LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Sample Student Midterm, Fall 2007

Rosalinda Ortiz

September 30, 2007

                                    Is It Better To Become A Part Of The Other Group?

When a person comes from a certain culture and decides to move into an area of a different culture, it becomes difficult to have to choose on whether they will adapt to their new environment or remain what and who they are.  A person may have a hard time trying to make the choice between the world of their past or this new world of their future.  In the case of Minorities in America, the Africans Americans that were brought to this country through slavery were not given a choice on making this journey.  They were thrown into this country and left to sink or swim, but not out of their own free will.  Yet once they arrived they had to decide on whether or not they were going to assimilate with these strangers among them.  Unlike immigrants, minority groups did not make this trip of their own accord, so assimilating had to become a choice they had on their plate.  There were different ways African Americans could assimilate into this new culture, but the problem was on them having to lose everything they had grown to know.  If they chose to resist assimilation, then they would remain ignorant from those slave-owners that had such tight grips on them.  If they did assimilate, then their eyes would be open to the horrifying situation they are sustained in.  One way the African Americans assimilated was through literacy and education.  Although learning to read and write may have made the African Americans feel like it was a step forward for them, the act of this assimilation may have also been a negative aspect in their life.

            Reading and writing is a benefit for everyone and anyone, but when African American slaves learned these traits it was at a cost of knowing the true nature of the state they were in.  Literacy opened their eyes to the actuality of this world they never really knew existed. A world they had never questioned before, but accepted because they had no other choice nor option.  The world of literacy opened up a different perspective on their lives.  They learned that the life they were leading was not the way things should be.  The treatment they received was inhumane punishment for a crime they never committed.  They would not have learned this had they not been taught to read and write.  At some point, they felt that maybe it would have been better for them to not have learned anything at all than know what it was they now knew.  Frederick Douglas, in The Classic Slave Narratives, states,

I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.  It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy.  It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.  In a moment of agony I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity…It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me (Gates 370).

Douglas was able to understand the terrible conditions the slaves lived in, but he had no answer on how to change it.  He can see and understand the problem, but he did not want this weight on him because he knew that there was no solution.  At least, there was not a way he could solve the problem all slaves faced.  He had to learn to live with the fact that he had this knowledge, but was not able to really use it.  And it was true in his case, when Mr. Auld said “it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy” (Gates 364).  Douglas does become unhappy with what he knows.  He reached points where he rather have been ignorant, like the other slaves, because then he would not have been carrying this burden of the actuality of slavery on his shoulders.  Anyone could understand why he would feel this way because why would someone want to know all this information and have to sit with his arms tied behind his back?  There is nothing that could be undone for a slave that now has his eyes open.  Reading and writing does not seem to be an accomplishment, but a misery for a slave that cannot end his confinement.

            Olaudah Equiano, also in The Classic Slave Narratives, had a different experience with literacy.  He was a captured slave, so he had already been conditioned in his own country before he was kidnapped.  He experienced it all first hand and knew that his life would never be the same, but he soon learned that he was different from his white capturers.  He attempted to become literate in hope that maybe it would allow him to reach their level.  The level of the people that Amiri Baraka describes in his poem “Somebody Blew Up America.”  Baraka asks,

            Who have the colonies

Who stole the most land

Who rule the world

Who say they good but only do evil

Who the biggest executioner

            Who? Who? Who?

Equiano wants to be like these same people that have done the above stated things and claim to be good with evil actions.  He may not be aware of what extent these people will go through to get what they want, but he thinks the solution to his problem is to become more like them.  In his narrative he writes,

I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as men superior to us; and therefore I had the stronger desire to resemble them, to imbibe their spirit, and imitate their manners. I therefore embraced every occasion of improvement; and every new thing that I observed I treasure up in my memory (Gates 81).

