Displacement, or “diss-placement” has adverse effects on entire communities and ultimately the individual. Although public planners usually act on the aesthetics of communities, the well-being of families and individuals are often overlooked. While overcoming this barrier may seem impossible on a municipal level, Fullilove mentions a model project that was able to demonstrate the importance of housing rehabilitation, housing cooperatives, and social services for families that have been recently uprooted and strengthened the “village-within-the-city.” In modern day Newark, the main hospital and medical school’s efforts to conduct community outreach has essentially integrated the institution into the surrounding community.Root shock can be sympathetic and humane if the means to facilitate a new neighborhood with a sense of unity are provided. Still, is this end justified by the means by which it was achieved?

What struck me the most was that they compared losing their house to losing their own skin. “Without replacement, of a house should be considered a “third – degree burn.” The number of blocks with third -degree burns, divided by the total number of blocks, gives the Community Burn Index.” When I read this, it was like ouch. I think the term Community Burn Index really shows how deeply affected they were and how this damaged their social life. It wasn’t only one person that was affected but rather it felt like their whole neighborhood had been set on fire and taken away from them. They were no longer able to be together and it’s sad how many of them said that they were no longer family anymore because they were now from another part of town. They now consider those that used to be close to them ‘strangers’. Through all this though, it was nice that there were people who were willing to try and help them move on. They tried to reach out to those who were affected and get them to talk about their current life, to make sure they were adjusting properly. I however also found it sad that we’re expected to try and reach this state of normalcy is fast as possible in order to move on with our lives. Even if things may seem “normal” again, the situation is something that has changed their lives forever and something they will never forget. For example when they bring up 9/11, I personally wasn’t affected but it’s an event that has changed our city and even our country forever. The memory of it still lies deep within us and it’s sad that so many people have to live with the memory of their homes being taken away from them

As I read about her perspective on the 9/11 tragedy, I felt a close connection, and I found myself trying to remember what happened that day. I remember being in 3rd grade, and I remember a little of the shock that the teachers showed when they heard the announcements. I remember the announcements made on the PA system by the principal, and how he sounded so serious, while he usually is a very relaxed person. I remember being dismissed from school early, and waiting for my mom to show up. I remember the fear on her face as she ushered my sisters and I into the car and took us home. I remember trying to watch it on TV, but the TV was full of static. I remember a lot of the small details. I just can’t seem to remember feeling any fear. As a child, I was observant of many things, but I couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of this event.

I speak of what I remember because I wish to ask, throughout this book, we see countless stories of people who have definitely encountered root shock. I only wonder if there is a similar syndrome faced by the younger children of these families, a situation where the children couldn’t comprehend what was happening but were still affected in some way. Throughout the book, the stories are about people who understood, even to an extent, what was happening. What about the children who couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening? What happened to them?

The first six chapters we read focused on what rootshock was and all of its negatives. We mentioned in class how rootshock can severely traumatize people, as they are being asked to move away from something they were raised with. However, chapter 7 attempts to shed a ray of hope into the idea of urban renewal. While it is extremely unjust that urban renewal happens mainly in Black communities, it is important to always cling onto hope. Some of these people needed a new beginning. Urban renewal presented them with the opportunity to start fresh and build an entirely different life.

However, the effects of being forcefully moved from the place where one grew up, will never truly fade. This, in conjunction with the escalating racism and outright discriminatory behavior by the whites toward the blacks, fueled the inevitable rise of people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. These people served as beacons of hope to all the blacks who were forced out of their communities. These two prominent figures, particularly MLK, fought for what he knew was right. As soon as one person steps up and takes the mantle, then everybody else will quickly follow. This is exactly what happened, as blacks from everywhere, realizing the unjust situation they are in and clinging onto the hope that things will get better some day, rallied behind these leaders and fought for themselves.

Rootshock can also be caused by factors other than urban renewal. For example, the tragic event of 9/11 completely traumatized all New Yorkers. The Twin Towers were part of our heritage; it was a part of the city. When this building was gone in the blink of an eye, all of New York, regardless of whether you lived in Manhattan or not, was brought to a traumatic standstill. However, once again, hope presided and now we are nearly finished with the project of building a new skyscraper, which honors the memory of the fallen towers.

Here Fullilove talked about different organizations that can add in rebuilding a city after some type of insurrection. The two types were community based organizations and neighborhood based organizations. The community cased is more effective but my question was why is it so? There seemed to be a lot of different programs in place to rebuild a city such as housing programs, setting up schools, and setting up hospitals. I wonder how long it really takes to get a city to “going” again.

Some people were happy to be leaving their current place because it would have better living conditions. Sala Udin was sad that she was leaving old friends but happy because there were better facilities. Through all of this, African Americans still had to face racism and during this time people like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X came up, giving a voice to black in the US. These people helped strive for rights and better conditions for African Americans and those of color.

I thought this question was a jarring contrast to Fullilove’s classification of root shock as a “Community Burn Index” of sorts.  I first read her analysis as a purely empirical, from her perspective of a curious psychologist rather than a concerned one.  I appreciated how sensitive she was to the emotional state of the community members and how they viewed the situation.  This, along with her journey with Cantal-Dupart, demonstrates her commitment to preserving the spirit of the community, and making upgrades of what exists rather than starting from scratch.

