Lessons From Down Under

  Lessons From Down Under was intently informative on the ways African Americans attained literacy in the Civil Rights Era, compared to Bessie House- Soremekum. While I was reading the story of Soremekum I found parallels in her life that reflected in mine. “Lines of strict blood lineage were of blurred as my aunt treated me as if she were my mother.” (60) I began to laugh as I read this quote, for when I was growing up there was no real distinction with discipline; my aunt and grandmother acted as if they were my mother at times.  I hated this growing up but, as I look at it now I view it as a informal literacy of treating everybody equal. Another incident in Soremkum life brought up a moment in my life. “I made the decision, during my fourth-grade year in school that I wanted to obtain the highest degree awarded in academia.” (63) After reading this quote I saw myself when I had made the exact same vow upon my life at an early age. Seeing the parallels in my life with the author made this reading informative about the types of literacies with a pathos appeal.

One thing that appealed to me throughout the reading is how Soremekum used her life experiences to tie back into her meaning of the work. When the author talked about how she “learned everything about succeeding in life” from her great-grandmother storytelling I saw this fact resembling in African American families across the country. There is nothing like a great-grandmother storytelling for they are enriched with history and grand opportunities. Soremekum asserted her passion behind formal literacy with race rules as she expressed how her great-grandmother was not given the respect of her name when whites approached her. In her assertion I gained insight and a scholarly perspective in the account on “separate but not equal.”

Don't Use Your Temporary Crutches Forever.

This week’s reading was a chapter called “Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats” inside of The Destruction of Black America.  My main focus while reading was the section about welfare brats.  My mother is a single parent with three children and she has never turned to the government for help.  She has too much pride to ask for help from anyone.  So when I read about how “welfare recipients are people who feel life is not worth living without a handout from the Great Society” (Parker 128) it is hard to believe that people would actually want to live their whole life on welfare or being “welfare brats” and not show society that they can be independent, hard workers for their earnings is very depressing.  I know that my mother didn’t want to get on welfare after she separated from my father is because society looks at the mother and child as victims when they are “receiving government assistance” (128).   From reading and understanding Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single-Parent Women, I think Sandra Golden is a perfect example to show other black single-parent women how to use support and help from others to build into someone who doesn’t need help anymore.  When someone breaks their leg they use crutches for the support and help to walk and get around but after a while when they heal they don’t need those crutches anymore and can walk on their own.  Welfare should be the crutches for those on welfare going through many struggles but once they get their life together they should walk away from the government’s assistance with a proud, high head.

"Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds You"

In the essay, “Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single-Parent Women” by Sandra Golden, it explains the lifestyles of black women who struggle with welfare. In the essay Golden states, “The study’s participants noted that they were not against the welfare reform law, rather they resented the discriminatory treatment from their self-sufficiency coaches (SSC)… the disrespect was a manifestation of public assistance are uneducated and lazy.” This statement posed a question in my mind that wonders whether what she studied in her participants is really the causing factor to their disrespect. When it comes to the respect that should be given from a “SSC” to a welfare participate should it be based on their education and personal behavior or simply should it be reflected from the respect given?  From a personal viewpoint I have interacted and I am acquaints to black women on welfare.  In observing their behavior and attitude towards people, majority of the women have a negative attitude to others. How can they expect someone to fully apply themselves in assisting you with the help you need if they treat have a bad temper? To a certain extent I can understand why some of the SSC may treat the women with less respect and it is because they earned it. Many of the women who struggle with financial issues that are single mothers have so much anger bottled up in them that they began to take it out on the people around them, especially those that may be in better situations than them.  Another thing to be mindful of is that many people have to depend on social services for assistance and it has nothing to do with their education. Some people who might have college degrees may be in the same predicament as someone who has a GED but that does not mean they should be treated with a higher degree of respect. It does not matter where they came from or what they have done in the past but it is where they are now. That now is being a single mother on welfare needing help and guide to have the ability to provide for herself and her children. Some of these women believe that the people that are helping them are obligated to help them and that is not true. They need to learn how to be respectful and not bite the hand that feeds them, while in this case help them. You do not need a high school diploma to understand the importance of manners, that should be a given.  I can understand Golden’s point as well as the participants with believing that a lot of mistreatment is rooted from the societal stigma that all black women on welfare are uneducated and have the “welfare mentality”. Some women who are mannerful are treated disrespectful because of that stereotype. Some "SSC" workers like to catergorize everyone in a certain catergory but not all. If you take the time to think about it, a lot of the SSC workers chose that job because they have a passion to help others in need not because they were stuck with it. So their focus is to provide the support that their participants need not to treat them with disrespect.

