Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single-Parent Women by Sandra Golden

Many Americans tend to frown upon welfare programs, but it’s not until you are introduced to the situation do you truly know and understand its value and system.  The welfare system was introduced during World War I and the Great Depression as means to support those unemployed and elderly.  Now welfare is known as an aid to needy families with dependent children was well.  The Department of Human services work to define the purpose of welfare as means to provide assistance to less fortunate families, end dependence of needy parents on government benefits, and prevent and reduce pregnancies out of wedlock.

It’s difficult to differentiate between those that need and use the welfare system and those that abuse it.  People abuse the system, but the system also abuses the people.  Many of those that work in the Department of Human services don’t necessarily think highly of those that come into the welfare office.  They seem to expect the worst.  Many of the African American women that need assistance may not have high academic literacy levels, but they do seem to be fluent among social literacies.  In fact it’s imperative that they know how to approach people and be socially sound in order to communicate with the Human Services Department.  “Although caseworkers are overworked and have high case loads, they must be required to recognize and respect the people they serve.”  The welfare programs are offered by the government to aid those who need assistance, but it’s essential that there is a mutual understanding of it’s purpose and the respect that it must exude in order for it to be successful.

Black Women & Welfare

This piece was very interesting to me. The author starts out by explaining an experience that she had on the Oprah show, arguing her point and then goes to further explain why she has established this view. She experienced first hand how people use welfare the wrong way and manipulate the government to set up a cushioned lifestyle, without work. The author chronicles her life, beginning at age 21. At this stage, she was introduced to welfare while living a fast life full of partying, promiscuity, and drugs. She learned that a pregnant woman can get a welfare check for three months to live on, but also make money selling Medi-Cal stickers to others. By doing this, she lived for a long time with no job and a care free life. Later, after having a baby she decided that she wanted to quit using welfare and form a healthy lifestyle for her daughter.


This article expands on how people misuse welfare and other things given to them. This can make it hard for people to do things on their own, because when things are given they are taken for granted. As stated in the writing, the "welfare brats" can form a sense of entitlement and feel that they do not have to work when they will be taken care of by the government. This is not a positive mindset, as many people work hard and should not have their money being wasted. I think that the author's point was that although it may be easier to take something that is given, it is better to work for it. Although she and her daughter might have lived well off of welfare, she still needed to keep working to improve their lifestyle and not let the sense of entitlement to government money get in the way. This ties back to black women and literacy, because I think as black women we are supposed to use or literacies to continue growing rather than to settle for what we are given.

Literacy in Disguise:: In the Shape of Cotten

In Lillie Gayle Smith's "Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I learned in a Cotton Field", she begins with a brief story of her background. She draws the image of herself as a young Black girl in Alabama during the summer of 1963 who, as opposed to picking cotton as she was accustomed to on days like this, was called in to watch TV by her mother to watch The March on Washington and, later, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream " speech. This event can be seen as one of the peaks of Smith's literary acquisition, as she watched and listened to the speech with "pride and joy".

Smith then transitions into her fall 2003 semester at a graduate University, in which she took up a course entitled "Black Women's Literacy". She explains that as a Black woman who had shamefully picked cotton as a child, prior to engaging in this course, Smith had refused herself of ever sharing this experience with those around her. However she eventually learned that this once shameful occupation (in a sense) had molded and shaped her literacy as a black woman. in relating to this passage on a more personal level, the mindset  she later developed in fact reminded me of that of a Spelman woman, or at least what the professors at Spelman are attempting to instill in us. The many empowering notions of recognizing our naturally inherited traits and literary attributes as Black women, the incentive to explore further the works taught to us in previously male dominated schooling establishments, and our seeking of confirmation in the form of likeminded women like ourselves are many elements that contribute to the outcome of our developing literacy. Smith also explains how her life experiences, along with the life experiences shared by professors and classmates, contributed to their acquisition of knowledge and awareness. 

Another interesting topic that  Smith discusses is that of female resistance, Black females especially. She uses the example of how a professor in one of the courses at her University neglected to acknowledge the thoughts and concepts shared by females within his class, without first consulting another male student in the classroom. Smith explains how although she could see how these women could be deemed as defeated or quitters in a sense by withdrawing  from the course, in turn they saw themselves as "challenged, inspired, and empowered" by this experience, in that it gave them the drive to search for a follow-up course. Because it can be scientifically stated that women often identify themselves "based on relationships with others", this negative relationship between the female students and their biased professor sprouted growth in these women to identify themselves as intellectuals beyond said professor's expectations.

-Tayla Fauntleroy

Seeing Beauty in all places

Ms. Smith, the author of Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field, creates a narrator who speaks of the effect of her once perseived negative past on her self understanding.  The narrator explores bits of her life and its effects on her appreciation to one specific aspect of her past, her experience picking cotton in the fields.  This piece of literature is viewed to me as a personal testimony.  The narrator speaks about her experience with teachers who attempted to negativly influence her understanding in certain classes.  She speaks of relations pertaining to Crick Crack Monkey, and how she understand knownledge construction.  The narrator speaks of a period of time when she did not have TV, but would get her entertainment from spending time outside in the fields with elders listening to stories and wise lessons about present life and life of the past.  They were able to "envision" a better life in the future; their stories were always full of "hope" and completely void of "despair" (Smith, 44). Many aspects of her knowledge construction and personal ideas she expressed.  The narrator touches on the self confidence imparted in young Black girls at a young age; this self confidence that tends to be very unique.  She speaks about several views of Black women being portrayed through the media.  The narrator then makes a connection back to her experiences in the cotton fields.  She explains how this aspect of her life was once one that was kept closed and very explained, but then a certain ephiphany was explained.  She goes into how women are connected.  This basically means that women tend to connect with situations, people, and especially aspects of nature on a level much deeper than that which is normally understood.  She feels as though throught the teachings and connections that she made during her time working on the cotton field, it has contributed to a unique part of her.

