Lessons Learned Beyond the Classroom

Educational literacy is stressed in this society because it is ultimately what will advance a nation to becoming the best it can be. The United States has stressed that ultimately math and science education will work towards the betterment of our nation to be technologically savvy and be the most innovative and resourceful country in the world. That is our aim, and this is why there is a push for more math and science oriented camps and schools, pushing more and more children in that direction. While math and science are important, the humanities such as music and English are important because they give an insight into the human experience that clinical subjects such as math and science cannot give. This is one reason why those entering fields of medicine, for example, must have a year of English as to not forget the human side of medicine, to learn and understand the complex struggle of human struggling and to help to alleviate the pain of someone who is suffering. The point is, there is something to be learned in even the most seemingly unrelated of circumstances, lessons that can be used in the everyday dealings of life.
In Unearthing Hidden Literacy, Lillie Gayle Smith discovers the lessons she has learned from the grueling work of picking cotton in her aunt’s cotton field. She took a course called “Black Women’s Literacy”, which made her drudge up the memories of her work in the field. She hated this work and viewed it as a negative experience, but when she carefully thinks about her experience, she finds that there were many pleasant things that she could take from cotton-picking. For example, she learned the value of earning money and independence, and also how to hope through the direst of situations from the elders in her community. This makes me think of how I felt in high school when I felt defeated in one of my math classes, my worst subject at the time. This caused a cascade of events, from me dropping from a high level precalculus class to a lower level one. I was so disappointed because I had worked so hard to do my best and I did not receive the grade that I wanted. I was also moved into other different classes because of this one grade. It was a low point in my life that could have broken me, but after being upset, I picked myself up and pushed forward. I was so motivated to conquer the beast that had always worked against me that I ultimately defeated.
Sometimes you have to push through the obstacles that work to detract you from your dreams, and I was and am motivated to push through anything that tries to get in the way of my goals, from difficult classes to negative relationships, I do not have the option to fail in my endeavors. I would’ve never learned this life lesson if it had not been for this negative experience, and just as it made Smith a better person to work in the heat of those cotton fields, my experience with my class has made me more determined than ever to succeed in everything that I do. From academics to social activities, that lesson was one that I learned that applied to other things in my life outside of the classroom and one that I will retain has I navigate through my college experience.

Jasmine Bryant

Reel Women

Is it just me or is it really Black women against the world? Not only do we look like animals in the music media world we have not advanced in Cinema portrayal in the sixteen year span examined in Joanne Kilgour Dowdy’s, “Reel Women: Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films.” These realities of the way Black Women are seen in White Society are becoming depressing. They are depressing because it has taken class discussions and assigned reading to open my eyes to this truth. In her account which views “literacy as a lens,” Dowdy analyzes nine films and out of the nine films dating from 1985 to 2001 there was only two positive Black women portrayed out of the nine women examined. Coincidently, those women were overshadowed by white powers. One was killed off for being an inspiration to her students and the other not recognized as a key supporter of the music program. I don’t like my new feeling but not I seem angry all the time. I know I have no right to be angry because I don’t know where to point my finger. Whose fault is it? Do we still blame it on the institution of slavery? As a Black woman I am tired of blaming all of our race’s short comings on slavery. We have to do better as a people. Our foremothers strived to advance our race and their progress seems to digress as more generations are formed. He most detrimental by for has to be my generation, generation X. When will we take back the pride and uplift our people? When will we start showing support to Black companies and creating positive role models on the television screen? I think its time.

-Jasmine E. Williams

When Will We Stand Untied?