Literacy Through A Struggle

Kaitlyn Jackson

Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field by Lillie Gayle Smith was a pivotal reading that expressed just how much negative experiences can affect a person's literacy without their knowledge.  Smith told the audience about her childhood of picking cotton in her aunt's field in Alabama.  From the beginning, I noted how much she hated the experience because it just made her a part of a long line of cotton picking African Americans.  Although, as she grew older, she learned in a course titled "Black Women's Literacy"(Smith 37) that her experience actually contributed to her literacy and lifestyle even as a graduate student.  Smith wrote that, cotton picking and slavery had their positive impacts on African American women because these negative, low class actions made them stronger as a race and a sex, than the women who were not working hard to achieve their already positive place in society.
In discussing the struggles of African American women, Smith also discussed the negative treatment of women as a whole.  One of her examples that really struck me was the example involving a male teacher giving the male students special treatment.  The female students dared not address the teacher directly and, instead, chose to drop the class or accept that they would not be equally treated.  At first, I thought that these actions did not help the students achieve the desired goal of being treated equally.  They were giving the teacher exactly what he wanted, a class full of men.  But, as Smith explained, "I now view them as forms of oppositon against the education system where they feel  degraded and diminished"(p.39).  The women of that class thought that they could be valued and treated equally elsewhere.  I learned that if this man could not give them the education that they deserved, these women would find it in someone who was willing to.
Towards the end of her article, Smith realized that her experience in the cotton fields not only contributed to her literacy, but to the literacy of others.  It is for that reason that she decided to look back on it, learn from it and share it with others.  It was from the elders of the cotton fields that she learned the most.  She learned respect, responsibility and religion from them.  They had been active in the Civil Rights Movement and it was those elders that she and the other children looked up to.  Yes, Lillie Gayle Smith was picking cotton, just as African Americans before her had for centuries, but she was also gaining the same literacy as they had through the struggle.

The "understanding of past experiences and present perspectives"

In Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field by Lillie Smith, the reader obtains a clear understanding of the readers past experiences and how they transformed into lessons of the authours present perspectives. Smith gives the audience a whole hearted concise story of how her young adolescent days of picking cotton carried out into the women of who she is today. While Smith develops her story she asserts scholars to validate her point allowing the audience to be enriched with more than enough ingredients of Smiths story. As a reader Smith drew me in on several lines, “Before, having picked cotton was not an experience I would have wished to interrogate yet …I had perceived as a completely negative experience.”(Smith 38). The point that Smith makes in this quote is something that everyone can relate to. When people undergo experiences that they do not like, they do not see the essence and the effect that, that particular experience could have on their future right away.  

Smith drew me deeply into her passage when she cited scholars and used anecdotal stories to complete her message. The incorporation of these two methods evolved Smith’s piece, for it added more reasoning on top of what Smith was declaring. One in particular was when Smith was exemplifying "women’s resistance" in a graduate class that she had taken. “…women in the class complained about the instructor’s gender preference, but no one approached him about it.”(Smith 39).  This anecdote gave me an outlook on how women of different races are always overlooked, but all are not daring enough to address the issue.

Smith also made me realize some key learning methods. Smith taught me that lessons can and are developed from "nonacademic survival literacies" (Smith 40), and that taking risks to share a personal journey with others is helpful in motivating the self. Unearthing Hidden Literacy was Smith story and a helpful tool in my life. It made me think more about my life and how my experiences are developing into my characteristics. Smith story was inspiring and she is not the only one who viewed picking cotton as a negative image. I too thought picking cotton was negative, for it derives from the slavery times, yet Smith gave a positive perspective after she realized that picking cotton was helpful in the development of who she is. Although I have never picked cotton a day in my life, I could relate to how Smith’s picking cotton lessons related to my experiences and I profoundly appreciated hearing her story.

By: Megan Edmonds

No Positive, Literate Roles For Black Women in Movies

In Reel Women: Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films, Joanne Dowdy discusses how Black women haven't been featured in movies as characters that are literate and how the filmmaker makes sures the audience knows that the women are black by the women using dark skinned black women. Of the examples of movies that she gives descriptions about, there were two that I remembered watching: "The Color Purple" and "Losing Isaiah". I find this reading interesting because I never once thought about or questioned how black women were being portrayed in these movies. In "The Color Purple", Whoopi Goldberg portrays a young woman who was raped by who she thought was her father but was really her step-father. She does learn how to read and write from her sister. In "Losing Isaiah", Halle Berry portrays an unfit mother and crack cocaine addict who abandons her own son. While in rehabilitation we realize that she can't even read a children's book. Not once, while watching movies like this, have I questioned why only black woman portrayed like this in movies. I wonder how many people would have watched these movies if it was white women actors instead of black women actors.  Every woman is given challenges in life because of our society so I believe that any woman, white or black, could portray any mother or woman that is having struggles in any movie director’s movie script.  For now on when I am watching a movie I will take note on how the main character is being portrayed because it does make a difference to me now.