The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
Other Website: http://herculodge.typepad.com/
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development. In a 1,500-word argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion from Sherry Turkle’s “The Flight from Conversation” (online essay) that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development.
A comma splice is joining two sentences with a comma when you should separate them with a period or a semicolon.
Incorrect
People love Facebook, however, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Corrected
People love Facebook. However, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Corrected
Though people love Facebook, they fail to realize Facebook is sucking all their energy.
Incorrect
Patience is difficult to cultivate, it grows steadily only if we make it a priority.
Corrected
Patience is difficult to cultivate. It grows steadily only if we make it a priority.
Corrected
Because patience grows within us so slowly, patience is extremely difficult to cultivate.
You can use a comma between two complete sentences when you join them with a FANBOYS word or coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
Correct
People love Facebook, but they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it)
My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.
10. Jeff Henderson had no choice, it was either work or stay confined in his prison cell.
11. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart, what better way to spend the rest of your life in bliss?
12. He asked me to marry him, he was a Marine after all stationed in Japan.
13. Her life was finally beginning, she could leave Los Angeles.
14. This was her life, she did what she wanted.
15. Now she had nothing, she had given up her job to move overseas.
16. Life was too much of a challenge, she accepted that fact.
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week. Nonetheless, he remained skinny.
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week, but he remained skinny.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW. Instead, she bought the Acura.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW, yet she did buy the Acura.
Steve wasn't interested in college. Moreover, he didn't want to work full-time.
Steve wasn't interested in college, and he didn't want to work full-time.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me. However, I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do, however, want you to help me do my taxes.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid. Consequently, I think we should break up.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid, so I think we should break up.
Students hate reading. Therefore, they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Students hate reading, so they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons
Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.
One. How have friendships been degraded in the age of social media?
Once built on sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and deep bonds, friendships, now redefined in the age of social media, have become more of a notion of metrics (“how many friends you have?”) than traditional characteristics that define friendship.
With the new metrics system of having over 1,000 friends, one is hoarding huge numbers for bragging rights rather than forging life-lasting connections based on effort and reciprocity.
Social media friendships are largely defined by the lack of effort to maintain them with a “like” button.
We’re now hoarding friends rather than cultivating friendships. We become degraded into petty-brained narcissists in the process.
According the Dunbar Number Theory, we can maintain 150 friendships in social media. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, based his number on a 1990s primate study. That study is now applied to social networks.
Two. Why does Curtis Silver disagree with the Dunbar Number Theory of 150?
For one, social networks are constantly shifting so we don’t even know who our “friends” are, or are not, at any given time.
For two, Dunbar’s theory was based on personal relationships, not online ones. We may be able to apply Dunbar’s theory to a certain point, but probably a lower number.
Three. Curtis Silver asks the question, “What is a friend?”
Silver quotes the Oxford dictionary: It is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
The problem with social media “friends” is that any mutual affection proves to be too minute or insignificant.
To use a cliché I like, with social media connections there is too often “not enough skin in the game.” In other words, nothing is really at stake in these online friendships.
Four. Have friendships been diminishing before social media?
We read that in fact they have. Silver writes, “According to a 2006 study in the journal American Sociological Review, Americans have been suffering a loss in number and quality of friendships since 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close friends, and the average of that overall per person has dropped from four to two. . . .”
Studies I’ve read about income inequality in America have pointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a turning point in which Americans had to fight harder to join the middle class. Perhaps working more jobs and in general being too busy for friends is a factor. In other words, perhaps economics is a cause of dwindling friendships.
“Dude, I’m too busy for friends. I’m too busy taking care of business.”
If this is true, then social media isn’t the cause of diminished friendships; it’s the symptom of economic hardship.
Five. What is the connection between social media and “sharing”?
Silver suggests that we share too much private information on social media so that intimate personal details are no longer sacred or special and that experiencing some sort of degraded intimacy with our “friends,” we stop connecting on a deep level with our real friends.
We could call this Sharing Fatigue, which reveals a pathological contradiction: We’re compelled like addicts to share all our private stuff on one hand but on the other hand we’re numb to all the sharing we do. Sharing Fatigue turns us into zombies.
Silver suggests that this zombie state degrades our concern for others and that it’s more difficult to be a real friend who is “grounded in a concern” for the other friend.
Additionally, all the social media sharing we do is too often less about making a connection with others and more about advertising “The Big Me,” to use a term coined by David Brooks who laments our digital age of self-aggrandizement and general boasting.
Six. What is the effect of our existence in a large matrix of social connections called “friends”?
We are now performing for this large audience and as we perform, cultivating an image for “our fans,” we lose empathy, develop narcissism, and become lost in an image that is disconnected from our true selves.
In an earlier chapter about celebrity culture, we studied the disconnect between celebrity and personhood.
Would a social critic be justly accused of bombast and hyperbole for pointing out that cut off from empathy and creeping toward narcissism and solipsism we’re heading into some mass psychosis? I’ll leave it for you to decide.
I will tell you that I’ve spoken with some students who tell me they not only have time for real friends; they don’t have time for social media as well, to the point that they don’t have a Facebook account or any other similar form of social media. Perhaps their being too busy works in their favor.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
after although as because before even if even though if in order that
once provided that rather than since so that than that though unless
until when whenever where whereas wherever whether while why
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
Students will work on thesis and outline for Essay 2
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development. In a 1,500-word argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion from Sherry Turkle’s “The Flight from Conversation” (online essay) that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development.
One. We're letting tech take us places we don't want to go.
She's talking about a psychological state, a demonic state, in which we date the angel that turns out to be the devil.
Two. Tech devices change not just what we are but who we are.
Tech is compromising our humanity, our friendships, our ability to enjoy solitude, and our skills at self-reflection.
Three. Crazy, dysfunctional behavior is the new normal.
For example, many text while giving eye contact, a sort of phony connecting.
We text at church, funerals, and sacred places. We take "salvation selfies" as we emerge from the baptism water.
We hang out at Starbucks for five hours and say the next day what a great time we had when in fact we we're "alone together" on our smartphones.
Four. We aspire to the "Goldilocks effect": not too close, not too far.
In other words, we want control of our environment. We prefer control to the messy lack of control from real human interaction.
We no longer want real conversations that take place in real time and that cannot be controlled. Texting becomes the preferred option.
In extreme cases, we're willing to dispense with people and prefer Siri or sociable robots.
Five. We take little sips of tweets and posts and other data bites and the hope is that eventually all these little sips will lead to one big nutritional gulp. But this hope is built on a canard. All we have is nothing.
Six. Our escape from conversation compromises the skills that also help us in self-reflection.
People who converse well also self-reflect well, and the opposite is true.
Seven. We expect more from technology and less from each other.
We need the latest upgrades and refreshes and innovations in tech even as we keep more and more people at a distance.
Eight. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy.
Intimacy requires honesty, loss of control, and vulnerability, but the rewards are humor, emotional completeness, and life fullness.
We're averse to the demands of friendship, which require commitment, loss of control, and vulnerability.
Nine. We suffer from "alone anxiety."
We can't be at a red light without checking texts and Facebook status.
We connect through texting and other ways not as a sign of our fullness as human beings but from a place of fear, fragmentation, desperation, loneliness, and angst (the restless anxiety that results from not knowing who we are, from having no purpose, and from languishing in the existential vacuum).
Turkle says "connection is a symptom, not a cure" for our sense of loneliness.
The more we connect, the more desperate we become, which in turn compels us to connect even more. This addiction becomes a vicious cycle.
Ten. Turkle says, "I share; therefore I am."
This is a delusion. Sharing is an expression of fragmentation and desperation and the loss of selfhood.
Turkle observes, "We're using people as spare parts to repair our fragile and broken selves."
Eleven. Turkle's secret sauce to the human condition is this: Solitude is the prerequisite for real connection.
"If we can't be alone, we'll be more lonely." We need to learn to be alone, and that means not sharing all the time on social media.
Final Essay
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 3 sources. One source must be from El Camino Library Database.
Thesis Response
In today’s digital age, it may be true that we suffer from an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, and online shaming; however, these pathologies are less the cause of social media than the symptoms of a dystopian culture built on income inequality evidenced by _______________, ________________, ______________, and ____________________.
Another Thesis Response
While income inequality is surely the cause of some of our social pathologies, we have to attribute even more of the blame on social media such as Facebook, which is responsible for __________________, __________________, _________________, and ________________________.
POSSIBLE REFUTATION OF TURKLE
What are OTHER causes of our loneliness and disconnection other than social media?
Moving into the suburbs
Growing debt equals more work hours.
Sub-living wages equals more work hours.
Anxiety and stress of "trying to stay afloat" impedes time and money for social life.
Addictive personalities will find whatever is available to feed their addiction. All addictive behavior leads to isolation and disconnection.
We live in an addictive society. Social media and consumerism have joined forces to make us addicts.
What can we attribute to Facebook as a misery cause?
It encourages the envy from social comparison and FOMO (fear of missing out).
But can we blame Facebook if we have let it become our default when we're looking for connection?
Do we confuse connection with real bonds? What's the difference?
Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it)
My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.
10. Jeff Henderson had no choice, it was either work or stay confined in his prison cell.
11. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart, what better way to spend the rest of your life in bliss?
12. He asked me to marry him, he was a Marine after all stationed in Japan.
13. Her life was finally beginning, she could leave Los Angeles.
14. This was her life, she did what she wanted.
15. Now she had nothing, she had given up her job to move overseas.
16. Life was too much of a challenge, she accepted that fact.
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week. Nonetheless, he remained skinny.
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week, but he remained skinny.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW. Instead, she bought the Acura.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW, yet she did buy the Acura.
Steve wasn't interested in college. Moreover, he didn't want to work full-time.
Steve wasn't interested in college, and he didn't want to work full-time.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me. However, I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do, however, want you to help me do my taxes.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid. Consequently, I think we should break up.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid, so I think we should break up.
Students hate reading. Therefore, they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Students hate reading, so they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons
Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Birthdays that land on a Monday are a bummer.
Birthdays, which can be costly, are overrated.
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
Identifying Claims and Analyzing Arguments from Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky’s From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Third Edition
We’ve learned in this class that we can call a thesis a claim, an assertion that must be supported with evidence and refuting counterarguments.
There are 3 different types of claims: fact, value, and policy.
Claims of Fact
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “Claims of fact are assertions (or arguments) that seek to define or classify something or establish that a problem or condition has existed, exists, or will exist.
For example, Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow argues that Jim Crow practices that notoriously oppressed people of color still exist in an insidious form, especially in the manner in which we incarcerate black and brown men.
In The Culture Code Rapaille argues that different cultures have unconscious codes and that a brand’s codes must not be disconnected with the culture that brand needs to appeal to. This is the problem or struggle that all companies have: being “on code” with their product. The crisis that is argued is the disconnection between people’s unconscious codes and the contrary codes that a brand may represent.
Many economists, such as Paul Krugman, argue that there is major problem facing America, a shrinking middle class, that is destroying democracy and human freedom as this country knows it. Krugman and others will point to a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, a growing class of temporary workers that surpasses all other categories of workers (warehouse jobs for online companies, for example), and de-investment in the American labor force as jobs are outsourced in a world of global competition.
All three examples above are claims of fact. As Greene and Lidinsky write, “This is an assertion that a condition exists. A careful reader must examine the basis for this kind of claim: Are we truly facing a crisis?”
We further read, “Our point is that most claims of fact are debatable and challenge us to provide evidence to verify our arguments. They may be based on factual information, but they are not necessarily true. Most claims of fact present interpretations of evidence derived from inferences.”
A Claim of Fact That Seeks to Define Or Classify
Greene and Lidinsky point out that autism is a controversial topic because experts cannot agree on a definition. The behaviors attributed to autism “actually resist simple definition.”
