MP3 Writing Goals; Race: Day 1

Period 1: 

Set goals for your writing portfolio, Marking Period 3:

• Write at least 1 goal that you want to accomplish in your portfolio
• Check your old goals and see if you met them. If not, why not? What need you do this marking period to be more "on the ball"?
• Read the portfolio advice (or see below)
• Choose 1 piece to revise this morning from your portfolio. Call it a new "draft" or Draft #2, #3, #4, etc. Keep your original as reference. Then follow these steps:
• 1. Identify the climax of your story/essay/poem 
• 2. Move this climactic scene to the beginning of your story
• 3. Use some of your original beginning as backstory later in the scene. Only use your backstory as suspense or as a delay when you need to transition from one scene to the next
• 4. Cut anything extraneous or unimportant from this draft

Also, during the lab please read the short article: "When Pop Culture Sells Dangerous Myths About Romance."

Try a writing prompt:

• Choose a movie, book, video game, or television show in which a male character pursues a female for the purpose of courtship. Could this be construed as sexual harassment? How does, in your opinion, the media promote sexual harassment by males in the stories we watch, read, or play? What might be the consequences of such images on youth or boys or men or women? Explore the topic.

View any of the following today in the lab, or as homework, or for next class:
Short videos to consider as inspiration/knowledge for your writing. Watch, take notes, brainstorm ideas for stories, plays, poems, podcasts, scripts, essays, memoirs, speeches, etc.:

• The Twisted Logic Behind America's Shameful Eugenic History (6 min)
• The History of Eugenics in America (video series) (about 130 minutes, broken into 10 min videos)
• Infowars: Special Report on Eugenics (30 min.)
• Further race/ethnicity info (Kahn Academy lecture, 6 min)

Things to research (in the lab, on your own, during this unit, etc.):

• One drop rule
• Better Baby contests
• Beauty contests (& beauty pageant history)
• Nature versus Nurture
• Immigration
• Jim Crow laws
• The Negro Motorist Green Book 
• Current events regarding immigration

Pick up The Caucasian Chalk Circle from the library.

Classroom/Period 2: Race.

Race: Define it in your own words.
Ethnicity: Define it in your own words.
Minority: Define it in your own words.

Let's start with this crash course video: Race & Ethnicity: Crash Course Sociology. Pay attention. Take notes as a writer. Consider what you can do creatively with the information you learn. 

Galton, (remember him?) the biological determinist who coined the idea of nature vs. nurture, supported the idea of eugenics: The belief (and practice) of improving the genetic quality of the human race through selective breeding, extermination, (or sterilization in some cases), separating the superior from the inferior. Eugenics was practiced in the US years before Hitler got his claws into the idea to exterminate the Jews (and others). During the Progressive Era, eugenics was seen as the best way to preserve and improve the dominant Hegemony in our population. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, the American eugenics movement received funding from various corporate foundations (the 1%) including the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. The Eugenics record office (ERO) was located in Cold Spring Harbor, NY by Charles Davenport. The ERO was one of the leading organizations to promote eugenics in seeking a solution to the problem of the "unfit" members of our society.

Before we throw stones, even prominent Black scholars and writers like W.E.B. Du Bois and Thomas Wyatt Turner believed "the best blacks were as good as the best whites (the talented tenth) of all races should mix", the idea of which is supporting eugenics. W.E.B. Du Bois stated that "only fit blacks should procreate to eradicate the race's heritage of moral iniquity..." see article for more information. Even "Better Baby" contests were held.

• Discuss

More Articles:

• "More Than Skin Deep"
• "In Living Color"
• "Grey Matter"
• "Color Lines"

HOMEWORK: Please complete your reading of The Distance Between Us by the beginning of next week. Bring your articles back with you & ideas for this topic by reading/noting the linked sources above. Bring The Caucasian Chalk Circle back with you to next class as well.

The Distance Between Us. Examine Grande's use of narration, description, exemplification, and compare/contrast tactics in the memoir. As an open-book test assignment, please answer 10 of the 20 questions for discussion to be turned in by Feb. 5 (pages 331-333 in the "teacher's section"). We will also hold a class discussion on the book at that point. Be prepared!