Lesson Plan Über Alles

Teaching Jim Crow, Lesson 1: Fall Semester 2023

Essay #2: Why We Study Jim Crow as Part of American History (200 points)

The Assignment:

Addressing Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s essay "Who's Afraid of Black History?" and Dr. David Pilgrim’s video “The New Jim Crow Museum," Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America” and the Netflix documentary 13th, write a 1,200-word essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the argument that teaching about the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is not a radical agenda set forth by some professors to brainwash their students into a Woke ideology. Rather, such teaching is a powerful antidote to historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation designed to oppress the already oppressed, is a powerful part of developing empathy which makes for a better society, prevents us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past, addresses the historical connection between American racism and gun violence, and strengthens democracy for all people.  

Be sure to have an MLA Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources. 

Suggested Outline

Paragraph 1: Draw from Dr. David Pilgrim's video "The New Jim Crow Museum" and Childish Gambino's video "This Is America" to write an extended definition of Jim Crow.

Paragraph 2: Summarize Henry Louis Gates' essay. 

Paragraph 3: Write your thesis in which you defend, refute, or complicate the argument that teaching about the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is not a radical agenda set forth by some professors to brainwash their students into a Woke ideology. Rather, such teaching is a powerful antidote to historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation designed to oppress the already oppressed, is a powerful part of developing empathy which makes for a better society, prevents us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past, addresses the historical connection between American racism and gun violence, and strengthens democracy for all people.  

Paragraphs 4-7 are your supporting paragraphs.

Paragraph 8 is your counterargument-rebuttal. 

Paragraph 9 is your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your claim. 

Some Arguments for Teaching Jim Crow:

Why we teach Jim Crow:

 

1. We must learn structuralism vs. individualism in the context of white structuralism so we avoid double standards.
2. We question American exceptionalism as a myth so we don’t have a warped view of history.
3. We create a permanently radicalized class if we perpetuate Jim Crow ideas. 
4. We perpetuate gun violence, which is attached to Jim Crow. 
5. We must prevent repeating the mistakes of the past.
6. We must struggle for democracy over white ethnocentric nationalism. 
7. We must study centrifugal vs. centripetal moral development. 
8. We must develop empathy to be more mature, a foundation for a free democracy. 
9. We must resist class bifurcation for moral health and social health. 

You might also consult Carol Anderson: The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

***

Building Block Assignment #1 for Jim Crow Essay

25 points

Paragraph 1: Draw from Dr. David Pilgrim's video "The New Jim Crow Museum" and Childish Gambino's video "This Is America" to write an extended definition of Jim Crow.

Paragraph 2: Summarize Henry Louis Gates' essay "Who's Afraid of Black History?"

***

Building Block Assignment #2 for Jim Crow Essay

25 points.

You will submit 2 paragraphs.

Paragraph 1: Submit your thesis paragraph: Write your thesis in which you defend, refute, or complicate the argument that teaching about the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is not a radical agenda set forth by some professors to brainwash their students into a Woke ideology. Rather, such teaching is a powerful antidote to historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation designed to oppress the already oppressed, is a powerful part of developing empathy which makes for a better society, prevents us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past, addresses the historical connection between American racism and gun violence, and strengthens democracy for all people.  

Paragraph 2: Submit your counterargument-rebuttal in which you anticipate your opponents' strongest argument against your thesis and you provide a rebuttal to their objection. 

***

 

Those who object to the teaching of African-American history are lumping this history with "Critical Race Theory." In fact, African-American history and CRT are different.

Main criticisms of CRT:

 

• Inaccuracies about the Revolutionary War being about slavery
• Extreme picture of systemic racism so that there is a helpless underclass
• Rubbing white kids’ faces in the mud of their “oppressive and privileged ways.”
• Calling all the white kids evil for being white.
• Doing slavery re-enactments at school

 

Whatever the excesses of CRT, we can still argue that there is a morally compelling reason to teach African-American history. 

 

• To combat slavery deniers or downplayers who rewrite history; in other words, teaching African-American history has to be looked at in the context of a history of slavery denial, which was expressed through The Lost Cause. 
• To refute the offensive practice of venerating champions of slavery who festoon cities in the form of statues, Confederate flags, and schools named after the founder of the Confederacy and apologist for the evils of slavery, Jefferson Davis. 
• To understand that the African-American heroes who struggled in the face of slavery, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights have a true place in American history.
• To acknowledge the complex nuanced look at African-American history, which refutes stereotypes, grotesque mythologies and racial misconceptions. 
• To acknowledge that African-American heroes provide moral instruction, inspiration, and role models of excellence for all of us. 
• To acknowledge that society’s sins can be a form of moral instruction and moral reform. (For example, Germany confronted its Nazi past and has not Hitler statues). 
• To fight against those who would replace real African-American history with a sugar-coated myth called The Lost Cause.  

For this unit, I am teaching ZERO Critical Race Theory. Rather, I am teaching racism and Jim Crow from African Americans' point of views, not mine and not from any "theory."  

Professor David Pilgrim

Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino

Jordan Peele

Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Frederick Douglass

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 

What I've learned from these African-American voices and others is the following:

Black history is not about self-pity or victimization; it's about genius, resistance, innovation, and heroism.

Black history is not about the White Savior bringing good tidings to the black people; it's about self-reliance and individual heroism. 

Black history is not about stereotypes or sentimentality; it's about a dialogue between conflicting voices and toughness in the face of evil. 

Black history is not about giving up or surrendering to evil; it's about finding solutions and making a path for others. 

Review Essay Outline

Suggested Outline

Paragraph 1: Draw from Dr. David Pilgrim's video "The New Jim Crow Museum" and Childish Gambino's video "This Is America" to write an extended definition of Jim Crow.

Paragraph 2: Summarize Henry Louis Gates' essay. 

Paragraph 3: Write your thesis in which you defend, refute, or complicate the argument that teaching about the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is not a radical agenda set forth by some professors to brainwash their students into a Woke ideology. Rather, such teaching is a powerful antidote to historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation designed to oppress the already oppressed, is a powerful part of developing empathy which makes for a better society, prevents us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past, addresses the historical connection between American racism and gun violence, and strengthens democracy for all people.  

Paragraphs 4-7 are your supporting paragraphs.

Paragraph 8 is your counterargument-rebuttal. 

Paragraph 9 is your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your claim. 

 

Why Do I Teach Jim Crow?

In today’s political polarization and troll culture, there is a popular thought propagated by political opportunists that teaching about racism, slavery, and Jim Crow in all its forms is Critical Race Theory: radical indoctrination into the wrong-headed belief that America is a hellscape and the CRT minions are obsessed with rubbing our faces in the racist stains of American history.

Such a grotesque oversimplification and caricature of what it means to teach racism is a Straw Man, a misrepresentation of the aims of teaching racism in a classroom. For example, for the last decade in my college composition class, we have a unit on Jim Crow.

I do not teach Jim Crow to rub people’s faces with exaggerated notions of America’s original sin or to promote some radical political agenda. I teach Jim Crow as a countervailing measure to the revisionist mythologies that replace its real history. Such revisionism leads to immoral acts. For example, the revisionist history of The Lost Cause, which outlandishly claims slavery was a good thing, results in over 200 public schools being named after America's worst racist Jefferson Davis, and today revisionism has caused millions of Americans to praise the criminals involved with the January 6 Insurrection as "American Patriots." I teach Jim Crow because the racist ideas that fueled Jim Crow are alive today in the form of social media white nationalists who are spreading weaponized misinformation. I teach Jim Crow because Jim Crow gave inspiration and instruction to racists throughout the world, for example, Hitler learned segregation techniques from America’s Confederacy creator Jefferson Davis. Finally, I teach Jim Crow because a moral inventory is essential for society’s moral reform, a process that the post-World War II Germans have successfully done in a form of soul-searching and atonement for the sins of the past, a process they call Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung. 

Trolls

• Weaponize misinformation
• Have no moral bottom
• Take delight in cruelty toward others
• Are blindly loyal to their racial or some other tribe
• They violate all laws of critical thinking
• They violate all laws of decency
• The creators of slavery and Jim Crow were America's first trolls. They are making a comeback. 

America's first trolls were defenders of slavery and Jim Crow.

• They engaged in historical revisionism, denying the atrocities of slavery and arguing that the Civil War was due to "Northern aggression" and "state rights."
• They gaslighted the oppressed, saying they were happy to be enslaved.
• They relied on pseudo-science to create a racial hierarchy. 
• They relied on Jefferson Davis' racist manifesto to justify slavery. To this day Jefferson Davis' name is on over 200 public schools. 
• They weaponized racist propaganda in an attempt to dehumanize African-Americans with millions of Jim Crow images. 

Why do we study Jim Crow?

• To resist the rewriting of history, which is designed to oppress the very people who suffered under Jim Crow.
• Because rewriting history is morally abhorrent and always has malevolent designs. 
• Because people are still rewriting history with malevolent intent today.
• Because the racist ideas that fuel Jim Crow are alive today in an international cult of white nationalists who are dedicated to using social media to spread weaponized misinformation.
• Because denying representation and silencing voices is morally bankrupt and denies us the truth about ourselves and about people who have been historically oppressed. 
• Because Jim Crow gave inspiration and instruction to racists throughout the world, for example, Hitler learned segregation techniques from America’s Confederacy creator Jefferson Davis. 
• Because a moral inventory is essential for society’s moral reform, a process that the Germans have successfully done in the aftermath of World War II. 
• Historical revisionism kills democracy and inverts morality. For example, the revisionist history of The Lost Cause results in over 200 public schools being named after America's worst racist Jefferson Davis, and millions of Americans praise the criminals involved with the January 6 Insurrection as "American Patriots."
• Because Jim Crow is built on troll culture and we need to build a society on critical thinking culture.

 

 

 

Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil By Susan Neiman

I’ve been teaching a unit about Jim Crow in my college writing class for the last 10 years. The recent hysteria about CRT has forced me to look closely at why I teach a unit about American racism. 

It seems one can teach American racism in four ways: 

• American exceptionalism, in which racism is minimized as a mere hiccup in America’s grand narrative
• The Lost Cause is the most grotesque perversion of history in which resentful losers of the Civil War cast slavery and Jim Crow as a virtue in which everyone knows their place.
• Radical Fatalism in which the original sin of racism is so egregious that America is an irredeemable hellscape.
• Struggle for Redemption in which we acknowledge our sins of racism and our accomplishments and struggle to find atonement within our country’s contradictions. Working off the past or the struggle to overcome the past is a long word in German: Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung. 

What is the word?

Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Struggle to overcome the past

Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung

I choose the latter category as the only moral and instructive way I can teach a course about American racism. 

See the New Yorker essay by Lizzie Widdicombe: “What Can We Learn from the Germans About Confronting Our History?

Widdicombe writes:

Neiman, an American who directs the Einstein Forum, a public think tank outside of Berlin, has recently published a book, “Learning from the Germans,” that makes the case for an American version of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, a word that she translates as “working off the past,” which refers to the decades-long process through which Germany has come to terms with Nazism and the Holocaust. Today, the country isn’t free from racism and anti-Semitism, as the recent attack on a synagogue in Halle showed, but its culture and politics remain deeply informed by its history. All of the arts, including TV and film, regularly refer to and treat Nazi history. And the country pauses to perform what Neiman calls “public rites of repentance” around events such as the liberation of Auschwitz, Kristallnacht, and the end of the war. Then there’s the iconography: the Holocaust Memorial sits at the center of a reunified Berlin. There are also the famous “stumbling stones”—small brass plaques placed throughout the city to mark where Jews and other victims of the Nazis last lived, before they were deported. By comparison, she writes, “Imagine a monument to the Middle Passage or the genocide of Native Americans at the center of the Washington Mall. Suppose you could walk down a New York street and step on a reminder that this building was constructed with slave labor.”

The lesson for Americans—particularly those involved in racial-justice work—is that “Nobody wants to look at the dark sides of their history,” she said. “It’s like finding out that your parents did something really horrible. There’s always going to be resistance. It’s normal, and it’s something we should expect.” So what made the Germans change? Neiman writes about a number of historical factors, but the most important, in her opinion, was “civil engagement” by the German public, beginning in the nineteen-sixties. A new generation came of age. “They realized that their parents and teachers had been Nazis, or at least complicit in Nazi atrocities, and were outraged,” she said. A small and often controversial vanguard insisted on digging up history that older generations had refused to discuss. People called them Nestbeschmützer, or “nest-foulers.” But the process they set in motion—a process of uncovering the past and talking about it—eventually reverberated throughout German society.

Her final lesson was about balance. She brought up a charge recently made by conservative critics of the Times’ 1619 Project, which commemorates slavery: that focussing on the worst parts of a nation’s history is depressing and, worse, delegitimizing. “They complained about it in Germany as much as Newt Gingrich and company are complaining about it now—‘It’s going to tear the social fabric, and we won’t have a national identity anymore! People won’t have anything to celebrate!’ ” There’s some truth there, she said. When planning monuments, “I think it’s really important that it not just be sites of horror, that we also remember heroes.” Is this to make us feel better about ourselves? “Yes,” she said. “I make this analogy which may seem a bit hokey: having a grownup relationship to your history is like having a grownup relationship to your parents. As a kid, you believe everything they tell you. As an adolescent, you may be inclined to reject everything. But having a grownup view involves sifting through with some distance, and saying, ‘O.K., I’m glad that my mother had those values, and that’s what I’m going to pass on to my kids. Not the other stuff.’ ” She mentioned a few of her own heroes: Sojourner Truth and Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Brown and Harriet Tubman, Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson. She said, “It’s like being orphaned if you can’t say, ‘No, there are people, and not a few of them, in my nation’s history whom I really admire.’ ”

***

After World War II and the defeat of Hitler and the Nazis, German went through a soul-search process, acknowledged their collaboration with evil forces, and made a concerted effort to work away their sins. 

Working off the past or the struggle to overcome the past is a long word in German: Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung. 

We cannot overcome the past unless we acknowledge it. Denial of the past causes the past evils to perpetuate. 

To acknowledge evil from our own tribe goes against human instinct. Evil is “out there performed by The Others, but it’s not us.” Such an impulse makes acknowledgment of evil within the tribe very difficult. 

Today in the South, many southerners won’t acknowledge that the South committed sedition and insurrection to defend the evil practice of slavery. There is a different narrative: “The South fought Nothern aggression and defended state rights.”

In post-World War II Germany, there was initial resistance to the acknowledgment of past sins. We read in The Guardian from Alex Clark:

Neiman does not stint on impressing on her readers the details of number one, drawing on a vast body of interviews – half, she estimates, didn’t even make it into the book – to explore how long history’s tail is. It is too easy, she argues, to believe that as soon as the second world war ended, Germany set about the process of atoning for its crimes. It simply isn’t so: after all, 10% of the country’s population had been members of the Nazi party, “and the most shocking, but also important thing, is they were not the uneducated masses. The majority had academic degrees. We like to think that education provides immunity to racist and fascist ideology. And it doesn’t.”

What, then, heralded the start of Germans en masse beginning to face the past? Although some of it can be explained generationally, she replies, as people died off, “that won’t do the trick, as we’ve seen in the United States. And as we’ve seen in Britain where, you know, time has gone by, and people like falling back on national myths of greatness.” In part, she believes the Auschwitz trials marked a moment of change in which the burgeoning of mass travel connected ordinary Germans with other worldviews and there was an emergence of books by Holocaust survivors. She also notes the importance of 1968, “a moment for confronting parents and teachers … and there was a sense of a sudden real wave of disgust and rebellion: what have you done?”

Neiman is also at pains to point out that this work was done more quickly and more effectively in East Germany – much of which went unnoticed because of the relentless focus on West German attempts at rehabilitation. “Whenever you say anything good about East Germany,” she says, “immediately somebody jumps up and says, ‘My God, you’re a Stalinist … ’ I’m not defending everything about it, of course. But I laboured on the chapter that talks about the east. I fact-checked it; I had somebody else fact-check it. I knew that I was going to get a lot of flak for that. But in the beginning, East Germany did a better job. They just did. On every level: in terms of bringing old Nazis to trial, in terms of teaching the period in schools, in terms of building monuments, and restoring concentration camps and making them educational.” Meanwhile, the west was so busy fighting a new conflict – “old Nazis were the best people to fight the cold war” – that efforts at serious denazification went by the board.

As one might expect from a philosopher – especially one who has side-stepped the academy to work across disciplines – Neiman is fascinating and potent on how the Holocaust has functioned on multiple planes, and primarily as an example of pure evil that, by consequence, allows other societies to divert attention from their own misdeeds. “Nothing else even comes close to it. And if you haven’t done that, well, then you’re doing fairly well … you know, it’s as if we would like to have a large black hole that says, this is where you put evil and we don’t have to look at it.”

She has, she says, been shocked by the lack of knowledge in Britain about the Nazi period, which naturally leads us into a conversation about the fondness of rightwing politicians for invoking the glories of the war, “this nostalgia for the empire that you see all over the place with Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg and I suppose Boris Johnson too ... As if the empire really was a wonderful thing, as if it brought nothing but civilisation to the rest of the world.”

***

In the New York Times review of Neiman’s book by Deborah E. Lipstadt, we read:

For two decades after World War II, Germany — East and West – practiced “moral myopia.” Communist East Germany claimed that since it was a postwar antifascist state and all the former Nazis were in West Germany (they were not), it bore no responsibility for genocide. West Germans, in Neiman’s words, “from dogcatcher to diplomat,” falsely insisted that only the Third Reich’s leadership knew of the mass murder. “Our men were gallant fighters, not criminals,” one German told her. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer appointed former Nazis to some of the government’s highest jobs, thus telegraphing the message that, on a personal level, all was forgiven. Even the reparation process, Neiman says, was “meanspirited and arduous.” Auschwitz survivors received a smaller pension than former SS guards and their widows. Simply put, Germans, East and West, refused to articulate the words: I was guilty.

What changed? In the late 1960s West German children and grandchildren of Nazis began to struggle with their families’ crimes. Having watched the televised Eichmann and Auschwitz trials, and inspired by student protests sweeping Europe, young Germans demanded an honest account of past wrongs. That confrontation with history, while hardly complete and now under attack from right-wing forces, remains far more extensive and honest, Neiman says, than anything that occurred in the United States regarding slavery and discrimination.

Born and raised in the South, Neiman moved from Berlin to Mississippi to research this fascinating book. She actively sought people and institutions engaged in “remembering.” She found eerie similarities between the response of the first generations of postwar Germans to their evil past and the response of many Americans, particularly Southerners, to theirs. Many of her Southern informants echoed Germany’s post-World War II mantra. Nobody was in the slave business. Southerners just bought what Northern ship captains sold them. Slavery was unconnected to the Civil War. The conflict was all about taxes.

Neiman notes that while Germany’s past no longer immunizes it against resurgent nationalism and anti-Semitism, there is in the heart of Berlin a memorial to the six million Jews murdered by Germans. “A nation that erects a monument of shame for the evils of its history in its most prominent space is a nation that is not afraid to confront its own failures.” While a museum dedicated to the African-American experience has opened in the heart of Washington, recent expressions of racism not just from the highest office in this land but also from many politicians, pundits and ordinary people suggest that America’s confrontation with its legacy of slavery and racial hatred is far from complete.

Many Americans, in the South and the North, insist that Confederate monuments are historical artifacts that simply honor the region’s history and its loyal defenders. They ignore the fact that most were built 50 years after the war, when the children of the Confederacy were creating the myth of a noble lost cause. Others were erected during the 1960s in protest of the civil rights movement.

Jim Crow 1.0 and 2.0 First Lesson

Teaching Jim Crow Is the Counter Response to the American Myth of Disneyland Innocence

When I grew up and went to public schools in the 1960s and 1970s, I received what you might call the American Mytho of Disneyland Innocence. 

In this Innocence Narrative, slavery was given a tiny paragraph in the history textbook and treated like a hiccup in the narrative. Once the hiccup ended, America was back on track with Disneyland innocence. Equality, freedom, and justice defined the American scene for all Americans. 

 

This same Innocence narrative informed the history of the pilgrims and the American settlers.