The quote used in the title, “She was workin’ like foreal,” is extracted from the conversation two of the participants was having. The young women were discussing a scene in the controversial music video, “Tip Drill,” by recording artist Nelly and how the video models in the video degrade the entire African American race of women. In the scene the girls explain one video model looked as if she was “hittin’ it from the back.” (Richardson 800) The term “hittin’” is a hip hop term replacing the act of having sex. While one of the participants feels the acts young ladies perform in clubs and in the music videos do not degrade the race of African American women I disagree. While I do agree that it is a personal choice to partake in such acts, because Black Women have been viewed as object of amusement for men, it does cast a negative shadow over the entire race of women. Because those women seen in the media gyrating and submitting to sexist acts such as allowing a credit card to be swiped down her behind to make assumption that her body could be bought society will view all black women as submissive to the discriminating and degrading picture that is painted by the lyrics and performances in the music videos. While I do view these negative portrayals as one reason for the sexism and racism Black women must endure, I do not believe the solution to ending the discrimination is being searched for. Until Black women unite and make a stand against everything that digress us as a people.

-Jasmine E. Williams

When Are We Really Going to "Fight the Power"?

I was just reading the experiment that we were assigned to read and write on, and I got to the part where “BE” is sharing her opinion on strippers and “tip drills”. What I got from what she was saying is that women who strip in order to better their lives can be respected and those women who just strip to make a quick buck cannot be respected. However; the way I look at it is if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, well then I most certainly is a duck. So just because a woman may be stripping to put herself through college, she is still a stripper. She is basically selling her body not necessarily for sex but nonetheless selling it. I don’t want to sound as though I am judging those who do those sorts of things to get by, but there are other ways to make money. I also think that all women should be respected no matter what their job is. This may sound contradictory, but the fact is that at the end of the day or night that woman is still a woman. I do not agree with or respect the job that she has, but she should still be respected as a person.
I know that we have all noticed the African-American obsession with all things Anglo (this is a generalization; I know not all Afro-Americans are). So therefore in music videos who do we mostly see being glorified by the rapper? Usually a light skinned girl with long flowing hair, or a girl with very distinct exotic features. Well this would lead one to possibly believe that the lighter you are the more beauty you possess and the better you are treated. The girls who are participating in the “rap session” make it clear that it doesn’t matter what shade a woman is, she could be as dark as 11:59pm or she could be light and bright, as long as she is a black woman gyrating her hips for a group of men in a music video she is not going to be respected and she will inevitably be treated as a “tip drill” even if she is not.
After reading a little bit more I came to the realization that, I do in fact identify with the Hip-Hop culture just as the girls in the session do. Does that make me guilty by association for entertaining the degrading ignorance that is constantly being shown on my television screen or blasted through the head phones on my phone? Am I partly responsible for the degradation of my sisters because I support the industry by buying, downloading, and dancing to the music that is blatantly referring to all women as female dogs and hoes? I think I do have a little bit of ownership in the problem, actually we all do. Well those of us who listen to and identify with the culture (Hip-Hop) do anyways. If we as women, not just Black women, but women of all different races came together and decided to boycott this type of music and treatment of women we could severely impact the Hip-Hop industry and maybe change things for the better. May be one day women will not be seen as objects for men to ogle or whatever they do, but we need to start being proactive about it now. For most of us it would be really hard to stop listening to Lil’ Wayne or Gucci, but as someone great once said, every journey begins with just one step. -Mary Williams

