Answer at least 3 of the questions below:
- Has the Black community truly been afforded equal access to literacy necessary to be successful in contemporary America? Reference Richard Wright’s “The Library Card” and any other sources, including your own experience, if you wish.
- How is literacy used as a hegemonic tool/ tool of power? By whom? Against whom? Reference at least 2 of this week’s course materials.
- Discuss your experience of taking one of the literacy tests from Activity 4. Provide examples of questions and your responses.
- How can we help establish more equality for the Black/ African-American community in the US?
- What is the argument in the article titled “With COVID, the African-American Literacy Crisis will get much worse”? Support your answer with evidence from the text, and with your own thoughts on this topic.
One thought on “African-American Perspectives”
In my opinion, the Black community has been afforded equal access to literacy to be successful in American after a long period of hardship, fighting for equality and education. Although black people faced many restrictions, they took great advantage of opportunities that were granted to them during racism/slavery. In reference to “The Library Card” that favor his coworker gave by letting him use his library card caused him to change his life for the better. Today there are many successful black people that are highly favored influencers to many communities. I believe we can help the black community in the US establish more equality by breaking the cycle of racial justice. Black people today are still being terrorized by authority and the movement “Black Lives Matter” is a great way to start and get attention, but the justice system have to set examples so that everyone no matter their race is being penalized fairly. The argument with COVID and African American literacy is the statistics level during this time. Researchers found that students were falling being and schools failed to progress. As stated in the article, “A 2017 report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that just 18 percent of Black eighth graders reach reading “proficiency.” And in 2015 NAEP found that only 17 percent of Black 12th graders were
proficient at reading. This means that during normal times, fewer than two out of every ten African American
high school graduates have the baseline skills they need to succeed.” I agree because COVID came in and took over. People we terrified of this deadly outbreak. People stopped their lives to be safe and to keep their children safe.