Jonathan Kozol says throw money at poverty

This is Matthew Rothschild, the Editor of The Progressive magazine.

I met one of my heroes the other day, Jonathan Kozol, the author of Death at an Early Age, Savage Inequalities, and Amazing Grace. Here's a guy who has spent more than three decades shining a spotlight on injustice in our society: especially the injustice of poverty. And he has not grown tired, he has not grown jaded, he has not given up. Unlike most writers and journalists, Kozol does not treat his sources as extractive minerals he can grab a quote from, leave behind, and then manipulate. He treats them as human beings. He says most reporters who go to places like the South Bronx, the setting of Amazing Grace, already have their stereotypes in mind, even their quotes in mind. And the people in the South Bronx know what the reporters are looking for, and they oblige them.

But that, by no means, is a snapshot of reality. Kozol, by spending time with people, by genuinely befriending people-and he remains good friends to this day with the sources in his book-he is able to describe people in three dimensions.

"If you go looking for beauty, you will find it," he says. "If you go looking for blessings, you will be blessed."

Kozol talked about "the tremendous meanness against the poorest of the poor." He said that it was fashionable these days for politicians, conservative think tankers, and intellectuals in elite publications to blame the poor for being poor. There's a "get 'em out of sight" attitude, Kozol said, and it's a form of hatred, of racism, of ethnic cleansing masquerading as social policy.

The day after Kozol left town, I picked up on of these elite publications, The New Republic. The cover story was by Joe Klein-you remember him of Anonymous fame-and it was entitled Money Isn't Everything. The story was about the urban poor, what The New Republic still refers to as "the underclass." Here's what Klein had to say: "Poor people are different, sadly, from you and me. They are isolated from us; they have different values. And it seems very clear that their problems were neither entirely caused by the loss of work, nor will they be entirely solved by government action," Klein added.

Kozol's heard all this before. And he doesn't buy it for a minute. He says poverty is one of the problems that is most easily solved by "throwing money at it," as conservatives derisively call it. Kozol says, "Yes, throw money at it. Throw it. Put it in a helicopter and sprinkle it!"

But the powerful, and the manicurists of the powerful like Joe Klein, don't want to do this. They'd rather blame the poor. It's their own damned fault! It's a mighty convenient formulation, since it excuses the rest of us from spending any money-even from spending any sympathy-on the poor.

This is Matthew Rothschild, and that's how I see it.