"To Protect And Serve"

“To Protect and Serve” by Elaine Richardson was a excellent essay that discussed the histories of black women‘s literacy. I enjoyed reading the essay, because it grabbed my attention and made me curious as to what the other readings would discuss. While reading this essay, many points that Richardson discussed stood out to me. The one that impacted me the most was when she brought up Yahoo search engines and typing in black women. I witnessed the the adult websites that popped up. The first link that popped up when you type in black women is indeed for an adult website. I was truly disappointed. I was glad though that the second link was for “Black Girls Rock,” which was Black Entertainment Television (BET)’s awards show dedicated to outstanding black women. After that however, the adult websites continued. It was very insulting and degrading to see this and it also made me enraged. I feel that these derogatory images of black women should not be the first thing one sees when trying to research black women. The question that popped into my head about this was, what if a young black girl tries to research black women and she types that into the search engine, what she think of herself if all she saw were those degrading images?  We need a better and much more positive media role for our young girls, because if all they see are us as adult movie stars and "video vixens," they will aspire to be nothing more than modern day "Jezebels."  We need to be able to show them that they are more than that and that they can be anything that they want to be and are not limited to what they see.