In the Cornelius article, much of it discussed the “rights” given to slaves in the 1800s in each state, and the discrepancy in between. He references a Benjamin Russell in South Carolina who says “we were taught to read… it was against the law to teach a slave to write”. They went on to say that reading was taught against the law there, but there seems to have been no flexing the law when it came to writing. Upon reading this, my initial reaction was disgust. It felt that the community was okay with educating slaves, as they knew that they were able to learn those skills, but did not provide them with the means to express themselves.
With this thought, I had the question of “How is the skill of reading impaired without the ability to write?” For these slaves, who were surely silenced on a daily basis, writing could have been their outlet. The fact that they were taught to read is very fortunate, but still being denied writing seems very cruel. I imagine that – with the skill of reading – a slave in this time period could have benefited from this outlet or means of communication, at the very least.
I feel as though reading without the ability to write, while better than nothing at all, could possibly be viewed as a strategic move on behalf of slaveholders to subjugate the populations they owned. By teaching someone to read, you can subject them to whatever you allow them to read, and while you run the risk of them getting their hands on something you don’t want them to, the benefit in the slaveholder’s minds possibly outweighs that risk. Without writing being added to the mix, you rob them of any ability to communicate or properly express sentiments that could harm the interest of the owners. Going back to Brandt’s view of literacy as a good which bestows economic and social benefit, I feel as though selectively controlling access to literacy and also the extent of which you do so is an extremely effective mechanism for control.