There is also disagreement on a definition of obesity. For example, some argue that the current BMI standards are not accurate.
Another example that is difficult to define or classify is the notion of genius.
In all the cases above, the claim of fact is to assert a definition that must be supported with evidence and refutations of counterarguments.
Claims of Value
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of fact is different from a claim of value, which expresses an evaluation of a problem or condition that has existed, exists, or will exist. Is a condition good or bad? Is it important or inconsequential?
In other words, the claim isn’t whether or not a crisis or problem exists: The emphasis is on HOW serious the problem is.
How serious is global warming?
How serious is gender discrimination in schools?
How serious is racism in law enforcement and incarceration?
How serious is the threat of injury for people who engage in Cross-Fit training?
How serious are the health threats rendered from providing sodas in public schools?
How serious are Brand codes and their connection or disconnection with the consumer’s unconscious codes?
Claims of Policy
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of policy is an argument for what should be the case, that a condition should exist. It is a call for change or a solution to a problem.
Examples
We must decriminalize drugs.
We must increase the minimum wage to X per hour.
We must have stricter laws that defend worker rights for temporary and migrant workers.
We must integrate more autistic children in mainstream classes.
We must implement universal health care.
If we are to keep capital punishment, then we must air it on TV.
We must implement stricter laws for texting while driving.
The Importance of Using Concession with Claims
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Part of the strategy of developing a main claim supported with good reasons is to offer a concession, an acknowledgment that readers may not agree with every point the writer is making. A concession is a writer’s way of saying, ‘Okay, I can see that there may be another way of looking at the issue or another way to interpret the evidence used to support the argument I am making.’”
“Often a writer will signal a concession with phrases like the following:”
“It is true that . . .”
“I agree with X that Y is an important factor to consider.”
“Some studies have convincingly shown that . . .”
Identify Counterarguments
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Anticipating readers’ objections demonstrates that you understand the complexity of the issue and are willing at least to entertain different and conflicting opinions.”
Developing a Thesis
Greene and Lidinsky write that a thesis is “an assertion that academic writers make at the beginning of what they write and then support with evidence throughout their essay.” They then give the thesis these attributes:
Makes an assertion that is clearly defined, focused, and supported.
Reflects an awareness of the conversation from which the writer has taken up the issue.
Is placed at the beginning of the essay.
Penetrates every paragraph like the skewer in a shish kebab.
Acknowledges points of view that differ from the writer’s own, reflecting the complexity of the issue.
Demonstrates an awareness of the readers’ assumptions and anticipates possible counterarguments.
Conveys a significant fresh perspective.
Working and Definitive Thesis
In the beginning, you develop a working or tentative thesis that gets more and more revised and refined as you struggle with the evidence and become more knowledgeable of the subject.
A writer who comes up with a thesis that remains unchanged is not elevating his or her thinking to a sophisticated level.
Only a rare genius could spit out a meaningful thesis that defies revision.
Not just theses, but all writing is subject to multiple revisions. For example, the brilliant TV writers for 30 Rock, The Americans, and The Simpsons make hundreds of revisions for just one scene and even then they’re still not happy in some cases.
Four Models for Developing a Working Thesis
The Correcting-Misinterpretations Model
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “This model is used to correct writers whose arguments you believe have misconstrued one or more important aspects of an issue. This thesis typically takes the form of a factual claim.
Examples of Correcting-Misinterpretation Model
Although LAUSD teachers are under fire for poor teaching performance, even the best teachers have been thrown into abysmal circumstances that defy strong teaching performance evidenced by __________________, ___________________, ________________, and _____________________.
Even though Clotaire Rapaille is venerated as some sort of branding god, a close scrutiny exposes him as a shrewd self-promoter who relies on several gimmicks including _______________________, _______________________, _________________, and ___________________.
The Filling-the-Gap Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The gap model points to what other writers may have overlooked or ignored in discussing a given issue. The gap model typically makes a claim of value.”
Example
Many psychology experts discuss happiness in terms of economic wellbeing, strong education, and strong family bonds as the essential foundational pillars of happiness, but these so-called experts fail to see that these pillars are worthless in the absence of morality, as Eric Weiners’s study of Qatar shows, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and _____________________.
The Modifying-What-Others-Have-Said Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The modification model of thesis writing assumes that mutual understanding is possible.” In other words, we want to modify what many already agree upon.
Example
While most scholars agree that food stamps are essential for hungry children, the elderly, and the disabled, we need to put restrictions on EBT cards so that they cannot be used to buy alcohol, gasoline, lottery tickets, and other non-food items.
The Hypothesis-Testing Model
The authors write, “The hypothesis-testing model begins with the assumption that writers may have good reasons for supporting their arguments, but that there are also a number of legitimate reasons that explain why something is, or is not, the case. . . . That is, the evidence is based on a hypothesis that researchers will continue to test by examining individual cases through an inductive method until the evidence refutes that hypothesis.”
For example, some researchers have found a link between the cholesterol drugs, called statins, and lower testosterone levels in men. Some say the link is causal; others say the link is correlative, which is to say these men who need to lower their cholesterol already have risk factors for low T levels.
As the authors continue, “The hypothesis-testing model assumes that the questions you raise will likely lead you to multiple answers that compete for your attention.”
The authors then give this model for such a thesis:
Some people explain this by suggesting that, but a close analysis of the problem reveals several compelling, but competing explanations.
“The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” by Curtis Silver
One. How have friendships been degraded in the age of social media?
Once built on sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and deep bonds, friendships, now redefined in the age of social media, have become more of a notion of metrics (“how many friends you have?”) than traditional characteristics that define friendship.
With the new metrics system of having over 1,000 friends, one is hoarding huge numbers for bragging rights rather than forging life-lasting connections based on effort and reciprocity.
Social media friendships are largely defined by the lack of effort to maintain them with a “like” button.
We’re now hoarding friends rather than cultivating friendships. We become degraded into petty-brained narcissists in the process.
According the Dunbar Number Theory, we can maintain 150 friendships in social media. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, based his number on a 1990s primate study. That study is now applied to social networks.
Two. Why does Curtis Silver disagree with the Dunbar Number Theory of 150?
For one, social networks are constantly shifting so we don’t even know who our “friends” are, or are not, at any given time.
For two, Dunbar’s theory was based on personal relationships, not online ones. We may be able to apply Dunbar’s theory to a certain point, but probably a lower number.
Three. Curtis Silver asks the question, “What is a friend?”
Silver quotes the Oxford dictionary: It is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
The problem with social media “friends” is that any mutual affection proves to be too minute or insignificant.
To use a cliché I like, with social media connections there is too often “not enough skin in the game.” In other words, nothing is really at stake in these online friendships.
Four. Have friendships been diminishing before social media?
We read that in fact they have. Silver writes, “According to a 2006 study in the journal American Sociological Review, Americans have been suffering a loss in number and quality of friendships since 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close friends, and the average of that overall per person has dropped from four to two. . . .”
Studies I’ve read about income inequality in America have pointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a turning point in which Americans had to fight harder to join the middle class. Perhaps working more jobs and in general being too busy for friends is a factor. In other words, perhaps economics is a cause of dwindling friendships.
“Dude, I’m too busy for friends. I’m too busy taking care of business.”
If this is true, then social media isn’t the cause of diminished friendships; it’s the symptom of economic hardship.
Five. What is the connection between social media and “sharing”?
Silver suggests that we share too much private information on social media so that intimate personal details are no longer sacred or special and that experiencing some sort of degraded intimacy with our “friends,” we stop connecting on a deep level with our real friends.
We could call this Sharing Fatigue, which reveals a pathological contradiction: We’re compelled like addicts to share all our private stuff on one hand but on the other hand we’re numb to all the sharing we do. Sharing Fatigue turns us into zombies.
Silver suggests that this zombie state degrades our concern for others and that it’s more difficult to be a real friend who is “grounded in a concern” for the other friend.
Additionally, all the social media sharing we do is too often less about making a connection with others and more about advertising “The Big Me,” to use a term coined by David Brooks who laments our digital age of self-aggrandizement and general boasting.
Six. What is the effect of our existence in a large matrix of social connections called “friends”?
We are now performing for this large audience and as we perform, cultivating an image for “our fans,” we lose empathy, develop narcissism, and become lost in an image that is disconnected from our true selves.
In an earlier chapter about celebrity culture, we studied the disconnect between celebrity and personhood.
Would a social critic be justly accused of bombast and hyperbole for pointing out that cut off from empathy and creeping toward narcissism and solipsism we’re heading into some mass psychosis? I’ll leave it for you to decide.
I will tell you that I’ve spoken with some students who tell me they not only have time for real friends; they don’t have time for social media as well, to the point that they don’t have a Facebook account or any other similar form of social media. Perhaps their being too busy works in their favor.
Openness is open and unlimited access to technology and information. We read, “Openness is today a powerful cult, a religion with its own dogmas.” We further read that, “This fascination with ‘openness’ stems mostly from the success of open-source software, publicly accessible computer code that anyone is welcome to improve. But lately it has been applied to everything . . .”
Openness can be subversive, countercultural, anarchist, populist, green, educational (MOOCS, massive open online courses) and about becoming independent from “The Man.”
Two. What are some problems with “openness”?
For one, its vague definition is an umbrella for too many things to be a coherent system.
For two, the alleged democracy of openness seems fragile when we ask who decides what issues openness will address and how those issues will be addressed.
Alas, there is a ringleader and this contradicts the notion of openness.
For three, openness is less about accountability and more about “how many apps can be built on top of it.”
Three. What is the author’s thesis?
In paragraph 4 we read, “One doesn’t need to look at projects like Defcad to see that “openness” has become a dangerously vague term, with lots of sex appeal but barely any analytical content. Certified as ‘open,” the most heinous and suspicious ideas suddenly become acceptable.” For example, making automatic rifles becomes okay because it's "open."
This openness, or what Morozov calls solutionism, is "the latest opiate of the (iPad-toting) masses.
This "opiate" or drug blinds its believers from the scary truth: Destruction, mayhem, and evil can be created in this unchecked environment of "openness."
Sample Research Thesis
"Openness," a word coined by Evgeny Morozov, will not pave the road to Utopia but, like Morozov argues, will bring on catastrophe and social pathology like we've never seen before because _____________, _____________, _______________, and _______________.
Morozov's alarmist analysis of "openness" is misguided when we consider _______________, ________________, _________________, and __________________.
Develop an analytical thesis that compares the themes of learned helplessness and the vicious downward spiral of poverty as they are evident in “The Consequences: Undoing Sanity” and “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty.”
Sample Essay Outline
Paragraph One: Define learned helplessness by giving a single-sentence definition followed by an example.
Paragraph Two: Write an analytical thesis. Examples:
Sample Thesis That Tends Toward Cause and Effect
"The Consequences" and "How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty" both effectively show the downward spiral of learned helplessness in the face of unemployment and poverty. This downward spiral is consists of five major forces. The first is the "incapacitating illness" of shame and worthlessness that unemployment and poverty cause. Second, this "illness" is reinforced by social stigma that reinforces the person's feelings of self-loathing. Third, this self-loathing results in dissolved bonds with family and friends so that the person in intractably isolated. Fourth, the poor face "death by a thousand cuts," as society preys upon their weaknesses and exploits them in many ways, as we read in Ehrenreich's essay. Finally, the nail in the coffin is the state of anhedonia in which the person is no longer capable of happiness or meaningful connections with others.
Paragraphs Three through Seven would elaborate on the above mapping components.
Paragraphs Eight and Nine would be your counterargument-rebuttals. Here are two examples:
My critics will say that lots of poor and unemployed people raise themselves from their bootstraps and achieve the American Dream. While I concede that that is sometimes true, their criticism does not refute that . . .
