Black And On Welfare by Sandra Bolden

              There are many people in our society today that need financial help.  However, when a single black mother comes into the building to be out on welfare, she is immediately stereotyped and looked down upon. “Unfortunately, our perception are that Black women on welfare have no interest in working and prefer staying at home rather than obtaining employment and providing for their families” (28).  The various women that have to go through the process to be on welfare have a difficult time.  They are belittled by those in charge and in some cases treated with little to no respect.   Even though some of the women that come through do not have much of an education, some do.  When they are not asked about previous schooling or important information that the authority should know, they feel disrespected because a lot of their background is only assumed and not known.  The women have to be placed in programs to enhance their skills to aid them in obtaining a job, yet many feel that most of these organizations are not very beneficial.  The opportunities that the programs prepare them for and are low-income jobs that barely provide for the participant and their family.            

Welfare has become another way of oppression for Black women. Society has its way of hindering its members, rather than pushing them to be more self-sufficient. Even in the times of funded training programs attempting to provide jobs, women were primarily given jobs that had no growth potential. Academic background has much to do with employment, and because of the assumption that the women lack such education; they were given the worse types of jobs. Golden encouraged individuals to go on and get the next education level to be accepted for better treatment. What society fails to realize it that these women have literacies of other things, such as family, home, and community literacy. Many of these women had special skills from taking care of their children and family members. Black women have also been influence to be literate in the community. Being in church and other social groups has helped Black women to gain leadership skills and a sense of belonging. These influence of the community, family, and home help women to improve academic skills. Therefore, caseworkers should not assume that there is a lack of skill or knowledge in that area. Gold feels that the act of assuming is a mere act of oppression and ignorance. Instead social workers and other parties involved should undergo a series of tests to determine the literacy of  the Black women. 

Golden, Sandra. "Black and on Welfare: What You Don't Know About Single-Parent Women." Readers of the        Quilt. ED. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P., Inc., 2005. Print. 

Unearthing Hidden Literacy

        Lillie Gayle Smith grew up picking cotton in Alabama's Black Belt. The field, owned by her aunt, once belonged to a Confederate captian. When Smith would pick, there would be "10 to 12 people [picking] cotton in [her] aunt's field, varying between six to eight adults and four to six children" (Smith, 42).  In 2003, Smith began taking Black Women's Literacy for her graduate degree. Through the various readings and assignments, she realized how her early days as a cotton-picker, shaped who she is today.   Throughout her adulthod, Smith reminised how her days as a child picking cotton, and the memory furied her. The thought reminded her of slavery and the "bitter legacy" that was passed down from generation to generation of African-American people.

       In Smith's Black Women's Literacy course, she discovered the positives that came out of the negative, of cotton picking. One being that it led "to a deeper appreciation and understanding of past experiences and present perspectives" (Smith, 46). Also, her professors in school contributed to her acceptance of her past. Instead of being an authoritative figure, her teachers were advocates in her education. They gave her the space, time, and patience to give birth to her own ideas and articulte in her best ability. Smith declares that she would not have a "fully understanding of significant life experiences without the assistance of her classmates and professors.

     Through her classmates Smith recognized how a student, especially a female, can acknowledge oppression from the teacher.  Sometimes this awareness causes the student to "resist" the "practices" of the professor whether it is done "consciously" or not.  The example provided was when an instructor at a particular institution seemed to favor his male students more than the females.  He wouldn't accept their answers as "accurate" and would ask a male student to verify the female's response.  This was degrading to the female population in the class and many took action by not paricipating anymore, and some even left the course (Smith 39).

       Literature also played apart in Smith's education. From Crick Crack Monkey (Merle Hodge, 1970), Nervous Conditions (Dangaremba, 1988), Women's Ways of Knowing (Belenky, 1997), and All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (Fulghum, 1988). She analyzed and connected the readings to her own experiences. She discovered that what happened to her as a child was not a burdern or curse but reality of the current situation her people, African Americans, were in.  "In short, what i rediscovered in the cotton field of my youth is yet another testimony to the power of literacies learned beyond the  classroom"(Smith 46).



Works Cited

Smith, Gayle Lillie. "Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field." Readers of the Quilt. ED. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P., Inc., 2005. Print.

Reel Women: Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films

Dowdy expresses that it is imperative for people in our society today to be knowledgeable about critical films in order to survive in the media world. Because the history of Black people hasn’t changed much over the last century, it is also imperative to have Black students knowledgeable about the Black character in critical films. This type of knowledge will allow students to connect themselves with their cultures and society. This understanding of Black films will give us an appreciation and respect for the things we take for granted as African American citizens. For example, many popular movies and books portray the lives of Black women and how they interacted with White societies.

