Homework for 3-11: For your next homework assignment #5, read “Zimmer Land” from Friday Black and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the connection between entertainment and racism.
3-11 Homework #5 due about “Zimmer Land.”
For Homework #6, read “Remembering History as Fable by Jamelle Bouie and “It’s Time for the Lost Cause to Get Lost” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains how some people pervert American history by turning it into a pernicious myth.
3-13 Homework #6 is due about Jamelle Bouie’s “Remembering History as Fable” and Jack Schwartz’s “It’s Time for the Lost Cause to Get Lost.” No homework for 3-18 because that day is a peer edit.
3-18 Peer Edit for Essay 2
3-20 Essay #2 Due on turnitin. We will look at essay 3 options. We will read Cal Newport’s book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You and explore the dangerous features of the Passion Hypothesis. Homework #7 is to read David Brooks’ Atlantic essay “People Like Us” and provide 3 reasons people stick to their tribe in a 3-paragraph essay.
“Zimmer Land”
Feed Racist Fantasies
An amusement park enacts racist fears and fantasies for white patrons. White patrons want to defend their “safe space.” This satire connects to a lot of stories in the news in which white women are calling the police to arrest black adults and children for trivial reasons like the woman who falsely claimed a black child “molested” her, as we see in the NYT.
White Paranoia
The story "Zimmer Land" is about white paranoia living out its fears and fantasies. This paranoia is a reflection of what is going on in American society evidenced by this CNN list of white people reacting with fear to black people with no rational reason.
We see another Vox article, “Babysitting While Black.”
There is an epidemic of 9/11 calls complaining against innocent black people, as we see reported in CNN.
Rolling Stone has an article: “Why White Women Keep Calling the Cops on Black People.”
The NYT has article: “When White People Call the Police on Black People.”
Here’s a CNN report of the “crime” of not waving.
Here’s a YouTube video of white man calling police on black woman at swimming pool.
Here’s YouTube video of black father at soccer game being unfairly harassed.
Here is a 10-minute PBS video of white people making these racist calls.
MLA Research Paper Checklist PDF
"You're the Head of Neighborhood Watch"
One of the roles at the Zimmer Land fantasy racist theme park on Cassidy Lane is for white patrons to do various hero role playing. One role is being the head of neighborhood watch. Clearly, this is a reference to George Zimmerman who, a wannabe hero, committed a senseless act of murder against Trayvon Martin. The "stand your ground law" in Florida in essence allows white entrance into a racist fantasy camp. We could argue that the state of Florida is one big giant Zimmer Land theme camp.
Thirty-three states have some type of stand your ground laws. Here is a list of those states.
Story's Narrator Is Paid to Role Play Jim Crow Stereotypes and to Normalize Gun Violence
Just as the media hungers for Jim Crow stereotypes in music, TV, and film, Zimmer Land theme park feeds white appetites for these Jim Crow stereotypes in the form of simulated white vs. black combat.
Childish Gambino shows these same stereotypes in his "This Is America" music video. Also, the video shows how America normalizes gun violence.
Fantasy Theme Park or Prison?
Zimmer Land is a fantasy theme park for whites; a prison for blacks.
Heland the White Entrepreneur Exploiting Black People
Zimmer Land's CEO Heland has a black girlfriend, which makes him 20% less racist according to focus groups.
Heland is evil in that he appropriates black suffering for his own profit by in part repackaging that suffering in euphemistic or BS terms to make the suffering palatable for human consumption and commerce:
Zimmer Land Mission
1) To create a safe space to explore problem-solving, justice, and judgment.
2) To provide tools for patrons to learn about themselves in curated heightened situations.
3) to entertain patrons of all ages.
Chicanery (trickery to achieve financial gain)
Heland and Doug are disturbed when the black narrator expresses that he can see through this chicanery. At one point, the narrator tells Doug and Heland that this role-playing is equating violence against blacks with "justice." The narrator's "flat" observation doesn't go well with his superiors.
Parents Teach Racism to Their Children
The story ends with a white father bringing his son to the racist theme camp and in essence passing the baton of racism to his son.