Christopher Colombus was portrayed as a hero who “discovered” America and was worthy of our admiration. The atrocities he committed against indigenous peoples, including severing the limbs of children, were never addressed because these atrocities would violate the myth of American innocence.

Likewise, the pilgrims and settlers were portrayed as benign travelers who shared cultural good with the native Americans and celebrated a Kumbaya moment. 

As a ten-year-old child in the fifth grade, I assumed the Myth of Innocence to be true. 

Then something happened that pulled the curtains apart and revealed the real America, an America that did not resemble the Disneyland innocence inculcated into me since my days in kindergarten.

As a fifth-grader, I was obsessed with baseball, and I read every baseball biography I could get my hands on. I’d either find baseball player biographies at the library or buy them from Scholastic Books, a mail-order program offered at my public schools. 

A lot of the biographies I read were about African American baseball players, many who played Minor and Major League baseball in the Jim Crow South during the 1950s. Here is what I learned:

 

• Henry Aaron’s wife and other black players’ wives could not sit in the bleachers with the white baseball players’ wives. She had to sit isolated in a section for people of color. 
• Black players could not eat in restaurants with the white players.
• Often, white players would buy food from the restaurant, scurry out of a back door and chow their grub in a back alley inside a car.
• Black players could not ride the trains with the white players.
• Black players could not sleep in the same hotels as white players.
• Black players had to be five times better than white players to get a full-time position. 
• Great black players were resented by white players and white fans because their greatness violated the Myth of White Supremacy. 

As I read about these Jim Crow humiliations, it occurred to me that what my public school was teaching me about America as a place of Disneyland Innocence was a lie. 

As I read about these Jim Crow humiliations, it occurred to me that white supremacy was used against other people of color, including Asians. 

I started thinking of my favorite TV show at the time, Kung Fu, starring David Carradine who played Caine, a Shaolin monk who travels through America’s Wild West in search of his half-brother, and along the way, he was subjected to racist taunts and violence. After reading about the black baseball players being humiliated by Jim Crow, I looked at Cain’s struggles from a broader perspective. 

White supremacy was a systemic disease brought on by deliberate doctrine. Only later would I learn that this odious doctrine was largely created by the founder of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, who as I write this, is venerated as a hero by having over 200 public schools in the South named after him.  

I was only ten years old. I was no expert on human relations, no psychologist, no professor, but I knew what I was reading about was my heroes being abused, and this abuse was a refutation of the lie of American Innocence. Several thoughts swirled in my mind:

 

• What the African American players were facing was abuse: mental and physical abuse and this abuse did not square with the America my school was teaching me about. 
• Their abuse was sanctioned and supported by the southern state governments in policies that were made by legal decree, a contradiction of a country that was supposed to be fair, just, and equal.
• The white people committing the abuses were exceedingly pleased with themselves and committed their acts of degradation with absolutely no shame or moral compunction. This told me their behavior had been normalized by some code that needed to be revealed, a code that I would later learn was the code of Jim Crow. 
• My schools withheld this information from me and were complicit in propagating the lie of American innocence and therefore my schools could not be trusted. 
• Either the public school system committed the lie of Innocence through incompetence or deliberate deceit, but it did not matter: Their lie made them worthy of contempt. 
• As a ten-year-old boy, I learned I was going to have to read on my own if I were going to learn the truth about various subjects, not the least of which was America’s original sin of slavery and Jim Crow. 
• I often wondered that if I did not love baseball so much and love Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Lou Brock, Larry Doby, Curt Flood, and others, I may have never had such a personal experience with Jim Crow, and I may have grown up brainwashed by the Disneyland of Innocence. 

 

Lesson for Henry Louis Gates’ Essay “Who’s Afraid of Black History”

 

One. What are Ron DeSantis and others’ objections to teaching African-American history in school?

 

DeSantis is making the claim that African-American history doesn’t focus on facts but is rather concerned with an agenda of “indoctrination.” This doctrine, according to DeSantis, says America is bad, racism is so severe and systemic that only reparations can begin to solve it, and anyone who doesn’t agree with this doctrine is a racist. 

 

While some adhere to this doctrine, many teachers who present African-American history in their classes are not attaching such a doctrine; nevertheless, these teachers are being reprimanded, canceled, and having their books and teaching content banned in class.

 

To lump all teachers together in one extreme doctrine is inaccurate and by twisting what they’re teaching, their critics are committing a Straw Man Fallacy in argumentation: twisting one’s words to make that person easy for attack. 

 

***

 

Gates points out the hypocrisy of DeSantis making a claim of teachers imposing a doctrine on their students when in fact DeSantis is an apologist for racism, The Lost Cause, and erasing Black History, which is a doctrine in its own right. In fact, DeSantis got himself in trouble when he said slavery wasn’t all bad and actually benefited African-Americans.

 

It is a great irony that DeSantis wants people to teach facts and stay away from doctrines when he himself pushes the false facts that slavery benefited African-Americans as part of his anti-woke agenda. 

 

Gates concedes that education indoctrinates us but he uses different language. He argues that in schools “we learn how to become citizens, that we encounter the first civics lessons that either reinforce or counter the myths and fables we gleaned at home.”

 

He further counters that we do indeed learn facts about African-American history. We learn about the following:

 

• Slavery
• The Civil War
• Reconstruction
• The Confederacy’s “Redemption” followed by Jim Crow segregation
• The Lost Cause Myth
• The Great Migration

 

The above are all facts about the black struggle in American history. Why does the teaching of this history have to be part of some pernicious anti-American doctrine?

 

Gates finishes his essay by observing the long history of trying to erase and demonize Black history. He writes:

 

Is it fair to see Governor DeSantis’s attempts to police the contents of the College Board’s A.P. curriculum in African American studies in classrooms in Florida solely as little more than a contemporary version of Mildred Rutherford’s Lost Cause textbook campaign? No. But the governor would do well to consider the company that he is keeping. And let’s just say that he, no expert in African American history, seems to be gleefully embarked on an effort to censor scholarship about the complexities of the Black past with a determination reminiscent of Rutherford’s. While most certainly not embracing her cause, Mr. DeSantis is complicitous in perpetuating her agenda.

As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so aptly put it, “No society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present.” Addressing these “ravages,” and finding solutions to them — a process that can and should begin in the classroom — can only proceed with open discussions and debate across the ideological spectrum, a process in which Black thinkers themselves have been engaged since the earliest years of our Republic.

Throughout Black history, there has been a long, sad and often nasty tradition of attempts to censor popular art forms, from the characterization of the blues, ragtime and jazz as “the devil’s music” by guardians of “the politics of respectability,” to efforts to censor hip-hop by C. Delores Tucker, who led a campaign to ban gangsta rap music in the 1990s. Hip-hop has been an equal opportunity offender for potential censors: Mark Wichner, the deputy sheriff of Florida’s Broward County, brought 2 Live Crew up on obscenity charges in 1990. But there is a crucial difference between Ms. Tucker, best known as a civil rights activist, and Mr. Wichner, an administrator of justice on behalf of the state, a difference similar to that between Rutherford and Mr. DeSantis.

While the urge to censor art — a symbolic form of vigilante policing — is colorblind, there is no equivalence between governmental censorship and the would-be censorship of moral crusaders. Many states are following Florida’s lead in seeking to bar discussions of race and history in classrooms. The distinction between Mildred Lewis Rutherford and Governor DeSantis? The power differential.

Rutherford wished for nothing less than the power to summon the apparatus of the state to impose her strictures on our country’s narrative about the history of race and racism. Mr. DeSantis has that power and has shown his willingness to use it. And it is against this misguided display of power that those of us who cherish the freedom of inquiry at the heart of our country’s educational ideal must take a stand.

 

 

Office Hours & Late Assignment Policy for Fall 2023

Monday 2-315

Tuesday 115-230

Wednesday 2-315

Thursday 2-315

 

Late Assignment Policy:

Building Block Assignments Are Available for Full Points One Week After the Deadline; Then the Assignment Is Closed for Zero Points

I will keep Canvas building block assignments open for one week after the deadline. Once it closes, it is closed, and you cannot earn points. I do this because I have to show the college and the state of California that you are going through the writing process, not dumping a bunch of hastily-gathered assignments at the end of the semester. 

Essay Assignments Are Available Throughout the Semester But an A Grade Is Impossible When More Than 5 Days Late. 

For essays, you get 5 days of grace, which means you can submit your essay five days after the deadline with no grade reduction. 

After 5 days beyond the deadline, the highest grade you can get is a B.

After 14 days beyond the deadline, the highest grade you can get is a C. 

I do this to reward the students who are punctual and to condition you to meet deadlines, a requirement for success in college and beyond college. 

Sunken Place Lesson #3 for Spring 2023: Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass and The Sunken Place

 

It would be irresponsible to discuss the Sunken Place without referencing the greatest American who ever lived, the freed slave, writer, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass who not only articulated the Sunken Place in the anguish he poured out in his descriptions of the inhumanity of slavery but did so in the context of longing to one day be a freeman. In other words, Douglass at the lowest point of his Sunken Place would never give up hope for being free or let go of his identity as a freeman with self-agency and self-determination. We cannot emphasize that the Sunken Place is a powerful tool of instruction only when we see that it is not a capitulation to inaction and surrender to the evil of racism; instead, the Sunken Place is where might and resistance are resolved and we see that resistance to evil is a vital component of the Sunken Place.

 

The author of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass may be one of the first great writers to describe in detail the agony of being owned (body and soul) by other human beings and subject to their whims, greed, and cruelty.

 

Douglass may be one of the first great writers to describe the agony of forced sleep deprivation, starvation, overwork, arbitrary whippings, and forced illiteracy in order to give life to the white myth of black intellectual inferiority (a myth created to justify the cruelty of slavery itself).  

 

Douglass may be the first writer to describe the agony of being forced to be a slave with a smile on your face and body language that exuded gratitude to the slavekeeper for enslaving you lest you be beaten to death for looking bored or ungrateful.  

 

The Sunken Place Feature #1: Letting your oppressors write your narrative to aggrandize themselves and humiliate you

 

Douglass begins his memoir by observing that the slave masters falsely portrayed slavery to justify their depravity and to sugarcoat the agony that afflicted slaves. 

Not only is slavery physically unbearable, Douglass observes, but to have your captors misrepresent you and your suffering at their barbaric hands creates a spiritual wound for which there are no words. 

 

Heroically, Douglass defied the slave masters and taught himself to read and write so that he could bare witness to the human rights violations that happened to his people and give voice to his people. Likewise, Jordan Peele’s Get Out is told from a black protagonist’s point of view. The movie, like Douglass’ narrative, is told by a black voice. 

 

Who gets to describe hell? The tormentor or the tormented? Clearly, the latter is the only moral answer.

 

The Sunken Place Feature #2: To be a nothing at birth, not human at all but property

 

Frederick Douglass and his fellow slaves didn’t know their birthdays because their births weren’t recorded. Symbolically, they “didn’t count” as humans. They grew up without a birthday and without knowledge of their age. It had to be estimated or counted by comparing their life circumstances to bookmarks in history. 

 

Slaves were not allowed to ask their masters their birthdays because to do so was considered “impertinent” and disrespectful.

 

It was believed that Douglass’s father was a white man, a slaveholder, and he observes that slaveholders constantly fornicated with slave women, impregnated them, and disowned the babies as their children but rather counted them as slaves so these slaveholders could both gratify their lusts and increase their slave numbers at the same time. 

 

It should be noted that these slave children were bullied more than the other children and often had to be sold because the white slaveholders’ wives were furious with being constantly reminded by these children of their husbands’ infidelity. 

 

As best as can be known, Douglass was born in 1817 or 1818 during slavery and died in 1895. He lived through slavery, the Reconstruction Era, when the white government tried to give reparations to black people for the sins of slavery, and the ill-named Redemption Era when the white government catered to angry white citizens who resented the government helping black people and persuaded their elected officials to roll back reparations and replace Reconstruction with Jim Crow, an insidious reappearance of slavery under a different name.

The Sunken Place Feature #3: To be torn apart from your parents

 

Because Douglass was mere property, slavekeepers separated slave infants from their mothers as “a common custom” so no natural family bonds existed for these babies. As cruel as this practice was, it was even more cruel when slaveholders sold older children who were then separated from their parents after a familial bond had been established. 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #4: To see your loved ones treated with abject cruelty by barbaric monsters

 

As a small child, Douglass witnessed many times his young beautiful Aunt Hester beaten by her slavemaster and he had to hear her terrifying screams. Mostly, he whipped her for his own whimsical pleasure but his most brutal beatings were for her falling in love with a young black man, which was forbidden because the slavemaster always “desired her presence.” He beat her to let her know she was his plaything, and this depraved cruelty left a permanent scar on the small child Frederick Douglass. 

 

Additionally, as a child, Douglass witnessed many mothers who failed to wake up in time beaten by the cruel overseers in front of their children while the children begged the overseers to stop whipping their mothers but to no avail. 

Witnessing this kind of human depravity with no guardrails put Douglass and his fellow slaves in the Sunken Place. 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #5: The anguish and pain of slavery are so deep that words cannot describe them. 

 

Douglass listened to his fellow slaves walk in the woods from the plantation to the Great House Farm and they would sing songs of sorrow that made him contemplate that the pain of slavery was so deep that the words he used to describe it were futile, that the only way to feel this pain, this Sunken Place if you will, was to listen to the “ineffable sadness” and “bitter anguish” in these songs his fellow slaves poured out in the woods. 

 

Only by listening to these songs could Douglass get his “first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.” 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #6: Being forced to live the lie that your slavemasters made you happy because they were kind

 

Douglass observes that while the slaves suffered unspeakable agony, they had to pretend that they were happy and that their masters were kind. To encourage this facade, masters would send spies into the plantations to record any stirrings of discontent and these malcontents would be ripped from family and friends and sold to some place of horror even worse than the hell that they lived in. 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #7: Knowing that the pathway from slavery to freedom is literacy, a condition that the slavemasters prohibited to prevent discontent in their slaves.

 

When the white caretaker Sophia Auld taught Douglass how to read and write, she was giving him the dignity proffered on any human being, yet her father Mr. Auld scolded her for “spoiling” the child with the gift of literacy, a gift that would make him think he was too good for slavery. 

 

At this point, Douglass the small child understood that illiteracy was the slavemaster’s “great weapon” in helping “the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.”

 

The slavemaster’s evil woke up Douglass to the fact that he needed to learn to read and write and whatever cost in order to save himself from the Sunken Place. 

 

In the words of Douglass:

 

“What he dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.”

 

Without a teacher, Douglass gave food, usually his bread, to poor white children in exchange for their grammar and writing books; he found scraps of newspapers in the garbage and taught himself to read.

 

As an adult while living under the slavemaster Mr. Freeland, Douglass taught other slaves how to read and write and he saw how this gift of literacy gave his fellow slaves the longing to be free and at least one such slave did indeed escape slavery.  

 

The Sunken Place Feature #8: Unable to remove the thought that you are enslaved, you regret your existence and wish you were dead.

 

Douglass was desperate to think of anything other than the horrid state of being a slave but the thought would not leave him and tormented him. He writes, “I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.” 

 

His only relief was hearing people talk about the need for the abolition of slavery. 

The very word abolition captured Douglass’ imagination. He studied discarded newspapers to get a handle on what abolition meant and he learned that it meant the death of slavery. 

 

He learned that an abolitionist was someone who championed the end of slavery through words, oratory, and deeds. 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #9: To learn that the slavemasters who purported the strongest religious faith were the cruelest and most vicious

 

Douglass learned that while all slavemasters were cruel and evil, there was an extraordinary meanness attached to those who claimed religious piety; therefore, Douglass had to witness these pious slavemasters bloviating religious passages and larding kindness and generosity on their white guests during religious holidays while starving and beating the slaves with sadistic delight. 

 

It was the religious slavemasters who would lacerate young slave women for up to five hours at a time.

 

One religious slavemaster knew a slave child had an injured hand from a childhood fire, yet beat her because she could not perform tasks in a timely manner. 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #10: Being punished for looking intelligent

 

Many white people, especially slavemasters, had a special hatred and dislike for Douglass because his intelligence gave him a “city life” look that they found threatening. These masters said Douglass’s “uppity airs” had a “very pernicious effect” upon him and “ruined his good purpose” to be a slave. Douglass’ intelligence threatened his masters who gave him “severe whippings” just to keep him in line. Their objective was to “break” him and consign him to the Sunken Place; however, he resolved to be free and to free others thereby becoming the greatest American in recorded history. 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #11: To be broken in body, soul, and spirit

 

Douglass observes that slavemaster Mr. Covey whipped him at least once a week and overworked and underslept him so badly that he was broken. “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!”

 

He would watch ships sailing out of Chesapeake Bay and long to be a free man. These moments planted the seeds for his escape plans.

 

It should be noted that Mr. Covey beat Douglass and Douglass fought back and inflicted great pain on Covey and Covey’s assistant, and even though he was a slave for four more years, Douglass was never whipped again. 

 

The Sunken Place Feature #12: Slavery is not merely physical bondage but a form of brainwashing

 

Douglass observes that slavery was a state of mind in which the slave had become content with his slavery and had lost the desire to be free. As Douglass writes:

 

“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”

Sunken Place Lesson #2 for Spring 2023 (Heroism is the antidote to the Sunken Place)

Why Jordan Peele Succeeds While Others Fail, Part 1

Jordan Peele has by all accounts made a cinematic masterpiece in Get Out. He has taken the horror genre combined with satire to show the horrors of racism and the victimization that ensues.

But this victimization is balanced by in-depth characters, black characters who see how white people perceive them and they overcome the white perspective and are ultimately able to tell their own stories and define themselves. Because of this, Get Out is never a salacious spectacle of violence against black people. It never indulges in gratuitous racism just for spectacle’s sake. The movie never paints its black characters as helpless victims doomed to misery. For example, Chris Washington uses cotton balls, symbols of slavery, to set himself free, and deer antlers, the symbol of black sacrifice for white economic gain during slavery, to defend himself from his enemies. Ron Williams uses his courage, smarts, and cunning to outsmart Rose and her minions of white racist cult members. Like the celebrated HBO show Watchmen, a superhero TV series based on the Tulsa massacre of 1921, Get Out balances racial victimization with black heroism. There has to be a balance. 

We even see this balance in the Netflix series High on the Hog, which is based on Jessica B. Harris’ book of the same name. Hosted and narrated by food writer Stephen Satterfield, we go to West Africa and see where millions of slaves were forced on ships leaving to the Americas, but this human tragedy is given a story of strength and love: Slaves influenced food culture in the United States and the world and their food preparation was an expression of love and dignity for each other that was denied them from the whites. 

In contrast, the TV series Them focuses on victimization and little else. 

Not surprisingly, many in the black community have been unhappy with the TV series Them, which addresses racism against black people during The Great Migration of the 1950s when many African Americans moved from the South to Los Angeles. 

Vanity Fair critics Cassie Da Costa and Sonia Saraiya discuss their displeasure with the violence “against Black bodies” in their article “Who Is the Racism Horror Anthology Them Really For?” Links to an external site.

The critics complain that Them overwhelms the audience with the “suffering of Black bodies” without ample character development and dramatic tension. 

Without sufficient drama and character development, the relentless victimization becomes a form of “violence porn” with no purpose other than to give entertainment spectacle. So whereas Get Out uplifts black people by showing their struggle in the face of racism, Them, many critics point out, degrades black people by showing them as helpless victims for the entertainment of the audience. 

Black Twitter agrees. Them was met with great objection on Black Twitter as participants complained that the endless spectacle of violence against black people was hollow and demeaning. 

Part of the problem is length. Whereas the movie Get Out subjects the audience to two hours of racist microaggressions, slavery allusions, and violence, Them is ten long hours in a TV series format. 

For ten hours, Them “returns to the same beats over and over,” says Sonia Saraiya. 

We can see the challenges of making a horror genre treatment of racism: There must be sufficient character development, in-depth character development, heroism to counter helpless victimization, and dramatic tension. Otherwise, the art denigrates into a gratuitous violent spectacle.

