Jonathon Kozol paints a frightening portrait of the South Bronx in Amazing Grace. The 1970s and 1980s were a time of great hardship for the Bronx, particularly its southern neighborhoods, like Mott Haven – the area of the book’s focus. White flight, a citywide financial crisis, and bank redlining all worked to destroy once rich neighborhoods. The Bronx survived. As the 1990s dawned, the Bronx began to emerge from its most desperate era. Kozol’s account is from these early years of the 1990s. Kozol focuses his work on hope residing in the youth of Mott Haven, but descriptions of the socio-political conditions that faced the Bronx as a united whole are weaved throughout. The writing though is very distant; an ethnography that offers no calls to action. After I review the situation as Kozol examined and expand to other neighborhoods and the years that have passed since his writing, I will briefly examine solutions that Wallace Shawn’s unnamed character would offer before and after conversion, and follow that with my own thoughts.

Amazing Grace describes the wavering of emotions that adults experienced in the South Bronx, “even here, it is more sadness than real indignation.” (Kozol 17) Frustrations bubble, but despair reminds the adults that they are being kicked while they are already down. Kozol describes the collapse of political anger after the local waste incinerator was approved. Despair became the defeating force for the community. However that was not Kozol’s focus. Kozol focused on the world-view of the children. There was still hope among them. Even so battered by society so young, the children preserved. This perseverance was not without struggle. Teachers and parents explain the depression that has already afflicted the children in their lives, but through Kozol’s interviews a bourgeois-sanctioned hope is articulated in the children. The children seem to have given up on their earthly lives already, but have deep faith in a heavenly afterlife. It seems that every child that Kozol speaks with has their own specific vision of the afterlife, centered on a shedding of all earthly problems. One child – Anthony – acknowledges his families burdens and denies them heavenly access, “there will be no guns or drugs or IRS [in heaven].” (Kozol 238)

What then leads these children of the South Bronx – children of all ages – to despair, even if the despair exists on different levels? As mentioned earlier, waste incinerators were placed in the South Bronx not long before Kozol started his research. In fact the first story we read is Cliffie – a neighborhood child – leading Kozol on a tour that features the incinerators. (Kozol 7) This has a damaging effect on the community in two distinct ways. First, it solidifies social roles as set up in New York City then and now. This is where the despair mentioned earlier emerges. It reinforces the ability of those in power to impose their will on the powerless no matter how much resistance. It reinforces the impossibility of maintaining a healthy environment – both physically and emotionally. The physical environmental disaster these incinerators provide for the neighborhood is possibly worse. Kozol describes that after the incinerator was completed, rates of asthma among the children skyrocketed. An already drained health-care system was stretched to its limits, as children were getting sicker, younger. As the story progresses, Rudy Giuliani becomes mayor of New York City, and a new era is dawned. For the middle-class and the rich this becomes a rebirth for the city. Manhattan is restored to its majesty. What we discover is this restoration is built on the back of the poor, as the humanity of the underprivileged of the city was ignored. Policing increased, but this shipped even more fathers, brothers, and sons to prisons. Housing in the Bronx was revitalized, but that was because Manhattan sought to reject the poor.

Today, the hope of a better future is expanding throughout the Bronx; events repeat themselves in a frightening cycle. Community members - fearing negative environmental effects - diligently fought the city's plan to create massive dumping sites in the years before Kozol's account begins. Their fears proved accurate. Again, the city created plans for a water filtration plant – now placed in a northern neighborhood of the Bronx – that would create incredibly harmful environmental protection. Community members fought diligently to prevent the construction, but the voice of the Bronx was again ignored. Now health conditions like asthma run rampant throughout the Bronx, expanding its grip on the youth of the Bronx.

Broader institutionalized forces are also quietly wrecking havoc on the Bronx, that Kozol’s subjects weren’t subject. Since the conclusion of Amazing Grace, NAFTA has crippled industrial and former industrial communities like Mott Haven even more. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act of 1996, ended welfare as we know it, making the lives of the poor even more difficult by decreasing benefits, while increasing demands. Now the federal government is pushing to end Section 8 housing grants. These grants have enabled underprivileged Americans to find decent housing for decades, and it may soon become a thing of the past.