Black Role Playing in America Is Rooted in Jim Crow Stereotypes
White Paranoia and White Perceptions of Blacks Have Led to Code Switching
Essay #2 Template
Variation of Essay Option Three with Thesis Template and Body Paragraphs:
Develop a thesis that compares the themes in Donald Glover’s music video “This Is America” with the theme of Jim Crow brutality in the short story “Zimmer Land.” Consult Glover’s video analysis in the following: Washington Post analysis, Time analysis, and Insider analysis. You can also include the video The Jim Crow Museum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf7jAF2Tk40&t=27s
Sample Thesis Template
The Jim Crow Museum gives us a history of the intersection of violence and entertainment that white America has inflicted against the black community evidenced in the short story "Zimmer Land" and Childish Gambino's music video "This Is America."
Points to Address in Body Paragraphs
One. Jim Crow is a minstrel character who provides racist entertainment for white people.
Two. While flagrant Jim Crow depictions don't exist in mainstream America today, white people still hunger for minstrel-like entertainment from black community in part by limiting roles they expect from the black community, preferring roles in sports and entertainment, which reinforces stereotypes.
Three. Jim Crow painted blacks as lazy and dishonest, and this dehumanization fed white paranoia and white appetite for violence against the black community.
Four. White toxic masculinity has a history of being defined by gun violence against the black community. This is evident in the story "Zimmer Land."
Five. Black stereotypes rooted in Jim Crow caricatures feeds a sick role-playing dance between the white and black community that is evident in the story "Zimmer Land" and the "This Is America" video.
The Curse of Tatiana Minero
The incident that sealed my deeply-entrenched bitterness and my brooding disposition forever, an event that at the time seemed relatively harmless, happened to me over thirty years ago. I was sixteen, a bodybuilder of svelte proportions, tanned and endowed with long brown locks, luscious thick eyebrows, and piercing beady brown eyes. I had showy squared-off cheekbones and a strong commander-like jaw that allowed me to exude a certain swarthy appeal. But beneath my supercilious, self-assured pose resided your typical teenage male, a social nincompoop, self-conscious, awkward, prone to excessive sweating. I was, like many young men my age, tongue-tied around women, having devoted all my time and effort to honing the perfect body but spending zilch on attaining even a modicum of a personality. A pity I didn’t have the insight to see that such a condition would lead to a lifelong curse, a searing affliction that men suffer when they are compelled to look back on a lost opportunity and then are left to wonder what could have happened if only they hadn’t fumbled the ball.
We all fumble. We all make mistakes. But we all learn from our errors and go on with our lives. Right? Wrong. Dead wrong. Take it from me, a middle-aged, rancorous man. Heavy-hearted, emotionally-arrested, a slave to the past, I am a helpless victim to a memory that, against my will, plays over and over in my mind and keeps its freshness and vitality even as I wither away.
The incident happened in the dead of summer. Scheduled to enter Mr. Teenage Golden State in a couple of weeks, I was tanning myself at Cull Canyon Lake, when I noticed an olive-skinned girl had thrown down her towel close to me and plopped herself down on the sand. This was no ordinary girl. This was a sixteen-year-old goddess, the fabled Tatiana Minero. Her body slathered in a deliquescing, zero-sun protection tropical banana-coconut tanning oil, she was soon stretched out in the supine position, revealing her smooth, willowy body in a tiny green chambray bikini, the material so scanty that both top and bottom could easily fit inside a robin’s egg. Her straight, dark, silken brown hair flowed down the length of her sleek, reticulated back. Her diminutive ankles were adorned with little shimmering bracelets of tiny silver, almond-shaped bells that jingled when she walked, emitting a sort of siren’s call so that every time she stood up to walk toward the drinking fountains, all of the men, overcome with a sort of smoldering, glandular itch, abruptly stopped what they were doing to observe what was no doubt the most cataclysmic event of the day, the witnessing of Tatiana Minero strolling slowly toward the drinking fountains to take a sip of water. To see Tatiana Minero get up from her towel, stroll toward the fountains, wet her parched mouth, and return to her spot on the sand was to be keenly aware of a palpable change in the atmosphere. Male hormonal levels, tensions, and anxieties immediately began to rise and seethe as all men’s eyes were glued to Tatiana’s trajectory to and from the drinking fountains. It was as if her mere act of walking was a rare phenomenon, one of the great wonders and mysteries of the world, so that all the men at Cull Canyon Lake, not wanting to miss a second of this breathtaking spectacle, became completely fixated and motionless in a sort of bizarre time warp whereby Planet Earth seemed to have, in deference to Tatiana, stopped rotating. I can still see the men frozen between the apex of their leap off the diving board and the water below them, I can still see them stuck in mid-air as they lunge for a Frisbee or a football, I can still see them unable to clamp their teeth down on the mouth-watering poor boy sandwich they were eager to bite into just a moment before Tatiana Minero stood up and, like the Priestess of Planetary Rotation, halted the Earth’s revolution around the Sun. All of the men at the lake, their conversations and antics interrupted, their lives put on hold, their very thoughts jammed, were noticeably agape, their eyes burning with torment and insanity, as they beheld this sylphlike teenage girl walk ever so slowly toward the drinking fountains.