Why Jordan Peele Succeeds While Others Fail, Part 2

Harvard Crimson’s Annie Harrigan article “‘Them’ Season One Review: An Accurate Depiction of Racism or Trauma Porn?”Links to an external site. gives a scathing indictment against the TV series Them. Harrigan writes:

Created by Little Marvin and executively produced by Lena Waithe, “Them” explores terror in America, with the first season focusing on anti-Black racism and violence. With its unyielding, never-ending depictions of racist violence and flat storytelling, “Them” is nothing more than an attempt to profit off of Black trauma in a post-”Summer of Racial ReckoningLinks to an external site.,” politically-charged, and socially-aware world.

Harrigan makes the claim that the TV show is “flat” and redundant. Worse, it is exploiting black trauma for entertainment purposes. 

Whereas Get Out is full of dramatic tension, nuance, satirical hilarity, and strong development, all Them has is good acting, but no nuance, no comic balance, no “breathing room,” and no character development. As Harrigan writes:

Unfortunately, no amount of exceptional acting can save this show. What makes “Them” so unbearable in comparison to works that juggle similar topics, such as Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” (2017) or HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” is the lack of nuance. “Them” is unnecessarily cruel and uncaring in its depictions of Black trauma, racialized violence, and gendered violence. Anti-Black violence is followed by sexual violence (or, at times, both occur simultaneously), which is followed by more anti-Black violence. There are no neutral moments and definitely none of joy for the Emorys at any point in the show. The same goes for their white neighbors as well. The white characters’ lives revolve around being violently racist and the Black characters’ lives revolve around avoiding the white characters’ violence. Much like the Emory family, viewers are given no time to breathe during “Them,” as every second of every scene is designed to leave its characters and audiences on edge.

Harrigan observes that the show lacks any redeeming features about the black struggle against racism and that the violence exacted against black people is “unbearable” to watch. She doesn’t even know who would watch such a show. As she writes: “Is it for Black audiences so that they can feel represented by the media? If so, why make it so traumatizing for us that many of us cannot bear to watch it?”

Moreover, Harrigan can’t imagine white people sympathetic toward blacks wanting to see Them. Only a self-congratulatory type of white person could bear watching this show. As Harrigan opines: 

Is it for non-Black audiences to sympathize with Black people and our history? For non-Black allies who watch the show to pat themselves on the back for not being as violently racist as the characters in the show while not actually grappling with the ways in which they uphold and benefit from systemic racism? The unflinching, gruesome nature of “Them” seems like it would only truly appeal to one audience: white supremacists who get to watch their racist dreams unfold on their TV screens.

Without character development and dramatic tension, Them is simply redundant, giving depictions of violence that are already in the news. Harrigan keenly observes:

It can be argued that “Them” is an accurate portrayal of the violent racism that Black Americans have faced for centuries, and still do today. But at a time when we can put on the news and see the trial of Derek ChauvinLinks to an external site. for the murder of George Floyd unfold or watch 20-year-old Duante WrightLinks to an external site. be shot by a white cop during a traffic stop, do we not have enough representations of Black trauma on our screens? At what point does creating a show like “Them” become less about depicting the truth of what we as Black people go through every day and more about profiting off of our trauma?

Why Does Get Out Succeed?

In contrast to Them, Jordan Peele’s Get Out puts violence in a white liberal environment, plants “Easter Eggs” of symbolism to make references to America’s historical racism, creates psychological realism and in-depth characters, and reinvents racist spectacle to show us racism in a way we’ve never seen it before. Additionally, the black characters are not helpless victims. They tell their own stories, define their own identities, and have the self-agency to resist and overcome racism and oppression. All of this, mind you, in a horror genre that at times has a delicious satirical bite and is often funny. 

***

The Need for a Hero

Variety’s Sarah Ahern article “Jordan Peele on How ‘Get Out’ Could Have Had a Darker Ending (Spoilers)” explores Jordan Peele’s artistic considerations that changed the movie’s ending. 

Originally, Peele was going to have the main protagonist Chris arrested for “slaughtering” his white captors. 

But testing this “more realistic” ending in front of a test audience, Peele and the film’s producers realized such an ending was a “downer.” It was missing something. 

But then Peele realized something. In his words: “It was very clear that the ending needed to transform into something that gives us a hero, that gives us an escape, gives us a positive feeling when we leave this movie. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the audience go crazy when Rod shows up.”

Rod Williams is a man who never apologizes for who he is, he is always watching the back of his best friend, and he always outsmarts his adversaries. In other words, Rod Williams is the heroic figure that counterbalances the movie’s racism and racist aggression.  

Not surprisingly, when Rod Williams shows up as the hero and gives a more triumphant ending, the test audience goes wild and Peele and the producers decided to go with triumph over defeat. 

In Collider’s Adam Chitwood article “‘Get Out’ Filmmakers Explain Why They Changed the Ending,” Get Out producers, director, and actors explain the complex thought processes behind changing the ending:

McKittrick: We tested the movie with the original “sad truth” ending where, when the cop shows up, it’s an actual cop and Chris goes to jail. The audience was absolutely loving it, and then it was like we punched everybody in the gut. You could feel the air being sucked out of the room. The country was different. We weren’t in the Obama era, we were in this new world where all the racism crept out from under the rocks again. It was always an ending that we debated back and forth, so we decided to go back and shoot the pieces for the other ending where Chris wins.  Henderson: I remember when they gave the verdict that Darren Wilson wouldn’t be indicted, and you felt defeated. Like, “Man! Can we catch a break?” What the original ending said was, “No, you can’t catch a break,” because that’s our reality. But the new ending gave us a break, and I think that’s why we enjoyed it so much, because we want it so badly. The similarities of the narrative are so parallel to what actually happened in Ferguson. When I have conversations with people about it, we talk about the importance of watching that black body get away to tell his story. Because you know who didn’t get to tell their own story? Trayvon Martin. Mike Brown. Philando Castile. Kaluuya: I love the original ending. It was great because of what it said about life — there’s this black guy who’s really cool and went through this trauma, got through all this racism, and in fighting for himself he gets incarcerated. That really resonated with me, because it showed me how unfair the system is. However, in hindsight, you still have that with the police lights, and Rod saves him through the black ­brotherhood — and also, Chris has a life, you know? He has to go out there even after he’s experienced all this racism, and people expect you to see the world in the same way when they haven’t experienced something like that. I thought that was really honest. Whitford: The original ending was making a statement that I think Jordan felt a white audience might be able to dismiss about mass incarceration. The ending he ended up with does a brilliant thing, because when Chris is strangling Rose in the driveway, you see the red police lights, and then you see the door open and it says “Airport” and it’s a huge laugh, and everybody has that same laugh and release. You understand from Chris’s POV that if the cops come, he’s a dead man. That is absolutely brilliant, non-lecturing storytelling. Peele: I think my improv training just put me in this mind frame of, with each problem, there’s not one solution, there’s not two solutions, there’s an infinite amount of great solutions. That includes the ending. When I realized the original, downer ending wasn’t working, I didn’t freak out. I looked at it as an opportunity to come up with a better ending.

Part of Get Out’s triumph is that Chris survives as a free man and he is able to tell his story from his eyes, not a white person’s.

 

***

Vox’s Aja Romano article “How Get Out deconstructs racism for white people” explores the idea of deconstructing, or analyzing, racism in a horror genre. 

Romano observes that the film has a rich anti-racism checklist that you won’t find in other films that address racism:

• For one, there is subtle “suburban gaslighting,” civil white people politely exacting one microaggression after another. In sum, these microaggressions equal a giant bloviating cloud of gaslighting, which is exhausting and infuriating. 
• One of the great triumphs of the film is that it is never preachy or strident in its messages. Through satire, making the Armitage family act like believable jackasses, the movie is both entertaining and believable.
• The film relies on experience and drama to deliver the themes, not vice versa.  
• Secondly, the main protagonist Chris Washington is very aware and very “woke” to the point that he knows that the white Armitage family is being creepy in their condescending politeness. Christ knows he is in a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, his instincts to get the hell out of this Armitage Freak Show are tempered by his politeness and his desire to ingratiate himself with his girlfriend Rose. 
• Third, Get Out features no white fantasy of the black person being saved by a “white savior.” You won’t find black victims being saved by well-intentioned white people. You’ll find black people saving themselves through self-reliance, cunning, and self-agency. 
• Fourth, we see the narrative unfold, not through white eyes, but through a black protagonist and as a whole the story is seen through black eyes. Through black eyes, we see the importance of Code Switching, when black people have to change their tone, voice, and persona to make white people more comfortable or less uncomfortable. 
• Fifth, there is no passive, helpless victim motif here. To the contrary, fighting for one’s life, resisting by “any means necessary,” like the deer antlers scene, is one of the film’s most salient messages. 
• Sixth, there must be a dimension beyond human victimization when addressing racism in a movie. For example, Chris Washington is an accomplished photographer whose self-agency causes him to resist. But other artistic venues focus too much on victimization at the exclusion of everything else.

We read in The Atlantic’s Hannah Giorgis article “Who Wants to Watch Black Pain?” that an overemphasis on suffering and victimization diminishes the art form:

While watching the most merciless moments of Them, moments in which pure racist violence is more menacing than any supernatural element, I found myself thinking not just about other Black viewers’ exasperation but also about something the director Nia DaCosta said last year. Speaking with Wired’s Jason Parham about her new adaptation of Candyman out this summer, she said that adding layers about gentrification, police violence, and lynching was crucial to her process of reimagining the horror film. But she emphasized that the genre also has room for different kinds of Black stories: “I’d love to see Black people in horror films and in horror … that’s not just about this kind of trauma and pain, but can also be about other aspects of our existence.”

***

Through Chris Washington’s Eyes

In The Atlantic’s Lenika Cruz essay “In Get Out, the Eyes Have It,” the movie's plot propels us into the drama. 

Chris is someone who is trained to find detail, composition, light and shade, and to capture what he sees to convey some truth about the human condition. He has trained himself to “know the world” in a very specific way. 

Part of “knowing the world” is to reject being a passive player but rather to be skeptical, questioning, and full of healthy doubts. These characteristics will help Chris as his misadventure takes him to the final climax. 

Lenika Cruz describes Chris as a “trained observer,” someone who can find meaning and composition in a scene that may seem insignificant to the untrained eye. “What is wrong with this picture? Why does something feel out of place? Why is it important that I capture something when it seems askew?” These are the questions of a photographer who becomes a “trained observer.” 

These are the questions Jordan Peele is asked himself when he was on creepy interacial dates that required him to meet liberal white parents who couldn’t keep their microaggressions to themselves. This is the state of mind Peele wants us, the movie audience to share. By sharing this point of view, we develop a strong empathy for Chris Washington. 

Lenika Cruz makes the astute observation that Chris’ camera both brings him closer to people at the Armitage house while at the same time provides necessary distance. 

He is not only a photographer who uses his artistry to develop a sense of the world, but to know when to make himself vulnerable and to make himself distant and protected.

How to see the world is a theme that brings us to one of the most horrifying parts of the movie. White art dealer Jim Hudson is blind, which Lenika Cruz posits is a metaphor for the useless colorblindness of white liberals.  If Jim Hudson is both blind and colorblind, it does not stop him from his grotesque cultural appropriation. 

***

The New Yorker’s Richard Brody essay “‘Get Out’: Jordan Peele’s Radical Cinematic Vision of the World Through a Black Man’s Eyes” examines one of the movie’s central horrors: Erasing an entire people. As Brody writes:

At the time of dramatic crisis, Chris is denied the tools of his art; he has no camera on hand, and, what’s more, he’s being force-fed an audiovisual diet—through a nineteen-fifties-style television console—that is the very essence and tool of his captivity and his subjection. The Armitages aren’t creating slaves; they’re doing something that’s in a way even worse. Slaves are, at the very least, conscious of their situation and can, at least theoretically, if the opportunity arises, revolt. What the Armitages are creating is inwardly whitened black people—black people cut off from their history and their self-consciousness and, therefore, deprived of the power to rebel and to free themselves.

Held captive and forced to watch an “audiovisual diet” of 50s television, Chris is being force-fed the white narrative innocence at his expense. The result of this white narrative, for Chris, is self-erasure. This theme of erasure is explored in the Netflix series High on the Hog, about the influence of slavery on food throughout the world. We learn that history has erased much of the influence slavery has had on food. There are too many examples to chronicle here, but there is one that stands out. The show’s narrator Stephen Satterfield observes that in Charleston, South Carolina, the major port where the majority of slaves landed, most of the restaurants serving “Southern cooking” are owned by whites and “Southern cooking” is really African-American cooking, but this fact has been erased both in history and in restaurant ownership. 

The American narrative of Innocence, which emphasizes American Exceptionalism, the idea that America is a morally superior country and is compelled to shine its Light throughout the world, is challenged by the narrative of Original Sin, which focuses on America’s fast economic expansion as being dependent on slavery. 

The narrative of Innocence has dire consequences. It cancels or erases black identity and culture, and it exonerates America for its sins exacted upon black Americans. 

In Get Out, the Armitage family is an example of white people lost and intoxicated by the narrative of Innocence. They feel entitled to erase black people for their own needs and pleasures. In Richard Brody’s words: “What the Armitages are creating is inwardly whitened black people—black people cut off from their history and their self-consciousness and, therefore, deprived of the power to rebel and to free themselves.”

Seen through the eyes of Chris Williams, Get Out is a movie that, like Black Panther, refuses to silence black voices, identity, and history, and as such, it is a triumph over those who would relegate black people to The Sunken Place. 

***

Get Out: The Death of White Innocence

The New Yorker’s Rich Benjamin essay “‘Get Out’ and the Death of White Racial Innocence” explores the way the white narrative of Innocence results in moral bankruptcy and “moral apathy,” a condition seen with keen insight by famous African-American writer James Baldwin. As Benjamin writes:

“I’m terrified at the moral apathy—the death of the heart—which is happening in my country,” Baldwin adds later. In his mordant telling, Americans are consumer zombies struck by an “emotional poverty so bottomless and a terror of human life, of human touch, so deep that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable, organic connection between his public stance and his private life. This failure of the private life has always had the most devastating effect on American public conduct and on black-white relations. If [white] Americans were not so terrified of their private selves, they would never have become so dependent on what they call the Negro Problem.” Secluded in splendor, the Armitages, too, harbor desolate private struggles that lead them to inflict external racial terror.

In other words, the Armitage family is insulated by their delusion of innocence, and this insulation aids them in inflicting “racial terror” against others, including Chris Washington. 

Indeed, the Armitage family would like to believe they are innocent of racism and that America as a whole has moved beyond racism to the point that America is a post-racial society. As Benjamin writes:

White racial innocence meanders across time and political context. White blindness, as Baldwin saw it, crafted the social illusion that blacks have no reasons for being bitter. This era was followed by one in which whites would giddily talk up a color-blind America. They would avoid discussing race out of a sincere ethical desire to wash the stain of racial differentiation from our nation. These types saw (and still see) themselves as Reverend King’s disciples; they prefer color-blind conversations, policies, and Supreme Court Justices. Other color-blind acolytes, however, dismiss racial debate as a distraction from real issues, such as unemployment, “broken borders,” “law and order,” and “voter fraud.” All lives matter. And, most recently, we’ve witnessed the delusion of those whites who fancy themselves and the country as post-racial: there has been a sea change in racial attitudes, thanks to President Obama’s tenure, and we are going to bury racism in a dustbin, and racial identity and distinctions have become passé.

Part of the terror of the Armitage family is their insistence that black people such as Chris Washington accept the narrative of Innocence even as they’re victimized by the Armitage’s cultural appropriation, microaggressions, and gaslighting. The Armitage family inflicts racial pain on others while maintaining a facade of sweetness, civility, and innocence, but the movie Get Out lifts the veil and reveals the ugliness underneath. As Benjamin writes:

Baldwin could have been speaking today when he said that whites are cruelly trapped between what they might like to be and what they actually are. That moment of understanding, the very instance when whites acknowledge the blunt truths that make their innocence no longer cute, let alone plausible, is what delivers profound horror—or sidesplitting laughs—in a movie as sharp as “Get Out.” What a juicy moment when Rose, on the phone with Chris’s black friend, realizes that the jig is up; her caper is about to be exposed. Rose drops her sweet face and hardens it into a stare. Her stony eyes reveal her about-face from liberal ingénue to calculating racial predator. The Brooklyn theatre exploded in guffaws. Her family’s bloody antics, like this country’s recent racial politics, had careened to that moment when everybody knows what’s what, and all bets are off.

Not only do Chris Washington and his friend Ron Williams lift the curtain to reveal the true ugliness at the Armitage residence, they overcome the ugliness and free themselves. 

***

If McMahon Were Writing Essay 4, This Would be His Outline:

Paragraph 1, define The Sunken Place

Paragraph 2, Thesis: Argue that The Sunken Place is a critique, not of Southern Jim Crow racism, but of white liberal racism in the form of pressuring black people to code-switch, afflicting black people with microaggressions, and inflicting economic racism on the Black community. 

Paragraph 3: Show The Sunken Place of code-switching by comparing Chris to Aaron in Atlanta Season 3, Episode 9.

Paragraphs 4 and 5: Compare the microaggressions Chris experiences to Loquarreous in Atlanta Season 3, Episode 1, "Three Slaps."

Paragraph 5: Compare the microaggressions Chris experiences to those shown in Atlanta Season 3, Episode 7, "Trini 2 De Bone." 

Paragraph 6: Show that neoliberal America has done little to improve the economic landscape for African-Americans by examining the issues in Atlanta Season 3, Episode 4, "The Big Pay Back." Notice in Get Out that whites steal black bodies; this is a metaphor for all kinds of stealing, including wealth and cultural stealing (cultural appropriation) and shows America as a kleptocracy, a country built on a foundation of stealing. 

Paragraphs 7 and 8: Explain why heroism and resistance to racial oppression are necessary counterpoints to the Sunken Place.  

Paragraph 9: Conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis

 

 

Thesis Structure Example: 

Sample #1

In Get Out, the psychological state known as The Sunken Place is effectively illustrated by Chris’ hellish journey, which consists of ___________________, ________________, __________________, _____________________, and _____________________. 

 

Sample #2

Get Out is a microcosm of systemic racism in America that shows racism from a black man’s perspective and how that racism creates a traumatic state of mind known as The Sunken Place evidenced by ______________, _______________, ________________, ____________________, and ________________________.

 

Sample #3

In the masterpiece Get Out, the protagonist Chris Washington goes deep into the bowels of white liberal America where he descends into The Sunken Place characterized by _________________, __________________, __________________, _______________, and ___________________________. 

Gustavo Arellano Lecture #3 for Spring 2023

Highlights from Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America

The Cosmic Burrito

According to food writer and Los Angeles Times culture critic Gustavo Arellano, Mexican food has been assimilated and celebrated in the United States for 125 years. Tacos and burritos are America’s comfort food. 

The celebration of Mexican food in America has caused a worldwide appetite for Mexican food, from Dubai to Australia, which has its own Taco Bell, called Taco Bill’s, which specializes in fish tacos.

Arellano observes that for over 100 years, many Americans who are anti-Mexican in their prejudices are unaware of the contradiction between their racism and their undying love of Mexican food. They compartmentalize, loving the food yet inexplicably disliking the people who make it, turning Mexicans into negative stereotypes while having a relentless desire for Mexican food. 

Tortillas are the preferred food of NASA astronauts, so there is now the “Cosmic Burrito” and variations of Mexican food pop up all over America, including the muchaco, a taco made with ground beef and pita bread at the Taco Bueno restaurant chain.

Hot Cocoa Comes from Mexico

Arellano observes that traditional desserts made with cocoa and vanilla to make chocolate and vanilla desserts, including hot cocoa, come from 1700s Mexico when the Virgin Mary statues in the cathedrals had offerings of various chocolate and vanilla desserts. This vanilla was cultivated to perfection and copied by the Europeans in Pico de Orizaba, a vanilla region in Veracruz, which is in eastern Mexico. 

As early as the 1500s, Spanish conquerors fell in love with Mexican foods made with corn or maize, which were made into various forms of masa cornmeal.

The Spaniards become obsessed with tortillas and tamales, the latter being a convenience food perfect for traveling with.