My critics will say that by drinking Uchitelle and Ehrenreich's Kool-Aid, we are contributing to the victimization of the poor and the unemployed and therefore are guilty of reinforcing their helplessness. However, my intention is not to victimize the poor. My intention is to . . .
Paragraph 10: Your conclusion will restate your thesis in emotional form.
Sample Thesis That Tends Toward Argument
Ehrenreich and Uchitelle's essay refute the rhetoric that any person, no matter how poor, can lift herself out of poverty with strong character, determination, and hard work by showing that poverty is a self-reinforcing cycle evidenced by _______________, ______________, _______________, and _____________________.
Thesis That Disagrees with the Above
While Ehrenreich and Uchitelle do a good job of highlighting the risk factors for cycles of poverty, they do little to offer the poor strategies to free themselves from their impoverishment and as such their rigid liberal political agendas do more harm than good because their vision paints the poor as helpless victims who must rely on policy changes before they find relief from their interminable economic hell.
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom on to the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and woman alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's passivity and his aversion to argument insure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a trouble maker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sports writer Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.
One. Is it enough to say unemployment kills self-esteem?
No, it's not. That's an understatement. Unemployment kills the former self. We become a ghost of our former self. Stacy Brown missed her husband, the one who had a job. The new one was insufferable.
Erin suffers from learned helplessness, the sense that he is trapped in a cycle of futility that compels him to give up on getting a job, himself, his wife, and Life.
Studies show after three years without a job we become unemployable.
We read that for men especially, but women also, "incapacitating illness" takes over the mind and soul.
We further read about a close correlation between unemployment and suicide rates.
Even in the face of being a good person and a good worker, the unemployed take a "blow" that "erodes human capital" and eats away at them like a pernicious, ongoing disease.
You've heard the cliche: "I'll define you not how you fall off the horse, but what you do AFTER you fall off the horse."
But for the unemployed, falling off the horse is easy compared to the shame and self-loathing that follows. How do you get back on the horse again when you're hit with a "blow" to the guts?
Two. What happens to the stay-at-home dad?
Rather than connect with his family, a huge barrier separates him and his family as he withdraws into his world of shame and depression.
We read that men don't communicate their feelings of depression well, so they just suffer a slow rot in isolation.
The American Psychiatric Association has officially declared being laid-off has dangerous to your mental health.
The disease spreads from the laid-off parent to the children who too are overcome by shame, depression, and low self-esteem.
Lexicon
Anhedonia: you reach a state of unhappiness from which there is no return. Once you wear this quality on your sleeve, you become unemployable.
What’s harder on a man, begging for love or work? Work. Humiliation results in anhedonia.
Inertia (resistance to change); paralysis that feeds on itself.
Male vs. female hardwiring and their different effects in the workplace: Women are more adaptable, take more risks, and seek change. In contrast, men like routine, comfort, and stability.
Unemployment is referred to as the “acuteness of the blow." One person in the essay is so traumatized he cannot face the anxieties, the rejection, and the sense of insignificance all over again, so he sabotages future prospects.
The double hit of unemployment: The feeling of being worthless coupled with self-blame. Let's add a third hit: You lose your medical coverage.
“Finessing layoffs”: The attempt to “finesse” a layoff is futile.
The layoff is followed by a breaking of emotional bonds with others; it has a rippling effect. The person withdraws into depression.
Despondence and apathy set in.
Ennui (the cycle: despondence, apathy and inertia, ennui, and then anhedonia)
Husband’s unemployment devastates the wife: She has to carry her soul, and his, up the mountain. She can't do it forever. Eventually, she gives up. Divorce is the common result.
“Going postal”
Unemployment spreads shame through the entire family. We read that the rippling effects spread in unforgiving fashion. Children lose confidence that they can achieve. They fear they will fail like their parents.
Shell-shocked: You become so traumatized that you build a defensive wall that is worse than the problem that made you shell-shocked in the first place. (describe the student with the scowl on her face)
Summary of Unemployment Effects
1. family withdraws from one another
2. children are "emotional sponges" and internalize and absorb their parents' emotional trauma.
3. alcoholism increases
4. divorce increases
5. suicide (murder-suicide in Wilmington)
6. long-term stigma
7. long-term low self-esteem and self-blame
8. long-term physical ailments including hypertension, ulcers, chronic fatigue, etc.
9. women reach out for social support more than men so women tend to fare better.
10. Vicious cycle of unemployment: You become depressed, which makes you less employable, which makes you more depressed, and so on and so on. "Layoffs deplete life."
Essay Option That Connects Tirado, Uchitelle, DePalma, and Vice News video:
In the context of Linda Tirado's essay, Louis Uchitelle's (342), DePalma's (353), and the Vice News video series (Vice News video, Part 1 and Part 6 are the most relevant to our purposes), develop a thesis that analyzes the way the tightening job market affects our emotional and professional connection to work. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 minimum sources.
McMahon's Approach to the Above Prompt (Sample Thesis Attempts)
The essays in Chapter 5 evidence a fracturing of Americans' connection with work because the majority of America's economic growth is getting funneled to the 1% resulting in learned helplessness, a strictly business approach to education, a reinforced economic caste system, and lowered expectations for the American Dream.
Critique of the Above
Perhaps the writer is trying to cover too much. Perhaps the writer needs sharper focus:
The essays in Chapter 5 show that as the 1% gobble up most of America's economic gains, the average American is succumbing to learned helplessness evidenced by ___________________, ____________________, _______________, and __________________.
The essays in Chapter 5 show that the American Dream of upward social mobility is a myth evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, ____________________, and ______________________.
The essays in Chapter 5 show that now more than ever millennials must approach college strictly as a business decision based on cost-benefit analysis, demand for intended major, economic forecasts, and strict budgetary discipline.
“How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty” by Barbara Ehrenreich
Study Questions
One. How are the poor robbed?
They are exploited and robbed in thousands of tiny cuts that leave them eviscerated, bereft, and hopeless.
They pay more for cars.
They pay higher interest rates on loans, up to 600%, which is legal in some states.
They pay in terms of stolen wages (employers can program computers to shave a few dollars off each paycheck).
They pay in terms of being preyed upon by police for civil forfeiture laws in which police can take money, cars, valuables of any kind, by saying it was money “seized in a drug deal” with no need for evidence, no need for arrest, and no need for any kind of trial.
They have to pay for family members’ incarceration or else be fined and subject to arrest and imprisonment themselves.
The sub-prime market preys upon the poor.
The poor can go to prison if they don’t show up to court to address a debt to a landlord or collections agency.
The government will confiscate the drivers’ licenses of the poor in the event they owe child support (which can’t be paid because they’re, well, poor) and now they can’t drive to work to earn their minimum wage.
If the poor cannot pay their overdue traffic fines in Las Cruces, New Mexico, they will be fined by having their water, gas, and sewage turned off.
Once the poor, who are more likely to get into trouble with the law, have a criminal record, they cannot find work for they now suffer a permanent stigma.
At this point, the poor are more likely to be homeless at which point they may “get busted for an offense like urinating in public or sleeping on a sidewalk.” (I keep thinking of the metaphor “squeezing blood from a turnip.)
In a 4-page essay with 3 sources, develop a thesis that compares the way DePalma (353) profiles immigrant workers with the way Ehrenreich (380) explores the working poor. Based on the argument she makes here, which specific aspects of DePalma's essay do you think Ehrenreich would find most persuasive? Why?
Essay Option from Syllabus:
Develop an analytical thesis that compares the themes of learned helplessness and the vicious downward spiral of poverty as they are evident in “The Consequences: Undoing Sanity” and “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty.”
Sample Thesis
Ehrenreich and Uchitelle's essay refute the rhetoric that any person, no matter how poor, can lift herself out of poverty with strong character, determination, and hard work by showing that poverty is a self-reinforcing cycle evidenced by _______________, ______________, _______________, and _____________________.
Thesis That Disagrees with the Above
While Ehrenreich and Uchitelle do a good job of highlighting the risk factors for cycles of poverty, they do little to offer the poor strategies to free themselves from their impoverishment and as such their rigid liberal political agendas do more harm than good because their vision paints the poor as helpless victims who must rely on policy changes before they find relief from their interminable economic hell.
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
Sentence Fragments
No main verb
Fragment
An essay with a clear thesis and organization.
Corrected
An essay with a clear thesis and organization has a stronger probability of succeeding.
Fragment
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests
Corrected
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests will inevitably discriminate against non-native speakers.
No main subject
Fragment
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students
Corrected
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students, No Child Left Behind remains a form of discrimination.
Fragment
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese
Correct
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese, they fell apart upon the first bite.
Fragment
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos
Correct
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos, your tacos will fall apart.
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
In a 4-paragraph essay, support or refute the argument that "Against School" (271) and "Preparing Minds for Markets" (301) both show how American education has betrayed the highest interests of children. Make sure you have a thesis with 4 mapping components. Essay should be approximately 500 words. If you want, you can write the essay at home and rewrite in class.
Essay Option:
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that “Against School” and “Preparing Minds for Markets” convincingly evidence that American education is more about protecting private business interests, maintaining class bias, and asserting mass control than it is about promoting real empowerment such as critical thinking, independence, and freedom.
Developing Your Thesis
A thesis statement is one sentence that articulates the central idea of your essay.
A thesis statement is one sentence that tells readers your position or argument.
A thesis statement often outlines your essay’s body paragraphs with mapping components.
A thesis statement is born out of your assigned topic.
A thesis statement can never be merely a statement of your topic. Rather, it must be the point you are making about your topic.
Example
Topic
Standardized testing is part of the No Child Left Behind program.
Argumentative Thesis Statement
Standardized testing is a sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes.
Standardized testing is a sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes because the evidence shows that _______________, ___________________, ________________, and _________________.
Topic
In high numbers, upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children from measles and other diseases.
Cause and Effect Thesis Statement
Many upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children because their pride, paranoia, and pseudo-science have intoxicated them into embracing all the myths de jour of the anti-vaccine movement.
Argumentative Thesis Statement
There should be harsh penalties incurred against parents who don’t vaccinate their children because ________________, ________________, _______________, and _______________________.
Topic Is Not a Thesis
Unlike other first-world countries, the United States spends close to 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare while other countries spend closer to 10 percent.
Cause and Effect Thesis Statement
The United States is resigned to spending 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare because __________________, __________________, _________________, and _______________________.
Argumentative Thesis Statement
The United States needs to get its healthcare GDP down to about 10 percent because _______________, _______________, ______________, and ___________________.
Topic
The manner in which John Gatto would respond to teachers committing plagiarism in the classroom is a writing topic.
Definition Thesis
Reading "How We Learn," we see that plagiarism is not all kinds of imitation, but imitation characterized by ____________, _____________, _____________, and _______________.
Cause and Effect Thesis
Reading "How We Learn," we can imagine John Gatto being outraged by the link between teaching hypocrisy and student boredom when we analyze ________________, __________________, ______________, and ___________________.
A strong case can be made that John Gatto, when faced with the hypocrisy mentioned in Toor's essay, would use this hypocrisy as ammunition to support his thesis evidenced by _______________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________.
As The Geography of Bliss teaches us however implicitly, it is imperative that we embrace strong moral cultural norms to create happiness evidenced by _________________, __________________, ________________, and ____________________.
Your Essay Must Have a Thesis Statement That Is the Engine of Your Essay's Body Paragraphs
A thesis statement is an assertion that can be demonstrated with logic, reasoning, and examples.
We read in US & World News Report that, "Among millennials ages 25 to 32, earnings for college-degree holders are $17,500 greater than for those with high school diplomas only, a new study finds."
The above is not a thesis; it is a fact. We could use such a fact or study to support a thesis.
