1 When looking at The Library Card, the story shows how Black people were not allowed to enter the library. Something like this would hinder someone’s education or their drive to pursue a better education. With this example, it shows that the black community was not given equal access to literacy in America. In the novel, it also shows that for Richard to be able to access the books from the library he had to make it seem as if the books weren’t for him but for somebody else. With this being the case, this is going to lengths that may be too hinderance for some in which that could be another case of how literacy was withheld.
2 When reading “Why Slave-Era Barriers to Black Literacy Still Matter” something stuck out to me. In the article it stated that if somebody was illiterate back then, people would exploit this flaw and try to scam the illiterate. It was important that if you were literate at that time that you would be able to pass down this knowledge to your next generation and also protect yourself from the scams that were used against the illiterate.
3 My experience from attempting the tests that were given for the literacy tests is that they were tricky. The reason why I found some tricky is because my assumption is the way they wrote out the tests was to try and confuse the readers in what the question were asking. I felt that most if not all questions weren’t straight forward and its as if you’re reading a wrap around that leads into the question.
One thought on “Conversation 7”
Hi Arta,
I had a similar experience when trying to take the literacy tests. Not only was the layout slightly confusing but the fact that all the questions were open-ended seemed really unfair. The open-endedness of it is what I think would confuse the readers. I also touched on how the difficulty of achieving literacy can affect the drive/motivation for a black American to want to read/write. It was difficult back then and still difficult now.