To add to our misery, occasional breezes wafted Tatiana’s sweet-smelling tanning oil into our direction, affording us a redolent reminder of her presence so that, like dogs in some cruel Pavlovian experiment, we shuddered with violent paroxysms as we inhaled her potent, ambrosial cocktail.
But the torment didn’t stop there. As if Tatiana wasn’t already unbearably irresistible, she also enjoyed the cachet and supernatural aura of belonging to a prized progeny of sisters, aunts, and cousins, who, known simply as The Minero Sisters, were legendary throughout the San Francisco East Bay for their beauty, the kind that aroused such passion that men squandered entire fortunes, warred and conspired against each other, and plotted diabolical schemes into the deep of the night for the privilege of being one of their suitors.
As I tried to relax on my pale orange Charlie Brown bedspread, I had heard some guys nearby whispering to each other, with the kind of excitement and conspiratorial glee reserved for surprise movie star appearances, about how this gorgeous girl lying on the sand next to me was one of the Minero Sisters. To merely utter the words “Minero Sisters” elicited an immediate smile and understanding and sometimes caused the hairs behind a man’s neck to bristle, for the words had the same kind of power and brand recognition as the words BMW, Mercedes Benz and Lexus.
Some guy from my school had introduced me to Tatiana as she was lying on her beach towel just a few feet away from me. To my surprise, upon meeting me, her ears perked up and her dark saucer eyes seemed to greedily soak in her view of me as she sat upright, supported by her long, slender arms, their sleek shape and cocoa butter tan highlighted by gold arm bracelets coiled around her delicate wrists like writhing snakes. With a coquettish giggle, she outstretched her legs in front of her while her high-arched feet circled playfully, causing her ankle bells to jingle. Then turning her head toward me in a way that caused her long dark brown hair to whip around her body like a matador’s cape, she stared at me, asked me who I was and why she had never seen me before. The tone of her voice was downright imperious. She sounded like a mildly irritated queen who would have her informants beheaded for having failed to apprise her of my very existence. “How come I’ve never seen you before?” she asked again. I told her I attended Castro Valley High. No wonder, she said, she had never seen me; she was a student at Hayward High School. Then out of the blue, she asked me a question that caught me completely off guard:
“Are you a good kisser? Cause with a body like that, boy, it would be a real shame if you weren’t a good kisser.”
In shock, dumbed by her beauty, and paralyzed by such a brazen proposal, my bowels loosened, and I found myself unable to speak. I tried and tried with all my will to say something in response to her audacious remark but my lips were pressed shut. I would have been happy merely spitting out some incoherent gibberish, but my brain synapses were apparently short-circuited rendering my jaw locked and I was revealed for who I truly was, a helpless mute, a dumbfounded ninny, an inexperienced awkward-handed Billy goat, unworthy of holding court with the great Tatiana Minero.
My failure to respond to her scintillating offer seemed to tell her all she needed to know about me, which was, of course, that for all my tanned, sculpted muscles, I was in fact not a good kisser, not just in the literal sense of not being able to kiss, that is, the mechanical act of caressing her lips with my own, but in the fuller, broader, more devastating sense of not having the confidence, the moxie, and the élan, to express passion toward her. Her question about my kissing was in a way an ingenious work of espionage; she had sent a reconnaissance team, a sort of Geek Patrol, into my psyche to see just what I was made of and found, rather quickly, that I was indeed a geek, so that, armed with this information, she insouciantly turned around and did not speak to me again.
Ever.
It was not just that she did not speak to me, but, on a more traumatic scale, that she actually seemed to recede from my universe, fade, and disappear, forever out of my grasp so that now, over thirty years later, I still reconstruct the event and imagine how rapturous it would have been had I had it within me to respond to her question with something charming, assured, and sophisticated, something that would let her know that I was indeed the great kisser she had been looking for.