A thesis from the above would look like this:
While college costs are punitive and oppressive, especially to those with modest financial means, going to college for most people is worth its steep investment when we consider gains in lifetime income, networking with diverse populations, developing literacy, and creating a legacy of higher income for future generations.
Thesis statements or claims go under four different categories:
One. Claims about solutions or policies: The claim argues for a certain solution or policy change:
America's War on Drugs should be abolished and replaced with drug rehab.
Two. Claims of cause and effect: These claims argue that a person, thing, policy or event caused another event or thing to occur.
Social media has turned our generation into a bunch of narcissistic solipsists with limited attention spans, an inflated sense of self-importance, and a shrinking degree of empathy.
Three. Claims of value: These claims argue how important something is on the Importance Scale and determine its proportion to other things.
Global warming poses a far greater threat to our safety than does terrorism.
Four. Claims of definition. These claims argue that we must re-define a common and inaccurate assumption.
In America the notion of "self-esteem," so commonly taught in schools, is in reality a cult of narcissism. While real self-esteem teaches self-confidence, discipline, and accountability, the fake American brand of self-esteem is about celebrating the low expectations of mediocrity, and this results in narcissism, vanity, and sloth.
Sample Thesis
John Taylor Gatto accurately diagnoses the corruption of school by pointing out that it is not designed to educate us to be our better selves; rather, public education is about indoctrinating us to be malleable slaves to mediocrity and conformity evidenced by _____________, _____________, _____________, and ______________.
One. In the essay’s opening, we see that boredom is not a benign condition. Rather, boredom is a malignancy. This becomes clear when we see that boredom is a synonym for all sorts of horrible things. Give a list of things boredom stands for.
Learned helplessness
Resentment or mutual loathing (everyone blames everyone else for the problems at school)
Recurring cycles of futility, which brings up Einstein’s definition of insanity
Monotony
Lethargy, the fatigue and enervation from being mired in a problem with no apparent solution for so long
Lowered expectations
Dysfunction, settling into the idea that “this is how it is” and “nothing can be done,” so I’ll just “ride this out.”
All of us. We are all responsible, according to Gatto’s grandfather, to entertain and amuse ourselves.
We have all been responsible for the apathy and tolerance to brain-dead mediocrity.
Three. For Gatto, what is the difference between education and forced schooling?
He argues that “mass compulsory schooling” is not associated with success if we look at history.
The goals of “mass compulsory schooling” were defined, we read during 1905 and 1915 and they focused on the following:
One. To make good people.
Two. To make good citizens.
Three. To make each person his or her personal best.
For Gatto and H.L. Mencken who Gatto quotes, education is a form of indoctrination in which we brainwash students to fit with the system, be mediocre, and conform into the same type of safe person. This conformity is to the model of the mindless consumer who is obedient to marketing and advertising in order to insure a robust economy.
We further read that schools base their operations on indoctrination, not critical thinking.
Obedience to authority, conformity to norms, learning the “correct” social role, labeling the students according to perceived rank (tag the “unfit”; promote the desirables), pass on elite power to younger generation of the elite and to hell with the rest of them (276).
In contrast, a teacher serves his students well if he gives them critical thinking skills:
Learn how to think for yourself by establishing informed or considered opinions, not habitual or peer-driven ones.
Learn how to read critically.
Learn the difference between causation and correlation.
Identify logical fallacies.
Grow and flourish as you become an adult and independent thinker.
“Preparing Minds for Markets” by Jonathan Kozol (301)
One. Why are all the high school practice jobs manager positions in the service industry like being a cashier or manager at Walmart or Sears or Home Depot or Pet Smart?
It appears the teachers have low expectations for their poor students who they feel are either going to prison or, as their salvation, getting a mediocre job in the service industry.
Perhaps the teachers have good intentions. Perhaps not. But in any case, they have prescribed a narrow role for their students. As one principal says, “I’m in the business of developing minds to meet a market demand.”
Many would argue this isn’t the role of education. Education should expose students to as many opportunities as possible. Would you want your children trained exclusively for service industry jobs at school as if to say, “This is all you can do”?
Part of the problem is financial. A lot of poor schools don’t have computers, so they can’t teach computer literacy, or beyond that, computer code. Some schools don't even have books.
Two. What is the psychological devastation that results from treating students like they’re on the road to prison or a service-industry job?
Demoralization, a crushed spirit, disconnection from the teacher, hatred of education are all results of the system described in Kozol’s essay.
I know an English professor and published author who grew up in the inner city of Detroit, and he said his teachers were scared of him, in part because he’s six feet six inches and weighs 300 pounds. One day in high school he blew up and said to a teacher, “If you keep treating me like a gangster, I’m going to become one just because you're making me very upset!”
The conditions Kozol and others describe is a scandal that underscores how the disparity between the haves and the have-nots contradicts notions we have about American freedom, American democracy, and the American Dream.
We watch Shark Tank and say, “See, everyone, the American Dream is still alive!” But only a minuscule percentage of the show’s aspiring entrepreneurs come from a school in which they were trained to be service workers and managers in department stores.
Essay Option:
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that “Against School” and “Preparing Minds for Markets” convincingly evidence that American education is more about protecting private business interests, maintaining class bias, and asserting mass control than it is about promoting real empowerment such as critical thinking, independence, and freedom.
Paragraph One: Write an anecdote about how school either wasted your time or showed its baby-sitting control qualities more than its educational value.
Paragraph Two: Write a thesis such as this:
Gatto and Kozol convincingly show that American education betrays its children by championing private business interests at the expense of students' needs, asserting mass control rather than teaching critical thinking, and giving advantages to the higher social classes while leaving the lower economic classes in the dust.
Paragraphs Three Through Eight could expound on the thesis' points. In other words, you could have two paragraphs for each of the 3 mapping components.
Paragraph 9 would be your counterargument-rebuttal section.
Paragraph 10 would be your conclusion, an emotional restatement of your thesis.
Sample Responses
Support of the Authors
Rose, Gatto and Kozol are allies in the battle against economic class warfare, which perpetuates the divisions between the lower and upper classes evidenced by _____________, ________________, ________________, and __________________.
Refutation of the Authors
Rose and Kozol are shrill liberals whose attempts to bridge the gap between the poorer working classes and the more affluent classes prove misguided when we consider that Rose is guilty of glorifying blue-collar work and making it attractive to those who should aspire to greater career goals; Kozol is guilty of dismissing vocational training in low-income schools that are giving students options that they otherwise would not have; both are guilty of intrusive and unrealistic social engineering and economic redistribution.
Grammar: Dangling Modifiers
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
Sentence Fragments
No main verb
Fragment
An essay with a clear thesis and organization.
Corrected
An essay with a clear thesis and organization has a stronger probability of succeeding.
Fragment
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests
Corrected
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests will inevitably discriminate against non-native speakers.
No main subject
Fragment
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students
Corrected
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students, No Child Left Behind remains a form of discrimination.
Fragment
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese
Correct
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese, they fell apart upon the first bite.
Fragment
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos
Correct
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos, your tacos will fall apart.
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Confusing subject with object
Please give the chocolate to Randy and (I, me).
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
“Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” by Bell Hooks (287)
One. What did Hook’s mother teacher about desire in the mother’s attempt to quell the appetite for unaffordable things?
Hooks felt belittled and learned to distrust her desires and bury them. The implicit message is that since she is of the lower classes she has to know her place and have no sense of entitlement. She must remain modest. She must be happy in life with life's bare minimum. She must be apologetic about her existence.
To have desires for anything above one's station in life is considered impolite.
We can only imagine what this would do to her psyche.
That would drive me crazy to want something and to develop this reflex to immediately say I don’t actually want it.
Hooks’ save-money mentality followed her into college where money had to be first considered above all else.
During Hooks’ first year in college, she realizes a lot of her mother’s fears are rooted in class shame, the disgrace of not measuring up in the presence of “real classy people.” Sadly, we live in a society where the lower classes suffer an inferiority complex because they don't "measure up" to the higher classes.
Two. What happens to Bell Hooks in college?
She is isolated by the white girls who look at her in horror and disdain for being black and for being not rich. “Not only are you black; you’re not rich. Stay away from us, you pariah.” She becomes La Otra.
Like her childhood, Hooks was learning to be apologetic about her existence. "Sorry I don't fit in, rich girls. I'll try to stay out of the way."
Her existence becomes one of self-abnegation or self-erasure: “If I want things and if I feel overcome by loneliness, then too bad. I have to suffer. My existence is not worth these considerations. My needs mean nothing compared to these rich white girls.”
Bell Hooks sees the world as binary: The haves and the have-nots. Those who live in glorious gardens with grass and trees and those who live in the scorched weeds.
Bell Hooks connects with one white girl who like Hooks is financially challenged. She is a Czechoslovakian immigrant with modest means. The two of them together become Las Otras.
In 1978 when I was training at the gym, a 300-pound power lifter scrutinized me with piercing eyes and told me "there are only two kinds of people in the world, homeowners and renters." And then he spit behind his back before bench pressing 500 pounds like it was a feather.
Unlike Hooks, though, the Czech girl has contempt and envy for the rich white girls. She desires their riches and resents them for having what she lacks.
In contrast, Hooks’ religious upbringing taught her to be leery of excess, of pride, of loving riches for their own sake.
Three. What finally sets off Hooks’ rage toward the rich white girls?
When they perform their ritual of trashing someone’s room and it ends up being Hooks’ room, Hooks is enraged that these rich narcissists cannot consider that someone with modest finances cannot easily replace all the items that were ruined during the trashing.
The rich girls’ lack of empathy and their failure of imagination stirs Hooks’ deep loathing for them.
Adding to her contempt is Hooks’ refusal to want to be white like them and to aspire to behave like a vain privileged white girl.
Her contempt for these immature white girls compels Hooks to go to a real college, Stanford, which will test her parents’ class anxieties. Her parents will hide behind religion and say that Stanford, which is in California, is sinful.
Four. What does the essay teach us about education?
To succeed in education, we have to break the bonds with our class identity and this can be excruciating if our class identity is tied up with our parental identity.
Time and time again, we read of college students who don’t succeed until they break from their parents’ and communities’ class influences and this break is often seen as a betrayal and it results in guilt. But it is necessary.
Five. What cynical worldview does Hooks observe at Stanford?
Her white roommate, a poor girl from Orange County, believes in the religion of privilege: “Cheating was worth it. She believed the world the privileged had created was all unfair—all one big cheat; to get ahead, one had to play the game. To her, I was truly an innocent, a lamb being led to the slaughter.”
Hooks isn't prepared to play the game because playing the game means selling one's soul to the devil.
For Hooks' roommate however the only devil to worry about is being poor.
Six. What does Hooks conclude about the manner in which students must adapt to college?
Hooks writes: "Slowly, I began to understand fully that there was no place in academe for folks from working-class backgrounds who did not wish to leave the past behind. That was the price of the ticket. Poor students would be welcome at the best institutions of higher learning only if they were willing to surrender memory, to forget the past and claim the assimilated present as the only worthwhile and meaningful reality."
In other words to assimilate into the privileged, educated class, we have to embrace their language, attitude, demeanor, characteristics, body language; in other words, we have to die to our former self, disavow our past, and become a new person born in a world of privilege.
This new privilege becomes evident in the way we speak, write, and affect our body language. We develop a certain superciliousness and hauteur (uppity, proud, self-regarding expression that says, "I'm all that").
Hooks is tormented by the above fact not only because it's true, with all of its questionable moral implications, but because Hooks went through the process herself even as she questioned it. She became an "upper class intellectual."
At best when we transform from working class to privileged educated class, she writes, someone like her will suffer contradictions, having a remnant of her past identity and a new identity based on privilege.