I was especially interested in Cantal-Dupart’s ideas about aesthetic beauty in public space.  As Fullilove explains, the insider and outsider perspectives both have their biases. It takes a truly committed observer, an artist and healer of sorts to see neighborhoods for both what they are and what they can be to the people that live there, for what is truly beneficial and familiar to its roots.  It takes a combination of the well-informed resident and the well-meaning onlooker to make wise decisions for preserving a community and its members.

Even with tragic events like 9/11, citizens have the chance to find the beauty in the rubble, the possibilities in what has been lost.  So long as there is a commitment to preserving the presence of the people who have lived, worked, and make connection there, a community will remain very much alive.

The question is: how is a community to reach consensus on what is to be done?

-Jacqui Larsen

When reading Fullilove’s proposal for education in the digital world from pages 228 to 232, I wondered why she proposed that schools should be extended in both the number of hours and the amount of days that students spend. At first, I thought she proposed this in order to give African-Americans certain skills needed for the workplace, such as trade school, but since she stresses the need for a college degree in order to someday elevate the student’s social class, trade schools couldn’t be the reason. Perhaps Fullilove proposed that children needed to be kept in school longer in order to keep them away from their possibly fractured home life. If that is true, it may explain why she prefers a longer school session instead of the policy where schools teach one half of a curriculum and parents teach the other. I find that hard to believe when there are students who did not learn English as a first language, but outperform many of their peers in school.

Not only that, but in order to learn in the digital world, students need to be actively engaged with the increased amount of stimulation available to the everyday citizen such as video games and social media. If one extends the time in school without changing the way school is taught, then it is the system that is flawed and not the student or race. I wonder what would happen if individuals took a more holistic structure of school instead of the one that exists in many public schools today.

Games can be used as a bridge to create more engaging educational environments that is very different from way individuals are currently used to. For instance, Quest to Learn is a public charter school founded in 2009 which is located in New York City for students grades 6^th to 12^th and is the first game based school in the world. Their student body consists of 26% Black and 29% Hispanic. This school operates on a method of points and levels instead of numbers that will eventually lead to an average number or a letter grade. Instead of assignments as homework, Quest to Learn uses quests with objectives in order to learn points and experience. The main difference between these two systems is that instead of a traditional bell curve for students, all students at Quest to Learn have an equal opportunity to “level up” into a level that equates into an A. This because instead traditional exams that average up, failing a quest does not damage an average at Quest to Learn. The student who fails a quest would simply have to complete more quests in order to level up to the highest level they can get. This decreases competitiveness as well as pressure, which in some cases can prove detrimental to a student’s development. There are also elements that occur in video games at the school. In fact, the school also has a “boss level” system where students work together in order to accomplish a task. With Quest to Learn’s ability to create a school that is engaging and encouraging to the students it will be interesting to see how different they are compared to the rest of their peers when they graduate and move onto college in 2016.

Although I agree with Fullilove’s statement that there should be a form of community in school, such communities should be achieved though Quest to Learn’s system where students can interact in school and complete assignments both physically and digitally. Or else, how can you educate individuals for the digital world with an analog modality.

One of the core themes that seems to be present through out the entire novel deals with communities rebuilding after an overriding separation. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences in how the communities in Pittsburgh, Newark, and Roanoke reacted to urbanization. One of major points, that some of my classmates pointed out as well, is that there seems to be a loss of community between the members of the former community. This seems like a very odd point because it is pointed out that some members of the communities experience a healing process through a “re-enactment” of their former living space. It would seem logical that people would try to be even closer to each other in order to hold on to whatever remnant they may have of their former community Throughout history, we have seen diasporas of many ethnical groups such as Jewish diasporas and Latino diasporas. Now, these can serve as a sort of analogy to root shock because in essence a large wave of people was displaced from their homeland via an outside force. However, many ethnic groups in our present society still form a tightly knit community and have a strong sense of relationship amongst each other. It seems that members of these groups can relate to each other and form a sort of intangible bond.

Why do members of diasporas seem to have a strong sense of community yet, according to Fullilove, members of uprooted communities seem to have a “weak” sense of community?

“When all the fancy rhetoric about ‘blight’ is stripped away, American urban renewal was a response to the question, ‘The poor are always with us, but do we have to see them everyday?’  The problem the planners tackled was not how to undo poverty. but how to hide the poor” (197).  I never really thought about New York City hides its poor before.  Yes, Time Square is famous for its skyscrapers.  Tourists admire the tall buildings and bright lights.  New York is the city that never sleeps.  But I never thought about poverty in New York as an “ugly secret.”  When you go anywhere in the city, you often find homeless people on the streets or in the subway.  There is poverty everywhere.  Still, most people tend to ignore them if they can.  I never thought that the city actively tries to hide the poor because I always thought that most people just ignore them in the first place.  This made me wonder: people constantly talk about helping the poor, but few people ever really do that.  Why?

Through the first 9 chapters of Root Shock, I’ve had trouble relating to the concepts addressed. I guess I’ve been waiting for the anecdote that got to me.

The realization on the power of root shock, as well as the balance of social classes, occurred for me when Fullilove addressed New York. Her firsthand account of the events on September 11th in conjunction with the information she presented up to this point revealed how doesn’t only occur to victims of urban renewal etc.

So, how did 9/11 uproot you or your family, if at all, and how did it affect your identity as a New Yorker?