The Spanish invader Cortes demanded Mexican food in his court, and according to Arellano, this is the first documented case of cultural appropriation.

Moreover, the Spaniards introduced the Mexicans to wheat flour, which brought flour tortillas to the Mexican diet. 

This is our first known case of fusion. 

Chile Con Carne (soon to become Chili)

Arrellano observes that the first chili made with hot peppers and meat was around 1870 in the San Antonio region, not Texas, but pre-Texas: Tejas. 

Chile became so popular that by the 1880s, you could already find it advertised in Hawaii and Washington D.C. 

The world doesn’t understand how good Mexican food is. They take it for granted. This is one of Arellano’s main points.

Now Chile Con Carne is just “Chili.”

Tamalero

Tamales started to spread throughout America in the 1890s and were sold by European, Indian, and Arab immigrants who were often called “Mexicans.” These immigrants who sold the tamales on the streets were called Tamaleros, AKA “The Hot Tamale Man.”

They became part of American popular culture and folklore.

World Domination of the Taco in the 1950s

As big as tamales and chili were for about 70 years, they would be replaced by the world-dominating taco starting in the 1950s. 

Arellano contributes this growth to a place in Orange County called Irvine, the birth of Taco Bell, founded by Glen Bell. 

We now have many tacos including:

• The soft-shell taco
• The taco dorado (hard shell)
• The taquito (flautas)

Tacos have exploded all over the world, including Sweden, Japan, and South Africa. 

Birthplace of the American Taco and the Gateway Drug Argument

While Glen Bell popularized the taco, the birthplace of the American taco comes from downtown Los Angeles on Olvera Street, a tiny taco stand called Cielito Lindo, circa 1931. 

The second place is in San Bernardino, the Mitla Cafe, established in 1937. The restaurant served hard-shell tacos packed with beef and shredded cheese: taco dorado con carne molida.  

Glen Bell noticed the popularity of Mexican food among the white consumer base in the San Bernardino area, and he copied Mitla Cafe when he started various taco ventures before settling on Taco Bell. 

The owners of Mitla Cafe and Gustavo Arellano defend Taco Bell with its phony “Mexican food” because it’s the “gateway drug” to real Mexican food.

We can call this the Gateway Drug Argument for your essay. 

Challenges to Authenticity

In his book, Taco USA, Arellano tackles some challenges to the idea of authenticity in Mexican food:

• Since the 1980s, many white chefs have become Mexican food “experts,” writing cookbooks, opening Mexican restaurants, and having TV shows featuring Mexican food. 
• There was a type of food from New Mexico called “Southwestern Cuisine,” which could often be pretentious “gourmet” dishes with some loose connection to Mexican food. Other times, the food is very good, featuring local ingredients like hatch chilies. The enduring food from Southwestern Cuisine is the breakfast burrito. The craze started to die in the 1990s.
• Tex-Mex, a fusion that since the 1930s features fajitas and chili has been criticized as being inauthentic, “the lowest common denominator of Mexican food.” However, the actual term Tex-Mex wasn’t coined until the 1960s.

The Great Burrito Rivalry 

Gustavo Arellano adores the legendary Manuel’s Special at Manuel’s El Tepeyac Cafe in Boyle Heights. 

He compares the burrito to an encounter with God. The burrito is 5 pounds and filled with grilled chicken, carne asada, machaca, beans, rice, guacamole, and sour cream. 

The rival to Los Angeles for burritos is San Francisco, the Mission District, a place called “El Faro,” the Lighthouse. These are called Mission Style burritos. 

“Tracing the delicious history of San Francisco’s mission style burrito”

“Why are Restaurant Burritos Better Than Homemade?”

Holy Grail Mexican Food Destinations

• Arellano says his favorite burrito is the chile relleno burrito at Lucy’s Drive-In on Pico Blvd and La Brea in Los Angeles.
• His favorite tamales are at Pasquale’s Tamales, a trailer in Helena, Arkansa, owned by a third-generation Sicilian family. 
• His favorite lamb chicharrones are Angelina’s in Espanola, New Mexico. 
• He loves the Taco Acorazado (Battleship) at Alebrije’s Grill in Santa Ana, CA. He says the tortillas alone are a miracle. 

Not All Cultural Appropriation Is Alike: To Agree Or Not to Agree with Gustavo Arellano

The college students in my critical thinking class and I live in Los Angeles where some of the best food in the world is in our very backyards. I don’t want my students or me to take this for granted. I want us to do a deep dive into the Los Angeles food world, particularly Mexican food, the most popular cuisine in the world. So for our final essay assignment, we read Gustavo Arellano’s article “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” and we write an essay that supports or refutes Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation. 

Arellano defends cultural appropriation by explaining three things. One, that since the beginning of time restaurant owners have copied their competition; two, social justice warriors aren’t helping anyone when they patronize Mexicans by painting them as helpless victims when in fact Mexicans steal in the food industry just like everyone else; and three, what some might call appropriation or stealing can be in fact the healthy human impulse for cross-cultural pollination, evidenced by the fact that many of Mexico’s most famous regional dishes incorporate the food and ingredients from Spain, France, and the Middle East. 

Arellano’s argument forces us to question the very idea of authenticity. What is authenticity? In the context of Mexican food, authenticity is the traditions of regional Mexican cooking that bring labor-intensive cooking techniques, geographical richness, and time-tested rituals to produce some of the best food in the world. But authenticity is more than food. It is family and culture. I urge you to watch The Taco Chronicles on Netflix. When you see families in different parts of Mexico making carnitas, canasta, asada, pastor, barbacoa, guisado, suadero, cochinita, cabrito, birria, and pescado, you will find that the geography and family traditions make these dishes authentic. But just as importantly, these foods are so good that they are a miracle from God. Look at the love the community lavishes on the local taquero, the man selling tacos on the street corner. He is bringing love to the city, and he is appreciated for it. Look at the entire communities gathering together to make these authentic dishes and you will see that food is rooted in family and culture. What is most beautiful about this notion of authenticity is the expression of love for others by bringing them the food of the gods. There is a reason in Mexico why the taco is called madre. 

When we watch The Taco Chronicles, the sense of community combined with the making of the best food in the world wins our hearts and our stomachs. Any notion of violating this authenticity rightfully angers us and we are disinclined to agree with Arellano’s support of cultural appropriation. However, if you read Arellano’s book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, you will get more context for Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation. Arellano would never want us to violate the authentic regional traditions of Mexican cooking. Instead, he is arguing that the splendor of regional Mexican cooking spread to America by bringing food that is both desirable and affordable and that some, not all, of the magic of authentic Mexican cuisine became accessible to the American masses. Moreover, this Mexican food changed American culture for the better. Full-flavored Mexican food replaced the tasteless pablum of “American” food. Americans speak with their money and they spend so much money on Mexican food that they have made a statement that they want Mexican food in their culture. 

Is Gustavo Arellano defending all forms of cultural appropriation? Clearly not. If you read his articles and watch the Netflix series Ugly Delicious, “Tacos,” you will see that Arellano has contempt for “soulless” Mexican food, “Mexican” food chains that bastardize good-tasting Mexican food, food chains that disconnect the food they sell from the workers and from the Mexican culture; you will also see that Arellano has a healthy contempt for white-washed tourist food--phony overpriced Mexican food that has no spice and has been altered to appeal to the most infantile tastebuds. These counterfeit “Mexican” restaurants aren’t serving Mexican food at all. Rather, they are shamelessly serving overpriced tasteless codswallop. They are an abomination of Mexican food and the very idea of cross-cultural pollination. 

However, there are defensible iterations of cultural appropriation. Stealing recipes from Mexico and elsewhere and bringing affordable street food to America doesn’t hurt anyone and in fact brings the nectar of the gods to more people for affordable prices. Recipes are stolen all the time. Just don’t take aqua fresca and call it “spa water” on your Tiktok channel, as Gracie Norton did, which is a form of racial plagiarism. 

Some will argue that if some white ladies from Portland go to Mexico and steal taco recipes from grandmothers in Mexico City, those grandmothers are entitled to a cut of the action. But in reality, millions of recipes are stolen every day in the restaurant industry and any kind of compensation through accurate and detailed accounting is an impossibility. 

Another defense of Gustavo Arellano’s claim that cultural appropriation is a good thing can be found in Netflix’s Chef’s Table Pizza series. Specifically, there are two chefs, Chris Bianco and Ann Kim, who break the rules of tradition to show that there is a place for creativity and improvisation in making superior pizza that violates notions of tradition and authenticity. In fact, Italian pizza experts have visited Chris Bianco’s Pizzeria Bianco in Pheonix, Arizona, and have proclaimed that his pizza is superior to the traditional pizzas of Italy. In the case of Ann Kim, she puts kimchi on her pizza and serves Korean mung bean pancakes and her restaurant Pizzeria Lola is so famous that to meet demand, she opened three other restaurants: Hello Pizza, Young Joni, and Sook & Mimi. Incidentally, her most recent restaurant Sook & Mimi features handmade tortillas made in the tradition of Mexico. 

When we see successful restauranters such as Chris Bianco and Ann Kim make delicious food that is based on both authenticity and creativity, we see that making authentic food, or not, is not an either/or proposition. It is possible to do both. Again, this notion of combining authenticity with cultural cross-pollination supports Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation.

Clearly, not all forms of cultural appropriation are alike. Some types are an abomination. Others are a celebration. The purpose of this assignment is to use our critical thinking skills to distinguish the good from the bad and to find nuance, shades of gray, and complexity. 

Just as the best tacos have a complexity of flavors, the best essays have a complexity of ideas.  

Your Essay Assignment:

Do you agree or disagree with Arellano's defense of cultural appropriation?

Summary of the Essay's Main Arguments

• We are all rapacious creatures whose drive for success makes us to some degree cutthroat and ruthless. The more ruthlessly we steal a recipe the more we affirm the greatness of that recipe. Mediocre food isn't stolen. Only great food is. The theft of Mexican recipes is a tribute to its greatness. 
• "Stealing" is actually the natural human inclination for cross-cultural pollination. Such pollination enriches culture and in many cases actually changes culture for the better.
• To treat Mexicans as helpless victims whose delicacies are being stolen is to patronize them and to "rob them of human agency" (free will). In fact, Mexicans have been "stealing," or rather cross-pollinating, for thousands of years. Their history is rife with taking foods from other cultures such as Spain, France, and the Middle East, and making these foods their own. 
• From the Netflix series Ugly Delicious, "Tacos" episode, we find that respectful inspiration from the original dish is an acceptable form of cultural appropriation. 

Some Caveats, Stipulations, or Conditions We Can Use from Ugly Delicious, "Tacos":

• Taking shortcuts is an abomination and degrades the original version of the food such as tortillas.
• Offering stereotypes of Mexican food is an abomination and shows ignorance of the depth of ingredients and creativity from the treasures of Mexican cooking. Don't play "Jingle Bells" on the piano when you should be playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony. 
• Making tourist food or white-washing food to make it bland for mass appeal will make you money but it is an abomination of authentic Mexican food. 
• Taking agua fresca and rebranding it as "spa water" is a form of racial plagiarism so egregious that I doubt Gustavo Arellano would defend such an act of shamelessness and arrogance. 

 

***

Sentence Fragments 

Sentence fragments are incomplete thoughts presented as dependent clauses or phrases.

A dependent clause or a phrase is never a complete sentence.

Types of dependent clauses:

Whenever I drive up windy mountains,

Because I have craved pizza for 14 months,

Unless you add coffee to your chocolate cake recipe,

,which is currently enjoying a resurgence. 

 

Phrases

Enamored by the music of Tupac Shakur,

Craving pesto linguine with olive-oil based clam sauce, 

Flexing his muscles with a braggadocio never seen in modern times,

Lying under the bridge and eating garlic pepper pretzels with a dollop of cream cheese and a jug of chilled apple cider, 

To understand the notion of Universal Basic Income and all of its related factors for social change in this disruptive age, 

Running into crowded restaurants with garlic and whiskey fuming out of his sweaty pores while brandishing a golden scepter, 

 

Examples

I won't entertain your requests for more money and gifts. Until you show at least a modicum of responsibility at school and with your friends. 

I won't consider buying the new BMW sports coupe. Unless of course my uncle gives me that inheritance he keeps talking about whenever he gets a bit tipsy. 

I can't imagine ever going to Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes me feel like I'm emotionally arrested. 

I am considering the purchase of a new wardrobe. That is, if I'm picked for that job interview at Nordstrom. 

Human morals have vanished. To the point at which it was decided that market values would triumph. 

No subject 

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. 

Identify the Fragments Below

Identify the Fragments Below

I drank the chalky Soylent meal-replacement drink. Expecting to feel full and satisfied. Only to find that I was still ravenously hungry afterwards. Trying to sate my hunger pangs. I went to HomeTown Buffet. Where I ate several platters of braised oxtail and barbecued short ribs smothered in a honey vinegar sauce. Which reminded me of a sauce where I used to buy groceries from. When I was a kid.

Feeling bloated after my HomeTown Buffet indulgence. I exited the restaurant. After which I hailed an Uber and asked the driver for a night club recommendation. So I could dance off all my calories. The driver recommended a place, Anxiety Wires. I had never heard of it. Though, it was crowded inside. I felt eager to dance and confident about “my swag.” Although, I was still feeling bloated. Wondering if my intestines were on the verge of exploding.

Sweating under the night club’s outdoor canopy. I smelled the cloying gasses of a nearby vape. A serpentine woman was holding the vape. A gold contraption emitting rose-water vapors into my direction. Contemplating my gluttony. I was suddenly feeling low confidence. Though I pushed myself to introduce myself to the vape-smoking stranger with the serpentine features. Her eyes locked on mine.

I decided to play it cool. Instead of overwhelming her with a loud, brash manner. Which she might interpret as neediness on my part.

Keeping a portable fan in my cargo pocket for emergencies. When I feel like I’m overheating. I took the fan out of my pocket, turned it on, and directed it toward the serpentine stranger. Making it so the vapors were blowing back in her face.

“Doesn’t smell so good, does it?” I said. With a sarcastic grin.

She cackled, then said, “Thank you for blowing the vapors in my face. Now I can both enjoy inhaling them and breathing them in. For double the pleasure. You are quite a find. Come home with me and I’ll introduce you to my mother Gertrude and her pitbull Jackson. I’m sure they’ll welcome you into our home. Considering what a well-fed handsome man you are.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “I would love to meet your mother Gertrude and your mother’s pitbull Jackson. Only one problem. My breath smells like a rotting dead dragon. Right after eating spicy ribs. Which reminds me? Do you have any breath mints?”

“I don’t believe in carrying breath mints. On account of the rose-water vape. That cleanses my palate. Making my breath rosy fresh.”

“Wow. Your constant good breath counteracts my intractable bad breath. Making us a match in heaven.”

“I agree. Totally. You really need to meet my mother. Because she’ll bless us and make our marriage official. Since we really need her blessing. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Now let me smell your breath. So I can identify the hot sauce.”

“Why must you do that?”

“So I can use the same hot sauce on our wedding cake, silly. To celebrate the first night we met. Capisce?”

“Capisce.”

She approached me. Affording me a view of her long, tired face. Covered in scales. Reptilian. Evocative of something primitive. Something precious and indelible from my childhood lost long ago. I wanted to run from her, but I could not. Some mysterious force drew me to her, and we inched closer and closer toward one another. Succumbing to a power neither of us could fathom. 

 

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.

English 1A Sunken Place #1 for Spring 2023

Essay #4: The Sunken Place in Get Out (200 points; due June 8)

Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out uses the horror movie genre to create a realistic horrific state of mind for victims of racism called “The Sunken Place.” Consider that this “Sunken Place” is the result of racist gaslighting, which can be defined as someone in power bullying, confusing, bewildering, and discombobulating the innocent victim, such as Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and attempting to make the victim feel confused and guilty when in fact the bully is the culprit. 

As you consider the notion of gaslighting and systemic racism in the movie Get Out, you will want to watch the 15-minute YouTube video that addresses this theme, “The Philosophy of Get Out--Wisecrack Edition.” 

The brilliant video “The Philosophy of Get Out” analyzes several causes of “The Sunken Place”:

• How white liberalism and the romanticization of blackness perpetuate systemic racism in America
• How so-called “post-racial liberalism,” a form of white self-congratulation during the Obama years, was a hoax, a thin veneer that could barely conceal a racist agenda
• How white liberals going out of their way to be “not racist” make people of color feel weird and alienated
• How the romanticization of blackness by white people, elevating black people to being cool and super chic, is a way of both “lionizing and demonizing” people of color so that they never enjoy the feeling of just being normal
• How white people exploit the black body and use black people to satisfy white fantasies
• How white people are so intent on culturally appropriating blackness that they actually want to be black such as the case of Rachel Dolezal who is referenced in the video. 

You will need a minimum of 5 sources for your MLA Works Cited page. 

I recommend the following:

• The Wrap’s Ross A. Lincoln article “‘Get Out’ Director Jordan Peele Explains ‘The Sunken Place’”Links to an external site.
• The Guardian’s Alex Rayner article “Trapped in the Sunken Place: how Get Out’s purgatory engulfed pop culture”Links to an external site.
• The Atlantic’s David Sims article “What Made That Hypnosis Scene in Get Out So Terrifying”Links to an external site.
• YouTube video:“The Philosophy of Get Out--Wisecrack Edition.”Links to an external site. 
• Jet Fuel Review Blog’s Michael Lane article “Living in the Sunken Place: An Analysis of ‘Get Out’”Links to an external site.
• Vox’s Aja Romano article “How Get Out deconstructs racism for white people”Links to an external site.
• Variety’s Sarah Ahern article “Jordan Peele on How ‘Get Out’ Could Have Had a Darker Ending (Spoilers)”Links to an external site.
• Medium’s Abdul Moiz article “Get Out Film Analysis”Links to an external site.
• Medium’s Diya article “Dear White People, Stop Gaslighting Us, We didn’t ‘Imagine’ Racism”Links to an external site.
• The Atlantic’s Lenika Cruz essay “In Get Out, the Eyes Have It”Links to an external site.
• The New Yorker’s Richard Brody essay “‘Get Out’: Jordan Peele’s Radical Cinematic Vision of the World Through a Black Man’s Eyes”Links to an external site.
• The New Yorker’s Rich Benjamin essay “‘Get Out’ and the Death of White Racial Innocence”Links to an external site.
• New York Times’ Jason Zinoman article “Jordan Peele on a Truly Terrifying Monster: Racism”Links to an external site.
• Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson essay “Get Out is a horror film about benevolent racism”Links to an external site.
• Vanity Fair’s Cassie Da Costa and Sonia Saraiya article “Who Is the Racism Horror Anthology Them Really For?”Links to an external site.
• Harvard Crimson’s Annie Harrigan article “‘Them’ Season One Review: An Accurate Depiction of Racism or Trauma Porn?”Links to an external site.
• The Vulture’s Angelica Jade Bastien essay “Them Is Pure Degradation Porn”Links to an external site.
• The Atlantic’s Hannah Giorgis essay “Who Wants to Watch Black Pain?”Links to an external site.

Suggesting an Outline for Your Essay

You don’t have to use the following. It is merely a suggested outline:

Paragraph 1: Define the term “The Sunken Place” as it occurs in the Jordan Peele film Get Out. You might want to address the role of gaslighting as it pertains to sending Chris Washington into the dreaded “Sunken Place.”

Paragraph 2, your thesis or claim: Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out uses the horror movie genre to create a realistic horrific state of mind for victims of racism called “The Sunken Place.”

Body Paragraphs 3-6 might address some or more of the following:

• How white liberalism and the romanticization of blackness perpetuate systemic racism in America
• How so-called “post-racial liberalism,” a form of white self-congratulation during the Obama years, was a hoax, a thin veneer that could barely conceal a racist agenda and systemic racism evidenced in mass incarceration, police violence, and unequal income distribution
• How white liberals going out of their way to be “not racist” make people of color feel weird and alienated
• How the romanticization of blackness by white people, elevating black people to being cool and super chic, is a way of both “lionizing and demonizing” people of color so that they never enjoy the feeling of just being normal
• How white people exploit the black body and use black people to satisfy white fantasies
• How white people are so intent on culturally appropriating blackness that they actually want to be black such as the case of Rachel Dolezal who is referenced in the video. 