Writing Prompt from Page 295
Race and class, hooks argues, are the unspoken norms that structure everyday college life, the invisible scripts that set the boundaries around what different types of students are encouraged or allowed to expect from school. Write an essay in which you analyze how hooks makes this argument. How does she present her own experience as a student as an example? What unspoken (or spoken) scripts about schooling, education, race, or class does hooks expose in her writing?
Breaking down the assignment:
What are the “unspoken norms” or “invisible scripts” of race and class that pervade college life?
The unspoken belief system, if you will, is that people of white privilege, evidenced by their high-earning power and emulation of an upper class code, enjoy a world of entitlement. On the other hand, it’s also scripted that people of the lower classes are loathsome and only deserving of contempt and society’s spoiled leftovers, not the fresh fruit enjoyed by the rich.
Write an essay in which you show how Hooks makes the argument that invisible scripts set boundaries for students.
Hooks shows that professors teach their students how to enjoy the upper-class club, to deny their lower-class family roots because those roots are contemptuous and shameful.
Hooks further explains how college education is not just a specialization in a certain field; it’s an indoctrination into the superiority of the educated, privileged class and how working class and more modest backgrounds are not even worthy of consideration; therefore, these modest backgrounds should be shunned; in other words, we should become dead to our poor past.
Hooks argues becoming dead to our past is immoral because we become indoctrinated into the worldview of the privileged vs. the non-privileged, the haves vs. the have-nots and such an indoctrination in Hook’s view is immoral and antithetical to the true humanitarian teachings that should be part of college life.
Hooks shows how students of modest means who don’t aspire to be uppity are disregarded and dismissed as invisible.
You need to drink the privileged class Kool-Aid if you want to succeed in college and in the work world, Hooks is arguing.
Sample Essay Response That Agrees with Bell Hooks
College should be a place that champions the humanitarian spirit, embracing the struggle of those who suffer under the weight of the elites, the privileged class. However, as Bell Hooks convincingly argues, college perpetuates class and sometimes racial elitism, tacitly scorning the working-class while adulating the privileged elites evidenced by the professor’s indoctrination of the students to act and be privileged, the pressures to disown one’s working-class family and community, and the rich students’ contempt for the poorer students.
Sample Essay Response That Disagrees with Bell Hooks
While I sympathize with Bell Hooks and would defend her against anyone, teacher, student, or otherwise, who would discriminate against her on the basis of her race or economic class, I find that her condemnation of the elitism she identifies at college to be misguided. The role of the college should be to teach students to lift themselves up from their lower class and into a more privileged class. That’s the point of going to college, to go from a lower station to a higher station in life. Secondly, having these ambitions doesn’t make us anti-humanitarian or contemptuous of the lower classes. We simply want to work toward a place of more privilege. That’s normal human nature that addresses the Darwinian, often brutal realities we face in this world. Bell Hooks has the luxury as someone who makes hundreds of thousand of dollars a year to decry the privileged class, but she needs to face the fact that she belongs to that privileged class and she worked hard to get there. Finally, Bell Hooks does a disservice if she doesn’t tell students from the working class the hard truth about succeeding at college, which is that to be successful we must disavow ourselves of our tribalistic past, even if it means separating ourselves from our working-class parents and community, even if our abandoning that family and community, as Bell Hooks herself did, gives us shame and guilt, because that separation is essential for becoming reborn as an empowered member of the privileged class who is now in a position to help our family in ways we never were before.
Response That Refutes the Above
The refutation of Bell Hooks under the claim that we must sell our souls to the devil in order to be successful is a grotesque absurdity misinformed by the blind ambition of class privilege, a convenient worship of Darwinian self-centeredness, and a failure to acknowledge that we can enjoy the joining the privileged ranks without disavowing our past identity, family, and community.
Response to the Above Refutation
I never claimed we should sell our soul to the devil and engage in Darwinian self-centeredness. My argument, contrary to the one misconstrued above, is that to embrace the new life of college, its ideas, its knowledge, its new identity, and yes the privileges that come with higher learning, we must go through the excruciating process of dying to our old self, the very self that was raised in our working-class homes and communities and that this process of dying and being reborn again is the very process that Bell Hooks admits to going through in order to become the success she is today.
Essay Option
In a 1,500-word essay with a minimum of 5 sources, support, defend, or complicate the notion that Hooks, Kozol, Rose, and Gatto make a convincing case that education is class biased in a way that is harmful to the working class and reinforces class inequality. You might consult Dana Goldstein's YouTube presentation.
In a 4-paragraph essay, support or refute the argument that "Against School" (271) and "Preparing Minds for Markets" (301) both show how American education has betrayed the highest interests of children. Make sure you have a thesis with 4 mapping components. Essay should be approximately 500 words. If you want, you can write the essay at home and rewrite in class.
One. What are the current statistics for food stamps?
47 million Americans receive food stamps to combat hunger.
About 5% of Americans have “very low food security,” meaning food can run out before the next source of income.
In one-third of those households, an adult “reported not eating for entire day.”
Fourteen percent of toddlers suffer iron deficiency. This can result in impaired brain development.
Impaired brain development and other health problems will cost tax payers far more than food stamps.
The essay’s author Nicholas Kristof finds it “infuriating” that a wealthy country like America allows this kind of hunger and malnutrition to go on. He expresses his outrage at a time when Congress is debating to slash the food stamp program.
Democrats at the time of this essay wanted to slash food stamps by $4 billion over 10 years; Republicans wanted to slash them by $40 billion.
More than 90% of the families who receive food stamps live below the poverty line. Nearly two-thirds of the recipients are children, the elderly, and the disabled.
Two. How does the government offer “food stamp” subsidies to the rich?
When they dine at expensive restaurants, the rich can deduct the bill as a tax write-off.
There’s controversy about feeding the poor but no controversy about the government helping to pay the expenses for the rich’s opulent meals, caviar, champagne, etc.
Additionally, the farm bill gives aid to 50 billionaires or companies.
More surprisingly, the government pays Kristof $588 a year to not grow crops on his wooded land in Oregon. He gives the money to a maternity hospital.
The author is outraged at a double standard that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.
Three. What counterargument does Kristof address?
He concedes that food stamps are not perfect. After all, they treat the symptoms, not the root causes, of hunger. He further concedes that we should “chip away at long-term poverty through early education, home visitation for infants, job training, and helping teenagers avoid unwanted pregnancies.”
However, he offers a rebuttal that food stamps are effective in many ways:
They reduce the number of children living in extreme poverty by half.
They give nutrition to the fetus and stave off long-term health problems to that fetus.
He concludes that slashing food stamps would be “a mark of shortsighted cruelty.”
Essay Prompt from page 175
Create a proposal that outlines what you believe should be the proper government policy concerning food stamps. How much support for this program should the government provide? What particular needs should it address? What limits should it establish? Then write a quick assessment of the ways your proposal compares to Kristof’s. What are the key similarities and differences?
Or you can look at the assignment this way:
In a 5-page essay, support, refute, or complicate Kristof's argument that in spite of the food stamp abuses cited by opponents of the food stamp program, providing food stamps for the poor is moral and economic imperative over the long-term. Be sure to have a counterargument and rebuttal section at the end of your essay.
Sample Outline for a 5-Page Essay
Page One: For the introduction, you frame the debate: Why some people like Kristof advocate food stamps while others want them to be cut.
Or you might know someone on food stamps, and you can tell a compelling story about this person or family that will catch the reader's attention.
Page One: Develop a thesis with a concession clause:
Thesis Sample That Supports Kristof
While I acknowledge that there is some fraud, abuse, and dysfunctional dependency created by food stamps, we must continue to provide them to the poor and disabled because it is not fair to punish innocent children, providing fetal nutrition saves the tax payers over the long-term, we cannot have the double standard of subsidizing the rich with tax write-offs, essentially paying for 30% of their "business meals," while making the poor starve.
Pages 2-4 would address the points made in the thesis above.
Page 5 would address your two counterarguments and rebuttals.
Sample of Two Counterarguments and Rebuttals
My opponents will argue that there is food stamp fraud, and that is just reason for cutting food stamps for all. However, my opponents are misguided when we consider that food stamp fraud is less than 3%.
Examples of Counterargument-Rebuttal Statements
While author X makes many compelling points, her overall argument collapses under the weight of __________, ___________, ___________, and ______________.
My opponents will point out that X, Y, and Z. However, their points fail to be convincing in light of A, B, and C.
The above would have to be developed into a paragraph that would be about a half page.
Secondly, my opponents will argue that food stamps create a cycle of dependency. However, while there are abuses, most food stamp recipients are employed within a year. It should also be noted that many full-time American workers don't get paid enough money to feed their families and, as many Walmart employees will tell you, they need assistance. Therefore, it is greedy companies like Walmart that are bilking the tax payers, not poor Americans.
The above would have to be developed into a paragraph that would be about a half page.
Your Conclusion:
A conclusion should be an emotional restatement of your thesis. You want your conclusion to be powerful and emotional so that it sticks with the reader.
Essay Options for Essay 1: Choose one of the following for your 1,500-word essay:
Refute, support, or complicate Asma’s assertion that green guilt is not only a relative to religious guilt but speaks to our drive to sacrifice self-indulgence for the drive of altruistic self-preservation and social reciprocity. See Elizabeth Anderson’s online essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Develop a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the assertion Debra J. Dickerson, who wrote the “The Great White Way,” would find Michael Eric Dyson's essay "Understanding Black Patriotism" a complement to Dickerson's ideas about race, power, and hierarchy.
Support, refute, or complicate Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is more of a social fantasy than a reflection of objective reality.
Develop a thesis that analyzes the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us.”
Support, refute, or complicate Nicholas Kristof’s assertion that slashing food stamps is morally indefensible.
Develop a thesis that compares or contrasts (or both) the social pathologies that inform the type of eating disorders and neuroses described in “The Wages of Sin” and “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem.”
(New Option)
Addressing at least two essays we've covered in class, support, refute, or complicate the argument that overeating, anorexia, and other eating disorders are not the result of a disease but are habits of individual circumstance and economics.
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that “Against School” and “Preparing Minds for Markets” persuasively evidence that American education is more about protecting private business interests, maintaining class bias, and asserting mass control than it is about promoting real empowerment such as critical thinking, independence, and freedom.
Develop an analytical thesis that compares the themes of learned helplessness and the vicious downward spiral of poverty as they are evident in “The Consequences: Undoing Sanity” and “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty.”
“The Wages of Sin” by Francine Prose
Study Questions
One. What is the Nanny State?
In paragraphs 1 and 2 we read that people are dumbed-down troglodytes who are so helpless to fend themselves it is necessary for the government to be a Big Nanny that cares for the infantile, incontinent appetites of the people by imposing stringent laws and regulations.
In dystopian nightmare Nanny State, nurses would knock on your door at 2 AM and demand 200 push-ups or else your health insurance would be doubled.
You might get tickets for "exposed cellulite violations" at the beach.
In reality, we are not so dumb as we are surrounded by a consumer culture committed to stimulating our appetites, and we find ourselves maladapted to all the calories we consume.
We are not so dumb as we are vulnerable. For example, watching food on TV triggers our appetites.
Chemists work on flavors and textures that stimulate our appetites. Their research is secret. Journalists are not allowed in the lab.
However, consumer culture, which stimulates our appetites, also markets the perfectly sculpted body and wants to sell us products that will get us that body as well.
Thus consumer culture gives us mixed messages, screws up our head, and then shames us for being overweight.
Two. What does it mean to be paternalistic?
We are speaking of when someone takes on a parental role in a derogatory sense in that the “parent” is assuming control over others. This word often has a negative meaning, for it often suggests someone being presumptuous enough to be an authority over another. “You are fat and you need me to help you become a healthy, productive member of society.”
