Homeless what do we think when we hear that word? Some of think I feel bad for them, they are disgusting, or they need to go. Kozol takes us on an emotional journey as we read his essay. Kozol first starts in the perspective of he homeless people and we start to feel pity for them, but it doesn't really start until we realize how they are treated. Kozol then takes us into the perspective of people who have jobs, people who have families, and people who have homes with warmth to go back into. Kozol tells us how those people treat them and what they do to the homeless to get rid of them it's terrible and awful and then you wonder how a human could be so discriminent against people.
Kozol says that the homeless is kind of like the rejected waste of scociety. Think about it, if we throw a peice of trash away we don't think about where it will go it's just gone from our minds and we don't have to worry about it anymore. That's kind of like the homeless we build homeless shelters or we just try and take care of the problem by putting them in jail or ridding them of their 'homes'. They leave our minds for awhile but the homeless always keep coming back. So we try and get rid of them using worse and worse tactics but they just keep coming back, just like the trash. It is always there and it just keeps coming and coming and it never stops. Thats what I think Kozol is saying when he says that.
As we keep trying to get rid of them we start to hate them and think of them as annoyances that have to be thrown away; we start to scorn them. We scorn them so that they know they aren't wanted and we are angry at them. Anger is a secondary emotion which means there is a primary emotion connected to it and I believe that primary emotion in this case is fear. It may be because we are afraid of the diseases they carry or that they are just pretending to be homeless or that maybe they became homeless due to lack of funds and they don't try to get a job. But I think what scares us the most is they might steal from us or it might be that it's a reminder of what could happen to good people too. They might lose their job and become homeless also. So if they get rid of the homeless then it means there is no possiblity of becoming homeless.
Kozol has a way of writing that definitely moves our emotions because he gets us thinking about how this situation could be better treated and how we as people need to be more understanding. Through this paper as we read it we can connect to it emotionally and if Kozol didn't write his paper like that we wouldn't think about how awful we can be toward humans. At the end of his paper he leaves with an incomplete ending pretty much saying that we have the choice to end it however way we want. We can keep going the way we are going or we can try and understand.
Our attitudes toward the poor and our attitudes toward the homeless are awful we have pity for them, but is that enough? Will that really help them? We think oh it's their fault that they are there but I think they already know that. I think most of them realize the mistakes that they've made but they can't or they don't know how to go back. Our attitudes affect this. All they need is jobs. I'm sure 90% of them are willing to get a job but they've just lost all hope because maybe they've tried and tried and they just don't see any reason for it anymore. We could help them get back on their feet whether it's driving them somewhere or helping them get a job, but then at the same time I get where the middle class or the upper class are coming from. They are disgusting. What if they get me sick? What if they steal from me? What if..? What if...? There's too many what if's. It depends on you it depends on if you are willing to take that risk or not.
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