Paragraphs 7 and 8: Counterargument-rebuttal paragraphs in which you address the possible criticism that Get Out, like the Amazon Prime series Them, is making a spectacle of black suffering, helplessness, and victimization for consumer entertainment and as such displaying this racism in such a flagrant form is exploitive. Do the journeys of Chris Washington and his friend Rod Williams have enough dignity, self-agency, courage, mental toughness, and resistance to avoid the same charges exacted upon the TV series Them?  Explain.

For paragraph 7, you might summarize the criticism exacted upon the Amazon Prime series Them. 

For paragraph 8, you might then argue whether or not Jordan Peele’s Get Out falls into the same pitfalls as Them. 

Paragraph 9: Your conclusion is a short dramatic restatement of your thesis. 

Works Cited with a minimum of 4 sources in MLA format follows on the last page. 

***

Building Block #1 for Essay 4

Worth 25 points and due on May 18

Writing Your Introduction Paragraph as an Extended Definition of the Sunken Place

Purpose of Formative Assessment: To build your Essay 4 with your introductory paragraph. 

Objectives:

1.  Write an introductory paragraph with a single-sentence definition followed by an extended definition to show a clear understanding of The Sunken Place.
2. Two. Use appropriate signal phrases and in-text citations.
3. Three. Use this paragraph as a building block for your Get Out essay.

Assignment Description

Writing Your Introduction Paragraph as an Extended Definition of The Sunken Place

In your introductory paragraph, define The Sunken Place from the provided research materials above. 

Give a one-sentence definition of The Sunken Place and expound on your definition by giving distinguishing characteristics examples from the sources given on the previous modules. Your distinguishing characteristics will be gathered by quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing major points.

The Purpose of this Assignment

All of my assignments are “building blocks” toward your finished essay, which in online education circles is referred to as your Summative Assessment.  By fulfilling the requirements of this assignment, you will have a first paragraph completed toward your essay. 

Sources for The Sunken Place: 

The Wrap’s Ross A. Lincoln article “‘Get Out’ Director Jordan Peele Explains ‘The Sunken Place’”Links to an external site.

The Guardian’s Alex Rayner article “Trapped in the Sunken Place: how Get Out’s purgatory engulfed pop culture”Links to an external site.

The Atlantic’s David Sims article “What Made That Hypnosis Scene in Get Out So Terrifying”

The Philosophy of Get Out--Wisecrack on YouTube

***

Building Block Assignment #2: The First 3 Paragraphs of Your Essay

Worth 25 points and due on June 1

Building Block #2 is your first 3 paragraphs. 

***

Essay 4: The Sunken Place

Write an essay that addresses the claim that Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America,” and Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” are works of great literature and art that present us with an extended definition of the Sunken Place.

 

For 2 other sources, I recommend two of the following from YouTube:

 

"The Philosophy of Get Out--Wisecrack Edition"

"What Is the Sunken Place?" from Now You See It 

"Get Out Explained: Symbols, Satire & Social Horror" from The Take

"Hidden Meanings Behind Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' Video Explained from Insider

"The Hidden Meanings Behind Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' Video from Inside Edition

"Childish Gambino's "This Is America" Lyrics Explained/Genius News from Genius

"Frederick Douglass: Crash Course Black American History #17"

 

 

ChatGPT

 

Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America,” and Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” are all works of great literature and art that present us with an extended definition of the Sunken Place.

The Sunken Place is a concept introduced in Get Out that represents the feeling of being trapped and powerless, unable to escape the systems of oppression that surround us. While the concept is specific to the film, it has been used to describe the experiences of Black Americans in a broader sense. All three of these works explore the Sunken Place in different ways, expanding our understanding of what it means to be trapped by systemic oppression.

In Get Out, the Sunken Place is a physical location that Chris is transported to when he is hypnotized by his girlfriend’s mother. The Sunken Place is represented as a dark, empty void where Chris is unable to move or speak. It is a metaphor for the way that racism can cause a person to feel trapped and powerless, unable to escape the systems that oppress them. The film explores the way that racism operates on both a systemic level and an individual level, and it uses the concept of the Sunken Place to illustrate this.

Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America” presents us with another extended definition of the Sunken Place. In the video, Donald Glover is shown dancing in a warehouse while chaos and violence erupt around him. The video is filled with references to the history of racism in America, including the Charleston church shooting, police brutality against Black Americans, and the legacy of minstrelsy. The Sunken Place is represented in the video as a place of chaos and violence, where Black Americans are trapped by the systems of oppression that surround them.

Finally, Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” is a classic work of literature that presents us with yet another extended definition of the Sunken Place. Douglass was a former slave who became a prominent abolitionist and writer, and his speech argues that the Fourth of July celebration is a hypocritical celebration of American freedom that is not extended to Black Americans. Douglass speaks eloquently about the injustice of slavery and the way that racism operates in America, using his own experiences as a slave to illustrate his points. In this way, Douglass presents us with a Sunken Place that is defined by the historical and ongoing oppression of Black Americans.

Together, these works of literature and art present us with an extended definition of the Sunken Place. They show us that the Sunken Place is not just a physical location, but a metaphor for the way that racism can cause a person to feel trapped and powerless. They also illustrate the way that racism operates on both a systemic level and an individual level, and they challenge us to think critically about the systems of oppression that surround us. By expanding our understanding of the Sunken Place in this way, these works can help us to work towards a more just and equitable society for all people.

Essay 4 Option

 

Write an essay that addresses the claim that Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America,” and Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” are works of great literature and art that illustrate the complicated dynamics of racism in both the systemic sense and the individual who experiences what is called the Sunken Place.

 

 

ChatGPT

 

Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America,” and Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” are all works of great literature and art that explore the complicated dynamics of racism in both the systemic sense and the individual who experiences what is called the Sunken Place.

In Get Out, Peele uses horror elements to tell the story of a Black man named Chris who goes to meet his white girlfriend’s family and uncovers a sinister plot involving the theft of Black bodies for the purpose of transplanting white brains into them. The movie explores the systemic racism of the medical industry, the fetishization of Black bodies, and the way that racism can operate on an individual level. The Sunken Place, a concept introduced in the film, represents the way that racism can cause a person to feel trapped and powerless, unable to escape the systems that oppress them.

Similarly, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America” uses music and dance to illustrate the complicated dynamics of racism in America. The video shows Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) dancing in a warehouse while chaos and violence erupt around him. The video is filled with references to the history of racism in America, including the Charleston church shooting, police brutality against Black Americans, and the legacy of minstrelsy. The video also features a moment when Glover is shown with a bag over his head, representing the experience of being trapped in the Sunken Place.

Finally, Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” is a classic work of literature that explores the systemic racism of America in the 19th century. Douglass was a former slave who became a prominent abolitionist and writer, and his speech argues that the Fourth of July celebration is a hypocritical celebration of American freedom that is not extended to Black Americans. Douglass speaks eloquently about the injustice of slavery and the way that racism operates in America, using his own experiences as a slave to illustrate his points.

Together, these works of literature and art illustrate the complicated dynamics of racism in America. They show how racism operates on both a systemic level and an individual level, and they highlight the experiences of Black Americans who feel trapped in the Sunken Place. These works are important because they challenge the dominant narratives of American history and culture, and they encourage us to think critically about the way that racism operates in our society. By exploring the complexities of racism in this way, we can work towards a more just and equitable society for all people.

Should You Keep a Revised Game Changers Prompt Instead of the Liver King?

Write an essay that defends, refutes, or complicates the claim that the Netflix documentary The Game Changers makes an unpersuasive attempt to champion a plant-based diet because of its reliance on propaganda, logical fallacies, deceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. 

 

ChatGPT Response:

 

The Netflix documentary "The Game Changers" is a highly controversial film that champions the benefits of a plant-based diet for athletes and active people. While the film has been praised by some viewers, others have criticized it for relying on propaganda, logical fallacies, deceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. In this essay, I will argue that the film makes an unpersuasive attempt to promote a plant-based diet due to its use of misleading and manipulative tactics.

Firstly, the documentary relies on propaganda to promote its message. Propaganda is a form of communication that is intended to persuade an audience to adopt a particular viewpoint. The film uses propaganda techniques such as appeals to emotion, appeals to authority, and oversimplification to make its case for a plant-based diet. For example, the film opens with a montage of famous athletes endorsing a plant-based diet, which is designed to persuade viewers that if these athletes can thrive on a plant-based diet, then so can they. However, the film does not provide a balanced view of the scientific evidence on this topic, and it oversimplifies the complex relationship between diet and athletic performance.

Secondly, the film relies on logical fallacies to make its case. Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that undermine the credibility of an argument. The film uses fallacies such as false dichotomy, appeal to ignorance, and ad hominem attacks to persuade viewers of the benefits of a plant-based diet. For example, the film presents a false dichotomy between animal-based and plant-based diets, suggesting that athletes must choose one or the other. In reality, many athletes consume a variety of foods, including both plant and animal sources, to support their performance. The film also makes an appeal to ignorance by suggesting that the scientific evidence is unequivocal in support of a plant-based diet, which is simply not true. Lastly, the film uses ad hominem attacks against critics of a plant-based diet, rather than engaging with their arguments in a constructive manner.

Thirdly, the film relies on deceptions and deliberate misrepresentations to make its case. For example, the film claims that a plant-based diet is the only way to get enough protein to support athletic performance. This claim is misleading because there are many plant-based sources of protein, such as beans, nuts, and tofu, that can provide the body with the necessary nutrients. Additionally, the film selectively presents evidence to support its argument, while ignoring contradictory evidence that does not fit its narrative. This cherry-picking of evidence undermines the credibility of the film's message and leaves viewers with an incomplete understanding of the issues.

In conclusion, "The Game Changers" makes an unpersuasive attempt to champion a plant-based diet because of its reliance on propaganda, logical fallacies, deceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. While the film may have good intentions in promoting a healthier and more sustainable way of eating, its use of manipulative tactics undermines its credibility and leaves viewers with an incomplete and potentially misleading understanding of the issues at hand. A more balanced and nuanced approach to the topic of nutrition and athletic performance is needed, one that engages with the complexity of the issue and respects the diversity of individual needs and preferences.

Essay Prompts for 1A and 1C for Fall 2023, May 9, 2023 (Game Changers Replaces Liver King)

English 1A:

Essay 1:

Based on Cal Newport's writings and video presentations, support, defend, or complicate Cal Newport's claim that following your passion to find career success is bad advice. 

Scott Galloway:

“Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don't have to love it, just don't hate it. If practice takes you from good to great, the recognition and compensation you will command will make you start to love it. And, ultimately, you will be able to shape your career and your specialty to focus on the aspects you enjoy the most. And if not—make good money and then go follow your passion. No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.”

― Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

ChatGPT Response:

Cal Newport argues that following your passion to find career success is bad advice because it is a flawed approach that is unlikely to lead to fulfilling and financially rewarding work.

Newport suggests that passion is a byproduct of mastery. In other words, when we become really good at something, we tend to enjoy it more and develop a passion for it. Therefore, instead of focusing on finding a job that aligns with our pre-existing passions, we should instead focus on developing skills that are rare and valuable in the marketplace. This can lead to finding fulfilling work that we may not have initially considered.

Newport also points out that the "follow your passion" mantra can be harmful because it puts an unrealistic pressure on individuals to find their one true passion. This can lead to a sense of failure and disillusionment if they don't find it, or if their passion turns out to be something that is not financially viable or realistic.

Moreover, Newport suggests that the idea of a "dream job" can be problematic because it implies that work should be easy and enjoyable all the time. This is not always the case, and it can create unrealistic expectations and a lack of resilience when things get tough.

Overall, while it is important to have interests and passions, Newport argues that the best way to find fulfilling and financially rewarding work is to develop rare and valuable skills and to keep an open mind about the types of jobs that may be available. This approach can lead to a fulfilling career and a sense of purpose, even if it may not be immediately obvious or tied to our pre-existing passions.

Essay 2

Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that teaching about the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is not a radical agenda set forth by some professors to brainwash their students into a Woke ideology. Rather, such teaching is a powerful antidote to historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation designed to oppress the already oppressed, is a powerful part of developing empathy which makes for a better society, prevents us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past, addresses the historical connection between American racism and gun violence, and strengthens democracy for all people.  

 

ChatGPT Response:

I would like to defend the argument that teaching about the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is not a radical agenda set forth by some professors to brainwash their students into a Woke ideology. Rather, such teaching is a powerful antidote to historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation designed to oppress the already oppressed, is a powerful part of developing empathy which makes for a better society, prevents us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past, addresses the historical connection between American racism and gun violence, and strengthens democracy for all people.

Firstly, the teaching of history is not a radical agenda but rather an essential component of education. The purpose of teaching history is to provide a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the past, to contextualize current events, and to inform our decision-making in the present and future. Ignoring or downplaying the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow would be a disservice to students, and would perpetuate a culture of ignorance and misinformation.

Secondly, the teaching of this history is a powerful antidote to the historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation that has been used to oppress marginalized communities throughout history. By providing an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the past, we can counteract the myths and stereotypes that have been used to justify systemic racism and oppression.

Thirdly, the teaching of this history is a powerful part of developing empathy, which is an essential component of a better society. By understanding the experiences and struggles of marginalized communities throughout history, we can develop a greater sense of empathy and understanding, which can lead to a more just and equitable society.

Fourthly, teaching about the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow can prevent us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past. By learning from the mistakes of history, we can make more informed decisions in the present and future, and work towards a more just and equitable society.

Finally, teaching about the historical connection between American racism and gun violence is an essential component of addressing the root causes of gun violence in our society. By understanding the historical context of gun violence and its connection to systemic racism and oppression, we can work towards meaningful solutions that address the root causes of this complex issue.

In conclusion, the teaching of the history of systemic racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is not a radical agenda set forth by some professors to brainwash their students into a Woke ideology. Rather, it is an essential component of education, a powerful antidote to historical revisionism and weaponized misinformation, a powerful part of developing empathy which makes for a better society, prevents us from repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past, addresses the historical connection between American racism and gun violence, and strengthens democracy for all people.

 

Defend, refute, or complicate the claim made by many politicians and their minions that teaching slavery, Jim Crow, abusive policing, and systemic racism is part of an anti-American, pro-CRT (Critical Race Theory) propaganda campaign that radical professors are imposing on their students to brainwash their students into becoming anti-American and Kool-Aid-drinking adherents of Woke ideology.  

ChatGPT Response:

The claim made by many politicians and their supporters that teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, abusive policing, and systemic racism is part of an anti-American, pro-CRT propaganda campaign is a baseless and misleading argument. This claim aims to stoke division and fear, rather than foster honest and constructive conversations about our history and present-day realities.

To begin with, the inclusion of these topics in education is crucial to have a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of American history. Acknowledging and teaching about the country's dark history of slavery and systemic racism is not anti-American, but rather a step towards building a more just and equitable society. Hiding or ignoring these facts does not make them disappear, but rather perpetuates a false narrative that the country was founded on entirely noble and admirable principles.

Moreover, the claim that teaching these topics amounts to a "brainwashing" of students into anti-American, "woke" ideology is entirely unfounded. Critical thinking and analysis are fundamental aspects of education, and students must be equipped with the tools to analyze and evaluate information critically, even if it challenges their previously held beliefs. Rather than brainwashing, teaching these topics allows students to examine the facts and develop informed opinions based on evidence.

Additionally, the claim that teaching about systemic racism and oppression is part of a "Critical Race Theory" (CRT) propaganda campaign is a misrepresentation of what CRT is. CRT is a scholarly movement that emerged in the legal field to examine how racism and other forms of oppression are embedded in laws, policies, and social structures. Teaching about the country's history of slavery and systemic racism is not synonymous with teaching CRT.

In conclusion, the claim that teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, abusive policing, and systemic racism is part of an anti-American, pro-CRT propaganda campaign is a misleading and unfounded argument. Teaching these topics is crucial to have a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of American history and to work towards building a more just and equitable society. Rather than brainwashing, it allows students to develop critical thinking skills and examine facts objectively.

Write an argumentative essay that addresses the claim that we are morally compelled to study America's darkest chapters of history in order to move forward as a healthy society.

Why we teach Jim Crow:

1. We must learn structuralism vs. individualism in the context of white structuralism so we avoid double standards.
2. We question American exceptionalism as a myth so we don’t have a warped view of history.
3. We create a permanently radicalized class if we perpetuate Jim Crow ideas. 
4. We perpetuate gun violence, which is attached to Jim Crow. 
5. We must prevent repeating the mistakes of the past.
6. We must struggle for democracy over white ethnocentric nationalism. 
7. We must study centrifugal vs. centripetal moral development. 
8. We must develop empathy to be more mature, a foundation for a free democracy. 
9. We must resist class bifurcation for moral health and social health. 

See Carol Anderson: The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

Essay 3: Why Did Lacie Pound Go Into a Free Fall?

Analyzing Lacie Pound's descent into insanity as rendered in the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive," write an essay that explains Lacie Pound's downfall in the context of Jaron Lanier’s book 10 Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone,” and Jonathan Haidt's essay "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid."

ChatGPT Response:

Lacie Pound's descent into insanity in the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" is a cautionary tale about the dangers of social media and how it can drive people to madness. In the context of Jaron Lanier's book 10 Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Sherry Turkle's YouTube Ted Talk "Connected But Alone," and Jonathan Haidt's essay "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid," Lacie's story is a powerful reminder of the need to reassess our relationship with social media.

Lanier argues that social media is designed to manipulate us, to keep us hooked and addicted to its platforms. He suggests that social media is turning us into "lab rats" by constantly collecting data about our behavior, preferences, and desires, which are then used to keep us engaged with the platform. In "Nosedive," Lacie is a prime example of this phenomenon. She is obsessed with her social media ranking and will do anything to improve it. She is constantly checking her phone, posting pictures and comments, and trying to impress her peers. Her entire life revolves around her social media persona, and she is unable to disconnect from it.

Turkle's Ted Talk is about the paradox of social media: the more connected we are, the more alone we feel. She argues that social media is eroding our ability to form meaningful relationships and that we are becoming disconnected from ourselves and others. In "Nosedive," Lacie's obsession with her social media ranking comes at the expense of her relationships with the people around her. She is unable to form genuine connections with anyone, and her relationships are superficial and transactional. She is constantly performing for others, trying to impress them, and seeking their approval. She is unable to be herself and is constantly wearing a mask to fit in with her social media persona.

Haidt's essay is about the polarization and tribalism that has characterized American politics in recent years. He argues that social media is exacerbating these tendencies by creating echo chambers and filter bubbles that reinforce our existing beliefs and prejudices. In "Nosedive," we see how Lacie's obsession with her social media ranking leads her to become increasingly isolated and disconnected from the world around her. She is unable to see beyond her own social media bubble and is trapped in a world of superficiality and self-promotion. Her inability to connect with others, to empathize with their perspectives, and to appreciate their differences is a symptom of the wider social media culture that Haidt describes.

In conclusion, Lacie Pound's descent into insanity in "Nosedive" is a powerful commentary on the dangers of social media. Her story highlights the ways in which social media can manipulate us, erode our relationships, and isolate us from the world around us. Lanier, Turkle, and Haidt's work provides a useful framework for understanding Lacie's downfall and for reflecting on our own relationship with social media. We must take their warnings seriously and reassess our dependence on social media before it's too late.

***

Essay 4: The Sunken Place

Write an essay that addresses the claim that Jordan Peele's movie Get Out, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and the Max documentary 38 at the Garden are works of great filmmaking and literature that present us with an extended definition of the Sunken Place.

 

For 2 other sources, I recommend two of the following from YouTube:

 

"The Philosophy of Get Out--Wisecrack Edition"

"What Is the Sunken Place?" from Now You See It 

"Get Out Explained: Symbols, Satire & Social Horror" from The Take

"Hidden Meanings Behind Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' Video Explained from Insider

"The Hidden Meanings Behind Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' Video from Inside Edition

"Childish Gambino's "This Is America" Lyrics Explained/Genius News from Genius

"Frederick Douglass: Crash Course Black American History #17"

 

 

ChatGPT

 

Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America,” and Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” are all works of great literature and art that present us with an extended definition of the Sunken Place.