This is the same mentality of treating citizens like dumb children that we see John Taylor Gatto's essay "Against School."
Three. There’s a lot of talk about the so-called obesity burden in which tax payers have to absorb half the medical costs incurred by obesity-related ailments. Is that fair?
Answers will vary.
Four. What is the Fat Tax dilemma?
If taxing fat people and putting a “fat tax” on “fatty” items were to be effective, people would live longer and old age increase would put a NEW tax burden on tax payer.
Smokers and obese people lose about ten years of their lives.
Five. What curbs fat more, a heavy stigma or the Nanny State?
Prose suggests that a stigma, a sense of shame, is more powerful than any government regulations. The fear of being an outcast is greater than financial punishments.
Six. What is gluttony?
Gluttony is the sin of overeating as a form of self-indulgence. Most Americans overeat; therefore, most of us are gluttons. If all or most of us are gluttons, perhaps there is less stigma to being a glutton.
Or more realistically, there are different levels of the glutton.
A Stage 1 Glutton is 20 pounds overweight. He gets a pass.
A Stage 2 Glutton is 40 pounds overweight. He is about to lose his pass.
A Stage 3 Glutton is 50 or more pounds overweight. He lives in Shame Hell, either alone or with other Stage 3 Gluttons.
When we speak of gluttony, we make fat a moral issue: Gluttony shows a disrespect for the body and an excessive pandering to one’s ego.
Seven. How do we see latent hostility against obese people?
We claim to be compassionate towards the obese but in reality we are not when obesity inconveniences us. Airplane seats, for example, are a source of strife because the obese are taking more than their share of space.
Perhaps most significant is fat discrimination in the workplace. Employers know the cost of obesity at work.
Eight. Is obesity as simple as saying it’s a moral issue or a sin?
Perhaps that’s an oversimplification: Attributing complex problem to simple cause: to blame obesity on sin or indulgence or ego is absurd. Obesity may be partly these things, but they don’t tell the whole story.
The 15 Causes of Obesity:
There is an abundance of convenient, cheap, calorie-rich food everywhere we go.
We move less than we did generations ago. Do we chase the animals we eat? No.
Mindless eating; not even knowing the quantity of what we consume every day, much of it done while talking, watching TV, or surfing the Internet, all forms of Mindless Eating. See book of same title by Brian Wansink.
Poverty; there is a relationship between poverty and obesity. This is due to a lack of education combined with reliance on cheap fast food.
Parents. Children eat what their parents eat. If the parents eat a “fat lifestyle,” so will their children.
Friends. We eat and look similar to our friends. We often call this “social eating.”
Eating processed foods instead of real foods and not knowing the difference. Please see In Defense of Eating: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. In short, only shop at the far left and right of supermarkets; avoid the middle; or shop at the Farmer’s Market.
Super-sized portions are marketed as a “good deal.” See the film Super Size Me and read the book Fast Food Nation by Erich Schlosser
Boredom; stay at home with nothing to do and you’ll overeat
Emotional eating; eating to feel “love” or “self-esteem” or because you feel lonely.
Lack of sleep. The more tired you are, the more you feed your blood sugar to compensate.
Education; knowing how to enjoy good healthy food should be very practical but too few people know how to prepare food for themselves that they both crave and that is good for them.
Learned helplessness: You convince yourself that you are too ignorant to make your own food and become dependent on fast food and junk.
Dieting; it leads to weight gain, splurging, neuroses, and messes up the metabolism, which rebels and goes on “shut down.”
Fast food is marketed to children in an aggressive way; see Fast Food Nation.
Essay Option for Obesity and Eating Disorders
Develop a thesis that compares or contrasts (or both) the social pathologies that inform the type of eating disorders and neuroses described in “The Wages of Sin” and “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem.”
Addressing at least two essays we've covered in class, support, refute, or complicate the argument that overeating, anorexia, and other eating disorders are not the result of a disease but are habits of individual circumstance and economics.
In the context of Francine Prose's and Caroline Knapp's essays, does the addiction or behavior modification model more effectively cure addictive behaviors?
Paragraph One: Show how Prose's essay, about the shaming of fat people, and Knapp's essay, about a woman who internazlies shame, point to the problem of compulsive overeating and compulsive self-starving.
Paragraph Two: Show how eating disorders can be addressed by a disease or behavior modification model. Briefly explain what how model works.
Paragraph Three: Write an argumentative thesis that sides with one model or both as a way of treating eating disorders. Make sure your thesis has four mapping components that outline your essay's body paragraphs.
Paragraphs Four Through Seven: Body paragraphs support your thesis mapping components.
Paragraphs Eight and Nine: Write your opponents' counterarguments and our rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 10: Conclusion: Rewrite your thesis with more emotion than your original thesis.
Sample Thesis In Support of Disease Model
While AA's disease model doesn't work for everyone, many addicts, including overeaters and anorexics, are in urgent need to follow the 12-Step Disease plan to save their lives when we consider the failure of free will, the failure of behavior modification to address root causes of addiction, the patient's repeated show of helplessness to her disease, and the disease model addresses biological causes of addiction that cannot be changed by behavior modification.
Sample Thesis in Support of Behavior Modification Model
The evidence shows that we should replace the disease model of addiction with behavior modification. For one, a lot of addictive behavior is not biological, but habit. Second, calling oneself an "addict" is self-stigmatizing and this self-loathing leads to other behavior problems. Third, the disease model makes people see themselves as helpless and thus encourages a lifelong dependency and, yes, addiction to addiction meetings. Four, behavior modification allows the patient to address specific behavior rather than get bogged down in "recovery talk."
Sample Responseto Francine Prose's Essay (Calling Obesity a "Sin" Is a Form of the Disease Model)
Pulpit thumpers decry that religion is dead in America and that a revival must sweep the nation soon lest we suffer the fiery annihilation of Sodom and Gomorra. These doomsday prophets are wrong. Religion is alive and well. As Francine Prose renders in her acute and trenchant essay “The Wages of Sin,” the Supercilious Fat Police and their calorie-counting acolytes who look upon fat people as a breed of bloated sinners have co-opted religious language and metaphor to divide society into two sides: The reedy svelte souls bound for heaven and the repugnant obese souls bound for hell. To reinforce this polarization, the Fat Police, and even self-loathing fat people themselves, assert big government micromanagement of “fat behavior,” so that there are fat taxes imposed on lovers of movie popcorn, colossal burritos, super-sized buckets of ice cream and soda, and other foods that pose a threat to one’s salvation. The Fat Police and their disciples have also proselytized the gospel that moral depravity and “immoral self-indulgence” are at the root of obesity, so that it is clear that fat people are not helpless victims of the environment or genetic hard-wiring but the result of their own damnable sloth, gluttony, and avarice.
Another category that insures fat people suffer the stamp of stigmatization is society’s collective resentment that corpulent fleshy souls are guilty of hogging or usurping other people’s personal space. What kind of wickedness allows the fat person to assert his gargantuan belly into our area when he squeezes next to us on a train, a bus, or an airplane? His rude and selfish sin is so malignant that he and his obese brothers and sisters should pay for not one but two airline or bus tickets to accommodate their elephantine rumps.
Finally, if fat people can be saved at all, they must resort to a Higher Power: Their countless tons of unwanted flab can only be shed if they throw themselves upon the Alter of God’s Mercy and embrace a variety of spiritual rehabilitations—Twelve Step Programs, revivalist gospel tracts, and other motivational tools rooted in the language of God, the devil, sin, and divine providence. If the obese refuse to access the divine tools that are set before them, surely they deserve to be thrown into the fiery hell that awaits these gluttonous, recalcitrant sinners.
How to Set Up a Counterargument in Your Rebuttal Section (The Templates)
Some of my critics will dismiss my claim that . . . but they are in error when we look closely at . . .
Some readers will 0bject to my argument that . . . However, their disagreement is misguided when we consider that . . .
Some opponents will be hostile to my claim that . . . However, their hostility is unfounded when we examine . . .
Thesis with Concession
While Author X is guilty of several weaknesses as described by her opponents, her argument holds up to close examination in the areas of _________________, ______________, _____________, and ______________.
Even though author X shows weakness in her argument, such as __________ and ____________, she is nevertheless convincing because . . .
While author X makes many compelling points, her overall argument collapses under the weight of __________, ___________, ___________, and ______________.
“Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem” by Caroline Knapp
One. Why is starvation an addiction for Caroline Knapp and perhaps for others?
There are two kinds of people in this world, the laid-back and the high-strung.
The latter have what is called generalized anxiety disorder.
Everything we do is a source of anxiety.
A corn nut lodged in the back seat of our car can cause us insomnia.
When we're always anxious, we seek calm and safety. Too often these retreats into calm and safety become addictions.
Knapp retreats from life--the anxieties she faces in her life--and withdraws into a sense of calm. She feels safe, but she is not living. When we retreat from life to alleviate anxiety, we are engaging in over protection, and as such we choose death over life.
I’m thinking of the woman whose husband left her two days before their planned wedding, and she became a ghost of herself in the aftermath. She became bitter and “undateable.” She become a zombie, a hollow husk, a cipher. She is too afraid to feel and to embrace her full humanity.
Knapp escapes from life with her strict food routine. Her rigid routine makes her feel safe from wanton, self-destructive behavior. Of course, she’s blind from the fact that the rigid routine is a form of self-destruction.
Two. What is the “silent protest” of starvation?
Her starvation becomes a “silent protest” against ridiculous feminine ideals that are forced upon women. Starving both aspired to the ideal and “mocks” it. Kate Moss the waif replaces the Marilyn Monroe the voluptuous one.
Therefore, starvation alleviates the discomfort of “inhabiting the female body.” A real female body has curves and appetites. An anorexic female body has vanished. There is no body, there are no appetites, and there is no personality. The person has vanished.
Three. How is starvation about self-rejection and avoiding judgment?
Starvation is an attempt to invert the food obsession as a positive symbol of nurturing and care-taking; in its place, starvation is about self-rejection and “self-inflicted cruelty.”
Starvation becomes a way of avoiding self-recriminations: “I’m such a hog” for having eaten that chocolate cake. I don’t deserve love. I don't even deserve to live.
I should be sent to my room without supper. God, I hate myself. My only hope for feeling good about myself, therefore, is to starve myself.
We can conclude then that starvation has become a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the Devil, in which women trade eating satisfaction so that they can enjoy self-esteem.
Mastering and controlling one’s appetites becomes a way of feeling empowered. This empowerment becomes a form of compensation for feelings of loneliness, self-doubt, and consuming dread and desperation.
Four. How is starvation a feminist issue, according to Caroline Knapp?
Starvation becomes a way of surrendering to the “backlash” against the rise of feminine power. Women have more earning power and are more successful in college than men.
Starvation is an attempt to withdraw from the overwhelming choices that are part of a woman’s new freedom.
Starvation is a reaction to an unnatural hatred of fat.
I would complicate Knapp’s assertion, however. I would say that starvation, also known as anorexia, is a problem about race and social class. Most anorexics are middle to upper class white women.
The Barbie aesthetic is part of being a member of that catty clique in a lot of upper class white social circles.
I concede that some of the above may be true, but I'm reluctant to see feminism and politics as the main driving forces of anorexia. I tend to agree with those who attribute the disease to anxiety and depression as Carrie Arnold, a former sufferer of anorexia, explains in this excerpt from her book Decoding Anorexia.
McMahon’s Summary on “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem” by Caroline Knapp
Whether they are bingeing or purging, irrational eaters are in a most damnable condition--the state of having no self-control and being helpless and fearful in the face of overwhelming appetites. These inflamed irrational passions are so devastating that binge eaters must tiptoe through life fearing that at any moment they will fall into the abyss of their avarice.
