"Amazing Grace" by Jonathan Kozol Connections

There is something that is incredibly personal about the stories Kozol discusses in his article "Amazing Grace." He walks the streets with these people and just records his conversations with them, trying to understand the world of disadvantages that they live in. Kozol's interviews really embody the messages that Kristof was attempting to convey in his piece, "U.S.A., Land of Limitations." Kozol's interviews with the families and the individuals shows the idea that where you grow up, can have a strong influence on the poverty that effects you in the future. Kozol's interview with Alice and David Washington, two generations living in poverty, further enhance this idea. Kozol discusses how David has to live in poverty because his mother's welfare had been cut and he grew up in an abusive home with a sick mother. This is based off of the life that his mother had provided for him through her own hardships in her adult years. This kind of story reminds me of the ones that Kristof provides on his friend, Rick, that grew up in poverty and ended up not being able to provide for himself to live a comfortable life. Rick was sick just like Alice had been and both didn't exactly have the means to really provide for themselves that they wanted to, but they both seemed to care deeply for their families and tried to provide for them the best they could with the limited resources that they had.

Then, there was one particular passage in Kozol's piece that really stuck out to me in relation to Lisa Delpit's "The Silenced Dialogue." In Kozol's piece on page 23, Kozol has a quote from David Washington in which he states, "Evil exists... I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil. Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people- that is my idea of evil." This is basically Delpit's biggest concern in her piece. The idea that those in power are in power because they know how to use it and they won't help those in power learn the rules of power. David Washington understood that he and his mother were not individuals in power and tried to explain that to Kozol. He did not understand the rules and codes of power in order to gain it, just as Delpit had argued in "The Silenced Dialogue."

The following chart that I found from a book called "Teaching With Poverty in Mind" by Eric Jensen shows the downward spiral of adverse childhood experiences on people. I just throught it was interesting to compare next to the three pieces discussing how early poverty can effect those later on in life.