"Going Against the Grain" with the Force of a Boulder

“Hungered for knowledge” (pg 161)
“Inspired by material circumstances” (pg 140)
“Power of language and learning” (pg 108)
“Long-standing desires for freedom and agency” (pg 115)
After gaining a comprehension of “Going Against the Grain”: The Acquisition and Use of Literacy, I am balancing the weights of empowerment and disappointment. These emotions are also accompanied by inspiration and determination. This piece of literature summarizes the lives of amazing women in their acquisition of literature, and it calls for us, the reader, to take advantage of the opportunities allotted to us. Above, I noted a few quotes that embrace the fortitude of the women in this passage. We should be empowered by their great effort to gain literacy and break the bonds that held them back mentally, physically, and spiritually. I cannot help but find dissatisfaction in the movements and actions of our people today. While our foremothers took on the battle that our people be made free and considered as humans with the same apportioned rights and privileges as others, a critical amount of our people today lack the motivation to obtain benefit from their fight. Unfortunately, the rate of African Americans that do not finish high school is increasing at a critical rate. Less and less students are choosing to further their education at colleges and universities. We have to question two ideas. When did we lose interest in the succession of our people; how to we get that motivation back? It is our duty to hold close the significance of our literacy. We cannot allow the same rights and privileges that our foremothers fought for be snatched from right beneath us. Our ancestors embodied strength, resilience, perseverance, among other amazing characteristics that contributed to our success, but we cannot stop. We have to grip those same traits in the fight to keep our success. We were not handed our freedom, or our literacy. They were taken by force; we have to keep our freedom and literacy, forcefully. The great efforts that Spelman has taken to instill the importance of our literacy are a prime example. Who can teach us better than those who know who we are and where we came from? Our acquisition of literacy should not gather dust in the back of our mind after this class. The fight hasn’t stopped so neither should we. The women of this literature piece did not fight for just themselves; they fought for their people. We are their people. No matter what grains we are up against, we have to take them down with the strength and force of a boulder
-Sojourner Ballard

A Diamond in the Rough

Black women have been going against the grain for as long as can be remembered. The institution of slavery has made Black women strong, stronger than anyone in our society. We have constantly been tested by the indignities of racism, classism, sexism, and many other isms that have tried to divide and defeat us. Though these enterprises have worn us down, they will never break our spirit and certainly will not hamper our drive, which explains the number of Black women going to college, earning both undergraduate and advanced degrees, and going back into the communities and into the world to make a difference in the lives of those who are in progress of bettering themselves.
Being literate is something that Black women cannot take for granted because we have worked so hard to earn the right to learn, a right that as human beings should be bestowed upon us as inalienable and without stipulations regarding the extent of our ambition. This is a promise that Spelman continues to keep by inspiring its students to achieve and conceive as much as our imaginations can hold. Harvey J. Graff asserts: “the environment in which students acquire their literacy has a major impact on the cognitive consequences of their possession of the skill and the uses to which it can be put”. This defines our school’s mission perfectly because we are taught from the day that we set foot on campus that we are expected to learn as much as we can and then go into our communities and make them better places so that future generations may see that anything is truly possible and that dire situations such as a bad home life, absentee parents, under education, and economic distress does not have to always be the defining concept of our lives. There is hope and there is a way out, but it is in no way easy to achieve these goals, but the tools necessary to changing lives is found within the journey of being literate.
Literacy is not a means to an end, but rather a never-ending journey that makes one more aware of the world and of one’s own consciousness. The fact that Black women had to struggle to learn to read and write makes us appreciate literacy more and this is why we are so determined to defy the odds and become better people and be the trailblazers and change agents in our communities. We have come a long way from having no right to learn to taking and seizing every opportunity we have to become better women and to change our world. We are diamonds in the rough when we enter Spelman, and when we leave we are diamonds that shine our light on all around us. This light is one that will continue to shine through service and expectation for our advancement as a people.