Most irrational eaters, especially the women described by Knapp, suffer shame for several reasons, including a sense of anxiety over the disparity of their new freedoms but limited power; their internalized "theme of vigilance and self-restraint" that often backfires and is counterbalanced by compulsive appetites that eradicate all the "gains" rendered from the meticulous adherence to eating rules; the state of hunger that "becomes divorced from the body" and becomes "loaded with alternative meanings" that have to do with unfulfilled emotional longings; and their knowledge that violating the slender female aesthetic will cause them to be held in tacit contempt by both men and women alike.
This sense of shame and self-loathing becomes exacerbated when obesity is looked at through a religious prism which would have us condemn over-eaters as gluttons, sinners indulging their appetites, reprobates putting their desires before God, miscreants violating our space with their grotesque corpulence.
Scapegoated by society for putting an undue strain on medical costs, despised for taking up our space, an unloved for not inciting the kind of desire that we associate with Kate-Moss slenderness, fat people represent the possibility of human failure and rejection that we fear in ourselves. Thus many of us, overreacting to our fears, develop a myriad of eating disorders so chronic that once ensnared in these irrational eating habits, it is nearly impossible for many of us to free ourselves from them and lead relatively normal lives.
In Knapp's essay, what does she say is being internalized?
Obsession with unrealistic images of beauty that result in obsession with self-control
Obsessive link between being thin, or not, with one's identity
Obsessive link between being thin, or not, with one's self-worth
Brainstorm for Prewriting
Both essays address the way we are a culture obsessed with food.
We tend to binge with food and we tend to purge with food.
We are two extreme regardless if we are bingeing or purging.
We have internalized shame in regards to eating.
We have internalized rules in order to conform to a quasi religious order of what makes us “bad” or “good.”
We internalize these eating rules from the food police and in essence create our own food religion and the result of this religion is a form of control.
This form of control is deceptive. Some of us, like Caroline Knapp and others, can be so obsessed with control that we’re controlled by the need to control.
Obsession with control leads to out of control behavior.
Bingeing leads to purging and purging leads to bingeing. Or in other words, self-denial leads to self-indulgence and self-indulgence leads to self-denial. For example, after a Christmas-New Year’s binge, many start the New Year with a New Year’s resolution of denials.
A lot of internalized food rules, it seems, disproportionately affect Anglo middle and upper class people, so that we might say eating disorders are largely a “first world problem” of the privileged class.
However, being fat is a stigma that affects people of all classes, especially in the workplace.
Being fat is being “a monster,” a drain on society, “Los Otros,” the Other. A fat person is demonized as taking up space and costing us billions in sick costs at work and in hospitals.
Dieters use “religious language,” we read in Prose’s essay (183). “That chocolate cake was sinfully delicious.”
Dieters adopt 12 Step programs and embrace a Higher Power to free themselves from their bondage to eating.
Knapp says we must be austere to austere rules to have a skinny body.
Knapp warns that when we mess with our natural hunger, we go a little crazy or more than just a little: “The more you meddle with a hunger, the more taboo and confusing it will become. Feed the body too little and then too much, feed it erratically, launch that maddening cycle of deprivation and overcompensation, and the sensation of physical hunger itself becomes divorced from the body, food loaded with alternative means: symbol of longing, symbol of constraint, form of torture, form of reward, source of anxiety, source of success, measure of self-worth” (193).
Develop a thesis that compares or contrasts (or both) the social pathologies that inform the type of eating disorders and neuroses described in “The Wages of Sin” and “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem.”
(New Option)
Addressing at least two essays we've covered in class, support, refute, or complicate the argument that overeating, anorexia, and other eating disorders are not the result of a disease but are habits of individual circumstance and economics.
Thesis Attempts
Both Prose and Knapp capture the analogy of strict food rules with unhealthy, diseased religious compulsion, which is comprised of ____________, ___________, _____________, and _____________.
Another Attempt
While the food police would label us as helpless eaters and Knapp would consign some sort of disease to anorexia, in truth most eating disorders are not so much a "disease" as they are the products of economics, family influences, and habits.
Another Attempt
To demonize or stigmatize people with eating disorders as being ignorant, sinful, or diseased is a dangerous exercise that obscures the root causes of eating disorders, which are born from economic deprivation, family influence, and bad habits.
Another Attempt
While Knapp makes some convincing points about unrealistic body images of women causing some women to develop eating disorders, the real cause of women starving themselves doesn't appear to be political or "patriarchal" ("it's a man's world") but more rooted in behaviors analogous to drug addiction evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, _____________________, and _____________________.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Parallelism
Thesis Statements Need Parallelism
Parallelism’s importance is most apparent when looking at mapping components in a thesis. We want those components to be written in parallel form whether we’re referring to a list of phrases or clauses.
Faulty Parallelism Example
Marijuana should be legalized because it’s safer than alcohol and many pharmaceutical drugs, its medicinal properties; it’s a fool’s errand to wage a war against it, and keeping it illegal increases criminal activity.
Above we have a mix of clauses and phrases. We should correct it by changing all the mapping components to clauses.
Corrected
Marijuana should be legalized because it’s safer than alcohol and many pharmaceutical drugs; it has medicinal properties; it is too common to waste money in a feeble attempt to eradicate it, and in illegal form it results in too much criminal activity.
Faulty
"You're Ugly, Too" and "Greenleaf" feature characters whose pride is born as a coping mechanism to the intense pain of loss and loneliness. However, the coping mechanism of pride becomes maladaptive when we consider pride builds a wall of solipsism, fortifies a prison of learned helplessness, and the lie of self-sufficiency.
Corrected
"You're Ugly, Too" and "Greenleaf" feature characters whose pride is born as a coping mechanism to the intense pain of loss and loneliness. However, the coping mechanism of pride becomes maladaptive when we consider pride builds a wall of solipsism, fortifies a prison of learned helplessness, and spawns the lie of self-sufficiency.
Faulty
The deluded fantasies of the married man in "The Other Woman" speak to men's unrealistic expectations of marriage evidenced by men's desire to embrace the forbidden Eros of Angelina Jolie, the squeaky clean innocence of Jennifer Aniston, and he wants a trophy wife.
Corrected
The deluded fantasies of the married man in "The Other Woman" speak to men's unrealistic expectations of marriage evidenced by men's desire to embrace the forbidden Eros of Angelina Jolie, the squeaky clean innocence of Jennifer Aniston, and the upper class status of the judge's daughter.
Faulty
The Man-Child, embodied by Francis Weed in "The Country Husband," is characterized by his propensity for indulging his lust and anti-social aggression at the expense of societal and family responsibility, his fixation on his youth as his central identity, and he likes to party.
Corrected
The Man-Child, embodied by Francis Weed in "The Country Husband," is characterized by his propensity for indulging his lust and anti-social aggression at the expense of societal and family responsibility, his fixation on his youth as his central identity, and his inclination for intractable self-pity.
We use parallelism in all types of writing.
Faulty
The instructor sometimes indulges in bloviating, pontificating, and likes to self-aggrandize.
We see above two gerunds followed by an infinitive, which is a faulty mix.
Corrected
The instructor sometimes indulges in bloviating, pontificating, and self-aggrandizing.
Using parallelism after a colon
Faulty
Kettlebell exercises work on the major muscle groups: thighs, gluteus, back, and make the shoulder muscles bigger.
Corrected
Kettlebell exercises work on the major muscle groups: thighs, gluteus, back, and shoulders.
Correct the faulty parallelism by rewriting the sentences below.
One. Parenting toddlers is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that toddlers contradict everything you ask them to do; they have giant mood swings, and all-night tantrums.
Two. You should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: They encourage gluttony; they feature fatty, over-salted foods and high sugar content. (they lard their food with high sugar content)
Three. I prefer kettlebell training at home than the gym because of the increased privacy, the absence of loud “gym” music, and I’m able to concentrate more.
Four. To write a successful research paper you must adhere to the exact MLA format, employ a variety of paragraph transitions, and writing an intellectually rigorous thesis. (write, not writing)
Five. The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that the rules are frequently being updated, the sheer abundance of rules you have to follow, and to integrate your research into your essay.
The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that you have to constantly stay updated on the changing rules, you have to memorize the sheer abundance of citation rules, and you have to learn to integrate research sources into your writing.
Six. You should avoid watching “reality shows” on TV because they encourage a depraved form of voyeurism; they distract you from your own problems, and their brain-dumbing effects.
Seven. I’m still fat even though I’ve tried the low-carb diet, the Paleo diet, the Rock-in-the-Mouth diet, and fasting every other day.
Eight. To write a successful thesis, you must have a compelling topic, a sophisticated take on that topic, and developing a thesis that elevates the reader’s consciousness to a higher level.
Nine. Getting enough sleep, exercising daily, and the importance of a positive attitude are essential for academic success.
Ten. My children never react to my calm commands or when I beg them to do things.
Grammar: Dangling Modifiers
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Confusing subject with object
Please give the chocolate to Randy and (I, me).
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.
Essay Options for Essay 1: Choose one of the following for your 1,500-word essay:
Refute, support, or complicate Asma’s assertion that green guilt is not only a relative to religious guilt but speaks to our drive to sacrifice self-indulgence for the drive of altruistic self-preservation and social reciprocity. See Elizabeth Anderson’s online essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Revised Version of the Above:
Refute, support, or complicate Asma's argument that guilt and internalized self-hatred are necessary for living in a cooperative society.
Develop a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the assertion Debra J. Dickerson, who wrote the “The Great White Way,” would find Michael Eric Dyson's essay "Understanding Black Patriotism" a complement to Dickerson's ideas about race, power, and hierarchy.
Support, refute, or complicate Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is more of a social fantasy than a reflection of objective reality.
Develop a thesis that analyzes the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us.”
Support, refute, or complicate Nicholas Kristof’s assertion that slashing food stamps is morally indefensible.
Develop a thesis that compares or contrasts (or both) the social pathologies that inform the type of eating disorders and neuroses described in “The Wages of Sin” and “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem.”
(New Option)
Addressing at least two essays we've covered in class, support, refute, or complicate the argument that overeating, anorexia, and other eating disorders are not the result of a disease but are habits of individual circumstance and economics.
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that “Against School” and “Preparing Minds for Markets” persuasively evidence that American education is more about protecting private business interests, maintaining class bias, and asserting mass control than it is about promoting real empowerment such as critical thinking, independence, and freedom.
Develop an analytical thesis that compares the themes of learned helplessness and the vicious downward spiral of poverty as they are evident in “The Consequences: Undoing Sanity” and “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty.”
“Understanding Black Patriotism” by Michael Eric Dyson
One. What is the difference between black patriotism and “lapel-pin nationalism”?
The history of black people is the history of struggle, to fight against slavery, Jim Crow, unfair incarceration laws, unequal income distribution, to name some, and this struggle for a better country through the struggle is far more in-depth and arduous than people spewing easy slogans and clichés.
If one is angry toward one’s country, then one has hope for change. True abandonment of one’s country is not expressed anger or outrage but apathy, and the percentage of people of all colors who stay at home on election days speaks to apathy.
In contrast, there is “My country, right or wrong,” which is a dogmatic credo of the ignorant peasant who subscribes, not to patriotism, but to jingoism, the act of cheerleading or being a fanboy for one’s country without doing the research or hard work concerning the relevant issues.
A jingoist is a Kool-Aid drinker or fanboy who blindly embraces all things that pertain to one’s country.
A true patriot, according to Dyson, is a critical thinker who wants an accurate diagnosis of America's ills in order to make a better America.
Two. What examples does Dyson provide regarding hypocrisy of patriotism?
Dyson points at the five deferments of Dick Cheney, hawkish on terrorism, who may have been hawkish when he was calling the shots, but when it came to him fighting he stayed home from the war five times. He really used those deferments but was eager to make others fight his war.
