Jonathan Kozol- "Amazing Grace"

Argument

     In this piece Kozol argues that the way New York treats it's poor and destitute is almost as if it is throwing it into a junk drawer and ignoring it. While not explicitly stating this, Kozol represents it through a series of quotes from people who live in these areas, facts about these areas, and his own experiences. Some examples are how they move the homeless into the housing projects, and the incinerator that was to go into a wealthier area, but fought against do to the burning of chemicals. There is also mentioning of people just dumping their "trash" in the streets, treating this area as a dump. Another argument that Kozol features here is  one against the common idea that the people in these areas got their on their own accord and must have done something wrong to be in such a circumstance. He shows this to be very fictitious when outlining the life of his good friend Mrs. Washington who has always tried to rise above but her skin color and origin have repetitively held her down, proving that it's not all drug addicts and people who have messed up. He also takes a look at the kids that grow up being bombarded with the images of suffering and violence, needing to grow up at such an early age. Those children have done nothing wrong to get stuck in these awful human dumping grounds.
      As a side note I was also curious about the part he mentioned about people handing out clean needles and I have heard about it, but never really looked into it, so I decided to see if R.I. does this at all. Instead I found a NY Times article that is contemporary to the Kozol piece and it tells how illegal giving needles to addicts is. It is very intersting.