Savage Inequalities Analysis

As Kozol writes in Savage Inequalities. “The difference in spending between very wealthy suburbs and poor cities is not always as extreme as this in Illinois”(66). Throughout the years there has been an extreme problem with poverty in East St. Louis especially in the lower part where proximately african american people live. In East St.Louis there is a fine that separates the poor and the wealthy and each stay in there own lane. In north of East St Louis where predominately white people there no problem. Most people are living their happy lives and sending their kids to some of the state of the art private while a little bit across the bridge there is african american people struggling to find jobs because of the lack of resources. Most of

Louis were predominantly black people live suffer from lack of jobs which then makes people rob and steal for what they need to survive. There is a list of problems that can be named about East St. Louis but one main problem is there air pollution from these chemical plants. As kozol writes in Savages Inequality “The city, which by night and day is clouded by the fumes that pour from vents and smokestacks at the Pfizer and Monsanto chemical plants, has one of the highest rates of child asthma in America”(9-10). The tremendous effect that these chemical plants have on people is horrible and life threatening. Another problem at East St Louis has is there sewer problem which is flowing from collapsed pipes and dysfunctional stations, has also flooded basements all over the city. Which means that some homes are unsanitary and unlivable due to sewage backup in there homes. You would think that most people would complain but as Kozol writes “In 1989 the mayor announced that he might need to sell the city hall in court judgment to a creditor. East St. Louis is mortgaged into the next century but has the highest property-tax rate in the state. So as you see there is no structure and no city

There were fights, vandalism of property mainly in the school of “Martin Luther King Junior High School”. There teachers being laid off because the school didn 't have enough money to fund the teachers. The sewage backup, caused by the failure of two pumping stations forces officials at the high school to shut down the furnaces. Even there sports. For example there football field was missing everything. The school was so broke that when the head coach would go and wash jerseys he would have to go to a laundromat with a bag full of quarters. Another problem about the jerseys was that there were ripping and the coach couldn 't afford to buy new ones so he would have to use tape and other material to keep the jerseys together. When school would go and play Martin Luther King High most school don 't want to have a halftime they just want to continue to play so the they can leave. This just to show how poor that school was. Growing up in the type of environment you would how would you been able to break the statistic of being a highschool dropout and later going to jail or dead in the street. One of the most interesting idea that comes to mind is how these kids grown up and end up in this situation. It all starts when the kids are in kindergarten. They aren 't really able to see that they are getting the bad end of the stick and the danger around them. The kids tend to start seeing the real world around the