Homework and Recap.
1. Today in class we looked at Thesis Sentences (Rules pp. 27-31). handout: Writing with a Thesis. Complete all the exercises. Do not type out, write on the paper. Bring to class.
2. Argumentation: Lecture. Read in Rules pp. 84-110.
Also look at https://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/argument/
3. Watch this video: When the Shotgun Questions the Black Boy by Sonya Renee Taylor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImN6zCJ_BKM
4. Analyze the poet's argument (250 words about 3-4 paragraphs).
What is her claim? is it a claim of policy, value or fact?
See http://www.scsk12.org/scs/subject-areas/research_paper/claim.htm
What is the author’s argument? What evidence does she use? How does she set it up? Are you familiar with at least one of her analogies? What is an analogy? What does she mean when she says the poem is from the
perspective of the gun? What is a metaphor? Can guns talk? So the gun is a metaphor or personification of what?
Use evidence to support your claim. Cite the video at the end. See Rules page 512.
When we talk about argumentation, for those who looked at Hacker, an argument is a persuasive discourse; someone is trying to change your mind about something. In this case, what is the poet trying to change your mind about?
Deduction looks at the case makes a universal assumption based on the case and its relationship to a particular example of the case in point. Take for instance:
Induction moves from the evidence to the conclusion.
Induction says here is the evidence:
Black boys, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo, Alan Blueford . . . hoodies, night time, day time, age doesn’t matter, but youth is a plus, hand guns, rifles, fear or arrogance, police, ordinary white male citizens –
This is what we can probably conclude: Trayvon Martin was shot and killed.
So obviously there are many Americans who believe shooting black boys makes sense.
There is such a thing as fallacious arguments. A fallacy is flawed thinking or reasoning. In deductive arguments there is something wrong with the form and the fallacy is call formal fallacies. Even if the first argument is true, there is something wrong about such conclusions, isn’t there?
In the inductive argument, the fallacies involve the evidence. These fallacies are material fallacies.
There is something incorrect about the evidence. Again, in our example the evidence is not incorrect, but the reasoning seems to be so.
5. Continue reading Rubin. Catch up.
Feb. 3-7 prepare: pp. 69-111
Feb. 10-14 prepare pp. 112-140
Feb. 17-21 prepare pp. 141-193
Feb. 24-28 prepare: pp. 194-220
Mar. 3-7 prepare: pp. 221-257
Mar. 10-14 prepare: pp. 258-292
For March 1, 2014
Look for homework for next week next Saturday, March 1. I'd like everyone to find two articles from the library database on Rubin and another on happiness from a scholarly perspective.
Assignment
Visit http://alameda.peralta.edu/library/article-databases/ If you have trouble accessing the data email the Virtual Librarian at http://alameda.peralta.edu/library/distance-education-resources/
I will put this in a separate post. This is just a preview.
1. Today in class we looked at Thesis Sentences (Rules pp. 27-31). handout: Writing with a Thesis. Complete all the exercises. Do not type out, write on the paper. Bring to class.
2. Argumentation: Lecture. Read in Rules pp. 84-110.
Also look at https://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/argument/
3. Watch this video: When the Shotgun Questions the Black Boy by Sonya Renee Taylor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImN6zCJ_BKM
4. Analyze the poet's argument (250 words about 3-4 paragraphs).
What is her claim? is it a claim of policy, value or fact?
See http://www.scsk12.org/scs/subject-areas/research_paper/claim.htm
What is the author’s argument? What evidence does she use? How does she set it up? Are you familiar with at least one of her analogies? What is an analogy? What does she mean when she says the poem is from the
perspective of the gun? What is a metaphor? Can guns talk? So the gun is a metaphor or personification of what?
Use evidence to support your claim. Cite the video at the end. See Rules page 512.
5. Before you write the essay continue reading the Lecture
When we talk about argumentation, for those who looked at Hacker, an argument is a persuasive discourse; someone is trying to change your mind about something. In this case, what is the poet trying to change your mind about?
