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.

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.

"To Protect and Serve": African American Female Literacies

While reading Elaine Richardson's "To Protect and Serve": African American Female Literacies the beginning was the most captivating. The opening kept my attention and was on my mind throughout the rest of the reading. The term "Mother Tongue stood out to me. I am still wondering if there is a certain definition that can clearly give an explanation of the essential meaning of the term. According to Elaine Richardson, “The term mother tongue can be understood on several levels” (677).
From the reading I can basically argue a definition of mother tongue in my own words. My level of understanding of mother tongue would be that is a type of literacy that is taught through the tongues of maternal figures. Elaine Richardson writes, “Woman is the child’s first teacher, who protects it even in her womb and begins to socialize it” (677). This quote helps me support my reason for composing a certain definition of mother tongue. She also adds, “But, more basically, our language, our mother tongue, is at least partly how we know what we know.” (677)
I agree with Elaine Richardson’s arguments about the concept of mother tongue literacy. There are different types of literacy we are introduced to throughout our lives. The main literacy that I believe most of us are taught first is maternal literacy. The nurture of a mother to her child is a wonderful and never-ending experience because it is full of knowledge that sticks with you which allows you to pass it down to your own children. I still learn a lot from my mother just from watching her interact with my siblings and I. As a young child, your mother was your first teacher. Everything your mother taught you was what you took with you on the first day of school and continued to add on to the knowledge that was given to you from mother tongue literacy.