Use Literacy to Fight The Oppressor

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As a disabled woman, I think about the ways life is inaccessible a lot. Most of life is dictated by inaccessibility. Can I work at a job if I don’t take a break (to help prevent my seizures)? Can I attend this event? (Is it walkable? Is there a masking policy?) If I can attend it, can I attend alone (in case of emergency)? Would I be able to catch a bus (since I can’t drive due to seizures)? And so on. A kind of inaccessibility I’ve been noticing more this year, however, is inaccessible language. Especially when it comes to our literacy as a country.

The News and Inaccessible Language

The New York Times released their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list last year. My partner is also a reader, so we went through the list together to see how much we’d read. I would read the title, the author, and the provided blurb. And each day, I was glad there were only 20 books, because I was becoming increasingly frustrated.

I love flowery, verbose, grandiose language, I truly do. I love that sort of language existing and believe there’s a place for it. Still, as a kid, I was told that newspapers are meant to be accessible to more people. But between paywalls and the language used, I’ve found that the news has become more inaccessible. In the case of the best books list, the descriptions I read were overwhelmingly frustrating. I kept thinking, “Why don’t you describe this more simply?” And then I noticed it again, and again, and again. Throughout the year, I saw world news, politics, and other types of stories use inaccessible language.

A comedian I follow recently posted a link to a quiz to tell you where you sit on the political spectrum, followed by a commenter who posted a more in-depth quiz. I took the quizzes, only to be confused by a lot of the language. Afterwards, my partner, who had heard a lot of the phrases used before, went through the quiz with me, and I realized I was saying yes for things that I would have said no for, and vice versa. It skewed my results, because I had been piecing together what I thought the questions were and was way off base.

In a country where 54% of adults have literacy below a 6th-grade level, why don’t we use everyday language to discuss important information? Why do newspapers hide behind paywalls? Why do they use language that 54% of the adult population might struggle with?

Literacy as We Know It and Media Literacy

Traditional literacy is the building block for how we are able to receive and process information. Targeting an illiterate community with information that they can’t thoroughly process can be used to manipulate them. Trevor Noah had a joke about how good the right’s branding must be. When you first hear the words “Pro-Life,” if you don’t know what that means, you might think “well, of course I’m pro-life!” When you learn what “pro-life” really means, however, your opinion might change.

The same thing happened with “All Lives Matter.” My gramps once heard it used on the news and thought it was a good phrase to explain how we need to stick together and take care of each other… until my grandma explained how it was being used against Black Lives Matter and how we can’t claim all lives matter when Black lives are systematically attacked.

Literacy gives us the language to explain and understand these things. Higher literacy gives us a stronger foundation to build on, especially when we look at the way we receive our news and information. Higher traditional literacy ensures we have what we need to build our media literacy skills.

Learning Media Literacy

A phrase I hear (or read) often is “media literacy is dead,” but people don’t usually explain what they mean. Media literacy is our ability to look at different messages from the media and analyze or evaluate them. Remember when teachers said not to use Wikipedia as a source for reports? Do you know how Google and Apple Maps have changed their maps to read “Gulf of America”? When we ask critical questions about what media shows us, we’re using media literacy skills. They’re incredibly important for making sure we avoid manipulation and avoid being easily influenced. Media literacy is a skill we have to be taught, though.

My dad taught me media literacy through sports. Every year, my dad reads writer Matthew Berry’s “Things You Need to Know Before the Draft” post, which Berry always starts the same way (using different players). He’ll hype up one player, showing positive statistics that make you think “I have to have them on my team.” Then he’ll show you another player’s statistics, making them sound like the last person you’d ever want to draft. Oftentimes, they’re either A) the same person or B) the positive player is incredibly unpopular while the negative player is an all-star talent. As he said in 2024’s edition, “You see, I can make stats say anything I want. Literally anything I want…  can talk up or down any player I want. I just have to choose the right stats for the job.”

I first read Berry’s article as a teenager, and it stuck with me. If the statistics or facts are out there, you can spin them how you want. A notion that was absolutely terrifying to me, because I realized that it included the news, which I had been taught is meant to be impartial.

Media Literacy and the News

My grandparents and I saw vastly different coverage of the 2020 protests, and it’s because we had different news sources. They watched the local news channels, and I scrolled through social media. They saw police saying how riots were getting out of hand, and I saw videos of police firing rubber bullets on peaceful organizers. I read first-hand accounts when police shot rubber bullets at press, once blinding journalist Linda Tirado. Tirado lost her left eye, settled a lawsuit with Minneapolis police, and is currently dying of her injuries from the rubber bullet.

