What's Critical Literacies?

By Author: Tracy McGrady
Total Articles: 56
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For Orlonia, Pinesville's white supremacist history functions as a "text" in that it is an object she interprets and makes sense of to operate within her community. As a text, such a history has participated in creating what the Pinesville community recognizes as legitimate and natural, setting "canons of truthfulness" (Apple, 2000, p. 46) within the community that represent a white supremacist ideology. The local newspaper is one text in which such canons of truthfulness circulate and Replica Tag Heuer are reproduced. For Orlonia, reading this newspaper's articles as research for the community alphabet book, particularly archived articles that document the community's Civil Rights-era struggles, required a repertoire of critical literacy practices in which she read for perspective, positioning, and power (Jones, 2006) to unpack the articles' functions, ideological framings, and multiple meanings.

In perusing The Pinesville Times for articles that depict the civil rights activities within the community in the summer of 1965, Orlonia focused ...
... on one article in which the author lauded the efforts of the local sheriff in handling the civil unrest that took place that summer. Orlonia stopped at one passage that described picketing Front Street merchants for not hiring African Americans. The article described one elderly female picketer who was seen with a cold drink and a package of crackers. The perspective of the reporter was that the picketer acted inconsistently—that the woman certainly purchased the soda and crackers from one of the downtown stores she was picketing. The power exercised by the reporter undermined the intentions and actions of the protestors and thereby positioned the protestors as insincere and hypocritical.

Upon reading this passage, Orlonia asked, "I wonder who gave it to her" When Amy heard Orlonia's question, particularly the emphasis on the word "gave," she became curious about Orlonia's interpretation of the article. Mainly, this was because she was surprised that in her previous readings of this article she had thought little about this reporting of events. Orlonia's question implied that the elderly African American woman was "given" the cold drink and crackers by someone who wanted to frame her for crossing the picket line. So, in response to Orlonia's question, Amy asked, "Do you think a white person gave it to her" To which Orlonia, smiling coyly, replied, "I don't know. Maybe." In this interaction, Orlonia directly questioned the reporter's perspective, making visible how power and positioning were operating within this article. In so doing, Orlonia helped Amy read this text differently.

In another example, Orlonia read archived articles from The Pinesville Times that described protests for school desegregation. Orlonia shared that African American youth who tried to board school buses headed for schools in Mill County were met by members of the KKK, who threw bottles at them. One youth who tried to board the school buses was a high school student and civil rights activist. A glass bottle thrown at the young man cut his cheek, leaving a scar. In reporting on this incident, the Breitling Replica Watches newspaper reported that this young man and 4 other high school students were arrested and charged with kidnapping for leading nearly 300 Pinesville High School students to a Freedom School, six miles outside of Pinesville. The perspective of the author was that these 5 students forcibly carried away 300 Pinesville High School students to the Freedom School. The power exercised by the author criminalized the actions of the students and thereby positioned them as "criminals." In reading this depiction of the young man's heroic efforts, Orlonia questioned, "Now, how could 5 kids kidnap 300 students"

What is significant about these two examples is how the two newspaper reporters positioned African American individuals in a way that reinforces white supremacy. Rather than being positioned as local heroes who have acted with integrity and courage, the reporters positioned African American individuals as hypocrites and criminals. In her reading, Orlonia detects and questions the power and perspective of the reporters and how they used language as a tool for positioning African Americans. Although Orlonia does not link such positioning to white supremacy aloud, such thinking is implicit within her questioning. As such, these examples shed light on how Pinesville's history informs how Orlonia engages with printed texts. Orlonia has matured in a context explicitly committed to maintaining a system of white supremacy, and she bore witness to the civil rights activities within this community. These experiences have enabled her to cultivate an alternative lens for interpreting texts, like the local newspaper, that were used to question the intentions and undermine the efforts of African American individuals.