LOOK AT UNDERCOVERED COMMUNITIES, KOZOL ASKS

Author who has spent years working in the poorest areas of New York tires of 'happy ghetto' stories and the 'sanitizing of reality' that characterizes much of today's news

So how many followed up on author Jonathan Kozol's gentle appeal? It came at the end of his talk - an emotional discussion on the children of the South Bronx's Mott Haven, an impoverished neighborhood, two-thirds Latino, the rest African-American. All are subjects of his latest book, "Amazing Grace," an account of his friendships over the course of two years with residents in a six-block area.

In Kozol's eyes, Mott Haven, like other poor, forgotten neighborhoods, is an undercovered community, one that many newspapers romanticize about in stories about survivors, about the ghetto bouncing back, not about normal-life situations: children living in filth or kids calling the hallway of apartment building "outside" because it is simply too dangerous for them to really go outside on the sidewalk and play.

That's why Kozol, who has spent decades writing about the plight of poor kids, asked you to look into Jessica's eyes on the cover of his book:

"Tonight, if you have a copy of my book and ... you're in a mood not to be clever, not to be urbane, not to be sophisticated, but just to be exposed to your own feelings - for a moment just look at the eyes of that little girl.

"I think those eyes can tell you something about decency, about integrity - grace, if you will - and certainly clarity of vision. But they also tell us something about danger because they look so piercingly into a future that's been imperiled for her by our actions and decisions."

"I was asked to come today and to a degree, criticize the way the press handles the neighborhoods that I've worked in for these 30 years."

Kozol didn't hold back.

He said editors and reporters have a tendency "to sweeten and romanticize our cruelty to children."

One example are recycled stories he has coined "happy ghetto stories": stories that are usually about "individuals who beat the odds, or a unique school in the ghetto which is somehow turning things around or a new block of renovated buildings."

"Some journalists I know think it's kind of a favor to the poor to write these kinds of stories, as if it's an act of kindness to say something nice about the ghetto for a change."

Kozol disagrees. "I don't think these stories speak to the poor in any case because they never read these stories." He said that the New York Times isn't even delivered to Mott Haven - a community only a few miles from the Times' offices (yet it is delivered to Kozol's parents home in Boston, hundreds of miles away.)

"It's not doing any favor to the poor. It's doing a favor for the rich. It's pacifying us," he said.

Newspapers write about "compassion fatigue" - a term he defined as "a kind of existential weariness that wealthy people feel at seeing so much poverty in front of them and not seeing anything get better." They don't write about people like many in his book who live in shelters or in buildings where tenants have to lug buckets of water seven flights up or share a single restroom with dwellers on the same floor.

Where are those voices, he asked, asking out loud how stories become stories.

"What is news? Who defines it?" Why are hemlines headlines, why is a new restaurant news, he wanted to know. "I think these kinds of stories - especially those in the lifestyle pages - do a lot more damage than some of my friends in journalism may believe. I think what's going on here is a kind of cultural deletion, a kind of sanitizing of reality."

Why are so many lives and deaths of youth ignored? Births go unnoticed. Marriages aren't reported in the social pages. And when Mott Haven residents die, they probably won't get any obituaries..

That's why Kozol ended his book with 24 death notices: the children and young people of the poorest part of the poorest congressional district in America.

Maybe, that's why he asked you to look into Jessica's eyes - eyes that seem to ask "Do you see me as somebody of real human value or am I superfluous?"

But the question Kozol wonders about most is "whether this nation plans to bless the children. That's the question that has not been answered. Not by our government. Not by our politicians. And not by our daily press. I hope that some of you will have a chance to give an answer."

Quintanilla is a feature writer for the Los Angeles Times.