Word: ghettos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
School Food Programs: In 1968 the bulk of school lunch programs were concentrated in suburban school districts. The suburban districts needed the programs less than poor ghetto and rural districts, but they had the money to set up the facilities. Since 1968, a good deal of money has been allocated nationally to establish food service facilities in the poorest school districts, so there is now a much greater potential for reaching the most needy children with free or reduced-price meals. (The remaining problem concerns the palatability of the food, a problem which Nutrition is now working on.) Also, since...
...politics to write the bill in a way which precludes it from reaching the neediest eligible participants. Preference for funding would go to organizations with volunteer labor. Such organizations are much more prevalent in middle- and upper-income areas, where people can afford to volunteer their time. In ghetto areas, few people have time to volunteer, and few suburbanites are willing to volunteer for ghetto work. Yet ghettos are the areas where needs for the program are greatest...
...daughter, will never be part of the city's black community because she alone is from the middle class; but she won't be part of the white middle class either, and so will always be alone in her grand, dark house. Morrison has written a story of a ghetto, where three generations of characters must learn, somehow, to deal with racism, while they live their own lives...
EACH OF THE CHARACTERS in Song of Solomon has his own burden, some trauma from which he must free himself if finally, he is to move beyond the mental confines of the ghetto. Only Milkman's aunt Pilate is free. She was odd from birth--she never had the choice of conforming, because she has no navel, no connection to even family. She is eccentric, living outside respectability with her daughter and her daughter's daughter, off the proceeds of her homemade wine. Pilate, in her unkempt and mystical way, is not bound by the conventions that trap ordinary people...
Morrison leaves us without resolution of the problems her characters face. Freedom from the urban ghetto, where life is dominated by discrimination and where one can only fight back with wit or violence, means leaving the comprehensible world. Both Pilate and finally Milkman have left the earth: they are off in a world that is inaccessible. Song of Solomon opened with the attempted flight of a lonely insurance salesman, off the roof of No Mercy Hospital; his failure is not a good omen for Milkman's flight. But the attempt, Morrison suggests, is the important thing. Milkman must decide between...