My Life as a Welfare Brat

In the reading, "My Life as a Welfare Brat," Larstella Irby begins with her experience debating with two women on the Oprah Winfrey Show about welfare. The two women, Linda and DellaMarie, believed that they were entitled to the government assistance that they were getting, but Irby on the other hand felt that government assistance should be viewed as a last resort rather than an alternative lifestyle. She then confessed to them that she also used to be on welfare and explained that the welfare system discourages job finding and brings about a "take-what-you-can-get" attitude.

The points that Irby brought out to the two women on the Oprah Winfrey Show about welfare and any other type of government assistance are probably the views of all tax-paying citizens. Not saying that all recipients of government assistance take advantage of the system, but for a lot of people that is usually the situation. Like the two women, Linda and DellaMarie, many women feel a sense of entitlement, as if they automatically deserve welfare. During her  as a welfare brat, Irby tells about how she would sell her MediCal stickers for extra money. This is one of the main ways people manipulate the system and make it harder for the people who really need government assistance to receive it. This scheme also helps to prove the notion that the welfare system discourages finding jobs because it it easier to sell their benefits to others.

During the show with Oprah, Irby states that it not just the women that use the system. She says that men leave their families because they know that government will pick up the slack where they left off. I believe that if a man is willing to leave his family, he really does not care whether or not they are taken care of. I dont believe that men walk out their families with the mentality of, "They will be okay because the government is going to provide for them."

As her life as a welfare brat dwindled to an end, Irby identifies Pastor Fred Price as the most influential person in her life. His sermons really motivated her change in lifestyle. In one particular sermon about welfare, Price told the congregation, "The government is not your source, God is your source." I think if people had an inspirational and motivational person in their lives, they would want better for themselves. When you are surrounded with people that are in the same situation as you, doing the same things that you are doing, its hard to see life any other way, but when you find someone who is doing something productive, it pushes you to want to change and do the same.

Single-Parent Women and Welfare

In "Black and on Welfare," Sandra Golden tells her experiences with raising a child and needing government assisatance in America. Golden speaks about the judgement and humaliation she suffered based upon the stereotypes of black women and welfare. Sandra Golden, and educated woman, found herself categorized with some people who were"unskilled, unmotivated, uneducated, or undereducated, and responsible for bringing fatherless children into the world" -the stereotypical welfare dependent American (28). Being an educated black female woman, Golden became frustrated with the treatment of people under government assistance. She noted the judgemental attitudes of the workers, the inconsiderate manners of the Welfare's office procedures towards "help", and the assumptions that everyone seeking assistance was the same. Sandra Golden talks about how it is critical to actively HELP those in welfare situations, she says that there should be better steps taken for each individual. Steps to find that persons talents, ablilities, background and intircately place them into society, instead of giving them whats convienently available.

This relates to literacy because  Golden says women in welfare systems and thier literacies are often not recognized. This is important because Sandra Golden also argues that literacy expounds past literature, but there is also home, family, and community literacy as well. As a single parent you already know how to use your family and community as resources to help you and  your family get by. This is a form of understanding how your community works or learning how to be a parent by yourself all contribute to the know-how of that individual. Golden uses these facts to foundate her recommendation that within the welfare system there should be a place for people who are not literate to learn. She says that the ways in which these  people have become communally and family literate are evidences that these people are capable of learning and applying.

Overall, Sandra Golden calls for a reform for the Welfare system, where the welfare system does not just bypass the cases, but investigates how they can better the family, whether that require education or the implementation of  education already recieved. Sandra Golden highlights an important flaw in our government. In order to help people we need not judge them upon arrival. This discourages people to do better because they think everyone is jugemental and degrading and that ulitmately scares them from trying to progess. It is a cycle. It is our job to take these people and help them where they want help in order to truely nurture those struggling in our society. It makes me wonder of how many instances may have occured where an individual wanted my help but felt uncomfortable? I wonder what the outcome of thier situation was? How often does this happen in America daily? How can we change it?

Literacy of Exclusion

In Mandi Chikombero's "Dysfunctional Literacies of Exclusion: An Exploration of the Burdens of Literacy in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions" she discusses "some of the ways in which the book makes significant contributions to the understanding of Black women's literacy" (148). She tells readers that literacy is a hard thing to define, she tells us to be "black, female, and literate means different things in different context" (148).

Black women have been taught to keep silent. Our struggles have been hidden and kept a secret. Black female authors such as Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou have helped exploit these stories to the public. Two types of literacy are addressed in this chapter, traditional literacy and colonial literacy.

“Traditional literacy refers to all aspects of sociocultural literacies” (151). Oral traditions such as: myths, legends, folktales, songs, and dance are all important parts of traditional literacy. In traditional literacy, women are at the center of reproduction and agricultural production.

Colonial literacy is the act of learning and educating one’s self. It breaks away from traditional literacy and old traditions.

Traditional literacy is how African Americans educated themselves before colonial literacies. Before African Americans were accepted into a learning institute, they learned from their ancestor’s stories and tales.

Women and Literacy in Alice Walker's The Color Purple

This reading starts off talking about how women of the Diaspora have been using the oral culture for generations. "Before Black women were allowed to publish, they kept their stories alive through the act of storytelling" (137). Black women writers recorded their histories through their stories. The reading goes on to talk about how literature from writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker mirrors the realities of being both Black and female. 