In contrast, African American critic of American racism Jeremiah Wright surrendered his student deferment and volunteered to join the Marines.
Sample Thesis
Pro Dyson Thesis
Those who attempt to dismiss the criticisms of great African American thinkers as being anti-American are engaging in the most vile form of tribalism and jingoism, and they would be well served to embrace these African American thinkers’ authentic patriotism, which is evidenced by __________, ___________, ___________, and ____________.
Pro Dyson Thesis
Attempts to label the great African American thinkers who have criticized US policy as anti-American collapse when we consider that these thinkers are the truest kind of patriot. This is evidenced by _____________, _______________, ________________, and ____________________.
Against Dyson Thesis
While I concede to Dyson’s point that we can criticize US policy and still be patriotic, Dyson’s examples are too extreme evidenced by _________________, _________________, ________________, and _______________________.
In the following video, we see Michael Eric Dyson make his point about true patriotism as he contrasts it with false patriotism:
False patriots apologize for abusers of civil rights.
False patriots white-wash the real narratives that define racism in America.
False patriots get defensive when truthful criticisms are put on the table.
One. In the first paragraph, Dickerson writes that the president will struggle to explain what race is to space aliens. She suggests that no one knows what race is, yet it is the “central drama” of America.
Why is race, which is such a vague and confusing term, our nation’s obsession?
Because people of color have traditionally been excluded from the American Dream and there is a history of genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow (segregation and racism), human rights violations that were rooted in the idea of race.
Genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow were justified by white people who, intoxicated by the doctrine of White Supremacy, felt entitled to treat others in the horrid manner of racism and all its resulting evils.
In our contemporary society, we enslave migrant workers in tents up and down the agricultural worksites of California and elsewhere.
In the United States, we imprison black and brown men for the same crimes as whites at a ratio of 10:1.
So race, even in its vague definition, is still a hot-button issue and points to a crisis of injustice and moral bankruptcy.
Two. What does Dickerson mean when she writes that “race is an arbitrary system for establishing hierarchy and privilege”?
The creators of White Supremacy, who escaped the tyranny of European kings knew the value of freedom. But they loved money more than freedom and they only valued freedom for themselves, not others.
White profiteering sociopaths who were envious of the profits slave traders were making in Britain, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere, wanted a piece of the action, but they knew the white Christian peasants and farmers were too religious and too caught up in the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself" to embrace slavery, so the white sociopath conmen insidiously put White Supremacy, the belief that God and Jesus are white and that the world was made for white people, into the white peasants' Bibles and soon enough the peasants and farmers drank enough of this White Supremacy or "evil Kool-Aid," as I'm fond of calling it, and they were on board with the white conmen.
Here's an important point: The white conmen were too clever to be fooled by race. They knew that race doesn't exist, that race is a canard and they used race as a canard to fool the white peasants.
The white peasants actually believed in the Kool-Aid the conmen gave them.
I don't know if there's a Hell, but if there is one with descending levels of torment, it would seem the conmen who knew race was a canard all along would go in the deepest part of Hell.
The peasants would still go to Hell because there's no excuse for their "complicit ignorance," as I like to call it, but they're not as diabolical as the white sociopaths who invented White Supremacy for their own profit.
Review of White Supremacy
White Supremacy is an evil religion, a hybrid of Christianity and white superiority narratives, which states whites were put on Earth lord over everyone else in any manner they saw fit.
The Inventors of White Supremacy Didn't Believe in It Themselves But Created It to get poor Christian farmers to "get on board" with slavery.
The creators of White Supremacy didn’t even believe in it. They were cynics who created a false religion because they knew the masses of white people would “drink the Kool-Aid” and become converts to White Supremacy as slavery became a powerful economic engine that made America into a super power.
In the United States, there was no such thing as "race" until slavery came along.
Before the false religion of White Supremacy, people did not have a consciousness of race or skin color. Race and skin color were inventions, or if you will, an elaborate fiction or fairy tale designed to justify genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow.
White farmers and slave owners drank the Kool-Aid and saw themselves as “good Christians” even as they exacted cruelty upon people of color. They were able to use White Supremacy (“I’m just doing what the good Lord ordained me to do.”) to assuage their conscience and perform heinous acts, which constituted the most depraved human rights violations.
Three. What attitudes did white Americans feel toward European immigrants from Ireland to Greece?
They were looked upon as subhumans that would takeover America as “mongrel hordes” unless the white Americans started breeding more.
There was a racial hierarchy with Anglo Europeans at the top, Italians, Slavs, Greeks, and Irish at the middle, and brown and black people relegated to the bottom.
Hostility was so bad against non-Anglo Europeans that 11 Italians were lynched in Louisiana in 1891.
The Anglo whites wanted to assimilate the southern Europeans into more jobs and get their votes, so they “promoted Southern Europeans to whiteness,” whiteness being equivalent to the gold card of freedom, respect, and privilege.
This privilege gave “fascist-leaning Italians” full respect while patriotic Japanese were put into internment camps.
One of the horrid things about southern Italians becoming full white Americans was in sharing white Americans’ hate and disdain for people of color. For example, we read that Italian Americans took delight in beating up black people.
This was their sick rite of passage into “being fully white.”
Four. How was FDR’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal a sort of affirmative action for whites only?
The states could decide who got the New Deal money and it always went to poor whites, never to blacks. White liberals in the north allowed southern states to do with the New Deal as they liked, state by state. There was no federal enforcement so that all people benefited.
During the Depression, relief only went to poor whites. Poor blacks received nothing.
Blacks were not eligible for Social Security until the 1950s.
These injustices, which happened 70 years ago, give weight to the argument for affirmative action, Dickerson argues.
We did have affirmative action for the poor, Dickerson reminds us, but 70 years ago, it was only the white poor who received it.
Essay Options
Develop a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the assertion Debra J. Dickerson, who wrote the “The Great White Way,” would find Michael Eric Dyson's essay "Understanding Black Patriotism" a complement to Dickerson's ideas about race, power, and hierarchy.
Support, refute, or complicate Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is more of a social fantasy than a reflection of objective reality.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" makes the persuasive case that race is a canard and a social construction that has nothing to do with scientific reality and everything to do with privilege evidenced by __________, ____________, ______________, and ________________.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" and the Rachel Dolezal controversy both reinforce the idea that race is an arbitrary social construction, an insane fantasy, and an anti-humanitarian fiction designed to give a false order of things, to provide a rationale for exploitation, and to reinforce our base tendencies for tribalism.
One. What explains our hunger for sameness in terms of the people we surround ourselves with?
We’re anxious and alienated from “people who aren’t like us.” We’d rather feel connection and comfort from being with “members of our tribe,” be it in education, politics, class aspirations, etc. We want to be around people who share our values and our way of seeing the world.
Such tribalism is both comforting and effective in making us happy.
Here’s the killer fact we don’t want to confront: We’re happier by remaining in our tribe. We don’t want to be around people who don’t share our values.
Why?
Because we are hard-wired to be self-segregating based on interests and values.
If we’re hipsters, we want to live in a community of hipsters.
If we’re suburban consumers, we want to be around suburban consumers.
If we’re creative, we want to be around a community of artists.
People who shop at Trader Joe’s are of a certain educated and political ilk.
People who shop at Whole Foods are of a certain educated and political ilk.
People who don’t vaccinate their children hang out with other likeminded parents.
People who watch Fox News hang out with Fox News viewers.
People who watch MSNBC hang with MSNBC viewers.
People who like luxury watches create online watch communities.
The Internet with its millions of blogs is all about consolidating people of common interests. The same can be said with YouTube and its over 500 million channels.
If you’re a college graduate the chances are your friends will be college graduates.
If you’re not college educated, the chances are your friends won’t be either.
If you’re fat, your friends probably are also.
If you’re skinny, your friends probably are also.
If you're beautiful, your friends probably also enjoy a fair amount of pulchritude.
If you’re an MMA fighter or enthusiast, your friends probably are also.
If you’re a vegan, so are your friends.
If you’re sympathetic to civil rights and equal justice, you probably don’t have friends who harbor racist views.
If you’re against guns, you probably don’t hang out with outspoken members of the NRA.
If you’re an atheist, especially an outspoken one, you probably don’t have a lot of Christian friends.
If you think skinny jeans on men look stupid, you probably don’t have a lot of male friends who wear skinny jeans.
Foodies hang out with foodies.
Coffee connoisseurs hang out with coffee connoisseurs.
Gamers hang out with gamers.
Sommeliers hang out with sommeliers.
If you're a gourmand who gorges on camembert, you probably hang out with other gourmands who wallow in camembert.
If you're a member of the cognoscenti, you probably hang out exclusively with other members of the cognoscenti.
If you're a Morrissey freak, you probably hang out with other Morrissey freaks.
We want to live in a bubble with people just like us. We feel comfortable being insulated from the “outside world.”
So let’s get real: There is no diversity. There’s only sameness.
Writing Option
Develop a thesis that analyzes the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us.”
Sample:
Brooks is accurate to say that we are hard-wired to live in our Same Tribe because we are a lazy people evidenced by _____________, _____________, ______________, and ____________________.
We should not denigrate ourselves for hanging out with people who are "just like us." We do so for survival reasons, which include _______________, _____________, ____________, and ______________.
Using Signal Phrases to Introduce Your Quoted and Paraphrased Research Material
One. What are the current statistics for food stamps?
47 million Americans receive food stamps to combat hunger.
About 5% of Americans have “very low food security,” meaning food can run out before the next source of income.
In one-third of those households, an adult “reported not eating for entire day.”
Fourteen percent of toddlers suffer iron deficiency. This can result in impaired brain development.
Impaired brain development and other health problems will cost tax payers far more than food stamps.
The essay’s author Nicholas Kristof finds it “infuriating” that a wealthy country like America allows this kind of hunger and malnutrition to go on. He expresses his outrage at a time when Congress is debating to slash the food stamp program.
Democrats at the time of this essay wanted to slash food stamps by $4 billion over 10 years; Republicans wanted to slash them by $40 billion.
More than 90% of the families who receive food stamps live below the poverty line. Nearly two-thirds of the recipients are children, the elderly, and the disabled.
Two. How does the government offer “food stamp” subsidies to the rich?
When they dine at expensive restaurants, the rich can deduct the bill as a tax write-off.
There’s controversy about feeding the poor but no controversy about the government helping to pay the expenses for the rich’s opulent meals, caviar, champagne, etc.
Additionally, the farm bill gives aid to 50 billionaires or companies.
More surprisingly, the government pays Kristof $588 a year to not grow crops on his wooded land in Oregon. He gives the money to a maternity hospital.
The author is outraged at a double standard that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.
Three. What counterargument does Kristof address?
He concedes that food stamps are not perfect. After all, they treat the symptoms, not the root causes, of hunger. He further concedes that we should “chip away at long-term poverty through early education, home visitation for infants, job training, and helping teenagers avoid unwanted pregnancies.”
However, he offers a rebuttal that food stamps are effective in many ways:
They reduce the number of children living in extreme poverty by half.
They give nutrition to the fetus and stave off long-term health problems to that fetus.
He concludes that slashing food stamps would be “a mark of shortsighted cruelty.”
Essay Prompt from page 175
Create a proposal that outlines what you believe should be the proper government policy concerning food stamps. How much support for this program should the government provide? What particular needs should it address? What limits should it establish? Then write a quick assessment of the ways your proposal compares to Kristof’s. What are the key similarities and differences?
Or you can look at the assignment this way:
In a 4-page essay, support, refute, or complicate Kristof's argument that in spite of the food stamp abuses cited by opponents of the food stamp program, providing food stamps for the poor is moral and economic imperative over the long-term. Be sure to have a counterargument and rebuttal section at the end of your essay.
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons
Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.