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Merely Reading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Kinohi Nishikawa
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Extract

Recent statistics on african american readers outline distinct trends that are difficult to reconcile with each other. On the one hand, standardized tests of high school reading proficiency show that African Americans are falling further behind students in every other racial and ethnic group. The National Assessment of Educational Progress “report card” on reading claims that “Black twelfth-graders scored lower in 2013 than in 1992,” when the assessment began, while “the White-Black score gap widened” over that period (“Top Stories”). On the other hand, the Pew Research Center, in a survey published in 2014, reveals that a notably high percentage of African American adults are book readers. Pew's statistics show that when it comes to having read at least one book in the past year, there are more black readers than white or Hispanic readers (81% versus 76% and 67%, respectively) and that African Americans have read more e-books, audiobooks, and books in print than any other group (“E-Reading”).

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 130 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 697 - 703
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

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