Book review:
"Amazing Grace, The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation," by Jonathan Kozol (Crown Publishers, Inc., New York) $23.00
What happens when people and children become a component of the waste stream? Who cares if some neighborhoods are so bleak that the children can't even imagine a future with hope?
Jonathan Kozol's new book "Amazing Grace" faces up to these questions ... while admitting that the answers are wanting. Kozol's book, moreover, seeks to connect wholesale environmental destruction with the plague of violence sweeping inner cities.
Yes, much of the environmental destruction consists of "normal" urban decay. But Kozol makes a case for seeing inner cities as hard-hit victims of an onslaught of industrial and urban toxins that are concentrated there precisely because of the powerlessness of the victims.
In a series of interviews lasting many months Kozol documents the struggle of numerous families in several South Bronx, N.Y., neighborhoods. Talking to children, mothers, clergy, a few fathers, uncles and others, he weaves a narrative of shattered lives, with statistics documenting the appalling physical conditions and lack of human services. The lack of minimal health and safety standards accounts for much of the destruction, such as the case of a boy who falls to his death through an unsecured elevator door. But Kozol also describes a world in which incinerators and sewage treatment plants get approval for placement within these neighborhoods. (Other New York City neighborhoods have the clout to keep them out.) And he describes a world where poor families on welfare are placed in the same neighborhoods for much the same reason.
This is, of course, horrible if true. Is it? Do people care one way or the other? Is an address outside the slums sufficient reason to deny responsibility? These questions become part of the fabric of the book as Kozol explores his own conscience and that of the nation. The book succeeds as far as such a work can -- it leads the reader toward greater understanding. One can hope that understanding leads to action and that "Amazing Grace" is remembered as a pivotal work.
The thesis may very well hit close to the mark. But Kozol, to his credit, doesn't claim too much or pretend to have all the answers. He presents his evidence and yes, his thoughts, without claiming any lock on the truth here. His evidence strongly supports this dim perspective. The South Bronx, for example, has an epidemic of severe asthma. He cites statistics showing hospital admissions for asthma at six or more per thousand people in the South Bronx neighborhoods, and 1.8 per thousand statewide in New York. Although residents say they know the asthma epidemic's likely cause is the recently built incinerator nearby, Kozol explains that the assertion is both plausible and difficult to pin down.
Another source of environmental destruction is the illegal dumping of toxic chemicals. In a place called Children's Park, Kozol finds several empty 55-gallon drums bearing "Toxic Contents" warnings. The rusting drums are scattered in the weeds and trash.
The physical environmental factors, however, are only part of the picture. People treating people as refuse has as much, or more, of an impact. He quotes sick people turned away from hospitals a short subway ride away -- and told to seek help in their own "catchment areas," such as the overcrowded and understaffed slum hospitals.
Kozol's other major thread in the book strikes a different note that clearly resonates with the title, "Amazing Grace." For all their brutalized existence the souls of some people still shine with a pure spirit: a local poet and his young disciple, a mother dying of AIDS who sees her son accepted into college, a few lucky children.
But one of the most moving passages is Kozol's plea not to make too much of the rare successes and the occasional miracle:
"The trouble with miracles, however, is that they don't happen for most children; and a good society cannot be built on miracles or on the likelihood that they will keep occurring. There is also a degree of danger that, in emphasizing these unusual relationships and holding up for praise the very special children who can take advantage of them, without making clear how rare these situations are, we may seem to be condemning those who don't have opportunities like these or, if they do, cannot respond to them."
Kozol's treatment of the drug epidemic and the violence it spawns is extensive. And he certainly doesn't excuse life-destroying behavior because of the deprived environment. He ferrets out the microscopic details of how drug lords organize their territories and extract their profits. Street corner by street corner, he explains how the system works and how "managers" pay fees for the right to sell drugs. He details in excruciating clarity how even children are drawn in.
In covering the drug trade, Kozol also tries to be even handed. He tells us, for instance, that the drug trade shuts down for a time in the afternoon when school lets out. But he also introduces the reader to a pusher who holds out two closed hands to a child playfully asking him to pick one. The child, of course, picks the hand with the cocaine because both hands hold drugs.
Painful as the drug trade is, Kozol rightly points out that justice isn't served by writing off a generation of people because of it. Consigning people to an environment from hell can't be a civilized solution. However, Kozol says that the present political climate offers little hope. Many in public life are more likely to use the shattered lives he portrays as a way to score political points than to see them as facts of life that scorn us all.