wfn.org | Jonathan Kozol calls UCC Synod to action for social justice

[George Conklin <gconklin@wfn.org>]

United Church of Christ
Office of Communication
700 Prospect Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44115
contact: Barbara Powell
phone: 216-736-2222
email: powellb@ucc.org
http://www.ucc.org

Prize-winning author fights for kids

by William C. Winslow
        PROVIDENCE, RI - July 3, 1999 - Jonathan Kozol and Mario are pals.
Mario
is a precocious seven-year-old with the face of  a �light brown olive with a
smile painted on it.� The youngster lives in the South Bronx of New York City,
the poorest Congressional district in the nation, but don�t tell him. 
        �Welcome to my neighborhood, Mr. Rogers,� he beamed when Fred Rogers of
children�s television fame visited the mean streets.
        Mario, Jonathan Kozol told General Synod Saturday night, loves to be
sprinkled with holy water at St. Anne�s, a �safe� building, �especially when
he�s done something bad and wants God�s forgiveness.� 
        Kozol discovered the boy when he was doing research for his book
Amazing
Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. The only thing on
Mario�s mind when they met was how old his new friend was. Sixty.  Mario he
crossed himself -- Kozol could die at any minute.
        Mario �is one of the sweetest kids I�ve ever known,� confessed the
prize-winning author and social critic who first burst into the public
consciousness in 1964 with Death at an Early Age, a searing expose of a
fourth-grade public school in a low-income neighborhood in Boston. Little Mario
has never read the book, he�s never been in a school with white kids and he
doesn�t know that from the rooftop of his tenement he can�t see the Statue of
Liberty, only Rikers Island, the world�s largest penal colony. White kids are
only glimpsed on TV in Mario�s world.
        That�s a snapshot that bothers Kozol. A veteran of the civil rights
struggles of the 1960s, he laments the fact that all of his liberal friends
seemed to have developed ethical amnesia. �My rich liberal friends now look at
me like I want to redistribute their wealth, which I do,� he said as the Synod
audience applauded in approval.
        Jonathan Kozol then shifted gears to fill in Mario�s world with harsh
statistics. New York City spends about $6,000 a year to educate their Marios,
while a white boy in an affluent suburb like Greenwich, Conn. is allocated
$60,000.
        �I hate it when the business community looks at its own kids and sees
them as a future generation of physicians, businessmen, lawyers, but looks at
inner city kids as only entry level workers,� he said. 
        But his little friend, Mario, may be in for some big government money
after all. Ten years down the line, said Kozol, Mario -- in despair, with a
dead-end job or no job -- may commit some crime. �We�ll spend $6,000 to educate
this child, but $60,000 to incarcerate this ruined man.�  
        �What kind of society,� he demanded to know, �would ever spend 10 times
as much to penalize him as it would to bless him?�
        Kozol thinks social injustice is a matter of theology:  �Jesus
said, �If
you love me, feed my sheep.� He didn�t say only the sheep whose parents make
smart choices.�  And Kozol worries that some of the country�s clergy have also
turned a deaf ear to the plight of South Bronx Marios. 
        �It saddens me to see so many ministers and priests dodging the
issue of
desegregation,� he said. �They appease their congregants by taking a sack of
toys at Christmas to Mario and his friends. To me, that is sheer hypocrisy.�
        But there is hope. Nobody remembered Jonathan Kozol�s 60th birthday,
except Mario. He sent him a card.  
�I thank God for giving wise hearts to small children,� said the grateful,
no-longer-lonely man.