 In many of the cases analyzed in this reading we see that many of the Black female roles have little to no educational background.  If they have had the privilege of finishing school they are still trumped by the whites and their political power.  The ending results of the films are almost always positive, yet by seeing them through film literacy and focusing on the black female, we notice that the messages they are representing are not always progressive.  In the movie “Eve’ Bayou”, none of the black women have jobs outside of the household.  This portrays the belief that women may not be capable of obtaining a job outside the house.  Also, in “Wit” the only black female actress in this movie does not even know the meaning of a simple word, yet she is a nurse.  This is an example of us getting a job outside the house, but we as black women, don’t seem knowledgeable enough to seem fit for that part.  It is pivotal for the audience to be capable to acknowledge these unspoken messages the characters depict so we can change them in the future and showcase our women in a more educated and successful light.

Educators find this as an avenue to build student/teacher relationships as they analyze details and evidence together. Because students view these movies so often, it is an easy way to learn Black Woman literacy. Looking at literacy through a lens, many professions in the media field require people to function in mainstream society, have verbal and communication skills, and able to read.  Students believe that literacy include many aspects of the media and connecting it to navigating through life.  “We can say that our pedagogy has moved beyond being critical to making constructive changes in the way that Black women are represented in movies and the way that critical analysts use such symbols to enhance their worldview”( Dowdy 179-180).  

Works Cited

Dowdy, Joanne. "Reel Women: Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films." Readers of the Quilt. ED. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P., Inc., 2005. Print.

 

Going Against the Grain (Part 4)



     Education was not always an opportunity for African American students. Elizabeth Ihle, an author, reported that "until relatively recently in our history, the most widespread schooling for any group was elementary schooling" and "for the first four decades after the Civil War, a black person with just three or four years for formal schooling was considered educated..."(pg. 159). The idea of Blacks going to school and becoming equally educated as whites was considered a taboo. In so, to stop Black students from obtaining the education needed to move up in society, only 64 public schools were established during 1900-915 in the South, whereas over 1200 public schools were established for white students. In rural areas, where most of Blacks lived, education opportunities were limited but in the cites, literacy development was more accepted.

     In the 19th century, Blacks "hungered for knowledge" (pg. 161) in order to better themselves and their community. In order to build each other, they would assist each other in reaching their literary success. In this effort of becoming literate, "a sense of self-in-society traditional patterns of belief and action" (pg. 161) arose. These people became the pioneers of some of African Americans' traditions, such as using "language and literacy to meet expressive and transactional needs" (pg. 161). Therefore, even though school education was not obtained, Blacks found other routes to still become knowledgeable.

Going Against the Grain (Part 3)

 There were three events put together from November 7, 1861-January 1, 1863 to form the history in the making. The first event occurred on January 1, 1863 where President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation known as the Emancipation of Proclamation which gave all states in rebellion the time between September 22, 1862, and January 1, 1863, to declare their allegiance to the United States and if they failed to do so their slaves would have been taken away and freed. So as the Civil War went on, several million slaves were freed. The war symbolically and practically became a crusade against slavery.

Even before the Emancipation of Proclamation, the first important event was the victory of Union troops over Confederate troops on Hilton Head Island. The second event was the Port Royal Experiment which was launched by Treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase and others including abolitionist Robert Purvis, Forten’s uncle. The experiment had two parts. One part was the economic: “the thinking of the day was that the freed people on the Sea Islands needed to be managed in order to expedite the claiming of the land that they occupied by the U.S. government and also to expedite the development of the critical resources on the islands”(p.144). The second part of the experiment was focused on the “contraband” of the people. This was the distribution from the government of teachers, ministers, and superintendents to aid in the assistance of the freed people.

On September 16, 1863 President Lincoln sent instructions to the Board of Tax Commissioners for the District of South Carolina. This support of education marked the first federal funding for educational opportunity for African Americans.

Missionaries thought of African Americans as deserving freedom and educational opportunity, but they found it difficult to think of African Americans as being equal or to treat them as such. Charlotte did not view freed slaves as either contraband or unequal. She viewed them as downtrodden members of her own race, as her own people, and she felt obligated, as a person who had benefited from greater opportunity, to lend a helping hand. Forten demonstrated her love of learning, keeping an amazing account of the books she read and other literacy activities. At the age of 25 Forten was the first African American woman to participate in the very first federal-tax supported effort to educate African Americans. Forten became the first African American to teach at the Epes Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts. Forten was also an active member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society. In the meantime, she taught the freed slaves reading, writing, oral recitation, numbers, music, and whatever else she felt handy to share.

Laura Towne described the freed people she met as being strange, ignorant, barbaric, and unrefined. Talking about two African American women who was educated and talked well, Towne states “I actually forget these people are black, and it is only when I see them at a distance and cannot recognize their features that I remember it. The conversation at dinner flowed just as naturally as if it were Northern whites” (pg.150).

My response to this reading was with all the bias behavior from the Northern whites and disgust in the whites, I am shocked they stayed around to complete the mission. I feel that Charlotte Forten was strong enough to take on such a mission and stick with it even though she had medical problems that could have stopped her.



