The Literacy Gameshow

This reading, specifically the Pollack piece, quite frankly made me want to hit something. The Southern literacy test questions were so irrelevant and random that they made me feel as though it was a game show asking questions that had no real bearing in what it meant to be a citizen with the right to vote: "How many rooms does the White House have?", "How many windows does the White House have?", "Write the entirety of the U.S. Constitution (punctuation counts)", "Recite the entire Constitution... in Chinese." It was virtually impossible to gain voting privileges if you were an African American citizen, and none of the white citizens cared. Another compelling point of the article was the choice quotations that were taken from multiple government officials, each more racist than the last. This article left me feeling angry and ready for change.