massive civil rights movement, many states, particularly in the Jim Crow South, used so-called "literacy tests" to disenfranchise Black people along with "poll taxes" and general terror tactics of bombing, burning, and lynching.

The argument was that to be able to vote "intelligently" a person had to be able to read and explain such things as the U.S. Constitution to the satisfaction of the local

election officials. Black people who dared to try to register to vote were disqualified by use of the "literacy test."

There was a joke in those days about the Black university professor who tried to register to vote and was asked to read and explain the U.S. Constitution. When he did so, he was given a passage in French by Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher which he read, translated, and explained to the local voting inquisitors.

He was then given a copy of a newspaper in Chinese and asked what it said. He picked it up and said he could only read the headline. The professor said the headline reads "No Black person will be voting in this county this year." It took the massive civil rights struggles of the '40s, '50s and '60s to get rid of the bogus "literacy tests."

Literacy tests for workers, who know the job inside and out because they do it day in and day out, are throwbacks to the same kinds of racist and chauvinist attempts to divide working people. The boss wants you to do the work and he hates it if you read a newspaper or book, no matter what language, especially if it's the Militant or Perspectiva Mundial, or a title published by Pathfinder Press.

Robin Maisel
Los Angeles, California  
 
 
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