Patriann Smith, Ph.D.

Recently, I attended another literacy function and was once again assailed by the insistence of well-intentioned educators on describing large numbers of students as “underperforming” due to their “illiteracy”. I was startled. It occurred to me that even with the insurmountable evidence we now have about students’ holistic literate capacities, there is a dedicated effort to maintain Eurocentric standards as the primary mechanisms for describing what children, many of whom are people of Color, can and cannot do.

In “Black Immigrant Literacies can Reinstate Black Language and Transcend the Global Myth of Black Brokenness,” published by the London School of Economics United States American Politics and Policy Blog (LSE USAPP), I argue that the devastating and long-standing practice of using “invented illiteracy” to characterize the sophisticated literacies of the Black Majority World is broadly indicative of markedly incomplete understandings of the literacies of Black peoples and of people of Color at large.

For decades, the Black Majority World has been described by white and Eurocentric institutions as “illiterate”, with some arguments made that “functional literacy” for Blacks should be improved while others have instead focused on the literate strengths of Black youth. But who decides what is “functional” and how does our current context often limit our capacity to see a broad range of literate strengths? 

Bridging dichotomous thinking using the lens of “Black Immigrant Literacies,” by relying on the axioms of quantum physics for transdisciplinarity as articulated by Basarab Nicolescu, I invite a “both-and” approach (distinctly different from the notion of “both-sides”) to demonstrate that Black people can use literacy exceptionally despite being historically described as broken and deemed in need of support by the very systems and societies that have repeatedly robbed them of the right to functional literacy.

Educators, academics, policy-makers and organizations are uniquely positioned and invited to make space for the rich linguistic diversity of Black Englishes and Black literacies, which positions Black peoples worldwide to engage with various forms of text, and makes others wonder and excited as well as think in novel ways.

#literacy #race #immigration #language