He believes that the white men were superior to them and took advantage of all attempts of assimilation to be like them.  It does not dawn on Equiano that he is as human as they are.  They both need the same air to breathe, but Equiano feels that these people have something that he lacks.  An act as attempting to be someone you are not may be more damaging to a person’s self because a person loses who they really are and all that they were taught.  In Equiano’s act of assimilating he begins to let go of his culture and beliefs.  He may think that he is doing a good thing to himself, like improving, but he is releasing everything that he was by taking this step.  In reality, he is aware that you cannot become one thing without changing who you were at one time.  It is just disappointing that he must lose his past to get anywhere in his future.

            On the other hand, not learning to read and write also becomes a downfall for African Americans and essentially, anyone.  It gives others the opportunity to take advantage of a person in this position.  Lacking the knowledge that is required to make any form of transactions becomes a benefit to a literate person, as opposed to someone who is illiterate.  The illiterate person becomes very vulnerable and weak, mentally.  Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison contained the prime example of someone that receives the shorter end of the stick due to his lack of literacy.  Macon Dead, Sr. did not know how to read and in the end it leads to him losing everything he owned.  The book states,

[He] couldn’t read, couldn’t even sign his name. Had a mark he used. They tricked him. He signed something, I don’t know what, and they told him they owned his property. He never read nothing…He should have let me teach him. Everything bad that ever happened to him happened because he couldn’t read. Got his name messed up cause he couldn’t read (Morrison 53).

Macon believed that the fact that his father did not know how to read completely ruined him.  Maybe his father would not have signed anything if he was able to read it.  Then he would not have lost his home nor his life.  Macon assumed all this because he assimilated in the world he lived in.  Macon, Sr. resisted assimilating, but I do not think that he ever assumed that his resistance would lead him down this road.  Yet the positive aspect of his failure to assimilate is that his son knew how important it was for him to learn and this helped him in avoiding the situation his father could not.  It, also, caused Macon to become a greedy, selfish man.  So which of the two would be the lesser evil, lack of knowledge or using knowledge for power over your own people?

            In contrast, Corinthians in this same novel does not received any luck from receiving an education.  She is the opposite of what someone would expect from an educated person.  Knowledge is supposed to allow someone to get ahead in life, but for her it does the opposite.  It brings her two steps backward instead.  It was expected for her have high prospects.  According to the novel,

It had been assumed that she and Magdalene…would marry well – but hopes for Corinthians were especially high since she’d gone to college. Her education taught her how to be an enlightened mother and wife…And if marriage was not achieved, there were alternative roles: teacher, librarian, or…something intelligent and public–spirited. When neither of these fates tapped her on the forehead right away, she simply waited (Morrison 188).

Here is a woman that got an education, even traveled and all that came out of it was that she became “Miss Graham’s maid” (Morrison 187).  A job she could have received without having a college education.  As Ftacnik explains in her 2001 midterm, Corinthians “was afforded the opportunity to be educated and literate, and should have been able to have a job as a professional.  Corinthians was not only a woman but a black woman, who graduated from college in the early 1940's, and she should have been able to earn a living as a teacher, or some other profession where she would be able to showcase her intellect.”  Corinthians did have opportunity that others could not afford, but she did not receive anything from her accomplishments through this opportunity.  She would not have been any worse off if she would not have wasted her years in school.  I am sure the question came through her mind of why it was that she even bothered with it.  It obviously did not send her on a path that was paved with gold.  It is believed that an education opens many doors, but, unfortunately, for Corinthians she could not even climb through a window.       

            To summarize, knowledge can be very rewarding for anyone that is given the opportunity to receive it, but in the cases up above it was more of a burden than a gift.  It is difficult to state whether or not it is better to learn to read or to not bother learning at all in those situations.  On the one hand, these people had to choose to become like the culture they were never asked to be a part of or resist this assimilation with the chance of never succeeding.  It did not seem to be a win-win situation for any of the people above.  It seems to be that you have to lose to gain or in some instances, gain to lose.  Literacy may have been mandatory for the African American slave, but to lose who you are in attempt to become someone your not should never be the case for anyone.  Many of these African American slaves had to give up everything they had grown accustomed to and begin all over again with a different culture and customs.  Yet assimilating because of the occurrences in a family’s past, may make a person become more proud and lose sight of the reason he was trying to improve himself.  It could become less of a group advancement and more of a selfish one.