- Within her essay, Biss combines two different narratives to tell a story. One of those narratives being the telephone poles and the story behind the invention of the telephone. The other narrative is the lynching, the racism, the race riots that had occurred in the same time period as the invention of the telephone. Throughout her essay, they interact and intersect each other by sharing experiences. Biss states, “In 1898, in Lane Cormorant, Mississippi, a black man was hanged from a telephone pole” (Biss 7). Here is the introduction of racism and lynching within Biss’s essay, showing the weaving of both narratives within each other. By doing so, this allows the reader to find the similarity they have, and think about the common ground they share and how lynching started becoming massively public when telephone poles were first developed. Within her essay, I learned that although the telephone poles were not meant for lynching and hate crimes against blacks, but in fact the telephone poles were taken advantage of to show the lynching’s on a public scale. In her essay, it is stated that many people stopped to watch black men get hanged, or decided to partake in the beating and burning of bodies hung on the telephone poles.
- The game telephone represents a child whispering to another child a sentence and as it gets passed along to other children, they see how far it can deteriorate the audio. Like the game, the telephone poles started as a way to hang the wires caused by telephones throughout the towns. It had a clear purpose and message, just like the initial whisper of the first child. Throughout time, the telephone poles started being taken down, “Wherever telephone companies were erecting poles, home owners and business owners were sawing them down or defending their sidewalks with rifles” (Biss 6). This represents a child deteriorating the audio of the initial message throughout the game. After the large influx of telephone poles being taken down, they became widely popular, but then they were being used for lynching, seeing as the audio of the game becomes more and more butchered until its ending message is absolutely nothing like its initial message. The initial goal of the telephone poles were not used for lynching and hate crimes against blacks, but in fact for the communication purposes and to support telephones. As each child hears the initial message, the ending message is not what the initial message was meant for.
- My view of her essay has not changed, as I thought it was informative and had a lot of history written within the essay. I did, however, expect her to be black as she wrote as if she had such a connection to the hate crimes brought up within the essay. I feel as if she were black, I would view the essay as more personal and have an experience feel to it, but because she is writing it through the vision of someone else, it does not feel as personal or related as she made it feel. With the information, I did not have a change of view as everything that had been done to the black men was dehumanizing as not deserved, along with the fact that in many cases was unnecessary. That being said, the information and history is valid, but I feel as though it could have been stronger if there was a personal connection.
Month: April 2021
- I believe my essays most notable strength is being able to properly integrate quotes within my writing. I feel as if every quote I use is strong and supports the claims I am trying to make within my argument. I also introduce them properly, and give good background context on about the quote. For example, I stated, “In his speech, Foster Wallace discusses the idea of a liberal arts education, and how it was meant not to teach us knowledge, but teach us how to think. According to Foster Wallace, “…the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about” (Wallace 2)”. Here, I give background knowledge of what my quote is going to be about, introduce the quote, have the actual quote, and then cite it. From there, I then went on to analyze the quote, and show how it supports my thesis.
- I feel as if the revisions within my second essay were more analysis based than the revisions to my first essay. That being said, my second revision process really had me look into the details of my quotes, break them apart and analyze them so they fully support my thesis and the argument I am trying to make. My first essay, I felt like was more about fixing up loose ends rather than breaking apart my paragraphs and going into a further analysis. By doing so, my revision process has improved because it allows me to look deeper into my writing and improve upon the ideas I had previously written. This helped me specifically within the analysis of paragraph 7, because as I looked at it further during my revisions, I noticed I could turn it into a naysayer paragraph and introduce both Bloom and Foster Wallace’s voices to help strengthen my argument.
- I feel as though I had strong integration of source material because I clearly stated a claim about the background information of the quote, and introduced it properly. My quotes were always relevant to the claim I was trying to prove, allowing me to strengthen my argument. As for integration in itself, all my introductions of quotes came from “They Say/I Say” as the utilization of the templates in chapter three allowed me to organize my thoughts and properly integrate my quotes.
- “Although Foster Wallace suggests that we have the choice of what to think about and how our thoughts can directly affect those around us whether positive or negative, Bloom claims that empathy is narrow minded and insensitive, giving it a negative connotation”. I feel as if this is my strongest claim because it has both of the authors voices in it showing the comparison and argument, but it also continues the idea from the last paragraph into this one. I feel as though my voice throughout my writing is fairly present, although in high school I was never aloud to use my own voice. This has been a struggle for me, but I believe I have done a decent job trying to break that boundary and get out of my comfort zone.
- “Although I agree with Konnikova up to a point, I cannot accept her overriding assumption that interpersonal relationships cannot be developed over a virtual platform as Chen argues”(First essay). “Although I agree with some of Bloom’s arguments about the negative effects of empathy, Foster Wallace’s theories about having the decision to choose what to think about are worth adopting into my everyday life as a college student” (Second essay). Both thesis’s begin with an argumentative statement showing and finish showing which side I plan on taking throughout my essay. They also include the voice of both authors, and my own voice, showing that I will incorporate some of my own ideas into the essay as well. I feel as though my first thesis flows a little better as I used a template from “They Say/I Say” to help me organize my ideas, compared to my second thesis I did not use a template and thought my ideas were a little choppy. I thought my first thesis statement was stronger, and that it supported the argument and prompt in a stronger way than my second thesis did. I did feel as though the first prompt was a little more boxed in and the second prompt gave us more freedom, helping me collect my ideas and organize my thoughts better for the first essay rather than the second.