The reading also states that there are five basic types of feminism: liberal feminism, radical feminism, prostructural feminism, social feminism, and black feminism. Liberal feminists focus on the rights of individual women and work to transform traditional beliefs about femininity and masculinity and emphasize women's rights to create their own identity. Radical feminists argue that the roots of women's oppression lie in the biological differences between men and women. Prostructural feminists examine the ways language patterns produce notions of gender. Social feminists believe that race, social class, and gender oppression are interrelated consequences of a patriarchal, capitalist system. Black feminism, or womanism, defines African-American women's struggles as issues of race, social class, and gender and work to give voice to the experiences of Black women. (138)

In the middle of the reading, five major epistemological categories from which women view reality and themselves and draw conclusions about truth, knowledge, and authority were drawn from a case study of 135 women. The passage went on to show how Celie, from The Color Purple, transitioned through all five categories to find self-worth and joy. 

In the beginning of The Color Purple, Celie begins in the category of the silent woman. Silence is a position in which women experience themselves as voiceless and mindless (138). It represents a denial of self and a strong dependence on external authority. Women of silent knowledge do not view themselves as learners. After Celie progresses through the stage of being silent, she begins to rely on what people say and think. She looks for others to validate her self-worth. The women who rely on received knowledge quiet their own voices to listen to what others have to say. These women are confident in their ability to gather knowledge from others. Celie then becomes a subjective woman. Shug pushes Celie into a place loving herself. When Celie realizes her potential, she no longer looks to others for affirmation because she has recognized the authority with herself. Celie then moves into the scheme of reason. These types of women try to take charge of their lives in a planned manner. During this stage, Celie began questioning God on why her life had been filled with so much turmoil even though she had always been a good person. In the last stage, women desire to improve the quality of life not only for themselves, but also for others. In this scheme, Celie ultimately learns to survive alone and finally possesses the secret of joy. Alice Walker asserts that knowing one's place within a larger schema enables women to maximize their power, uncover their hidden talents, and discover the God inside. That, perhaps, is the greatest level of literacy---knowing that self is an essential part of all (145). 

Literate Black Women Peer Counselors

The essay, “Transformation College Literacy of Literate Black Women Peer Counselors,” started off with Robin Wisniewski’s definition of a literate black woman. “[Being a literate Black woman means] that I can speak and what I have to say will be hear because I know what I am talking about (69). She then goes on to tell readers of the importance of knowledge and education. Wisniewski planned to successfully create a peer counseling program for students with disabilities, from low-income families, and who were the first from their families to attend college. Her methods were not of the traditional note-taking method.

Robin realized she wanted to do this transformation when she herself began feeling change. “My transformative journey began with the awareness of my own expectation for change in myself” (71). She tells readers that her college literacy arose from knowledge and learning new things. She thought of it as freedom, as “liberation” (71).

She starts her story with two young Black women, Lauryn who came from an all black school, and Vania who came from an all white school. Both Lauryn and Vania thought of the program as less of a program, more of a family environment. As the students were being taught, they were also doing the teaching. In this program everyone learned from everyone. Robin tells us that those two women taught her the best method of liberating black women, and that is knowledge through family orientation. These women made the program more family-like and each student was based off of their personality, not their major or grade point average. Each student was tutored without being judged. Robin Wisniewski just wanted to educate young people. “Knowledge is power, so if you’re literate you can make your own way. It is freedom.”

Going Against the Grain 3

The last ten pages of this reading feature how opportunities for African Americans to gain literacy were available to both pre-Civil War era and post-Civil War era. African Americans helped themselves to literacy in provocative and creative ways, but after the Civil War they were energized to take supreme advantage of what had previously had been denied them. This energy was cycled in three ways: the Sabbath school movement; the missionary school movement; and the common or public school movement (153).

The Sabbath school movement was church-sponsored and community-run schools that provided basic literary instruction. It was run predominately by African Americans themselves and operated in the evenings and on weekends. The african American community itself was largely responsible for laying the fertile foundation for universal literacy in African American communities. The second effort toward literacy was the missionary school movement. During the Civil War, various northern community and church organizations intensified their "home" mission activities...These efforts became a primary mechanism for the advocacy of freedom, justice, and empowerment (153). The third effort, the common/public school movement, emerged in the early 1870s. Southern leaders rose to regain their authority by supporting the education of African Americans through the establishing of public schools. These southern leaders were aided by many industrial philanthropists, who sought to maintain the status qui and push industrial models of education and to discourage liberal arts education (155).

This section of the reading went on to tell how African Americans began starting schools of their own such as Spelman College and Morehouse College. Schools such as these came to because African American parents with the resources to take advantage of other options typically did not favor public schools. They did not want to subject their children to the abuse of white southerners or to a southern-designed system of "Black" education, which they knew to be inferior. They preferred private schools that were still being run by philanthropic support, with a significant percentage of that support coming from the freed men and women themselves (155). Such efforts were repeated across as a network of private schools was established that would ultimately form the core of what today is the collective of historically African American private colleges and universities. This network of public and private institutions continues today, at the beginning of the 21st century, having forged a remarkable historical record for education of African American people (156).

"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.