Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (was OT libertarian demographics)

[Guest guest]

Quoting Suze Fisher <s.fisher22@...>:

> arguably the best book i ever read (NAPD aside) is jonathan kozol's

> " " Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. "

> it will change the way you see the world, especially in the case of

> people who don't really think racism is still much of a force in

> america.

>>>Can you give a short version of the argument?

----->it's not so much an " argument " as it is a documentary of the lives of

some children in a south bronx neighborhood, who live in the largest

racially segregated enclave in america. it's been a long time since i read

it but IIRC, the theme of race, poverty and segregation are primary, and

kozol interviews a lot of kids, their moms, other people in the

neighborhood, and chronicals such things as the predominance of toxic waste

dumps in such areas (which result in illnesses for many children), the

children's experiences in the schools, crime, death, and all the gov't

programs and institutions that are supposedly helping the kids survive in

their community, many of whom don't.

i'm pretty sure that the vast majority of americans who read it would be

shocked that this is *america*...that there are american children actually

living under such conditions by no choice of their own of course, yet show

such remarkable resiliance and courage.

so, i think the book's value lies in the documentary of these children's

lives and in the children's own words about their lives, not in the author's

politics.

here's a bit more about it:

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http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/kozol.html

In 1993, Kozol returned to one of the most racially isolated and

impoverished neighborhoods in the United States -- the South Bronx of New

York. Two years of conversations with the children, priests and parents who

befriended him led to the writing of Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children

and the Conscience of a Nation, which was published in October 1995.

Amazing Grace is a gently written narrative work that quietly explores the

meditations and reflections of some very young black and Hispanic children

who, although they live in one of the most violent, diseased communities in

the developed world, retain a soaring spiritual transcendence.

In a widely quoted speech, delivered June of 1995 before 2000 of the

nation's publishers, Mr. Kozol said, " I believe the questions that we should

be asking about justice and injustice in America are not chiefly

programmatic, technical or scientific. They are theological. But I disagree

with those who think we should be asking questions of theology primarily to

those who live in poverty. I think we need to ask these questions of

ourselves. "

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Kozol has said, " Of all my books, Amazing Grace means the most to me. It

took the most out of me and was hardest to write, because it was the hardest

to live through those experiences. I felt it would initially be seen as

discouraging but, ultimately, sensitive readers would see the resilient and

transcendent qualities of children and some mothers in the book-that it

would be seen as a book about the elegant theology of children. That's what

happened finally. The most moving comments about it also pointed to its

moral and religious texture. "

http://myhero.com/hero.asp?hero=jkozol

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excerpts:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/AmazingGrace_Kozol.html

The 600,000 people who live [in the South Bronx of New York City] and the

430,000 people who live in Washington Heights and Harlem, which are

separated from the South Bronx by a narrow river, make up one of the largest

racially segregated concentrations of poor people in our nation.

What is it like for children to grow up here? What do they think the world

has done to them? Do they believe that they are being shunned or hidden by

society? If so, do they think that they deserve this? What is it that

enables some of them to pray? When they pray, what do they say to God?

http://www.spinninglobe.net/amazinggrace.htm

" I look at my notes as the plane crosses Connecticut. I'm looking forward to

getting home and sitting at my desk and trying to make sense of everything

I've learned. But I don't really think I will make sense of anything and I

don't expect that I'll be able to construct a little list of " answers " and

" solutions, " as my editor would like. I have done this many times before; so

have dozens of other writers; so have hundreds of committees and foundations

and commissions. The time for lists like that now seems long past.

Will the people Reverend Grover called " the principalities and powers " look

into their hearts one day in church or synagogue and feel the grace of God

and, as he put it, " be transformed " ? Will they become ashamed of what

they've done, or what they have accepted? Will they decide they do not need

to quarantine the outcasts of their ingenuity and will they then use all

their wisdom and their skills to build a new society and new economy in

which no human being will be superfluous? I wish I could believe that, but I

don't think it is likely. I think it is more likely that they'll write more

stories about " Hope Within the Ashes " and then pile on more ashes and then

change the subject to the opening of the ballet or a review of a new

restaurant. And the children of disappointment will keep dying.

I think that Mrs. Washington is right to view the years before us with

foreboding. I have never lived through a time as cold as this in the United

States. Many men and women who work in the Bronx believe that it is going to

get worse. I don't know what can change this. "

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

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