In 1993, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman - both 14 years old - reported for an NPR radio documentary on their community. The boys taped for ten days, walking listeners through their daily lives: to school, to a bus ride that takes them out of the ghetto, and to friends and family members in the community. The candor in Jones and Newman's diaries brought listeners face to face with a portrait of poverty its effects on childhood in one of Chicago's worst housing projects. Ghetto Life 101 (30 min audio) became one of the most acclaimed programs in public radio history, winning almost all of the major awards in American broadcasting, including: the Sigma Delta Chi Award, the Ohio State Award, the Livingston Award, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Awards for Excellence in Documentary Radio and Special Achievement in Radio Programming, and others. Ghetto Life 101 was also awarded the Prix Italia, Europe's oldest and most prestigious broadcasting award. It has been translated into a dozen languages and has been broadcast worldwide.
One year later, 1994, the young men reported on the death of 5-year old Eric Morse in the Ida B. Wells Housing Projects in a documentary entitled Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse (39 min audio). As the website Sound Portraits asserts, "They set out to learn about the story from the inside, to see how a tragedy like this can touch a community, and to bring to light the scars it left behind." This project won the Grand Prize Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Peabody Award in 1995.Listen to one or both of these radio documentaries.
Contrast them with the documentaries we've seen in class (Throwaway People, 30 Days) and Kozol's Amazing Grace. Most importantly, consider that the creators and narrators of this perspective on a Chicago South Side neighborhood are two actual residents - and two young boys at that. How is their perspective valuable in understanding the lived reality of this community? How would Kozol, journalists, social scientists or politicians describe the lives of LeAlan and Lloyd's families and friends? Where do you note discussion of "culture and structure" as related to issues of poverty and poor people?
2 comments:
The narration of Ghetto Life 101 by two young boys who actually live in one of Chicago’s South side neighborhoods, places an identity to the countless children who grow up in poor communities. A major difference between Kozol and this documentary is Kozol took visits to the New York neighborhood, he was able to leave and return refreshed and refueled. LeAlan and Lloyd fight for survival in the streets of Chicago everyday with no breaks. The young boys perspectives are extremely valuable in understanding this community and many others because It directly shows that families are essentially recycling through Ghetto neighborhoods.
Families that start out in the ghetto usually stay there, generation after generation with little to no change in living arrangements. LeAlan and Lloyd are two young boys who are forced into adulthood because they have to adapt and learn to survive the harsh realities around them. The parents of most of the children are dead, suffering from addictions, and mental illnesses. Grandparents are left to take care of the children. I think Kozol, journalists, social scientists or politicians would describe LeAlan and Lloyd’s family and friends as hurt people. They are the products of horrible living conditions and over population. The children are dying at young ages and having babies while their young. I think they would describe the family structure as deteriorating. The structure of the neighborhood and school are the main factors destroying these families. LeAlan did not mention anything about community centers, libraries or afterschool programs, his idea of fun was throwing rocks at cars. The neighborhoods mentioned in Throwaway and Kozol are all suffering from lack of funding and lacking foundation of structural programs.
This is a very intimate and unique perspective on poverty. It gives the listener a real inside view of what it is like to live in the ghetto. It puts a name to the face of poverty. These radio documentaries are more candid than Kozol and the other documentaries that we have seen in class because rather than being interviewed by someone else (like in Kozol’s Amazing Grace) the boys are revealing anything and everything they find to be important. This child-directed approach reveals aspects of life in the ghetto that would probably never be revealed otherwise. The boys are bold enough to ask tough questions that a person who is not as connected to the people in the neighborhood would be unable to ask; for example, they ask questions like: “Do you think you have been a good father?” and, “What do you think you will be doing in 10 years?”
Not only does this interview show aspects of life in the ghetto that we would not normally see, but it helps to also demonstrate how normal these children are in many ways (despite growing up in extreme poverty). This is much different from the other avenues of investigation we have used thus far in the class because these other documentaries seem to polarize the experiences of young people in the ghetto—making them seem to be so different from other children because of poverty. Though their lives are shaped very much by poverty, it is important to remember that these are children, just like those growing up in the suburbs, and people need to remember that in order to keep a perspective on the fact that these children deserve so much more from life than they are receiving.
In Remorse, the boys point out structural issues and how the story of Eric Morse made national news for a week or two, but soon after, it was forgotten about, just like all other similar incidents that occur every day in places like Ida B. Welles Housing Projects. When interviewing individuals who live in the projects, it is made apparent that the conditions of the projects is unlivable—a structural concern. If these people are not given adequate housing and adequate resources, if they feel as if they are only worthy of living in a place worthy of rats, than how are these people supposed to even find the motivation to try and pull themselves out of poverty? The structural issues have a huge impact on the cultural aspects of poverty. For example: several times people mention that they don’t have anything to do in the ghetto—the kids had nothing else to do, so they would go and steal etc. because they are bored. This is an example of a structural issue that is affecting the culture of the neighborhood. There are not after school programs, no organized activities, no places to play etc. so kids go out and get in to trouble, and this causes an increase in crime in the neighborhood and affects the attitudes and lives of the children who are engaging in this behavior.
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