The Sunken Place is a concept introduced in Get Out that represents the feeling of being trapped and powerless, unable to escape the systems of oppression that surround us. While the concept is specific to the film, it has been used to describe the experiences of Black Americans in a broader sense. All three of these works explore the Sunken Place in different ways, expanding our understanding of what it means to be trapped by systemic oppression.

In Get Out, the Sunken Place is a physical location that Chris is transported to when he is hypnotized by his girlfriend’s mother. The Sunken Place is represented as a dark, empty void where Chris is unable to move or speak. It is a metaphor for the way that racism can cause a person to feel trapped and powerless, unable to escape the systems that oppress them. The film explores the way that racism operates on both a systemic level and an individual level, and it uses the concept of the Sunken Place to illustrate this.

Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America” presents us with another extended definition of the Sunken Place. In the video, Donald Glover is shown dancing in a warehouse while chaos and violence erupt around him. The video is filled with references to the history of racism in America, including the Charleston church shooting, police brutality against Black Americans, and the legacy of minstrelsy. The Sunken Place is represented in the video as a place of chaos and violence, where Black Americans are trapped by the systems of oppression that surround them.

Finally, Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” is a classic work of literature that presents us with yet another extended definition of the Sunken Place. Douglass was a former slave who became a prominent abolitionist and writer, and his speech argues that the Fourth of July celebration is a hypocritical celebration of American freedom that is not extended to Black Americans. Douglass speaks eloquently about the injustice of slavery and the way that racism operates in America, using his own experiences as a slave to illustrate his points. In this way, Douglass presents us with a Sunken Place that is defined by the historical and ongoing oppression of Black Americans.

Together, these works of literature and art present us with an extended definition of the Sunken Place. They show us that the Sunken Place is not just a physical location, but a metaphor for the way that racism can cause a person to feel trapped and powerless. They also illustrate the way that racism operates on both a systemic level and an individual level, and they challenge us to think critically about the systems of oppression that surround us. By expanding our understanding of the Sunken Place in this way, these works can help us to work towards a more just and equitable society for all people.

Write an essay that addresses the claim that Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America,” and Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” are works of great literature and art that illustrate the complicated dynamics of racism in both the systemic sense and the individual who experiences what is called the Sunken Place.

 

 

ChatGPT

 

Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America,” and Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” are all works of great literature and art that explore the complicated dynamics of racism in both the systemic sense and the individual who experiences what is called the Sunken Place.

In Get Out, Peele uses horror elements to tell the story of a Black man named Chris who goes to meet his white girlfriend’s family and uncovers a sinister plot involving the theft of Black bodies for the purpose of transplanting white brains into them. The movie explores the systemic racism of the medical industry, the fetishization of Black bodies, and the way that racism can operate on an individual level. The Sunken Place, a concept introduced in the film, represents the way that racism can cause a person to feel trapped and powerless, unable to escape the systems that oppress them.

Similarly, Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America” uses music and dance to illustrate the complicated dynamics of racism in America. The video shows Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) dancing in a warehouse while chaos and violence erupt around him. The video is filled with references to the history of racism in America, including the Charleston church shooting, police brutality against Black Americans, and the legacy of minstrelsy. The video also features a moment when Glover is shown with a bag over his head, representing the experience of being trapped in the Sunken Place.

Finally, Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July” is a classic work of literature that explores the systemic racism of America in the 19th century. Douglass was a former slave who became a prominent abolitionist and writer, and his speech argues that the Fourth of July celebration is a hypocritical celebration of American freedom that is not extended to Black Americans. Douglass speaks eloquently about the injustice of slavery and the way that racism operates in America, using his own experiences as a slave to illustrate his points.

Together, these works of literature and art illustrate the complicated dynamics of racism in America. They show how racism operates on both a systemic level and an individual level, and they highlight the experiences of Black Americans who feel trapped in the Sunken Place. These works are important because they challenge the dominant narratives of American history and culture, and they encourage us to think critically about the way that racism operates in our society. By exploring the complexities of racism in this way, we can work towards a more just and equitable society for all people.

Title: Frederick Douglass's Writings: A Compelling Precursor to Articulating Jordan Peele's Notion of the Sunken Place in "Get Out"

Introduction: Frederick Douglass, an influential 19th-century abolitionist and writer, challenged the dehumanization and oppression experienced by African Americans through his powerful writings. His narratives provide a compelling precursor to articulating Jordan Peele's notion of the Sunken Place in his movie "Get Out." Both Douglass's works and Peele's film explore the psychological captivity and marginalization faced by black individuals in different contexts. This essay will delve into the similarities between Douglass's writings and "Get Out," highlighting how Douglass's narratives offer a historical foundation for understanding the Sunken Place and its significance in Peele's film.

Body:

1. Portrayal of Psychological Captivity: Frederick Douglass's writings vividly depict the psychological captivity endured by enslaved African Americans. His narratives, such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," reveal the oppressive systems that stripped enslaved individuals of their agency, identity, and humanity. Similarly, in "Get Out," Jordan Peele introduces the concept of the Sunken Place, a metaphorical representation of black marginalization in a predominantly white society. Both Douglass's writings and "Get Out" convey the experience of being trapped, silenced, and stripped of autonomy, thereby shedding light on the psychological effects of systemic oppression.

2. Dehumanization and Erasure: In Douglass's writings, he exposes the dehumanization endured by enslaved individuals. They were treated as property rather than human beings, their experiences silenced, and their identities erased. The Sunken Place in "Get Out" serves as a contemporary manifestation of this dehumanization, representing the suppression and erasure of black voices and experiences in a society that perpetuates systemic racism. Douglass's works, through his personal accounts and poignant observations, offer a historical framework for understanding the erasure and dehumanization that underlies the concept of the Sunken Place.

3. The Struggle for Identity and Agency: Douglass's writings revolve around his struggle for personal identity and agency within the confines of slavery. He emphasizes the importance of education, self-emancipation, and reclaiming one's humanity. Similarly, "Get Out" explores the protagonist's fight for identity and agency in the face of racial exploitation. The Sunken Place metaphorically represents the struggle to break free from societal constraints and reclaim autonomy. Douglass's narratives echo the themes of resistance, empowerment, and the pursuit of freedom that are central to Peele's portrayal of the Sunken Place.

Conclusion:

Frederick Douglass's writings serve as a compelling precursor to articulating Jordan Peele's notion of the Sunken Place in "Get Out." Both Douglass and Peele address the psychological captivity, dehumanization, and marginalization faced by black individuals in their respective contexts. Douglass's narratives offer historical insights into the oppressive systems that stripped African Americans of their agency, while Peele's film brings these concepts into a contemporary setting through the metaphorical representation of the Sunken Place. Together, they shed light on the enduring struggle against racism, providing a profound and thought-provoking exploration of black experiences and the fight for freedom and self-determination.

Title: The Torment of Literacy: Frederick Douglass and the Affliction of Slavery and Racism

Introduction: Frederick Douglass, an influential abolitionist and former slave, recognized the profound power of literacy in his journey toward liberation. However, Douglass also experienced a unique torment arising from his newfound ability to read and write. This essay explores why Douglass felt that his acquisition of literacy afflicted him with even greater torment over the oppression of slavery and racism. By delving into Douglass's personal experiences, we can understand the transformative nature of literacy and its ability to heighten one's awareness of the injustices prevalent in society.

Body:

1. Heightened Awareness of Injustice: As Frederick Douglass acquired literacy, he became increasingly aware of the oppressive systems perpetuated by slavery and racism. Through reading newspapers, books, and speeches, Douglass gained access to knowledge and insights that exposed the harsh realities of the institution he was held captive within. Literacy enabled him to critically analyze the hypocrisy of the white power structure and recognize the vast gap between the ideals of liberty and equality and the lived experiences of enslaved individuals. This heightened awareness intensified his torment as he grappled with the stark contrast between the ideals of freedom and the cruel realities of his own existence.

2. The Burden of Unfulfilled Potential: Douglass's literacy opened a world of possibilities, showcasing the potential for intellectual growth, self-expression, and social mobility. Yet, his status as a slave and the oppressive laws that denied education to enslaved individuals prevented him from fully realizing this potential. The knowledge and intellectual capabilities he possessed through literacy further amplified his suffering, as he longed for the freedom to exercise his talents and contribute to society in ways that were systematically denied to him. The stark realization of his unfulfilled potential and the barriers imposed by slavery and racism inflicted immense torment upon Douglass's spirit.

3. The Loneliness of Consciousness: Douglass's acquisition of literacy exposed him to narratives of resistance, liberation, and abolitionist ideals, allowing him to engage with the broader intellectual and moral debates of the time. However, this newfound awareness came at a cost—the burden of solitude. As Douglass deepened his understanding of the oppressive systems at play, he felt increasingly isolated from both the enslaved community, who often lacked access to education, and the white society that perpetuated their subjugation. The awareness of his own oppression, coupled with the alienation resulting from his intellectual pursuits, created a tormenting sense of isolation and profound frustration.

Conclusion:

Frederick Douglass's acquisition of literacy brought forth a bittersweet transformation in his life. While literacy provided him with intellectual empowerment and a critical lens through which to view the injustice of slavery and racism, it also inflicted a unique torment upon him. Through literacy, Douglass became acutely aware of the stark disparities between the ideals of freedom and equality and the oppressive reality of his own existence. The burden of unfulfilled potential and the loneliness of consciousness further deepened his anguish. Douglass's experience underscores the complex relationship between knowledge, oppression, and the longing for liberation, illustrating the power of literacy to both enlighten and torment those who seek to challenge systemic injustice.

 

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English 1C

One. Is Losing Weight a Fool's Errand?

Addressing Xochitl Gonzalez’s essay “In the Age of Ozempic, What’s the Point of Working Out?," Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence" and Sandra Aamodt's "Why You Can't Lose Weight on a Diet," develop a 1,200-word essay that answers the question: Is losing weight a fool's errand? Consider the intersection between mental health, physical health, and self-worth. Also, incorporate the connection between discipline and summoning the Life Force as defined by Phil Stutz in the Netflix documentary Stutz. 

Suggested Outline

Paragraph 1: Summarize the 3 essays to show the connection between the stress and anxiety of weight loss and self-worth.

Paragraph 2: Develop an argumentative claim that answers the question: Is losing weight a fool's errand?

Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.

Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal paragraph.

Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, which is often a dramatic restatement of your thesis. 

Your last page is an MLA-format Works Cited with a minimum of 4 sources. 

 

Building Block #1 for Losing Weight Essay: 2 Paragraphs

For the first paragraph, summarize the major points in Xochitl Gonzalez’s essay “In the Age of Ozempic, What’s the Point of Working Out?," Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence" and Sandra Aamodt's "Why You Can't Lose Weight on a Diet" in order to emphasize the crisis between the stress and anxiety over body condition and self-worth. 

For the second paragraph, present an argumentative claim or thesis that in the context of the above writers answers the question: Is losing weight a fool's errand? Be sure to map out 3 or 4 reasons in your thesis. For example: Trying to lose weight and keep it off is (is not) a fool's errand because ______________________, ______________________, ___________________, and _____________________. 

Building Block #2 for Losing Weight Essay: Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph

 

ChatGPT Essay Response:

Title: Is Losing Weight a Fool's Errand? Exploring the Intersection of Mental Health, Physical Health, and Self-Worth

Introduction:

In today's society, the pursuit of weight loss is often considered a virtuous goal, associated with improved health and self-worth. However, examining Xochitl Gonzalez's essay "In the Age of Ozempic, What's the Point of Working Out?," Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence," and Sandra Aamodt's "Why You Can't Lose Weight on a Diet" sheds light on the complex and multifaceted nature of weight management. This essay aims to explore the question: Is losing weight a fool's errand? By considering the intersection between mental health, physical health, and self-worth, as well as incorporating the connection between discipline and summoning the Life Force, we can unravel the complexities of this topic.

The Intersection of Mental Health, Physical Health, and Self-Worth:

Gonzalez's essay questions the efficacy of exercise in an era where pharmaceutical interventions, such as Ozempic, are gaining prominence. While medications may provide quick fixes, they often overlook the broader context of mental and physical well-being. Mental health plays a crucial role in weight management, as stress, emotional eating, and negative body image can hinder progress. Consequently, a holistic approach that considers mental well-being becomes essential.

Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence" challenges the assumption that weight loss is the ultimate marker of health and self-worth. Brown argues that society's fixation on weight perpetuates harmful ideals, leading to a cycle of dieting and weight cycling. This constant striving for weight loss can have adverse effects on mental health, eroding self-worth and creating a sense of failure. Thus, the pursuit of weight loss alone may prove futile if not accompanied by a focus on mental well-being and self-acceptance.

Aamodt's "Why You Can't Lose Weight on a Diet" further reinforces the idea that sustained weight loss is challenging due to complex physiological and psychological factors. Our bodies have evolved mechanisms that resist prolonged calorie restriction, making weight regain highly likely. This repeated cycle of weight loss and regain can negatively impact mental health, perpetuating feelings of frustration and hopelessness. A comprehensive approach must acknowledge these factors and seek alternatives to conventional dieting.

The Connection Between Discipline and Summoning the Life Force:

In the Netflix documentary "Stutz," Phil Stutz explores the concept of summoning the Life Force, a deep wellspring of motivation and resilience. Cultivating discipline is integral to accessing this Life Force, enabling individuals to adhere to healthier habits, make sustainable lifestyle changes, and overcome setbacks without succumbing to discouragement. When applied to weight management, discipline allows for the consistent practice of healthy behaviors, such as regular exercise and mindful eating, which are key to achieving sustainable results.

However, discipline should not be equated with strict diets or rigid regimens. Instead, discipline should be rooted in self-care and self-compassion. By understanding and addressing the underlying emotional and psychological factors that contribute to weight-related challenges, individuals can develop a more balanced and sustainable approach to weight management.

Combining a Holistic Approach with Discipline:

To navigate the complex landscape of weight management, a holistic approach that encompasses mental health, physical health, and self-worth is necessary. It starts by prioritizing self-care and seeking support from healthcare professionals, nutritionists, or therapists. Understanding the relationship between food and emotions, developing mindful eating practices, and fostering a positive body image are crucial steps toward a healthier mindset.

Additionally, incorporating regular physical activity that aligns with personal preferences and interests promotes overall well-being and weight maintenance. Engaging in activities that bring joy and fulfillment can increase motivation and sustain long-term commitment.

By summoning the Life Force, individuals can harness their inner strength and resilience to overcome challenges along the weight management journey. Discipline, when rooted in self-compassion and flexibility, allows for adaptability and learning from setbacks rather than succumbing to self-judgment.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, losing weight is not inherently a fool's errand; however, it requires a holistic approach that addresses the intersection of mental health, physical health, and self-worth. Xochitl Gonzalez's essay highlights the limitations of pharmaceutical interventions, emphasizing the importance of considering the broader context of well-being. Harriet Brown's insights shed light on the detrimental effects of society's narrow focus on weight loss, calling for a shift towards self-acceptance and mental well-being. Sandra Aamodt's research underscores the complex physiological and psychological factors that make sustained weight loss challenging.

By incorporating the connection between discipline and summoning the Life Force, individuals can cultivate the necessary resilience and motivation to navigate the complexities of weight management. Discipline, rooted in self-care and self-compassion, enables the consistent practice of healthy behaviors, while summoning the Life Force empowers individuals to overcome setbacks and maintain a balanced approach.

To redefine the pursuit of weight management, we must shift our focus from mere weight loss to overall well-being, emphasizing mental health, physical health, and self-worth. By embracing a comprehensive and compassionate approach, we can break free from the cycle of unrealistic expectations and redefine success in terms of holistic and sustainable well-being.

 

 

Regenerate response

 

***

ChatGPT

The quest for self-worth is a powerful motivator for many individuals, particularly when it comes to health and weight management. Xochitl Gonzalez's essay "In the Age of Ozempic, What's the Point of Working Out?" and Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence" both explore the challenges of maintaining a healthy weight in a culture that values thinness above all else. Meanwhile, Sandra Aamodt's "Why You Can't Lose Weight on a Diet" argues that the pursuit of weight loss through restrictive diets is ultimately counterproductive. Together, these works suggest that the quest for self-worth is intimately tied to our attitudes towards health and weight management.

Gonzalez's essay highlights the pervasive influence of pharmaceuticals in our society and their impact on our attitudes towards health and weight management. She argues that the rise of drugs like Ozempic, which promise to help individuals lose weight without making significant lifestyle changes, reflects a larger cultural shift towards quick fixes and instant gratification. This shift is driven, in part, by a desire for external validation and self-worth, as individuals seek to conform to societal ideals of thinness and beauty.

Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence" delves deeper into the cultural pressures surrounding weight and health, arguing that the stigma against fatness is harmful and counterproductive. She highlights the many factors that contribute to weight gain and the difficulty of losing weight through diet and exercise alone. Her work emphasizes the importance of self-acceptance and self-worth, regardless of one's weight or health status.

Finally, Aamodt's "Why You Can't Lose Weight on a Diet" challenges the notion that weight loss is solely a matter of willpower and discipline. She argues that restrictive diets are ultimately counterproductive, as they can lead to disordered eating and a slowed metabolism. Instead, she advocates for a holistic approach to health that emphasizes self-acceptance, intuitive eating, and regular physical activity.

Taken together, these works suggest that the quest for self-worth is intimately tied to our attitudes towards health and weight management. The pervasive influence of societal ideals of thinness and beauty, coupled with the desire for external validation, can lead individuals to seek quick fixes and instant gratification, rather than pursuing long-term health and wellness. However, as Brown and Aamodt both argue, self-acceptance and self-worth are crucial components of a holistic approach to health that emphasizes intuitive eating, regular physical activity, and a positive relationship with one's body. Ultimately, the quest for self-worth should not be driven by external factors or societal pressures, but rather by a deep commitment to one's own health and well-being.

Essay 2: The Game Changers:

Write an essay that defends, refutes, or complicates the claim that the biochemist and Nutritional Scientist Layne Norton in his writings and YouTube videos (especially "Game Changers--Debunked") makes a strong case that the Netflix documentary The Game Changers is an egregious work of propaganda that makes an unpersuasive attempt to champion a plant-based diet because of its reliance on logical fallacies, deceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. 

ChatGPT Response (second one to variation of the prompt):

Title: Unraveling the Claims: Debunking the Critique of "The Game Changers" by Layne Norton

Introduction:

"The Game Changers," a popular Netflix documentary promoting the benefits of a plant-based diet, has garnered significant attention and sparked debate among health enthusiasts. However, biochemist and nutritional scientist Layne Norton has presented a strong case asserting that the documentary is a work of propaganda, rife with logical fallacies, deceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. In this essay, we will critically examine Norton's claims and argue that while there may be room for discussion, his critique does not hold up under scrutiny.

Body:

1. Logical Fallacies:

Norton argues that "The Game Changers" relies heavily on logical fallacies, undermining its credibility. While it is true that logical fallacies should be avoided in any persuasive work, it is important to assess whether the documentary actually employs such fallacies. Norton points out instances of cherry-picking data, anecdotal evidence, and appeals to authority. However, it is essential to acknowledge that these elements are commonly used in documentaries and do not necessarily discredit their overall message. Norton's contention that these fallacies entirely invalidate the film's argument is an overstatement.

2. Deceptions and Misrepresentations:

Another claim made by Norton is that "The Game Changers" deliberately deceives its audience by misrepresenting scientific studies and presenting anecdotal evidence as factual data. However, Norton's argument fails to account for the fact that documentaries often condense complex scientific information for a wider audience. While there may be instances where simplifications occur, it is essential to consider the overarching intention of the documentary: to raise awareness and provoke discussion about plant-based diets. Norton's accusation of deliberate deception lacks substantial evidence and appears to be driven by a bias against the film's message rather than a careful analysis of its content.