There are different kinds of claims, claims of
value, claims of policy and claims of fact. Often an argument or claim will
straddle a couple of perspectives. Which claims does the poet touch on?
Value says X is better than Y.
Policy
says we need to write
laws to change X and Y because neither is fair.
Fact
says that the black boy
was killed because he was black, plain and simple. (The fact is debatable not
absolute).
We
also have two types of arguments: deductive and inductive.
Deduction looks at the case makes a universal assumption based on the case and its relationship to a particular example of the case in point. Take for instance:
If A is
true: Black boys with hoodies are more likely to be seen as criminals and shot.
And B is true: Trayvon Martin was a black boy wearing a hoodie.
And B is true: Trayvon Martin was a black boy wearing a hoodie.
Therefore C
is true: Trayvon Martin was shot and killed.
Induction moves from the evidence to the conclusion.
Induction says here is the evidence:
Black boys, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo, Alan Blueford . . . hoodies, night time, day time, age doesn’t matter, but youth is a plus, hand guns, rifles, fear or arrogance, police, ordinary white male citizens –
This is what we can probably conclude: Trayvon Martin was shot and killed.
Another
thing, when we talk about argumentation we are speaking of rational thinking
and reasoning processes. We call this LOGIC or being LOGICAL. To be logical
does not mean you are right, it just means what you state or think or the
actions you make based on what you think or believe make sense to other
thinking beings (us).
So obviously there are many Americans who believe shooting black boys makes sense.
There is such a thing as fallacious arguments. A fallacy is flawed thinking or reasoning. In deductive arguments there is something wrong with the form and the fallacy is call formal fallacies. Even if the first argument is true, there is something wrong about such conclusions, isn’t there?
In the inductive argument, the fallacies involve the evidence. These fallacies are material fallacies.
There is something incorrect about the evidence. Again, in our example the evidence is not incorrect, but the reasoning seems to be so.
5. Continue reading Rubin. Catch up.
Feb. 3-7 prepare: pp. 69-111
Feb. 10-14 prepare pp. 112-140
Feb. 17-21 prepare pp. 141-193
Feb. 24-28 prepare: pp. 194-220
Mar. 3-7 prepare: pp. 221-257
Mar. 10-14 prepare: pp. 258-292
For March 1, 2014
Look for homework for next week next Saturday, March 1. I'd like everyone to find two articles from the library database on Rubin and another on happiness from a scholarly perspective.
Assignment
Visit http://alameda.peralta.edu/library/article-databases/ If you have trouble accessing the data email the Virtual Librarian at http://alameda.peralta.edu/library/distance-education-resources/
I will put this in a separate post. This is just a preview.
posted by Professor Wanda's Posse at 12:35 PM
5 Comments:
Victor Chen
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 1A Saturday
2 March 2014
When the Shotgun Questions Short Essay
Sonya Renee Taylor believes that we often do not treat each other like human beings. She wrote the poem When the Shotgun Questions the Black Boy to counter the narrative that young black men like Trayvon Martin deserve to shot because he was a “bad kid”, “smoked weed” , or “got suspended”. Sonya sets up her poem, which is about a young black man, Darius Simmons who got shot and killed by his neighbor while taking out the trash, by beginning with the epigraph: “Darius Simmons, was by all accounts a good kid” and by introducing that the poem is “from the perspective of the gun.”
I think the shotgun is a metaphor for the true loss of life from the perspective of those who are affected by the shot but that this is not felt by those who indiscriminately take the loss of someone. There is no way society can define goodness and badness. The shotgun shoots all that away, and it stops us from feeling sadness when sadness comes into our lives or having feelings of happiness when happiness comes into our lives. Now that Darius is not alive any longer, he could not “hold your [Darius’s] wilting mother while she wept?”, “weep over your [Darius’s] father’s footprints?” , or he could not “write him [Darius’s father] in prison?”
