There Are No Children Here - A Reason to Hope
The West side of Chicago, Harlem, Watts, Roxbury, and Detroit. What do all of these areas have in common? These areas, along with many others have become mine fields for the explosive issues of race, values, and community responsibility, led by the plight of the urban underclass. Issues such as violent crime, social separation, welfare dependence, drug wars, and unemployment all play a major role in the plight of American inner-city life. Alex Kotlowitz's book: There Are No Children Here, confronts America's devastated urban life; a most painful issue in America. Kotlowitz traces the lives of two black boys; 10 year old LaFayette, and 7 year old Pharoah, as they struggle to beat the odds growing up in one of Chicago's worst housing projects. Their family includes a welfare dependent mother, an alcholic-drug using father, an older sister, an older brother, and younger triplets. Kotlowoitz describes the horrors of an ill-maintained housing project completely taken over by gangs, where murders and shootings are an everyday thing. Kotlowitz does a fine job at portraying ghetto life; those who are outside the American dream. He succeeds at putting a face on th people trapped inside the housing projects with virtually no hope of escape. One can truly feel a sense of great loss for the family, and a great deal of hope for the two young boys. You can truly feel yourself hoping that things will work out for them, and you can really feel like you know these young men on a personal basis. Kotlowotz spent a great deal of time with the boys so he could portray the world from the eyes of a child growing up in the ghetto, and he does an amazing job.
All through their lives Pharoah and LaFayette are surrounded by violence and poverty. Their neighborhood had no banks, no public libraries no movie theatres, no skating rinks or bowling allies. Drug abuse was so rampant that the drug lords literally kept shop in an abondoned building in the progjects, and shooting was everywhere. Also, there were no drug rehabilitation programs or centers to help combat the problem. Police feared going into the ghetto out of a fear for their own safety. The book follows Pharoah and LaFayette over a two year period in which they struggle with school, attempt to resist the lure of gangs, mourn the death of close friends, and still find the courage to search for a quiet inner peace, that most people take for granted.
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Show MoreCurrently there are about 600,000 people who live in the South Bronx and about 434,000 who live in Washington Heights and Harlem. This area makes up one of the most racially segregated areas of poor people in the United States. In this book we focus on racially segregated areas of poor people in the United States. In this book we focus on Mott Haven, a place where 48,0000 of the poorest people in the South Bronx live. Two thirds of the people are Hispanic, one-third is black and thirty-five percent are children. There are nearly four thousand heroin users, and one-fourth of the women who are tested are positive for HIV. All of this, and much more in one little area of the South Bronx. In the middle of all this chaos and confusion are children. Children who have daily drills on what to do if gunshots are heard, children who know someone who has died of AIDS, children who have seen someone been shot right in front of their face wondering if its their father, children who long to be sanitation workers, and children who die everyday. The lives of these children almost seem lost with depression, drugs, and death all around them.
On January 30th, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York a boy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born. He was son of James and Sara Roosevelt. From a young age his family had given him the education he needed to make for the next step in entering a private school called Groton, which was located in Massachusetts. It was then at Groton where he had listened to a speech by one of his distant cousins Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin had looked up to him and was very influential in his political career. At Groton Franklin was not a standout student nor was he an athlete. Although that did not stop him from attending Harvard University in 1900.
Boyz in the Hood is a statement of how urban youth have been passed a legacy of tragic indifference, and the writer has shown that it is an almost inescapable fate for those born into racism and poverty to repeat the patterns they wish to escape. The movie’s characters are clear representations of how the system fails young black youth in the United States, and the difference one mentor can make for these kids. During segregation young black children became targets for white brutality. This movie reflects what the European mentality and what it has done to the African American culture.
...are inadequately being taken care of. Consequently, there is the possibility that America’s poor children will grow up in a socially disorganized neighborhood, and ultimately they will be exposed to violence. As they grow up, they will attach meaning to the surroundings and people around them, and depending on the resource in their life they will eventually become molded.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, in the city of New Yord, on the 30th of January 1882. He was son to Sara Delano Roosevelt and James Rooosevelt. Like other American children from rich families, the young Roosevelt was tutored by private tutors and went tot he private schools. After receiving his earlier education this way, in his home city of hyde park, the 14 year old Roosevelt left his home for Boston, Massachusetts where he started attending Groton School. Following his graduation from Groton School, Roosevelt enrolled in Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachuseets. This was in 1900. After graduating from Harvard University, Roosevelt joined Columbia Univeristy, New York for his two year degree in law. In addition to his academic qualifications, Roosevelt served in a number of positions before ascending to presidency in 1933. For instance, Roosevelt worked as a state senator, for New Yor, as well as, as a lawyer. Franklin Roosevelt married Anna Elanor in 1905, at a wedding attending by President Theordor Roose...
...pe it needed to revive itself by delivering prompt and vigorous action. Roosevelt held office during two of the greatest crises ever faced by the United States: the Great Depression of the 1930s, followed by World War II. His domestic program, known as the New Deal, introduced far-reaching reforms within the free enterprise system and gave people a new perspective on government. FDR rallied the country after the near disaster of Pearl Harbor, mobilizing over ten million troops. His military and diplomatic skill as the Commander in Chief during World War II, won him an award in the hearts of many Americans. Both in peacetime and in war, his impact on the office of president was enormous, making him one of the most influential leaders in US history.
