Me opening the link to Kozol's "The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation and getting ready to create another superior blog post:
Me: A little longer than I was hoping for but okay..."
Kozol: Describes a neighborhood full of violence, drugs, hunger, and disease
Me: Wow... It really makes me think about how lucky I am. The Johnson reading was right, we always are so aware of what we don't have that we become blind to what we do have. I have only ever been consciously aware and surrounded by one of two types of people. The first being those who grew up in my neighborhood or similar ones. In elementary and middle school everyone was pretty much equal. We all got free lunch, we all lived in neighborhoods that were falling apart and where bad things happen (Example), nobody batted an eye if you said you spent your Sunday morning/afternoon in line at the food pantry, it was all normal. But going into high school and college was so different. On my first day of freshman year (high school) we went around the room and said what we did this summer and I had two thoughts: 1: "Whoa I have never seen so many white people in one spot" and 2: "Oh my god I think I'm poor, these kids traveled internationally and did all these cool things wow what do I do? Should I lie??" Being in that bubble made me think that I was at the bottom. But I'm not. Also that part of the discussion we had after the egg drop thing where we mentioned that you can't truly understand things unless you see them or experience them is so true. I know that I just read about this neighborhood and how dangerous it is but it still doesn't seem real to me... Maybe I am a part of the problem
Cliffie: "I saw a boy get shot in the head right over there... Would you like a chocolate chip cookie?"
Me:
Kozol: "Then we get illegal dumpers. People who don't live here come and dump things they don't want."
Me: *Thinks about all the stolen cars and car parts, discarded furniture, litter (everything from wrappers, mail, food, to used diapers), and genuinely anything else you can think of that has been dumped onto my street.
Kozol: "There's a whole world out there if you know it's there, if you can see it. But they're in a cage. They cannot see"
Me: It is so easy to feel trapped. Everywhere I go, I see it. I see people who sit around outside all day just drinking, not really striving for anything. It would be so easy and simple if I just thought that they were just "losers" or something but it isn't simple. Maybe they just really don't think that there is anything else that they can do.
Me after finishing the article and getting back to my life and my ignorance and denial of the world's problems:
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