Hope is still becoming a greater possibility for residents of the Bronx, if for no other reason then the sheer opportunity for hope. When Kozol was writing, survival was such a difficult mission that there was little time for hope. Hope is showing itself all over the Bronx though. Art is expanding in the South Bronx with programs at The Point, an organization in Hunts Point. Community members are claiming graffiti as a valid art form and bringing it to the people. Parks are being beautified. Poe Park – at Kingsbridge and the Grand Concourse – has been reborn by a coalition of community organization and a renewed Parks Department. With the hope that is building, community members again believe in the potential that the Bronx stores. There is work that still needs to be done, but we can see progress.

As privileged members of the Fordham community within the Bronx, there are many different ways this future can be framed. First we can assume the mindset of Wallace Shawn’s protagonist before conversion. We can see this character every time we ride the subway, and someone asking for assistance is ignored. According to this thinking, there is nothing inherently wrong with the existing social systems. It is a shame that people are poor, but ultimately this thinking acknowledges their will always be oppressed people in the world. It goes even further to say, ‘better them then me.’ This framing allows Shawn’s character to define these roles by saying,

It’s appropriate for the chambermaid to go home at night to that particular hallway on that particular street, just as it’s appropriate for you and your friends to spend your life deciding which products you would like to buy and upholding high standards of performance in art. (Shawn 60)

This framing allows charity, but merely that. Shawn writes, “we’ll teach the poor that… we’re going to give them things, but we decide how much we’ll give, and when.” (Shawn 53). Though this framing tries to acknowledge humanity in the other, Shawn’s character comes to grips with the fact that charity is based only on personal survival – the fear of revolution is real. Shawn’s character briefly moves away from this thinking and thinks of fetishism of commodities, but within three days he is able to bring himself back to easy bourgeois life.

The children of the South Bronx fully understand this framing. This is the thinking that created the South Bronx as it is today. This framing allows the public school system to fail so miserably for these children, while those living in midtown high-rises blame the poor for their position in life. This framing is the city giving parks to children with its left hand, while creating air-choking water filtration plants over old parks. This framing is the existing paradigm.

There are two other options to this paradigm. Wallace Shawn lays one out as his character achieves conversion. Shawn’s character explains this ideology swiftly, “If I have more than others, share what I have until I have no more than they do. Live simply. Give up everything. Become poor myself.” (Shawn 66) This is a call to an immediate rejection of capital – an immediate martyrdom. In the Bronx, this would lead one utilize the resources of community organizations like POTS, while volunteering with them. Shawn’s character would seek radical solidarity with the poorest of the South Bronx after his conversion; able to live his life in a way that becomes personally satisfying after he comprehends common humanity.

The question that this proposed solution demands is, how will this help the situation? This solution may free one from the sin of capitalism. It may be a soul-cleansing ordeal. But the limited gains made by giving up personal wealth are so minimal, that suffering would just increase. This thinking makes suffering an end rather than a means. Shawn’s character forgets that an individual cannot destroy the social systems that create suffering. The action-based solution that is necessary for Kozol’s South Bronx can be understood as ‘biting the hand that feeds you.’ The systems that oppress people create a path for their own destruction when they privilege those with a conscious. This privilege can be used to alter the system as it exists or create counterinstitution that will eventually supercede the existing systems. This plays out in the Bronx in grassroots community groups. For example, Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation (FBHC) has been working for over 25 years now creating affordable housing for the Northwest Bronx. Economically this practice disrupts normal exploitative practices of housing. Through their affordable housing struggles and other programs, FBHC has empowered community members to make demands on the city. It has taken a long time, and the demands are still minimal, but progress is being made. Radical change will come, but it is important that those with power accept their privilege and use it for the benefit of others rather than reject it and maintain the cycle of suffering.

Kozol, Jonathon. Amazing Grace. New York; Harper Perennial, 1996.

Shawn, Wallace. The Fever. New York; Grove Press, 1991.