Works Cited

         

Royster, Jacqueline J. "Going Against the Grain: The Acquisition and Use of

                 Literacy" in Traces of Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among

                African American Women. U of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.

Going Against the Grain (Part 1 & 2)

Considered to be the interpreters and re-interpreters of the world, African American women have established a history of themselves as the caregivers and mothers of the world. African American women struggled tremendously in the history of becoming American people. However, the struggles that they endured allowed them to develop an inner strength that gave them the ability to become the activists that they are today. The women of the first generation of courageous women created opportunities for future African American women to carry out “good and righteous” work to better the community (race). In “Going against the Grain,” the author categorizes African Americans as teachers, instructors, storytellers, healers, lovers, and caregivers. The ability for women to resist the oppression and still be a vital part of the economy gave them the strength they needed to obtain literacy. “They recognized that literacy was a skill, a talent, and ability appropriate to their new environment” (114) African American Women knew the importance of strength and literacy, in order to have a voice in the world. With many people against them, such as, James Madison, they continued to fight for rights. Eventually people like Madison, were convinced by these education activists and we have been able to make a place for ourselves.

Making a place in America and trying to gain an education was not an easy task in early American History.  There were many stages that the African Americans had to go through to get to where we are today.  Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the rise of the Industrial Age and the rise in revolts within the slaves contributed to the restriction of literacy among blacks.  With the new inventions during this time, the whites only wanted cheap workers, and didn’t find the need to educate the slaves.  Also, the white slave owners were in fear of teaching the blacks how to read and write. They thought that enriching them with knowledge would add to the insurrections and give the slaves more power to eventually gain control and take over.  However, there was a new mindset that emerged after the Revolutionary War.  A group of revolutionary leaders wanted to rescue the enslaved blacks and offer them an opportunity to free their minds through education.  Free-born children were allowed to attend public school or other places available for them to gain literacy.  This was a privilege deemed more for the North.  The South was not granted the same opportunity as quickly as the North due to the types of environment both locations were embedded in.   This system and the rise of literacy among African Americans were strengthened as a result of the American Revolutionary War, and the foundational principles of the nation.  By the turn of the nineteenth century, there were a large amount of literate blacks, in both the North and South and African American women were a big factor that contributed to this. 
Many black women started schools for the youth because they knew the importance of an education.  “They demonstrated, in fact, a passionate determination to reduce ignorance, develop literacy, and encourage intellectual development for males and females alike” (137).  If an African American woman didn’t have the ability to open up her own school, she still made time to teach her children.  She spread her knowledge to others so they would be able to understand what is going on around them and become more aware.  A black woman’s determination caused her to overcome obstacles and do what she knew was best for her kids and their future.  Today a large portion of the black community has access to an education thanks to the hard work of the early slaves and the black women (and others) that pushed for a better life for their people.  This reading affected us positively because it shows the hard work that our ancestors put in for us to have access to an education.  Yet, it is sad to see how many people in our community take this opportunity for granted.

Works Cited

Royster, Jacqueline J. "Going Against the Grain: The Acquisition and Use of Literacy" in Traces of Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women. U of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.

To Be Black, Female and Literate

   In "To Be Black, Female, and Literate: A Personal Journey in Education and Alienation" Leonie C. R. Smith talks about her transformation as a little girl from the island of Antigua to New York City as an adult. The contents of being literate in Antigua were so much different than in America. In Antigua to be considered literate you only needed to know how to read and write, but in America if you came from somewhere else and tested differently you were considered illiterate. Coming from an island that did not focus on African American history and knew nothing about multiple choice tests, little Leonie failed a test in the seventh grade and was labeled as illiterate and was demoted. "It never occurred to this assistant principal that someone like me, raised in the Caribbean and educated under a different system, would respond differently to U.S. testing methods."(189) After a short while of after school tutoring and getting familiar with the tests and history she took the test again and improved by 50 points. "The difference in learning styles and the context of my literacy education were never taken into account."(189)

   Aside from academic education Leonie was taught a lesson on social education as well. In Antigua race and skin tone was not an issue but when she moved to New York she began to realize she "had to learn what it meant to be black in the United States." (189) Coming from a place where everyone was the same complexion to a place where everyone came in different shades of brown, she realized people preferred light skin and long, straight hair and name brand shoes and clothes. This was all knew to her because none of those things mattered to her in Antigua.
   My view on this is simple understanding because from a family that comes from the Caribbean and West Indies I know how it is to transform. The transformation is never easy because when you leave your homeland you are immediately considered an alien in your new hometown. Due to your poor accent and lack of clothing you will constantly be frowned upon and talked about. So I know how Leonie felt transferring from her small island to coming to a big city and having to learn everything all over again from academics to being social.


Works Cited:

Dowdy, Joanne Kilgour., and Leonie C. R. Smith. Readers of the Quilt: Essays on Being Black, Female, and Literate. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2005. Print.