"You Ain't Black If You Ain't Seen It!"

This particular reading highlights the importance of black films and literacy. It demonstrates how black feature films portray black women and the role literacy plays in such. It uses "Passion Fish", "Eve's Bayou", "The Josephine Baker", "Losing Isaiah", "The Color Purple", and a few others to demostrate how the black woman is portrayed as either a struggle or a rise from struggle, and in these instances the films seldomly show the black female as a literate being.

 The women who played these roles were provided with lucrative jobs, however, they were subjected to the demeaning message of the producers. It is important to notice these sort of things because just like in other forms of media, movies are factors in influencing youth and how they portray black experiences. These black films imply that black women struggle in day to day life, and the women that play these roles get paid to diminish the view of the black community. I have never noticed the simplicity in slandering the black literacy in these movies until this particular essay. It has raised awareness as to how often and how easily it is for our own people to bring down a collective community. Music, the way black people act on televison, magazines, and movies can all either benefit or be detrimental to the image of black society and our literacies.