There are No Children Here; by Alex Kotlowitz is a story about two brothers and their mother, Pharaoh, Lafayette and LaJoe Rivers and them growing up in the late 1980's in the (HHH) Henry Horner Homes, a housing project in Chicago. In the story the boys try to retain their youthfulness while they see constant gang violence, death of people close to them and their brother is in jail and their dad is struggling with drug addiction.
Geoffrey Canada gives his readers a rare opportunity to look inside the life of a ghetto kid and what they have to go through just to survive. He also provides answers to the many questions asked of why certain things happen the way they do in the Bronx. He used his childhood experiences and turned them into a unique tool when helping the youth of today. Now that he works as a youth councilor he sees that the problem in the slums has gotten dramatically worse with the emergence of guns. It used to be about pride and status, now any thug with a gun can be feared in the community. This, to Canada is a major problem because guns gives kids a sense of power, a strong feeling that is often abused and results in someone, even an innocent person dead.
An honor code can affect students’ behavior positively by the student knowing between what is right and what is wrong; that builds a principle that student will follow for the rest of their life. Honor codes reduce the amount of cheating that is occurred in classrooms, this is very beneficial since cheating is looked at very negatively since it is a very dishonest way of showing your knowledge. Also, if a student has cheated their whole way through high school, their life would be much more difficult. An honor code not only gives a school a better name, but it also shows that the kids that come out of the school are honest and hard workers. We need honest hard workers for several important jobs, such as a doctor, etc. If people were cheating and did not learn what they were supposed to know for this job, that can become very harmful. An honor code is necessary to make the world a better
males dealing with family, sexuality and the harsh reality of living in the urban ghetto. Young
The children in this book at times seem wise beyond their years. They are exposed to difficult issues that force them to grow up very quickly. Almost all of the struggles that the children face stem from the root problem of intense poverty. In Mott Haven, the typical family yearly income is about $10,000, "trying to sustain" is how the mothers generally express their situation. Kozol reports "All are very poor; statistics tell us that they are the poorest children in New York." (Kozol 4). The symptoms of the kind of poverty described are apparent in elevated crime rates, the absence of health care and the lack of funding for education.
Starting off the discussion we will start with chapter one. Chapter one is about Decent and street families. Decent families are families who live by society’s norms and try to avoid violence, drugs, confrontation, whereas street families embrace violence and fear because it is a way to stay alive within their neighborhoods. In the chapter they discuss how many families in the inner city actually have the decent family values, but can also harbor the street values. For example in the chapter they actually discussed an instance where Marge a women they had interviewed had a problem with others in her neighborhood. Her story s...
Michael MacDonald’S All Souls is a heart wrenching insider account of growing up in Old Country housing projects located in the south of Boston, also known as Southie to the locals. The memoir takes the reader deep inside the world of Southie through the eyes of MacDonald. MacDonald was one of 11 children to grow up and deal with the many tribulations of Southie, Boston. Southie is characterized by high levels of crime, racism, and violence; all things that fall under the category of social problem. Social problems can be defined as “societal induced conditions that harms any segment of the population. Social problems are also related to acts and conditions that violate the norms and values found in society” (Long). The social problems that are present in Southie are the very reasons why the living conditions are so bad as well as why Southie is considered one of the poorest towns in Boston. Macdonald’s along with his family have to overcome the presence of crime, racism, and violence in order to survive in the town they consider the best place in the world.
Boyz N the Hood was a film created to convey an anti-gang message as well as to provide societal members an in-depth look at life in “the hood” so he or she can expand their culturally awareness of identifying societal issues (Stevenson, 1991). Upon the debut of “Boyz N the Hood” violence erupted at theaters across the nation, resulting in multiple shows pulling the film from scheduled showings to alleviate future violent behaviors (Stevenson, 1991). The film profoundly illustrates the realty of the events revealed within the storyline that frequently occur on a daily basis within every impoverish community; however, is overlooked by the individuals who are not directly involved and or affected (Leon-Guerrero, 2016) Children of lower socioeconomic status often are raised in ghetto neighborhoods where they often witness, crime, violence, gang activity, abuse, and drugs (Leon-Guerrero, 2016). Ghetto communities envelop tumultuous cycles of violence and substance abuse creating a pervasive occurrence within the residents of the community. This is prevalent in lower developed communities that unfortunately many children and the youth populace indirectly inherit and sadly conform to, as there are no other means to an end for them (Leon-Guerrero,
In There are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz, the way of life in Chicago's Henry Horner projects has a profound effect on all the residents who live there. The children become desensitized by the constant violence that they are forced to witness every day. Children are forced to walk home from school through the urban war zone of these housing projects. It is not unusual for the children to run home from school to avoid becoming casualties of the ongoing battle between rival gangs. The violence has affected Lafeyette and Pharaoh as much as anyone in the projects.