3. Advocating for a Plant-Based Diet:

Norton's primary contention is that "The Game Changers" makes an unpersuasive attempt to champion a plant-based diet. He suggests that the documentary disregards the potential benefits of animal-based foods and exaggerates the advantages of plant-based diets. However, it is crucial to recognize that "The Game Changers" does not claim to be a comprehensive examination of all nutritional approaches. Instead, it highlights specific athletes and their experiences with plant-based diets, aiming to challenge traditional beliefs about protein consumption and athletic performance. Norton's criticism seems to stem from a fundamental disagreement with the film's message rather than an objective analysis of its arguments.

4. Alternative Perspectives:

While Norton's critique focuses on the flaws and alleged misrepresentations in "The Game Changers," it is important to acknowledge that there are alternative perspectives within the scientific community regarding the benefits of plant-based diets. Numerous studies have highlighted the potential health advantages of reducing animal product consumption and increasing plant-based food intake. While no single documentary can capture the entire breadth of scientific literature, "The Game Changers" contributes to an ongoing conversation about dietary choices and their impact on health and athletic performance.

Conclusion:

Layne Norton's critique of "The Game Changers" presents a one-sided perspective that fails to provide a nuanced understanding of the documentary's intentions and impact. While there may be legitimate concerns regarding the use of logical fallacies, deceptions, and misrepresentations, Norton's argument exaggerates their significance in undermining the film's message. It is essential to approach such critiques with a balanced perspective and engage in a broader conversation about nutrition, health, and the implications of different dietary choices. Rather than dismissing "The Game Changers" outright, we should encourage critical thinking and informed discussions that lead to a better understanding of the complex relationship between diet and well-being.

 

ChatGPT Response:

 

The Netflix documentary "The Game Changers" is a highly controversial film that champions the benefits of a plant-based diet for athletes and active people. While the film has been praised by some viewers, others have criticized it for relying on propaganda, logical fallacies, deceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. In this essay, I will argue that the film makes an unpersuasive attempt to promote a plant-based diet due to its use of misleading and manipulative tactics.

Firstly, the documentary relies on propaganda to promote its message. Propaganda is a form of communication that is intended to persuade an audience to adopt a particular viewpoint. The film uses propaganda techniques such as appeals to emotion, appeals to authority, and oversimplification to make its case for a plant-based diet. For example, the film opens with a montage of famous athletes endorsing a plant-based diet, which is designed to persuade viewers that if these athletes can thrive on a plant-based diet, then so can they. However, the film does not provide a balanced view of the scientific evidence on this topic, and it oversimplifies the complex relationship between diet and athletic performance.

Secondly, the film relies on logical fallacies to make its case. Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that undermine the credibility of an argument. The film uses fallacies such as false dichotomy, appeal to ignorance, and ad hominem attacks to persuade viewers of the benefits of a plant-based diet. For example, the film presents a false dichotomy between animal-based and plant-based diets, suggesting that athletes must choose one or the other. In reality, many athletes consume a variety of foods, including both plant and animal sources, to support their performance. The film also makes an appeal to ignorance by suggesting that the scientific evidence is unequivocal in support of a plant-based diet, which is simply not true. Lastly, the film uses ad hominem attacks against critics of a plant-based diet, rather than engaging with their arguments in a constructive manner.

Thirdly, the film relies on deceptions and deliberate misrepresentations to make its case. For example, the film claims that a plant-based diet is the only way to get enough protein to support athletic performance. This claim is misleading because there are many plant-based sources of protein, such as beans, nuts, and tofu, that can provide the body with the necessary nutrients. Additionally, the film selectively presents evidence to support its argument, while ignoring contradictory evidence that does not fit its narrative. This cherry-picking of evidence undermines the credibility of the film's message and leaves viewers with an incomplete understanding of the issues.

In conclusion, "The Game Changers" makes an unpersuasive attempt to champion a plant-based diet because of its reliance on propaganda, logical fallacies, deceptions, and deliberate misrepresentations. While the film may have good intentions in promoting a healthier and more sustainable way of eating, its use of manipulative tactics undermines its credibility and leaves viewers with an incomplete and potentially misleading understanding of the issues at hand. A more balanced and nuanced approach to the topic of nutrition and athletic performance is needed, one that engages with the complexity of the issue and respects the diversity of individual needs and preferences.

Optional Two. Rise and Fall of the Liver King

How is the rise and fall of the Liver King an instructive lesson on moral depravity, Faustian Bargains, the absence of positive male role models, the grift of Bro Culture, and the dehumanization of the social media age? In your analysis of the Liver King’s consignment to the Shame Dungeon, consult Nick Tiller's "The Liver King, Lies, and Logical Fallacies," Catalina Goanta's "The Rise and Fall of the Liver King," Ashwin Rodrigues' "After Liver King's fall, the ancestral movement will need a new dad," the More Plates More Dates YouTube video The Liver King Lie," the Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive,” Naomi Fry's essay “‘Fake Famous’ and the Tedium of Influencer Culture,” and Shirley Li’s “The Horrors of Being Extremely Online.” With these sources, develop an argumentative thesis about the connection between our thirst for fame and attention and our inevitable depravity and dehumanization. 

What does the rise and fall of the Liver King say about the contradictions of Bro Culture and social media? How does the artifice of the Liver King speak to our hunger for authenticity and dramatic personal change? How does social media relax our critical thinking skills so that we are seduced by salient images of power, transformation, authenticity, and masculinity? 

Your Short Liver King Essay:

Many of us have gleefully witnessed the fiery crash of the charlatan Liver King, a ripped bodybuilder claiming to be an all-natural practitioner of “ancestral” living when in reality his own liver was saturated with Performance-Enhancing-Drugs. 

But beyond the schadenfreude we enjoy from his consignment to the Shame Dungeon, we can see his rise as a social media star teaches us important lessons about the search for meaning in the social media age. Millions of men are hungry for positive images of masculinity, a healthy lifestyle that treats the mind, body, and soul with respect, and a lifestyle that gives men a sense of purpose, belonging, and self-worth. The Liver King pressed all those buttons and relaxed people’s critical thinking skills so that they swallowed disbelief and embraced him as Natural Man. He manipulated social media’s algorithms by curating an extreme image of a muscle man dragging trees and boulders while nourishing himself with bloody organs. 

Our outrage over the Liver King’s fall seems disingenuous. We knew all along we were embracing a fictional demigod to fuel our own Alpha Male fantasies. We should replace those adolescent longings by taking care of our bodies in a healthy way and freeing ourselves from social-media-fueled images of hypermasculinity. 

Exercise and nutrition are vital to our self-worth and sense of purpose, but we don’t need grotesque bodybuilding caricatures to inspire us. As an alternative to the Liver King, I recommend you watch the Netflix documentary Stutz in which therapist Phil Stutz argues persuasively that taking care of our bodies is essential to summoning the Life Force. We can embrace self-care while at the same time repelling mountebanks like the Liver King. 

ChatGPT:

The rise and fall of the Liver King, a social media influencer who promoted a carnivorous lifestyle and eventually became mired in controversy, is an instructive lesson on several interconnected issues in modern society. Firstly, it highlights the moral depravity that can arise from a Faustian bargain with fame and fortune. Secondly, it exposes the absence of positive male role models, particularly in the realm of health and wellness. Thirdly, it illustrates the grift of Bro Culture, which promotes toxic masculinity and unhealthy lifestyle habits. Finally, it showcases the dehumanizing effects of the social media age, where the quest for attention and validation can lead to the loss of one's humanity.

The Liver King's ascent to fame was largely fueled by his embrace of a carnivorous diet, which he claimed had numerous health benefits. However, his reckless promotion of this lifestyle and his refusal to acknowledge any potential downsides led to accusations of fraud and misinformation. This highlights the moral depravity that can result from a Faustian bargain with fame and fortune. In the pursuit of greater fame and influence, individuals may compromise their moral principles and engage in unethical behavior.

Moreover, the Liver King's rise also exposes the absence of positive male role models in the realm of health and wellness. His promotion of a hyper-masculine, meat-heavy diet perpetuated harmful stereotypes and unhealthy habits. This ties into the grift of Bro Culture, which valorizes unhealthy habits and toxic masculinity. The influence of this culture can be seen in the Liver King's behavior and in the behavior of other social media influencers who promote similarly harmful lifestyles.

The Liver King's eventual consignment to the Shame Dungeon, a metaphorical space where those who violate social media norms are ostracized and shamed, further illustrates the dehumanizing effects of the social media age. The Netflix Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" and Naomi Fry's essay "‘Fake Famous’ and the Tedium of Influencer Culture" both explore this phenomenon. In the quest for attention and validation, individuals may sacrifice their authentic selves and engage in performative behavior that is disconnected from their true values and identity. This can lead to a loss of humanity and a sense of disconnection from oneself and others.

In conclusion, the rise and fall of the Liver King serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of a Faustian bargain with fame and fortune, the absence of positive male role models in the realm of health and wellness, the grift of Bro Culture, and the dehumanizing effects of the social media age. Our thirst for attention and validation can lead us down a path of moral depravity and dehumanization, as we sacrifice our authentic selves in pursuit of fleeting fame and influence. It is crucial that we prioritize authenticity, empathy, and connection in our interactions with others, both online and offline.

Essay 3: How racial stereotypes hijack the brain and become chimeras that result in both insanity and injustice. 

Addressing the racial stereotypes evident in Hasan Minhaj's Netflix comedy presentation Homecoming King, HBO's short documentary 38 at the Garden, and Netflix's documentary White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, develop an essay that addresses the claim that racial stereotypes hijack the brain and become chimeras that result in both insanity and injustice.

ChatGPT Response:

Racial stereotypes are insidious and pervasive, and they have the ability to hijack our brains and turn into chimeras that can result in both insanity and injustice. This is evident in Hasan Minhaj's Netflix comedy presentation Homecoming King, HBO's short documentary 38 at the Garden, and Netflix's documentary White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch. In each of these works, racial stereotypes are perpetuated and reinforced, leading to negative consequences for individuals and society as a whole.

In Homecoming King, Hasan Minhaj recounts his experiences growing up as an Indian-American in the United States. Throughout the performance, he touches on a number of racial stereotypes that he has encountered, including the stereotype that all Indians are doctors, the assumption that he is a terrorist because of his skin color, and the pressure to conform to traditional Indian culture. While Minhaj uses humor to address these stereotypes, he also highlights the damaging effects that they can have on individuals, leading to feelings of shame and insecurity.

HBO's short documentary 38 at the Garden tells the story of the 1972 basketball game between the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers. The film explores the racial tensions that existed at the time, and how these tensions played out on the basketball court. The film highlights the stereotype that Black players are more athletic than White players, and how this stereotype was used to justify discrimination against Black athletes. The film also shows how racial stereotypes can be perpetuated through media coverage and public perception, leading to unfair treatment and negative outcomes for Black athletes.

Netflix's documentary White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch tells the story of the popular clothing brand and its controversial history with race. The documentary highlights the way that Abercrombie & Fitch used racial stereotypes to market their clothing, using images of White, conventionally attractive models to appeal to a specific demographic. The documentary also explores the negative consequences of this approach, including discrimination against non-White employees and backlash from consumers.

Taken together, these works illustrate how racial stereotypes can hijack our brains and become chimeras that result in both insanity and injustice. Racial stereotypes can lead to feelings of shame and insecurity for individuals, discrimination against certain groups, and negative outcomes for society as a whole. It is important that we recognize the power of these stereotypes and work to dismantle them, both on an individual and societal level. By confronting and challenging racial stereotypes, we can create a more just and equitable world for all people.

Four. Cult of Authenticity 

Write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates the claim by food and culture writer Gustavo Arellano in his essay “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food” and elsewhere that in the realm of food, especially Mexican food, we must step away from the Cult of Authenticity and embrace the idea that the greatness of Mexican food is related to its constant evolution from stealing, borrowing, synthesizing, and even culturally appropriating from one ethnic culture to another and that cuisines that fail to evolve lack relevance and vitality. 

ChatGPT Response:

In his essay “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food” and elsewhere, food and culture writer Gustavo Arellano makes the argument that in the realm of food, particularly Mexican food, we must step away from the Cult of Authenticity and embrace the idea that the greatness of Mexican cuisine is related to its constant evolution through borrowing, synthesizing, and even cultural appropriation from one ethnic culture to another. Arellano argues that cuisines that fail to evolve lack relevance and vitality. While some may argue that cultural appropriation in the realm of food is harmful and disrespectful, I argue that food, like culture, is constantly evolving, and borrowing from other cultures is a necessary part of this process.

Food is an essential aspect of culture and is intertwined with history, geography, and social customs. Just like culture, food evolves and adapts over time as a result of a variety of factors, including technological advances, economic changes, and migration patterns. The idea that a cuisine must remain static and unchanging is therefore flawed. As Arellano points out, Mexican food, like many other cuisines, has evolved over time as a result of borrowing and synthesizing from different cultures. This evolution has allowed Mexican food to remain relevant and vital, and has enabled it to adapt to new tastes and ingredients.

Furthermore, cultural appropriation in the realm of food is not inherently harmful or disrespectful. Borrowing from other cultures is a natural part of the evolution of cuisine, and it is often done out of a desire to learn and appreciate other cultures. While it is important to acknowledge and respect the cultural origins of a dish or ingredient, this does not mean that it cannot be adapted or changed in new contexts. The idea that a culture can "own" a particular dish or ingredient and prevent others from using it in different ways is both limiting and unrealistic.

Of course, there are instances where cultural appropriation in the realm of food can be harmful or disrespectful. This occurs when a dominant culture appropriates a dish or ingredient without acknowledging its cultural origins or actively erases the contributions of the culture from which it was borrowed. However, this is not a reason to reject the idea of cultural borrowing in the realm of food altogether. Instead, it is a call for greater awareness and respect for the cultural origins of different foods and a recognition of the contributions of different cultures to the evolution of cuisine.

In conclusion, the idea that the greatness of Mexican food is related to its constant evolution through borrowing, synthesizing, and even cultural appropriation from one ethnic culture to another is a compelling one. While some may argue that cultural appropriation in the realm of food is harmful and disrespectful, it is important to recognize that food, like culture, is constantly evolving, and borrowing from other cultures is a necessary part of this process. By embracing the idea of culinary evolution and recognizing the contributions of different cultures to the evolution of cuisine, we can create a more inclusive and dynamic food culture that celebrates the diversity of our world.

1A Writing Assignment Based on Chimp Empire

Assignment Prompt 1

Analyzing the power dynamics in chimp society as evident in The Netflix documentary Chimp Empire, develop an argumentative essay that addresses the claim that humans can learn essential life lessons by studying the chimp’s political maneuvers and relationship-building in the Netflix docuseries. 

 

ChatGPT Response:

 

The Netflix documentary Chimp Empire provides an insightful glimpse into the power dynamics of chimpanzee society. Through the lens of this docuseries, it is evident that chimpanzees engage in complex political maneuvers and relationship-building that offer valuable lessons to humans. This essay argues that humans can learn essential life lessons by studying chimp politics and relationship-building as presented in the Netflix docuseries.

One of the critical takeaways from Chimp Empire is the importance of social hierarchies in chimpanzee society. Chimpanzees organize themselves into dominance hierarchies, with the most powerful individuals occupying the top ranks. These hierarchies determine access to food, mating opportunities, and protection. By observing these hierarchies, humans can learn about the importance of social order and the role of power in human societies. For instance, humans can learn that hierarchy does not necessarily imply inequality or oppression, but rather it can create a sense of order and stability within a community.

Another essential lesson that humans can learn from chimpanzees is the significance of alliances and relationships in achieving power and success. In Chimp Empire, the chimpanzees form alliances to help them rise up the ranks of the dominance hierarchy. The alliances help to secure resources and protect members from threats, ultimately leading to a better quality of life. Similarly, humans can learn that forming relationships and alliances can be key to achieving success in life. By building strong social networks and forging partnerships with like-minded individuals, humans can increase their chances of achieving their goals and overcoming obstacles.

Furthermore, Chimp Empire demonstrates the value of empathy and social intelligence in chimpanzee society. The chimpanzees show a remarkable ability to understand each other's emotions and form social bonds. They also exhibit altruistic behavior, such as sharing food with other members of the community. Humans can learn from these behaviors, realizing that empathy and social intelligence are critical in building relationships and fostering a sense of community. By learning to read emotions and show compassion for others, humans can enhance their interpersonal relationships and contribute positively to society.

However, it is important to acknowledge that while humans can learn valuable lessons from chimpanzees, there are limits to the comparison between chimp and human societies. Chimpanzees, for example, lack the complex societal structures and cultural norms that humans possess. Additionally, while chimpanzees do engage in aggressive behavior, this does not necessarily mean that humans should emulate such behaviors. Rather, the lessons to be learned from chimpanzee society should be viewed as complementary to human experiences and societal norms.

In conclusion, the Netflix documentary Chimp Empire provides insight into the power dynamics and relationship-building in chimpanzee society, offering valuable lessons to humans. Humans can learn about the importance of social hierarchies, the significance of alliances and relationships, and the value of empathy and social intelligence in achieving success and fostering a sense of community. While humans should exercise caution when drawing comparisons between chimp and human societies, there is much to be gained from studying the political maneuvers and relationship-building of our primate cousins.

 

 

Assignment Prompt 2:

Addressing the power dynamics in chimp society as evident in The Netflix documentary Chimp Empire, develop an argumentative essay about the parallels between chimps’ and humans’ desire to achieve success and survival. 

 

ChatGPT Repsonse:

 

The Netflix documentary "Chimp Empire" provides a fascinating insight into the power dynamics within chimp society. The film highlights the similarities between the desires of chimpanzees and humans to achieve success and survive. This essay argues that the parallels between these two species' behaviors and motivations underscore the fundamental biological and social forces that shape their societies.

In the documentary, we observe how chimpanzees' social hierarchy is established through power struggles and alliances. The alpha male chimp, for example, is the most dominant and aggressive member of the group. He exerts his control over the other chimps through physical violence and intimidation. The other chimps recognize his authority and submit to his leadership in exchange for protection and access to resources.

This power dynamic is not dissimilar to that seen in human societies, where individuals vie for positions of power and control. Whether in politics, business, or entertainment, individuals who are the most dominant and successful are often the ones who can exert their influence over others. Similarly, alliances and networks of support are crucial for achieving success in many human endeavors.

Another parallel between chimp and human behavior is the drive to survive. In the documentary, we see the chimps hunting and foraging for food, competing for limited resources, and defending their territory from intruders. These behaviors are driven by the fundamental need for survival. In humans, too, the pursuit of survival drives our behavior in many ways, whether it's through seeking shelter, food, or medical care.

Moreover, the human desire for success is often motivated by the desire for survival. Success and wealth provide access to resources that can improve our quality of life and increase our chances of survival. In this way, the pursuit of success and survival is intertwined in both chimp and human societies.

In conclusion, the documentary "Chimp Empire" provides a fascinating insight into the power dynamics within chimp society. The parallels between chimp and human behavior underscore the fundamental biological and social forces that shape our societies. The drive to achieve success and survive are universal motivators that have shaped human behavior throughout history. As we continue to learn more about the behavior of our primate relatives, we may gain a deeper understanding of our own social and biological nature.

 

Assignment Prompt 3

Addressing the Netflix docuseries Chimp Empire, write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates the claim that by studying chimp society we can learn valuable life lessons to help us in politics, business, personal success, and survival.  

 

ChatGPT Response:

The Netflix docuseries Chimp Empire provides a fascinating look into the intricate social dynamics of chimpanzees in the wild. As humans, we have long been fascinated by our closest evolutionary relatives, and many have argued that studying chimpanzee behavior can offer valuable insights into our own behavior and societal structures. However, while there may be some general lessons that can be learned from observing chimpanzees, it is important to approach this claim with a critical eye and recognize the limitations of using non-human animals to inform our understanding of human behavior.

One argument in favor of studying chimp society is that it can offer insights into the evolutionary roots of human behavior. Chimpanzees share a common ancestor with humans, and as such, they can provide a glimpse into the behaviors that may have laid the groundwork for our own societal structures. For example, chimpanzees engage in complex power struggles and social hierarchies, which may be similar to the dynamics we see in human politics and business.

However, it is important to note that while there may be some broad similarities between chimp and human behavior, there are also significant differences. Chimpanzees live in a vastly different ecological and social context than humans, and as such, their behavior may not be directly applicable to human society. Additionally, it is important to approach the study of chimpanzees with a critical eye and recognize the limitations of using non-human animals to inform our understanding of human behavior.

