Kozol: Amazing Grace -Reflection-

I was originally going to respond on the shorter McIntosh reading (I ended up getting called into work and ended up working most of the day to make up for the wages I lost because of the blizzard) but after I read the Kozol text I ended up changing my mind.  The subject matter really stuck out to me because I had read something similar in a history class about poverty in New York during the first two decades of the 1900s. And I realized that, sadly, not much has changed for the destitute living in New York City.  

Some of the living arrangements that Kozol mentioned in the article have changed very little in the past almost  one hundred years.  The fact that families would have to sleep huddled up in the warmest clothes they owned to perhaps survive the brutal cold of the winters hasn't changed.  The small living spaces being completely infested with rodents and insects during the warmer seasons hasn't changed.  While the diseases plaguing the destitute of New York City may have changed, the large number of poor people of all ages succumbing to disease has not changed.  While drugs like heroin and crack-cocaine were not a problem that the poor had to deal with in the early 1900s, alcohol posed as big a problem in the 1910s as drugs did in the 1990s.  

Granted today there are programs put in place to help the destitute living the country such as SSI and welfare  however they are not always easy for some people to obtain.  Kozol mentioned that one of the women he visited had lost her welfare benefits.  In order for the ailing woman to get her benefits back she would have to get a letter from her doctor, a social worker and a hospital. When she got these letters and presented them she was then told that she would need to apply for a new ID.   I guess the point that Kozol is trying to make here is that even though there are programs in place, very few of the people he encountered had the means to apply.   

There was one paragraph in this that really struck a negative chord with me.  The paragraph started with a quote from a political science professor from New York University which stated: "If poor people behaved rationally they would seldom be poor for long in the first place."  It stood out because I have heard countless rich white men (and women) make very similar claims today.  Sadly, I do not believe that poverty can be changed just by the will of the people in poverty themselves.  And unfortunately this trend hasn't changed and is bound to keep repeating in an endless and vicious cycle.