Conversation 7

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.

• The United States has in the past deprived the Black community of basic human rights, so while there has been a big improvement in equality between white people and black people, there is still some imbalance in the present day. This includes equal access to literacy. We have talked about the public school and private school education in the course before and we discovered that many of those who attend school in a poorer sector, often have trouble even having access to things like books, computers, articles etc. In the TedTalk we watched with Kandice Sumner, who is a public school teacher herself, we discover the lack of resources these students truly have and how a lot of them ARE interested in literature, they just have nothing to turn to. This mostly affects minorities, the black community included, and in turn we have learned that many black students turn to the streets, drop out, lose motivation for pursuing literacy. In “The Library Card”, we learn about a black writer named Richard who is very similar to these students I discussed, in a way. There was a difference with Richard though, the fact that he has in the early 1900s where segregation was very much still alive. He wasn’t even able to get a library card and borrow books, let alone be able to afford brand-new books. Richard found a way to make it happen though, he convinced a white man to let him borrow his library card and from then on, Richard was able to read and pursue the dream of literacy. He found himself being successful, but many like Richard were not. Many did not know how to read, and in present day, we see the black community lagging behind academically and not reading at the level they should be. In reality, the black community has not been award equal access to literacy in order to succeed in contemporary America. We see those who succeed having to struggle and pave a way for those coming up behind them, we see time and time again the statistics of truly how many black students pursue college or graduate. It is not consistent enough.

• Discuss your experience of taking one of the literacy tests from Activity 4. 
• The Alabama Voter Literacy test is wild. For the read aloud section, the white person taking the test (if even asked or requested) had to read one sentence. The sentence was simple, like, “That no person shall be imprisoned for debt.”. Easy enough, right? When I had to read the section that the black candidate had to read, I found myself struggling with the first couple of sentences to read it all smoothly. They were given an entire paragraph, unlike the one sentence the white candidate was given. They were also given many complex words, which how schooling was at the time for the black community, where America segregated them and had an entirely different curriculum for them, was not fair. The registrar would then check off any word he FELT was mispronounced, bias was very much alive and with the perception that white people were ‘superior’ to black people, I would imagine this bias reigned in things like allowing black people to vote. Therefore, I’m sure any word they might have said slightly off or even with an accent, they would have gotten it ticked off. This system right off the bat is unfair, especially for citizens in general. I took a lot of the written test, which 80% of these questions I have no clue what the answers were without looking. As we know if you are born an American citizen or you become one, you can simply go vote. You don’t need to take an exam to see if you’re eligible because you are a citizen, but these exams were so heavily enforced in the black community back then and barely on the white community. I’m guessing this is why it was abolished overall. The question, 20. WRITE IN THE SPACE BELOW A STATEMENT SETTING FORTH YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP UNDER A CONSTITUTIONAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT: I wrote, Obey laws, pay taxes, enroll in the army if may be needed, Participate in Jury Duty.”
• This was done off the top of my head, as I don’t know if they mean literally or if they meant how to be a good citizen to others. I read that for the following questions asked in the Mississippi voter application, “WHAT IS YOUR OC CUPATION? WHERE IS YOUR BUSINESS CARRIED ON? BY WHOM ARE YOU EMPLOYED?”, it was apparently used to track down black people who wanted to vote and contact their employers to get them fired. Really awful stuff. Once again, even in Mississippi, the white person (if at all tested) would get one sentence to read aloud and the black person an an entire paragraph. The questions in the application were also made to tell if the voter was black or white and their information could be very well passed on.
• How can we help establish more equality for the Black/ African-American community in the US?
• There are many ways we can aid in helping to establish more quality for the black community here in the US. For example, I had a situation back in high school where a teacher would give me higher grades, but my black friends would get lower grades when we essentially wrote the same things. They didn’t want to advocate for themselves, as they were scared it would affect their grade so I told them to all write the same thing I did. I remember this being right before school got closed down because of the pandemic. They copied my answers and we all gave in the work, and when we got our worksheets back, I had scored ten points higher even though we wrote the same exact thing. We decided to confront him about it, and he just threatened to give us all 0’s, but we also brought up the fact that we wanted to speak to the principal about it. My friends were thankful for that because he changed the grades for them afterward and during the pandemic and online work, he was more lenient with their work. It was a microaggression towards them, and it was very much discrimination, so when we see things like this happening in the classroom, whether you are black or not, you should speak up about it. Also, if you notice a black student or a friend doesn’t have access to books or technology like you do, we can lend them what we have or share. We can even ask up front what they are struggling with. We should also, as a country, seek to change the curriculum we have in place. Not everyone learns the same and not everyone has the same resources to lean back on as other kids, we need to see financial status, capabilities, home life etc. I do feel as though we are progressing though, slowly but surely, there are more scholarships and foundations aimed to help the black community. We are seeing more advocacy as well. We are doing protests and calling out the bigotry that happens in America a lot of the time. Likewise, we are definitely building the foundation for future generations of black people and even minorities in general to come and I think it’s beautiful and about time.