Jasmine Bryant

Their Perspective

Thomas Jefferson’s explanation, or defense as I see it, for what he said about Blacks in his book Notes on Virginia is what many people still see Black people as today. This is just an opinion, but I feel as though many White people think that Blacks can do and have done many great things but because they are Black they still cannot compare to a White person. For example, even though a black person may have invented the traffic light society will claim that a white man perfected it. Jefferson says “…but whatever be their degree of talent, it is no measure of their rights”, today examples of this thought process are not as prevalent as they were 20 years ago. People still think this though. Young Black women are often at the brunt of this assumption. Even though Black women have to raise children on low budgets, work multiple jobs, deal with the stresses of being both a woman and black, they make many great accomplishments. Surviving each day is an accomplishment for some of these women. Yet it’s still looked at like “oh well she made it, but she’s still a woman, or she’s still a black woman”. I feel that it will take a very long time for black women to be seen as equal in the eyes of American society. Women in general have had to deal with people who think like Jefferson. For many, many years women and men would be dong basically the same job but they man would get paid more just because he was a man. A woman was denied the right to equal pay just because she was a female. After non-colored women got their right to equal pay among other things such as voting, Blacks especially Black women still found it difficult to receive equal pay and in some states Black men and women could not vote after the law was passed that said that any American citizen could vote. Even though others could receive equal pay and vote, Blacks were denied this right just because they were black. A Black secretary could type a report in half the time a white woman could but the white woman would still get paid more. Not because of her efficiency at work but because of her skin color. That’s not fair and the saddest part about this is that it still happens today. Not like it used to, but on a more low key kind of level. -Mary Williams

Going Against the Grain

From the reading, “Going Against the Grain: The Acquisition and Use of Literacy,” and the recent assignment of writing a Literacy Narrative, I fully support the claim made by Maria W. Stewart that African American women of the post-Emancipation era “recognized that literacy was a skill, a talent, an ability appropriate to their new environment. Their mandate, therefore, was to learn, to enhance talents, and to mandate abilities, with many of them holding deep-seated desires to participate proactively in both the making and the implementing of an agenda for new world survival.” In the Slavery institution, women were forced to fill multiple roles. Women were field hands, house slaves, cooks, mammies, ect. Because they were held responsible for all of these tasks, African American women naturally developed multiple literacies. The ability to juggle multiple duties has been passed from generation to generation. Today, many Black women have been able to become successful without obtaining what society believes to be a “standard education.” Although they may not meet society’s standards of education, Black Women have relied on wisdom and work ethic to define their literacy. The most literate Black woman in my life is my grandmother. Although she is not a College graduate, the sacrifices she made for her family, the work ethic she displayed as a Atlanta Police Officer for more than fifteen years, and her unfathomable interest in music and literature are recognized as acquired literacy. Moreover, Black women, pre-Emancipation and post-emancipation, have demonstrated various proficiencies that define literacy.

-Jasmine E. Williams

Literacy Builds Character

While reading Leonie C. R. Smith’s To be Black, Female, and Literate: A Personal Journey in Education and Alienation, a reoccurring realization that I came to was that literacy is more than acquired knowledge. Many traits that we gain over time are aids to achieving complete literacy. Literacy is not just the comprehension of an element’s capabilities and limitation; literacy is also the emotional stability to utilize that knowledge. During Smith’s “Literacy Narrative”, one of her first memories is the situation where her grandmother is persuaded into selling her estate for bags of flour and a $5 bill. This is a great illustration of how literacy can help you achieve personality traits that are essential to success. I argue that if Smith’s grandmother was literate, she would not have sold her estate, not only because she understands that the worth was no comparison, but also because she was more confident in her argument. With literacy, you can gain qualities that allow you to succeed in this society. From a personal point of view, I consider my day to day interactions. For example, in English class, it is very important to know the information, and utilize it. Between the in-class discussions and the assignments, if you do not have a clear comprehension of the required reading, it is easy to get lost and confused. If you understand that required reading, it is a lot easier to be brave to speak up in class, stand confident in your opinions, and stay dedicated to your assignments. Throughout Smith’s autobiography she talks about the different characteristics and traits she gained from her struggles toward literacy. Independence, self-sufficiency, and resilience are just a few traits that she symbolizes through her journey. Literacy can and will connect you directly with these positive traits. If you are literate, you are free. If you are illiterate, you have to depend of those around you to assist you in the every way. Literacy gives you the strength to stand and defend yourself. Without literacy, you will buckle to the influences and demands of those around you. Literacy will give you the flexibility to maneuver any situation for your benefit. Without literacy, you will be intimidated by change. During our journey on this path of literacy there are qualities that we gain to make us better individuals.