Ray Nicole
Blog #1
The Assignment:
Option One Analysis
Focus Reading: Toxic Literacies, Denny Taylor
Focus Terms: Colonization, culture/subculture: (Field Working), enculturate (Taylor)
· Colonization the takeover of less powerful people by more powerful people who demand conformity to their group’s ideas and values, as in a territory ruled or annexed by another country
· Culture the behaviors, patterns, rules and rituals of a group of people who have contact with one another and share common languages
· Enculturate the process by which an individual learns the traditional content of a culture and assimilates to its practices and values
A Class Misunderstood
Throughout a series of excepts from Toxic Literacies, Denny Taylor illustrates how lower class members of society become buried under bureaucratic paperwork that often keeps them in a state of despair, without an opportunity to receive help. Taylor argues that the official documents, used to determine who receives assistance, “takes away their (lower class citizens) rights and privileges and leaves them powerless to protest because they have no access to the text” (11). In other words, these toxic texts act as a barrier between those seeking assistance and those in control of providing the desired support. For the purpose of this blog, I tend to look into Taylor’s work in relation to two key terms, colonization and culture/subculture, from the text Field Working by B.S. Sustein and E.C. Strater.
To Taylor, toxic literacies encompass documents like emergency assistance forms, food stamps, and job applications geared toward the homeless, the poor, and those reaching for financial stability. He points out how through these official forms of documentation “federal, state, and local agencies have turned poverty into a bureaucratic industry” (10). In the simplest terms, this paperwork dominates the lives of lower class society. This process of control is defined in Field Working as colonization. Colonization is “the takeover of less powerful people by more powerful people who demand conformity to their group’s ideas and values…” (499). To my understanding, Taylor’s aim to expose toxic literacies as an effort to free the lower class, challenges upper class society to see lower class society as a population of individuals in need of an honest opportunity, not a handout. Taylor’s efforts to understand the bureaucratic system of paperwork and those involved with it, uncovers how the wealthy class has worked to colonize the peoples’ outside of their culture of affluence.
Throughout numerous stories, Taylor puts names to individuals struggling to survive under policies designed to slow or stop the process of accessing help. On top of the toxic texts come labels of “lazy,” “illiterate,” and “dysfunctional.” All of which are used as a way to further alienate a class of people whose culture has taught them to accept the system as is, instead of continuously fighting against it. Take for example the first man Taylor describes. He worked several odd jobs, dealt with severe health issues, and still held onto the idea of his children receiving a good education. Also, recall the women who obtained a degree, and hopped buses in an effort to find a job, which she never found (2-3). In both cases, hope faded into the reality of poverty and its devastating effects.
If it’s true, that those in a position to exert power over the life of another are using text to do so, how then can this same class of people look down on the poor when they learn to survive by deviant means? In other words, when someone is refused help, is unable to find or keep a job (for whatever reason), and then turns to selling drugs to feed their family and sustain their home… why are they punished further by criminal sanctions, disheartening labels, and angry judgment? Is this process yet another means of colonization, of further dismissing the reality of those in need, through paperwork, rules, policy, and regulation? A similar situation is told by Taylor, who illustrated the story of Cindy. Cindy takes drugs to ease her pain, both emotional and physical pain, and is then locked up and stripped of her children (8-9). To make matters worse, she is a junkie in the eyes of the judge, a hardly understanding society, and to whoever decides to keep that label upon her.
The process of colonizing the lower class, through text, fails to take into account the culture of those experiencing poverty. Instead of trying to learn about, understand, or make better the lifestyles of ‘poor’ people, the affluent class is trying to make the class below them conform to their personal way of living. In all reality, their efforts are nothing more than foolish. How can a class of people experiencing poverty, destruction, and struggle grasp onto the ideas of class benefiting from “proper” education, exposure, and experiences, a world that seems so far from reach? The lower class has learned to remain in a culture full of factors demanding failure. Although much of this culture accepts deviant means as a way of survival, they continue on living the best way they can. Just as the upper class sees its lifestyle as correct, so too does the lower class by way of Enculturation, as Taylor might say.