Sonya mentions examples of black men who were shot down and a few “dont’s” for Darius if he wanted to stay alive: “Don’t reach for your wallet, Dialo, I mean Darius. Don’t get be getting married in the morning, Shawn. I mean Darius. Don’t be getting handcuffed in the subway, Oscar, I meant Darius.” These examples make me think that the person wielding the gun has the true power to imprison. The shotgun stuns us in a way like a prison keeps us locked up. Sonya makes clear to me that the real prison is the ones we create ourselves to imprison goodness by the gun.
Works Cited
Renee Taylor, Sonya. “Sonya Renee Taylor - When The Shotgun Questions The Black Boy”
Youtube. 13 October 2013. Web. 2 March 2014.
Dorothy Middleton Middleton 1
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 1A Saturday
1 March 2014
The Shot Guns Speaks
Sonya Renee Taylor’s argument is that when you are a young African American male in the United States, you are likely to be perceived as a bad kid and stand a great chance of dying at the hands of the judge and jury; the shot gun.
The author states that after reading several accounts of the shooting death of Darius Simmons, a thirteen year old African American male; she became concern about the messages the white media was spoon feeding the public. She contends that the information was base sole on stereotypes. She farther states that most of the information about Darius was unfounded and untrue. We see and hear these kinds of reports almost every day in the media. As part of the shock and ah campaign the media uses to keep us glued to our television, they paste pictures of our African American males with headings that reads like the who’s, who of crime. We assume that they are guilty just because the media has stated so. No trial, no evidence, just the notion that the information has to be true; the media is seen as our link to the truth.
Middleton 2
I feel that it could easily be said that the author was referring to the same issue that young African Americans males have faced thru out history. Brent Staples stated in his essay, Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space, one of the biggest issue he faced was the perception of who he was as a Young African American male in this country. He claims the issue was due to “unwieldy inheritance”. This seems to me what young men like Darrius Simmons, Dialo and Oscar Grant all had in common an “unwieldy inheritance”.
Sonya views on that subject were pointed out when she interchanged their names to show they were all seen as one in the same, an African American male who needed to die because of their “unwieldy inheritance”.
It doesn’t matter if you look in to the case of Darius Simmons, Oscar Grant or even Emmett Till, the fourteen year old African American who was murder for whistling at a white woman in 1955, you would have to see that they all have the same issue, an “unwieldy inheritance”. Staples hit it on the nail. I think Brent as well as Sonya, based their believes on the fact that it was all about skin color and nothing more; a fallacy which has a life of its own
Middleton 3
That fallacy is thanks to Johann Blumenbach. In 1786 AD, he not only classifies humans by color, he also proclaimed; and it is still widely accepted today by many, that whites were superior to all the other races. Once we fast forward from 1786 AD to the years of slavery, we not only have an element of superiority which whites felt during that time based on Blumenbach’s fallacy; the element that African American were less than human as pointed out by the United State Constitution; and the fact that whites doing that time felt that African Americans were dangerous and untrustworthy. An “unwieldy inheritance” that is seen as a save guard for the ruling class to justify their killing of any young African American male even when their pants are not low, their grades are good and they help their mom with the rent; they can still be seen as a bad kid coming from the store eating a bag of skittles.
The author used the personification of the shot gun to deliver a message of hallucination. A message that maybe, just maybe that shot gun will be able to make a decision in a split second
and weed out the bad kid from the good kid and saving the good kid from a sure death. “It was all a dream”, sings Biggie Small, there is no split second once the trigger is pull and the bullet is deployed. That shot gun then becomes the judge and the jury, pronouncing all who stand in front of its barrel guilt, guilt, guilt.
Middleton 4
Works Cited
Biggie Small. "It Was All a Dream." Notorious B.I.G. N.d. Web.
"Brent Staples, Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space." 50 Essays, A Portable Anthology. 4th ed. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 394+. Print.
"Sonya Renee Taylor - When The Shotgun Questions The Black Boy." YouTube. YouTube, 28 Oct. 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.