One counterargument to the claim that studying chimp society can offer valuable life lessons is that it can lead to the dangerous myth of social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is the belief that some individuals or groups are inherently more fit to survive and thrive than others, and that this is a natural part of the evolutionary process. This belief has been used to justify everything from eugenics to imperialism, and it is a dangerous and deeply flawed perspective.

While it is important to study chimpanzees and other non-human animals to better understand the natural world, it is crucial to recognize that our understanding of human behavior and societal structures must be grounded in a thorough understanding of human history, culture, and social context. We cannot simply look to the behavior of other animals to inform our understanding of human behavior.

In conclusion, while studying chimp society can provide valuable insights into animal behavior, social hierarchies, and the evolutionary roots of human behavior, it is important to approach this claim with a critical eye and recognize the limitations of using non-human animals to inform our understanding of human behavior. We must recognize the unique complexities of human society and the importance of ethical considerations in our actions and decisions. While we can learn from observing the behavior of other animals, we must also be cautious not to overgeneralize or assume that non-human behavior is directly applicable to human society.

 

Loss of Critical Thinking Skills Lesson 3 for Spring 2023

 

Summary of Sherry Turkle’s “Connected, but alone?”

Being Controlled Gradually

When we change gradually, we don’t realize we lost an essential part of who we are. We don’t just wake up and find ourselves enmeshed or trapped in some kind of prison where our real self has been stolen. 

Getting lost in social media is like having a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive partner. At first, the relationship seemed fine, but gradually the pathological partner exerted more and more control over us until we find we are in a prison and our partner is the puppetmaster.

Social media addiction is like that. According to Sherry Turkle, technology is “taking us to dark places.” Our “plugged-in lives” are stealing our real self and self-agency.

Normalizing Pathological Behavior 

Pathological, sick, self-destructive behaviors become normalized with social media use. For example, multitasking, like texting in a classroom, or church, or at a funeral have all become “normal.” 

In fact, we are witnessing attention addicts who can’t focus on one event. 

Losing the Capacity for Self-Reflection

Sharing all the time on social media impedes our ability for self-reflection, the necessary condition for flourishing into a mature human being. 

Pushing People Away

We don’t want real friendships. Rather, we seek “the Goldilocks Effect,” keeping people within digital reach in ways we can’t control. Having social media connections with others is a degraded, counterfeit form of friendship, yet this becomes “normal.”

A few years ago, I heard a comedian whose name I forget lament the loss of real friendships in the age of social media. He said a real friend is someone who calls you to pick him up at a nightclub because he’s drunk and then he throws up inside your brand new Lexus. 

Behind the joke is an important truth: Real friendships are messy, require sacrifice, and loyalty. Such things are flagrantly absent in social media connections.

The Edited Self

In social media, we have normalized the phony avatar of self, the “Edited Self,” an inflated version of ourselves that over time we come to believe is true, yet this fictional self, this phony facade hides the fact that we have never developed into real people.

Sacrificing Conversation for Fake Connections

In social media, we lose our interest in face-to-face conversations and prefer the convenience and phoniness of online connection. 

In the age of the pandemic as we remained hunkered down in our homes, I worried that the neurons in my brain that are stimulated by real-life people interactions, at the college and elsewhere, would die and that overtime those neuron centers in my brain would atrophy to the point of no return. Such a thing happens when people acclimate to social media platforms.

“We’re lonely, but afraid of intimacy.”

Turkle brilliantly observes some disturbing paradoxes about our social media addiction. One is that the more we connect on social media, the more lonely and miserable we become, and we seek relief from our agony with more social media sharing, which only exacerbates our pathetic condition. 

Social Media Connections Offer 3 Fantasies:

Turkle observes that we have 3 fantasies or delusions from our social media addiction. One is that we can divert our attention anywhere we want at any time with no adverse effects. Two is that we are entitled to always be heard, to always have a listening audience for our constant outpouring of sharing regardless of how banal or inappropriate our shared content is. Three, we develop a neurosis that tells us we never have to be alone. Being alone, off the social media platform, becomes our definition of Hell. 

“I share; therefore, I am.”

We can only find fake validation through the constant neurotic need to share. We suffer from sharing compulsion, an impulse rooted in fear and an undeveloped fragmented, tattered self that is a needy creature in constant need of glomming onto others and getting likes, followers, validation, and this appetite can never be quenched. It is insatiable as the social media addict descends into madness.

We’ve lost the capacity to experience ourselves in solitude. 

We should all have the capacity for solitude, and we should teach this to our children. Paradoxically, our capacity for solitude defines us as whole, mature human beings. Only in this whole state can we have real friendships and intimacy with others. 

In contrast, anxiety-fueled sharing makes us use others “as spare parts for the purpose of making whole our fragile selves.”

Turkle smartly observes: “If we don’t know how to be alone, we will be lonely.”

Feedback Is the Fuel of Social Media Addiction

(The following is my summary of some of the more salient points by Adam Alter's book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Getting Us Hooked)

How long would you stay on Facebook or any other social media site if your posts were ignored?

Imagine being ignored for any length of time. You would leave your social media platforms and seek connection and meaning elsewhere. Truth be told, these social media sites would die except that they give feedback. For example, one of the most popular sites, Reddit, uses up and down arrows to show approval or condemnation of posts.

Feedback is a reward system that stimulates the brain.

The Mutual Sycophant Club

Social media works in part because of what we might call the Mutual Sycophant Club: I scratch your back and you scratch my back. We like each other’s posts, no matter how insipid, unremarkable, and mediocre, in order to fuel the feedback loop. This feedback loop can make us squander our entire existence on false validation.

Getting caught up in this loop is a huge time suck, a huge distraction, a huge waste, and a huge diversion from meaningful pursuits. But its draw is peer pressure and the tyranny of Technology: Don’t live in the common currency of technology and be irrelevant, invisible, and essentially dead.

It takes a lot of courage to live off the grid.

Going Off Social Media Feels Like Being Abandoned

Many people cannot do it. They are so dependent on the sense of community, however fake, that they derive from their social media accounts. To delete their accounts would result in a feeling of terrifying, primal aloneness, for which there is no word in English. We have to look to German:

MutterseelenalleinLinks to an external site.: complete abandonment, the sense that your mother's soul has left you. 

People with tattered, undeveloped, needy selves will be too scared to go off the grid because they will become possessed by the terror of mutterseelenalleinLinks to an external site.. 

Feedback Loop Can Be Explained by Pigeon Experiments

In 1971, researcher Michael Zeiler did pigeon experiments in which he found they pecked more ravenously when their pellet rewards were inconsistently given because the inconsistency was analogous to gambling’s dopamine effects.

Facebook’s Like Button

Decades later, Facebook did an experiment with a “like” button, the first of its kind on the Internet, and the “like” button had the effect of crack cocaine. It was a game-changer. Suddenly Facebook grew exponentially, not just in users, but in the amount of time users spent on Facebook.

Getting “likes” was like gambling. Your uploaded photo might win a lucky strike or it might be a dud, but when you got a “full house,” as it were, you received a huge dopamine hit.

Facebook users got addicted. They experienced euphoria when they enjoyed a hailstorm of “likes”; they experienced shame and anguish when their posts were ignored or not liked.

Think about it: Adults with higher degrees of education, with high-ranking jobs, with family responsibilities, were sitting at their computers in their robes drinking their green Matcha tea or eating their Hot Pockets while obsessing over their Facebook ranking. They had been reduced to experimental pigeons. They had become needy and pathetic.

But here’s the thing: Users were on Facebook LONGER than before. And that’s the point. Website creators want you on their site, the longer the better. They need to find ways to get you hooked. They don’t like you. They don’t respect you. They look at you as a potential addict, and they’re the pusher.

They actually look at you as a dumb rat or a dumb pigeon. They are rich, and they are laughing at us.

In fact, Mark Zuckerberg is on record as having said that “trusting Facebook users are dumb *****.”

What is the Human Self-Inflicted Distraction Principle?

Studies show that humans can’t sit still. They can’t be alone with their thoughts. They settle into a life of easy because, ironically, settling into a good life, a life full of comfort and non-conflict, drives people crazy.

People will induce their own problems out of nothing, they will create new challenges, they will sink into a hole, just so they can create a solution to a problem that never had to exist in the first place.

Rich movie stars do nose dives into self-destruction, we are told because the thrill of success can’t be enjoyed unless interrupted by a challenge.

In other words, we’re incurably self-destructive. Why?

The Self-Inflicted Distraction Principle 

We operate on the Self-Inflicted Distraction Principle. We are restless, scared of the emptiness inside us, and desperate for distractions. 

The drug pushers of the Internet know this all too well. The makers of games know this all too well. Tetris and World of Warcraft are built for people who need constant challenge and distraction. People are addicted to setting never-ending goals to avoid being still.

Karoshi: Death from Overworking

People are so scared of stillness, they will devise distractions. They will work, play games, try to improve their social media status, wear fitness watches, take their work home on laptops to “get ahead of the curve,” and the final summation of this never-ending treadmill is the Japanese term karoshi—“death from overworking.”

Getting on the Internet treadmill becomes a neurosis and a disease. People lose their essential self, and they don’t know it because it feels normal.

What is the Zeigarnik Effect?

Incomplete experiences occupy our minds and stay in our memories more than completed ones.

This is analogous to a cliffhanger for a TV show. If it ends on a cliffhanger, we are more likely to become obsessed and watch subsequent shows.

Cliffhangers can create compulsive binge-watching.

“Post-play” maximizes the cliffhanger principle. Breaking Bad from Netflix becomes a 13-hour nonstop movie punctuated with cliffhangers.

The Assist

The Netflix binge became a phenomenon, and the binge works because, in addition to cliffhangers, Netflix has your programming defaulted so that if you do nothing but just sit in front of the screen the next episode will begin automatically. This is called an “assist” in the industry.

What is the “bad is stronger than good” principle?

No matter how good the reviews on Yelp, Amazon, and Rate My Professor, it’s the bad reviews that stick out and have the biggest influence on people.

This principle applies to social media. You may get lots of good feedback on your channel, but it’s the mean ones that punch you in the gut and make you forget the positive feedback.

Always wanting to overcome negative feedback with greater and greater positive feedback feeds social media addiction.

Five. Why are children more vulnerable to Internet addiction than adults?

Children don’t have the natural boundaries that mature people have.

And just as dangerous, if we let children do easy things like using the Internet at the expense of more difficult albeit rewarding things like reading books, we deprive children of an important principle: Hardship inoculation.

The younger we experience tough tasks and learn how to overcome their difficulty the more we will embrace meaningful, challenging tasks later in life. For example, we may be tragically raising a generation of non-book readers.

Gamification:

Gamification is taking a non-game experience like fitness, nutrition, or social media abstinence, and turning it into a game with points and opportunities to beat personal records and so on.

Alter writes: “Gamification is a powerful business tool and if harnessed appropriately it also drives happier, healthier, and wiser behavior."

Behavioral Addiction on Social Media Platforms:

Adam Alter explains the parallels between substance addiction and behavioral addiction in this video:

 

Summary of Jaron Lanier’s Critique of Social Media

Introduction:

It's doubtful any of us will totally get off social media. Going off the grid is quite a commitment, the equivalent of disappearing inside a cabin in Alaska and killing bears with a bow and arrow as we live off the land. The fact of the matter is most of us live in the digital world, we are constrained by the pandemic, and my students tell me they are too busy to spend physical time with their friends and that a bit of social media and texting is all they have time for.

I find it interesting, though, that an overwhelming majority of my students tell me they waste too much time on social media and texting to the point that this wasted time compromises their college studies and their general productivity. They even admit that their overuse of social media and texting doesn't make them happy; in fact, it makes them miserable.

Jaron Lanier explains why:

One. Social media is now a portable crack machine that puts us inside a dopamine feedback loop resulting in a gradual behavior modification and addiction that can entrap even the smartest, most disciplined individuals because the addictive nature of social media is not a bug; it's a feature. Social media exists so that we give up our autonomy. 

Two. When we are addicted to anything, including social media's intermittent rewards, we become a nastier, meaner, dumber version of ourselves. Why? Because we are natural attention-seekers. Facebook and Google know this, so they reward us for our attention-seeking ways. What wins attention: Being outrageous, obnoxious, ruthless grotesque versions of ourselves. Getting attention on social media makes us the Worst Versions of Ourselves. 

Three. Because we are tribalists, we are vulnerable to social anxiety and social status as it pertains to our social media interactions. Long-term social media immersion results in anxiety and eventually into acute depression. Studies show that social media use makes us less and less happy and more and more “cranky” and anxious.

Four. Not only do we become addicted to social media, our addiction makes us willing participants in our own submission to data mining so that we are the product of the social media companies who sell our most private date to other business entities without our knowledge and consent. 

Five. Social media by its very nature tends toward fakery, manipulation, propaganda, and "fake news" because in grabbing attention from the reptilian part of our brains, social media is in a "race to the bottom" to get outrage. This sense of outrage is essential for maximizing clickbait and revenue for the social media companies. 

Six. As we adapt to the "race to the bottom," we become more polarized as a society and this polarization degrades democracy while strengthening fascism and totalitarianism.

Jaron Lanier’s Main Argument

Jaron Lanier makes a compelling case that we must delete our social media accounts because immersing ourselves in the social media ecosystem brings out our Inner Demon through selfish addiction, wolf pack behavior (joining Outrage Machine and Cancel Culture), and attention-getting fakery, which becomes “a race to the bottom.”

Lanier’s Supports 

Social media use leads to radical personality change for the worse.

Social media leads to addiction, which leads to radical personality change. To become an addict is for a normal person to lose her best self to her monster self.

The addict is in a constant state of neediness and deprivation, looking for the next hit. Smartphone nation is a nation of addicts. 

Social media addiction makes us selfish as we recoil into a Universe of One.

The addict “is always deprived, rushing for affirmation.” He is nervous, “compulsively pecking at his situation.” He is selfish, self-absorbed, and too “wrapped-up” in his addictive cycle to have empathy for others.

Addicts succumb to a “personal mythology of grandiosity.” This grandeur speaks to their colossal insecurity.

Social media addicts are aggressive: They victimize others and they play the victim.

Social media addicts become competitive trolls trying to “win points” in arguments and become more and more belligerent.

Lanier notices when he was a prominent blogger at Huffpost he received a torrent of belligerent emails. He noticed manipulation and a prominent phony AH Factor, the result of personalities conforming to online addiction.

Of all the arguments against social media, this is the one that he is most emotional and “visceral” about.

How Social Media Creates A***

Simple syllogism: A*** get the most attention. Social media creates attention addiction. Therefore, social media creates A***.

Two. What is a Solitary/Pack switch?

Lanier says we all have an inner troll. The troll is the pack wolf. We are more happy and more free as the solitary wolf.

But social media makes us pack wolves.

We all have a Solitary/Pack switch for our inner wolf.

Social media flips the Pack switch on. We become obsessed with our ranking in the wolf pack. Where we stand in our social hierarchy is our everything, so much that we lose contact with reality. Loyalty to the pack becomes more important than any adherence to reality, so if our pack denies climate change, we deny climate change to the death.

If our pack supports a racist politician, we justify our support of this racist politician. We may deny that this politician is racist even if overwhelming evidence supports the contrary.

This Pack Behavior is ruining America. It’s making us divided against each other. Social media has accelerated Pack Behavior in ways we cannot even imagine because in part in a very short period of time close to 2.5 billion people worldwideLinks to an external site. are on social media.

Pack behavior also creates a social outrage machine on Twitter where people will gang up on someone who is perceived as being bad. People get like sharks tasting blood. Take the case of Justine SaccoLinks to an external site., for example.

Solitary Wolf

In contrast to being a Pack Wolf, a Solitary Wolf is an independent critical thinker who isn’t beholden to groupthink or being beholden to conforming to the pack.

Pack Behavior on Facebook and Twitter 

Where you stand in the social hierarchy in Facebook and Twitter worlds becomes important because the social media environment manipulates you based on rewards and punishments. Rewards are likes and followers, which produce dopamine. We get addicted to dopamine and begin to behave in ways that will enhance our social esteem on these platforms, what Lanier calls “BUMMERland.”

• We will also share the outrage of the Pack.
• We can become an inner troll as a result.
• Lanier’s conclusion: Delete your social media. 

Three. How does fakery grow exponentially on social media?

Because behavior modification steers people to be fake versions of themselves, curating some grandiose self, everything else that generates from social media is likewise fake. 

 

 

Connect Haidt, Turkle, and Lanier into your thesis and outline.

1A Essay 3 (Essay Worth 200 Points): What Is Causing the Mass Erosion of Critical Thinking Skills?

Due as an upload on May 13. 

The Assignment:

For a 1,200-word essay, develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the forces that cause a societal intellectual and emotional disintegration analyzed in Jonathan Haidt’s essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” 

For research, you must draw from the following:

Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

The Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma

I also recommend the Netflix Black Mirror episode "Nosedive."

Suggested Outline:

Paragraph 1: Using appropriate signal phrases, summarize and paraphrase the major points of Jonathan Haidt's essay "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid."

Paragraph 2: Develop an argumentative thesis in which you support, refute, or complicate Haidt's claim.

Paragraphs 3-7: Your supporting paragraphs. At least one of your paragraphs should cite Jaron Lanier's book and another paragraph should address the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. 

Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.

Your last page is the Works Cited page with no fewer than 4 sources in MLA format. 

***

If McMahon Were Writing the Essay: My Approach

Jonathan Haidt makes a lot of salient points in his essay “Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” He observes our fragmented experiences that have us in our own social media echo chambers, which reinforce our cognitive biases; our deep hatred and animosity for people who are not on “our team”; our loss of trust in institutions; our loss of shared narratives to bond us together as a whole; our replacement of real friendships with parasocial interactions; the “never-ending stream of content” that has fragmented our minds; our addiction to outrage, virtue signaling, and virality; the ubiquity of smartphone devices that are accelerants of addictive behavior; orthodox political tribalism that is more fervent than religious faith and is so virulent that many of us live to “own our political enemies”;  the death of local news; the explosion of trolls in the age of extremist algorithms; the fever swamp of extremist conspiracy theories; weaponized misinformation in the service of autocrats; and a citizenry so confused they shrug their shoulders, say, “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” and surrender to nihilism and apathy. 

While social media has surely been an accelerant to the above problems that pose a threat to American democracy, we would be unwise to overemphasize social media’s role. Like the Gutenberg Press in the fifteenth century, social media will be the cause of much chaos and upheaval, some good and some bad. We would be wise to see that America’s division and acrimony have been baked in long before social media from deep sources of a long-standing cultural war between the city and the country (red and blue states), a generation war between Z and the Boomers; a class war between the haves and the have-nots, and a swath of anti-social males who lacking education, economic ascent, reproductive opportunities, and hope, are drawn to populism and fascism as ways of taking revenge on their imaginary foes. 

Thesis That Disagrees with the Above

While I agree with McMahon that America’s erosion of democracy and stupidification cannot entirely be laid at the hands of social media, the well-intentioned college instructor is in deep error to compare social media problems to the problems presented by the Gutenberg Press before it. Such a comparison shows that McMahon is blind to the unique crises and disasters that social media imposes on society. As Jaron Lanier, the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, and Jonathan Haidt rightly show, social media has profit-driven, built-in mechanisms and algorithms to make us stupid, addicted, narcissistic, tribalistic, and incapable of supporting a thriving democracy. 

Thesis That Disagrees with Both McMahon and Writer X

Let us not toil needlessly to side with either McMahon or Writer X. Both are wrong. In fact, McMahon is partially correct when he observes that the virulent tribalism that is dividing America is a toxic cocktail of social and cultural divisions and the pathologies of social media. Moreover, Writer X is also correct to argue that social media presents unique dangers that cannot be compared to the Gutenberg Press or other disruptive technologies that have come before it. In other words, if we are to restore America’s democracy, we will have to address the built-in disasters of social media and the systemic unrest from class and cultural divisions. In case McMahon and Writer X don’t know how to do this, it’s called walking and chewing gum at the same time.