I couldn’t understand why my grandparents, the people who raised me to have the values I do, weren’t seeing the police the way I did. Until I sat down and watched the news with them, and I realized they literally weren’t seeing what I did. I showed my grandma Tirado’s story, as well as other videos of protesters. I showed her last-minute curfews being implemented to trap protesters. While my grandparents would still watch and trust the news, my grandma was more critical of them after that. She would ask me what I was seeing that she wasn’t, and she’d listen. At the same time, she’d also remind me to make sure I was being wary of getting all of my information from social media.

Social Media Literacy

Social media can be a powerful tool, but that doesn’t mean it’s infallible. Just look at Twitter’s changes after Elon Musk bought it and turned it into X. Media literacy means looking critically at wherever we get news or media. It includes asking yourself questions when influencers are promoting brands and selling them to you, like wellness brands. (Hey, Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson covers how MLMs often target mothers who are looking for community, and shares the tactics they use to do so.)

Media literacy includes asking yourself questions even when engaging with FBC, even with this post. “What do we know about FBC? What do we know about Nox?” We want you to ask yourself these questions. Build up those media literacy skills!

Literacy Statistics

There’s a 7.3% gender gap in literacy levels worldwide, where men have a higher overall literacy rate than women. As The National Literacy Institute states, “34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US.” When you look at the demographics of the states with the highest adult literacy rate (New Hampshire) and the lowest adult literacy rate (California), or the states with the highest child literacy rate (Massachusetts) and lowest child literacy rate (New Mexico), the states with higher literacy rates are predominately white. With child literacy, Massachusetts is much wealthier than New Mexico, with the median household income in Massachusetts being over $30,000 more than that in New Mexico. California, while much wealthier than New Hampshire, is the state with the highest population in the country. A majority of California’s population is Latine.

This is the data that was readily available to me. A lot of states don’t collect data. But it’s still clear that illiteracy disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income communities. When you consider that literacy can give people access to information they’ve never had before, it’s a correlation that can’t go unnoticed. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has an article about racial inequality from 2022. In it, they say that “While the discussion of racial inequality in the United States is often focused on economic inequality, racial inequality also manifests itself in a multitude of ways that alone and together impact the well-being of all Americans. This includes racial disparities in wealth, education, employment, housing, mobility, health, rates of incarceration, and more.” The emphasis is my own. Communities of color should not be getting less educational resources. Lower-income communities should not be getting less educational resources.

Literacy as Social Justice

When I was in third grade, my teacher told us that our reading test scores were being used to predict how many prison beds would be needed when we turned 18. It turns out that’s a myth, but as Literacy Mid South says, there is a correlation between literacy levels and incarceration levels. There’s a history of literacy tests being used to deny Black people the right to vote, ones that were meant to be nearly impossible to pass. Literacy is a social justice issue.

With the majority of the literate population in the country being white and/or men, a white supremacist patriarchy would prefer language that is inaccessible to the rest of the population. Perhaps that’s why only 22 of our 50 states have passed laws regarding the readablility of ballot measures. Rhode Island is the most recent, where the language is required to be “…reasonably calculated to be understood by persons with an eighth-grade reading level.” It’s a start, but again, more than half of the adults in the country have a literacy level below 6th grade, not 8th.

We’re making progress, but we have more to do. We need to raise literacy levels while we make information accessible.

What Can I Do?

Fighting book bans can help with literacy! The lack of access to reading material, especially reading material that readers can relate to, makes it less likely for readers to pick up a book. It also challenges which areas have access to books. Last year, an Idaho library became adults-only as a response to the state’s new law. Fighting these laws makes sure everyone has more access to books.

NAMLE has a list of questions for engaging with media! Use them to build media literacy skills!

We need more literacy materials aimed at older students and adults. It has to be disheartening to try to build your literacy skills and see everything aimed at younger students. If you’re able to create them, or if you see any, make sure to share them!

Become a reading tutor! Organizations like Reading Partners and Literacy Mid-South provide you with the training and materials needed. If you can’t volunteer, you can donate to these organizations and others, like Room to Read and Media Literacy Now, so they can keep supporting literacy.

It’s easy in times like these to become overwhelmed or think that there’s nothing we can do. However, we can use the tools of literacy to continue to do good and support others.

Nox Quiroz