Please don’t get me wrong. It’s not like my whole life has succumbed to this one incident. I’ve moved on as best I could. I went to college, got a decent-paying job, and married a beautiful Mediterranean woman. She is a splendor to behold, voluptuous, large-lipped, blessed with long curly brown hair. Quite frankly, the best way to imagine my wife is to think of Anita Ekberg in Federico Fellini’s famous fountain scene in La Dolce Vita. Yes, my wife does possess what many might call that larger-than-life kind of beauty, the kind that is so powerful and delectable that I enjoy, in the public arena, the assurance and satisfaction that other men will seethe with envy and admiration whenever they see me with her.
But you see, not all is well. My wife is sometimes awakened at night by my crying out Tatiana’s name. Yes, I still dream of her. Imagine it. Tatiana, a girl I never even touched, being the cause of my greatest infidelity! It brings me so much anguish to still be under her spell more than thirty years later. She is such a haunting presence in our home, such an unwelcome apparition. Sometimes my wife, after hearing me speak of Tatiana in my sleep, shakes me from my sleep and admonishes me for speaking the other woman’s name again.
I rarely sleep at night myself because I fear I may have another one of my cursed dreams. Sometimes Tatiana laughs. Sometimes she says she still wants me. Sometimes she cries because, she says, I have betrayed her. Sometimes she does not even appear as beautiful teen girl I met at the beach but an ugly reptile with skin covered in green scales. I know she is not the same girl who spoke to me at the lake over thirty years ago. She is something else entirely, a demon, a succubus, an unclean spirit that will show me no mercy.
I’ve resorted to sleeping on the couch. I feel safer in the event that I have one of my dreams I can cry out Tatian’s name with no one hearing me.
Often I find myself lying on the couch sleepless and whimpering like an injured dog. My stomach will often hurt and I will try to abate the pain by drinking a vermillion green chalky substance that my doctor promises will assuage my chronic dyspepsia.
I sit up and drink the medicine while flaring my nostrils in disgust, after which I fall asleep and begin to dream of my lovely Tatiana, so full of grace, sophistication, and splendor. It pains her to see me forced to drink such a bitter-tasting noxious beverage, and she shares these words with me:
“You fool, if only you would have said yes you will kiss me at the beach, you wouldn’t be in this predicament. But you had to say no. And no one refuses Tatiana Minero without paying the price. Therefore, sweet dreams will elude you forever and ever. Good night.”
Commas are designed to help writers avoid confusing sentences and to clarify the logic of their sentences.
If you cook Jeff will clean the dishes. (Will you cook Jeff?)
While we were eating a rattlesnake approached us. (Were we eating a rattlesnake?)
Comma Rule 1: Use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS) joining two independent clauses.
Rattlesnakes are high in protein, but I’d rather eat a peanut butter sandwich.
Rattlesnakes are dangerous, and the desert species are even more so.
We are a proud people, for our ancestors passed down these famous delicacies over a period of five thousand years.
The exception to rule 1 is when the two independent clauses are short:
The plane took off and we were on our way.
Comma Rule 2: Use a comma after an introductory clause or phrase.
When Jeff Henderson was in prison, he developed an appetite for reading.
In the nearby room, the TV is blaring full blast.
Tanning in the hot Hermosa Beach sun for over two hours, I realized I had better call it a day.
The exception is when the short adverb clause or phrase is short and doesn’t create the possibility of a misreading:
In no time we were at 2,800 feet.
Comma Rule 3: Use a comma between all items in a series.
Jeff Henderson found redemption through hard work, self-reinvention, and social altruism.
Finding his passion, mastering his craft, and giving back to the community were all part of Jeff Henderson’s self-reinvention.
Comma Rule 4: Use a comma between coordinate adjectives not joined with “and.” Do not use a comma between cumulative adjectives.
The adjectives below are called coordinate because they modify the noun separately:
Jeff Henderson is a passionate, articulate, wise speaker.
The adjectives above are coordinate because they can be joined with “and.” Jeff Henderson is passionate and articulate and wise.
Adjectives that do not modify the noun separately are cumulative.
Three large gray shapes moved slowly toward us.
Chocolate fudge peanut butter swirl coconut cake is divine.
Comma Rule 5: Use commas to set off nonrestrictive (nonessential) elements.
