48 pages • 1 hour read
Jonathan KozolSavage Inequalities
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Dan Ryan Expressway
One important symbol in Savage Inequalities is Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway. Built in the mid-20th century, the stated purpose of the expressway was a means to give those in the outer suburbs the ability to commute into the downtown area of the city. The expressway is large and imposing, and one of the most important elements of Chicago. Kozol highlights a more negative intention of the expressway—enacting the segregation and isolation of poorer, Black communities in Chicago. This secondary intention however, is difficult to prove directly, but becomes clear when examined in context with unofficial renting practices in the surrounding areas. The result is a picture of the kind of segregation Kozol wishes to highlight: seemingly innocuous on the surface, and for all intents and purposes, officially true, but in fact conceived and constructed in this way, in order to allay suspicion. Furthermore, because edifices like the Dan Ryan Expressway are as integral and indispensable to the city's architecture, they cannot be immediately changed or removed. In these respects, the Dan Ryan Expressway is a metaphor for the US educational system.
The Dan Ryan Expressway was not constructed to meet any explicitly segregationist demands, and the demands met by the city, in its construction of the expressway, do not make mention of racial concerns. What Kozol underscores in these kind of initiatives is the cooperation between governmental and non-governmental entities. In the case of the expressway, the desire of residents of the suburbs to live in de facto segregated communities at the time was achieved by the cooperation of the city and renters, who set aside spaces in the inner suburbs for Black residents while restricting renting or owning property for Black residents in outer suburbs.
Just as the expressway was designed as a means to make these goals of informal segregation viable, the education system is a means of making the same goals a reality in schooling. Kozol cites the resistance to redistribution and supplementary initiatives for distressed and underserved public schools in Illinois and other parts of the US, as well as the resistance to mandatory desegregation, to demonstrate how intractable these systems are. This separation of the city's residents into Black and white communities is as much fostered by indifference as it is by overt racial bigotry; this indifference is furnished by how these mechanisms operate: the expressway permits wealthier citizens to bypass and avoid poorer communities entirely, ultimately removing them from one's attention altogether. Eventually, this psychological separation dampens the feeling of collective responsibility and shared interest.
The objective purpose of the Expressway is to aid and facilitate movement; this object may also be applied to the school system. The construction of the expressway already demonstrates the readiness of the city to engage in costly and complicated measures to aid some of its residents' economic potential. However, in doing so, the city indirectly enables this same subgroup of citizens to bypass and outpace others. In effect, the object of this piece of city infrastructure is to enable one community to separate itself from another, and leave that community behind.
Bluffs and Bottoms
Another, broadly topographical symbol of Savage Inequalities is the dichotomy of "Bluffs" and “Bottoms” from Chapter 1's look at East St. Louis, Illinois The phrase describes two Illinois communities—the Bluffs, located atop the Mississippi River floodplain; and the Bottom, the eastern portion of the floodplain, where East St. Louis is located. For Kozol's argument, the topographical difference is not just a metaphor for separation, but illustrates a glaring class hierarchy. Critical to this is the implicit desire for residents of the wealthier communities on the Bluffs to perpetuate this hierarchy. Thus, the inequality between these communities has a purpose, one which creates an unequal relationship. Kozol describes this inequality as the underpinnings of a kind of caste system, one which the American educational system sustains. This system is achieved at least in part through the limitation of educational opportunities for those in lower socioeconomic classes.
An established point of Savage Inequalities is the informal separation of communities by class and race, perpetuated by difference in public schooling. However, the point illustrated with this symbol is how segregation does not preclude interdependence; in fact, Kozol's book illustrates how the economic and commercial of these segregated areas have adapted and at times contrived to designate opportunities for upper- and lower-class residents. Kozol's image of Bluffs and Bottoms, then, provides a necessary complication to the idea of segregation: Instead of the mental picture of communities that are entirely separate, we receive, instead, communities whose interactions are limited and even prescribed to the benefit of the wealthy, and the detriment of the poor.
This condition is important in considering the circumstances of New Jersey and San Antonio, with respect to how we can understand the relative proximity of the rich and poor communities in these areas. In New Jersey, the communities of Camden and Cherry Hill are only minutes away by car. However, between these communities is a large socioeconomic gap, illustrated by the inequality of their school systems; in effect, Camden is the “Bottoms” and Cherry Hill is the “Bluffs.” There are few businesses in Camden, and even fewer owned by natives of Camden. Instead, residents of Camden provide cheap labor in and to surrounding communities, Cherry Hill being one of these. Camden schools are more crowded and in greater disrepair, and provide fewer educational opportunities with which to affect present socioeconomics. Thus, the cycle repeats.
Ultimately, the image of Bluffs versus Bottoms that Kozol illustrates in Savage Inequalities goes to show how systems of inequality in education can sustain and worsen patterns of segregation. And while the "caste system" that Kozol claims is largely implicit, it cannot be denied that the limitation of educational opportunities worsens residents' chances for economic independence and upward mobility. From the Bottoms to the Bluffs is a difficult, if not impossible, climb, one made all the more difficult by the obstacles placed by those above. The school system is one such obstacle. What characterizes the hierarchies that ensue, in the place of economic opportunity, are toxic relationships of dependence, in which lower-class communities are interminably stuck.
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