- While in Kingston, Cadogan faced dangers of walking in the streets alone at night because of the dangerous violence that occurred in Jamaica. When he moved to New Orleans, he thought the danger was going to get better, even when some university staff members warned him that walking alone late at night was dangerous. He thought because he came from Jamaica and the dangers there were far worse than the ones in America that he would be okay, but he was wrong. Cadogan states, “I wasn’t prepared for any of this. I had come from a majority-black country in which no one was wary of me because of my skin color. Now I wasn’t sure who was afraid of me” (Cadogan 6). Here he explains how he was found to be the danger to other people because there were many white people that lived in New Orleans. This also continued on when he lived in New York. He claimed that New York was just as bad as New Orleans, and that he had faced multiple assaults and police brutality while he was in New York. Indirectly, we learn that because of the difference of race that Cadogan was, people faced him as a threat because he was stereotyped against for being black. Just because he is different from the majority of people who lived in those cities does not make him a bad guy.
- I live right outside of Providence, RI, which is not the safest area. As a woman, I have had to make many rules for myself regarding what I wear, who I talk to, where I am, where I am going, etc. making it hard for me to feel safe when walking not even by myself but with a group of other women. I specifically related to Cadogan’s piece when he stated that the women he would walk with would also have to create the same rules as he did when it came to their safety on the streets. My mom has always told me to stay away from certain areas of Providence, and to dress conservatively. I always carry around pepper-spray wherever I go incase someone does approach me, and for my 16th birthday she had me take self defense classes as means of precaution. While walking around campus, I feel much safer than I do at home, but I still set rules for myself. I never walk alone past a certain time, and I always make sure I am aware of my surroundings or have someone with me. By having these rules, it helps me stay safe, and it keeps me reassured I have done everything to prevent myself from being harmed by someone else.
- There have been multiple times I have felt unsafe while walking in my hometown. The worst time was over summer break, I was working for a restaurant in an awful area of Providence and my shifts always ended after 11:00pm. I had a man following me to my car, yelling at me to turn around to look at him and cat-calling me. I just picked up my pace because my car was not far away from me now and he was a distance away from me. There was a man who passed by him and quickly caught up to me which alarmed me, but he explained that he was not going to hurt me, and that the man who was yelling behind me was taking pictures of me. He then proceeded to ask me my age, which I told him I was 17, and then told me because I was a minor he was going to call the cops. He took me back to inside the restaurant I worked at, told me to call my parents and have them come get me, while he dealt with the cops. He gave the cops a description of the man, and then when my parents arrived proceeded to talk about pressing charges. Although I was originally worried about the man who witnessed everything and approached me, I was thankful he helped me get to a safer place and deal with the authorities for me. From there on, I started having my parents or brother drive me to work, as I did not feel safe coming home from work so late.
- Coates sees the relationship of education and success as made up. He views education as a way to let people have control over him with the constant rules and discipline. He claims that to call yourself educated you had to be disciplined and follow the rules, but that wasn’t the case where he grew up. Education was also inflected by race as Coates states, “The world had no time for the childhoods of black boys and girls. How could the schools? Algebra, Biology, and English were not subjects so much as opportunities to better discipline the body…” (Coates 2). Here, Coates explains that education was not made for his race. Having to be an expert on the streets to protect yourself is arguably more important than education, and because of this Coates feels as if education is distant to him. He also talks about how everyone wants to live the dream of not being worried and eating good food to the classic white picket fence seen in a lot of white people’s yards. Because of this, he says all black people live in fear because of the dream, the dream to ultimately live how a white person is viewed. This allows him to feel distant because all he knew was that the dream was something he was not, and that education lead toward the dream. There were many failures Coates had while in school, such as threatening his teacher, but he found success with his mom and writing. In a sense, it seemed like writing kept him out of trouble, and that his mom allowed him to release himself and really think about his actions and his future. All in all, this is how Coates found his success.
- With the book being written in the form of a letter, it feels more personal and that a lot of thought and detail was put into it to allow the reader to feel something. This being said, it creates the content to be more personal and descriptive so the intended reader can understand on a deep level what the idea of the letter is about. Coates states, “Your grandmother was not teaching me hot to behave in class”(Coates 3). This excerpt resembles a letter because he addresses his mom as “your grandma” like the intended person knew who she was. This means this letter was directed towards someone directly, his son. He also uses great detail when explaining the people who would sit in the street and go into the store and buy drinks when they were handed money, almost as if the intended reader knew exactly what he was talking about. I feel as if Coates has a larger audience in mind when he goes on to explain how school was not meant for him and that the streets were what he knew. I think this because he becomes very specific when talking about the “Dream” as if it was towards a general audience, but becomes vague with personal details to his son. The form of this allows the audience to be moved by the excerpt because it shows so many personal details of Coates life.
- I was never super into school like some of my friends were. I get passing grades and do well in some classes, but I was never driven to exceed expectations or do any extra credit work. I did the bare minimum and that was enough to get me through high school. I feel as though school was not the place for me, and it was not until my senior year that I started becoming comfortable with schooling. My senior year I was able to choose the science classes I was interested in rather than take the mandatory computer engineering classes that pertain nothing to what I wanted to do when I grew up. In a sense, I feel like I can relate to Coates with that distant feelings towards school, that said it was preparing me for later in life, when in reality it did not prepare me at all. Coates claims, “I remember sitting in my seventh-grade French class and not having any idea why I was there. I did not know any French people, and nothing around me suggested I ever would” (Coates 2). Here, Coates is making the assumption that school is not for everyone, not everyone is interested in learning, and if it does not pertain to them then why are they doing it? School did not pertain to Coates as he was not interested in it, like it did not pertain to me until my senior year of high school when things started to become relevant.
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