Restrictive or essential information doesn’t have a comma:
For school the students need notebooks that are college-ruled.
Jeff’s cat that just had kittens became very aggressive.
Nonrestrictive:
For school the students need college-ruled notebooks, which are on sale at the bookstore.
Jeff Henderson’s mansion, which is located in Las Vegas, has a state-of-the-art kitchen.
My youngest sister, who plays left wing on the soccer team, now lives at The Sands, a beach house near Los Angeles.
Comma Splice Review
Identify the Comma Splices Below:
It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?
MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.
To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.
One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs.
Submit Correct MLA Research Paper Format (Rules for Writers PDF 527)
Sample Thesis and Outline Comparing "The Great White Way"
White Patrons Hit Black Actors in Amusement Park: Violence Merges with Entertainment
There is a history of black people being hit for white people’s amusement. There were carnivals in the Jim Crow south where a sick game called “The African Dodger” was played. This is part of a long tradition of minstrel shows in America.
Introduction:
Quote and analyze Ta-Nehasi Coates' essay and transition to the two stories in Friday Black.
Sample Thesis Template:
"The Finkelstein 5"and "Zimmer Land" are more than stories about a gruesome murder of five children and white hunger for violence against black people. These stories reflect an ongoing racism crisis in America. This crisis is evident in the Trayvon Martin case in which we see that stand your ground laws are part of "malfunctioning" legal system giving white people license to kill black people. The crisis is evident in Childish Gambino's "This Is America" music video, which intersects, like "Zimmer Land," white hunger for black entertainment and white hunger for violence against African Americans (white father who killed black children in "The Finkelstein 5" scapegoated his personal problems against those black kids). We see the crisis evident in reckless policing policies that result in the acquittals of those police officers who gunned down Stephon Clark and other black men. We see this crisis evident in a kind of white paranoia that forces black people to engage in code switching in order to calm down whites' unfounded fears.
Body Paragraphs
Racist codes in the form of dog whistles such as "stand your ground" laws
stand your ground laws are a continuation of Jim Crow-era violence against black people, illustrated in Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) video "This Is America"
unabated police shootings of black people such as Stephon Clark
white paranoia (all those viral videos of white ladies calling 9-11 on black children) that compels a lot of black people to protect themselves through code switching.
white people have a toxic relationship with black culture: whites depend on black culture for entertainment, and this entertainment is entwined with violence against black people dating back to minstrel shows and continuing through super star Michael Jackson. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black, explores this intersection of black entertainment as form of consumption for white people and black violence in his short story "Zimmer Land."
Comparing the themes in Black Friday to Donald Glover’s “This Is America.”
Variation of Essay Option Three with Thesis Template and Body Paragraphs:
Develop a thesis that compares the themes in Donald Glover’s music video “This Is America” with the theme of Jim Crow brutality in the short story “Zimmer Land.” Consult Glover’s video analysis in the following: Washington Post analysis, Time analysis, and Insider analysis. You can also include the video The Jim Crow Museum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf7jAF2Tk40&t=27s
Sample Thesis Template
The Jim Crow Museum gives us a history of the intersection of violence and entertainment that white America has inflicted against the black community evidenced in the short story "Zimmer Land" and Childish Gambino's music video "This Is America."
Points to Address in Body Paragraphs
One. Jim Crow is a minstrel character who provides racist entertainment for white people.
Two. While flagrant Jim Crow depictions don't exist in mainstream America today, white people still hunger for minstrel-like entertainment from black community in part by limiting roles they expect from the black community, preferring roles in sports and entertainment, which reinforces stereotypes.
Three. Jim Crow painted blacks as lazy and dishonest, and this dehumanization fed white paranoia and white appetite for violence against the black community.
Four. White toxic masculinity has a history of being defined by gun violence against the black community. This is evident in the story "Zimmer Land."
Five. Black stereotypes rooted in Jim Crow caricatures feeds a sick role-playing dance between the white and black community that is evident in the story "Zimmer Land" and the "This Is America" video.
Option Eight: In the context of Jamelle Bouie’s “Remembering History as Fable” and Jack Schwartz’s “It’s Time for the Lost Cause to Get Lost,” develop a thesis that evaluates the assertion that for many Americans the Civil War denies real history and replaces that real history with a pernicious mythology, often called The Lost Cause, that perpetuates the false doctrine of white supremacy.
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