Jessica Robinson

Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films

 Dowdy acknowledges the progression Black women have made in the film industry.  When I think about Black women in the media of a predominantly white culture I a strong, successful female lead isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.  We have been tormented by the media depicting images solely of lower class low-literate women.  “Commercial film has trained us to expect a reality where Black life is included as an incidental fact in storytelling of a White scriptwriter.  Understanding the way Black women fit into the schema of White society, I remind my students, is another kind of literacy code that we must unpack when we view films by mainstream filmmakers (Dowdy 174).”  It’s imperative to remember who controls the industry and that however they choose to display black women is how it will be.

Dowdy focuses on the roles and how each woman is perceived in the films.  She also discusses the literacies they fulfill.  In “Passion Fish”, Alfre Woodward plays a black nurse who is the caretaker for a white woman.  It is shown that she must work for the white woman in order to support herself and if that isn’t enough along the way she looses her merit, as she was never certified to be a nurse.  In “Eve’s Bayou” we witness Lynn Whitfield as a black domestic as all the roles of women outside the household are underrepresented.  In “The Color Purple”, Whoopi Goldberg plays a powerless female objectified by her cruel husband. At the beginning she can neither read nor write., but as the movie progresses and she acquires these literacies she becomes a stronger woman.

I wonder the opportunities these women might have, had they acquired more literacies.  Might they have been more independent, more successful, or overall more accepting and appreciative of themselves.  Literacy allows you to gain economic, political, religious, social, and educational knowledge.  Having a diverse group of them makes for a more pleasant lifestyle where you can create your won opinions rather than only having one option, to accept the information presented.

Going Against the Grain

During the section called "Schools of Their Own" in the piece of literature Going Against the Grain, the history of how literacy was perceived was defined.  The article explains parts of the background of Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles and major contributions to Spelman College.  This part of the article then goes into detail about the successes of many of the first graduates of Spelman College.  It is interesting to know that even though the early graduates, after college, entered a world where the expectations were much lower than those of now, they succeeded in many ways.  Clara Howard was sent to Spelman College by her father, graduated from the college in 1887, and began her missionary work in Africa.  She excelled greatly in this way, but had to put her work on hold because of the scare of disease.  

As a young, black woman of the 21st century, I would love to experience even simply visiting Africa in some way or another.  There are a number of opportunities to do so, but Ms. Howard was brave enough to go against the bounds of her time and spread the word through her religious works.  

Another section called "Coming to Voice: Maria W. Stewart," explained the struggles of a widowed woman who toils with the loss of her husband, lacking financial stability, and discrimination of her time.  This section explains the inner-workings of a few of the well known abolitionists of the 1800s.  Ms. Steward attempts to stand alone while presenting issues of race and gender discrimination, but soon gets shunned.  The society around her did not see it place for a woman to be speaking out on the issues in absence of a man's help.
The compilation of all the different readings in this section provides a certain insight about different aspects of the time that sometimes gets overlooked.  It is necessary to see as many aspects as possible in order to get a more accurate view.  


-Jessica Robinson

Stuggling to Make the Grain into Butter

The section entitled Charlotte Forten and the Port Royal Commission in Jaqueline Royster's "Going Against the Grain" in my eyes starts an entirely new perspective on the struggles that Africans in America have faced. Of course throughout the entire piece, and in the many repetitive readings like it, the empowerment of us as African Americans and women especially is emphasized,  in focusing on how important literacy is. But being the type of person that I am, historical context as opposed to mere opinions sits better with me because I tend to think critically. Before telling the story of Charlotte Forten, Royster gives reference to the Civil War, and basically stresses that because we were still not equal in the eyes of our "superiors" (i.e. former slave owners), even after the Emancipation Proclamation, we now fought in the "crusade against slavery" to be seen as human beings. What caught my attention was the mention of the political side to the war, i.e. that it was once a battle for economic power over southern agricultural resources (though at the time African slaves were a "resource" themselves).   


Before the Emancipation Proclamation, yet during the heat of the war, a battle between the Union and Confederate soldiers took place on Hilton Head Island on November 7, 1861. The Union victory brought about more than a Confederate loss of southern ports, but more importantly a loss of "contraband". This "contraband", now belonging to the U.S. Treasury Department, consisted of 50 plantations worth of African men, women, and children; 10,000 newly freed people without housing, substinence, or the education necessary to  acquire these things on an alien planet. With this, the Port Royal Experiment uggested by Edward L. Pierce began, which provided government assistance to freed "contraband", or former enslaved persons. Also with this experiment, claims were to be made on land and critical resources lost after the battle as well. The jobs of missionaries during this time was to cultivate those African-Americans who were now free. And although northern missionaries did believe that Black people deserved freedom and educational opportunities, they still failed to see them as equal human beings. 


This was the part that got me. How were white northerners who had a sense of superiority embedded in them throughout the years of slavery (that technically were still continuous at the time) expected to "cultivate" and improve the lives of those who they had been previously taught to oppress and conquer? Though they were "passionately committed" to the cause of beginning the process of cultivation, they were still nevertheless White. In further reading this text, it became apparent to me that Charlotte Forten had the same views in mind. She understood what it meant to be dedicated to her people in times of hardship and mistreatment, and aside from her socioeconomic stature, she never forgot who or where she came from.