions in government are held by wealthier and


more powerful people who more then likely have no first


hand knowledge of life in a low income ghetto. How can we


change this?


To change a whole community involves much more then


direct practice with individuals. Counseling


people on an individual basis gives individual responses.


The problems of the South Bronx are not with the individuals


themselves, but rather community organizational problems.


Changing the social policy of the community is of utter


importance in making it a better place to live. The norms for


the people in


these neighborhoods have gotten to be that of violence and


drugs. These are not healthy norms. To


change them, the communities could use more education on


social issues in the schools and communities to


help the people learn to live healthier lifestyles, to get the


word out that violence and disruptance are


not all right, and to help the people obtain some community


unity. Getting some of the well known


community members involved in politics is another way they


could get their voices heard and let the


government know their needs and desires. Support groups


held for people with AIDS, for people who have lost loved


ones, and also for people who just need a place to talk


about


their emotions and get their frustrations out, would help the


community as a whole and get more people


involved in the healing process of that community. If the


people in the South Bronx would act as a


community bound together to help themselves and each


other, there would be less tolerance for deviant


behavior among it’s members. Then the ones who act


defiantly could be out-numbered, and the good


citizens of the South Bronx could reclaim their homes and


their lives.

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