Nadia Cade
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 1A Saturday
3 March 2014
When the Shotgun Questions
Sonya Renee Taylor poem spoke of the inhumane ways humans can be towards one another in the past and present. Sonya spoke of the Darius Simmons situation but included different scenarios that happened in other black boy’s murders. I think Sonya’s claim was of fact because she spoke of many different cases that happened previously and currently in which black boys were innocently killed. Sonya stating the poem was coming from perspective of the gun could come from the fact that guns have been used to kill black boys in situations where the reason doesn’t justify the action. The “shotgun” was asking questions that is irrelevant to the case and tried to depict the black boy’s as someone who was guilty of a crime. The news will report a story similar to Darius’s story and mention facts about the victim that will try to insinuate the murder is “justifiable” when it’s not.
An analogy happens when the author starts to compare other situations to the one their speaking of and Sonya had many analogies throughout her poem. In one of her comparisons she used the Emmett Till case in which a young black boy was murdered because he whistled at a white girl. Emmett’s case is an analogy to Darius’s case because he was another black boy treated inhumanly. A metaphor is when the author uses a different term in represent something else and in this case I think the gun is a personification of the media and the killer. The shotgun asked questions that are answered in news report s or the answers could be the explanations of the killer on why he pulled the trigger in all the cases she spoke of.
Works Cited
Renee Taylor, Sonya. “Sonya Renee Taylor - When the Shotgun Questions the Black Boy”
YouTube. 13 October 2013. Web 3 March 2014.
Yessica Beltran
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 1A Saturday
6 March 2014
Analyzing “When the Shotgun Questions the Black Boy”
Sonya Renee Taylor claims that the way the media presents stories of young black men who are killed is ridiculous. The media questions the victim, not the person who fired the gun. Taylor disapproves of the media and society using negative stereotypes to justify the killing of these young men. In Taylor’s poem, “When the Shotgun Questions the Black Boy”, she writes from the perspective of the gun. The gun asks all of these questions, which are the ones asked by society when a tragedy like this happens.
Taylor begins her poem by stating, “ When the shotgun questioned the black boy’s heart, it asked.” A powerful way to begin this poem, as it states that as a society we question the story of his life, what he loves most, and not the incident itself. The shotgun in this poem is a metaphor for society. A metaphor is when one thing is used to represent another. The shotgun asks tons of questions at a rapid-fire pace, demanding to know how this “black boy”, in the case of this poem, Darius Simmons, behaves towards his parents, if his dad is still around, if not, did he comfort his mother when his father left, does he do his chores, does he wear his jeans low, did he do his homework, all questions that have nothing to do with Darius being killed. Meanwhile, the “gun” is also voicing ways in which Darius could have amended these “failures.” Darius should have looked for his father, he should have helped his mother pay bills, he should have worn his jeans at the waist. As if these actions would have stopped that man from killing him.
Taylor alleges that the answers to these questions, is the way we ultimately determine whether Darius was a bad kid. If he didn’t clean his room, he’s a bad kid. If he didn’t do his homework, he’s a bad kid. If his father left, it was probably because he is a bad kid. The media uses anecdotes like these to clear the shooter. Throughout the poem, the phrase “good kid”, is repeated. In one sentence, Taylor uses the phrase as an analogy, a comparison of two things. It reads, “if you’re a good kid I won’t peel your flesh like the skin of a plum.” This analogy is explaining how a gun can take a kid’s life just as easily as humans can flay the skin of a fruit. When presenting stories like Darius’s the media plays the “good kid vs bad kid” card, labeling victims based on their previous actions and personal life.
The poem ends with “the only good black kid is a dead one.” The public tends to generalize all cases involving young black men that have been killed. Comparisons are made and judgement is passed. Society moves on to next piece of news and these “black boys” are pushed aside, their memory silenced. As a nation with prejudice still very present among us, it is important that we remember the victims are not at fault for their misfortune. They are as human as the rest of us. Humans who made mistakes and tried to better themselves. It is up to us to question the shooter and uphold the impartiality denied to these victims.
Works Cited
Renee Taylor, Sonya. “Sonya Renee Taylor- When the Shotgun Questions the Black Boy”
YouTube. 13 October 2013. Web 6 March 2014.
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