1.) "The Number 6 train from Manhattan to the South Bronx makes nine stops in the 18-minute ride between East 59th Street and Brook Avenue. When you enter the train, you are in the seventh richest congressional district in the nation. When you leave you are in the poorest.....In 1991, the median household income of the area, according to the New York Times, was $7,600."
This whole first paragraph was tough to read because there is an 18 minute ride between these two areas, when they are in the same state and you can have that diverse amount of wealth distributed between one state. How the median household income could be as low at 7,600 dollars. This is probably families that need to support themselves and children and they are only making that amount of money. The 7th richest district in the nation and they cannot do anything to help out with the 18 minute distance of their fellow poor community.
2.) "Next to another vacant lot, where someone has dumped a heap of auto tires and some rusted auto parts he points to a hypodermic needle in the tangled grass and to the bright-colored caps of crack containers, then for no reason that I can discern, starts puffing up his cheeks and blowing out the air."
I believe that he was puffing up his cheeks and blowing out the air in distaste of what the world is coming turning to. How the poor community instead of reaching out for help is turning to these substances and other methods to cope with. In a vacant lot they are finding the needles in with old auto tires. This is out in the public for children to get ahold of. This is why there are problems in the poor area because this crack is available to anybody.
3.) "If poor people behaved rationally, says Lawrence Mead, a professor of political science at New York University, they would seldom be poor for long in the first place, many social scientists today appear to hold this point of view and argue that the largest portion of the suffering poor people undergo has to be blamed upon their own behaviors a word they tend to pluralize."
I believe this is true in some ways but if they were given the help they needed by some of the richer citizens they would be better off. Instead they downgrade themselves because they have nobody to turn to in some cases and instead of getting jobs and taking care of their children they resort to drugs and other things. If they made a case for themselves and stood up for themselves they would have a better stand on things instead of just letting all of this happen over their heads and do nothing about it.
