Literacy and the Black Woman

In Sharon M. Darling's work Literacy and the Black Woman, she addresses some of the main arguements and topics involving being a black woman. She states that black women represents oxymoronic concepts, such as black women represents endurance and strength but we are at the risk of poverty. The state that black women are in did not just start, we have been buried up to our waist in it for hundreds of years. Her main goal for writing this piece is to encourage the black woman that literacy is power and with it we can make it out of the state that we are in today. Because twenty-five percent of the world is illiterate and black women are forty-four percent of the sixty percent of women who are illterate. She traces the impact of literacy and black woman all the way back where the crisis started, in slavery.

So many factors are the cause of the crisis that black women are in today. Teen pregnancy, high school drop-outs, welfare and food-stamp recipients, etc.

Being born as a black woman makes you a statistic and at risk of being a failure. However; I believe that your past does not set the brightness of your future. Even though we are given the unfair advantage in school and in the work environment we still are black women. Black women are known to be fighters and we are the strongest due to our perserverance and resilience through everything that life has thrown our way, we made it through and we have it the hardest. It is not in our nature nor our history to stop believing and stop fighting for our rights and even though the world might not admit it yet they know that we are the strongest race/gender to have ever walk this Earth. If through literacy we will make people listen to us and announce that the Black woman is here, she demands respect, and she is here to stay.