Kozol Poverty's Children Analysis

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In Kozol’s “Poverty’s Children,” he talks about one of the poorest communities in America, Mott Haven which is located in the South Bronx. Throughout his article, he brings up issues that the community has to face. The issues range from homelessness, disease, drugs, and gang related violence, and environmental issues. Each political philosophy that I learned about will view these problems in different ways. Six philosophies that I will use to explain the situation will be utilitarianism, libertarianism, liberal contractarianism, communitarianism, moral conservatism, and deliberative democracy. The most prevalent issues that Kozol talks about in his article, is the relocation of the poor and the homeless. He tells of how people who once lived…show more content…
Moral conservatism believes that people have natural tendencies to behave in an antisocial way, so it is up to the state to provide religious training and traditional practices to maintain the social well-being. The majority of people who live in Mott Haven are broken families, because of all the issues. Which means that if poor families were to be relocated, they may end up as a broken family. Moral conservatism would be against the relocations because of this reason they do not want the family to be broken up and would try to prevent it from falling apart. In the article, there is a section talks about how women within the community become infuriated with the phrase broken family structure. The women in this community are more concerned with keeping themselves and their children alive, than they are with their marriage. These women would rather spend time with their children than being in a relationship with a man that knows he is a failure and brings negative energy to the family. One of the priests that Kozol spoke to told him that, of course the family structure would break in a place like the south Bronx, where everything breaks from pipes to hearts, so it only makes sense that the family would break too. Moral conservatives would never want to add family’s to this community for the chance of it being…show more content…
Deliberative democracy takes place when state laws are influenced by the voices of the citizens. If citizens of New York City voiced their opinions about relocating, the homeless or the poor, deliberative democracy would not mind the replacing of these people. The downfall of this is that no one really knows how bad it is in Mott Haven besides those who live there and the people they tell their story too. When Kozol is talking to Mrs. Washington he asks her if she hates people asking her questions and she says no because it gets her story out there. She mentions that she has told reporters everything she knows in hopes of change and help, but it never came. In another section of his articles, it states that the problems in Mott Haven are overlooked and that newspapers do not even talk about it. With people being under educated with the issues in Mott Haven, it is hard to make a well-informed opinion and to influence legislation in a positive way. Some rich people do not care and just wish to make their community better by getting rid of the poor and the homeless. Through deliberative democracy, the rich can make the city relocate its poor and homeless to another area that is fit for
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