Writing 140:
Assignments
"Traditional" American Culture: Benign and Wholesome or Inherently Racist?
Assignment 1: "Traditional" American Culture: Benign and Wholesome or Inherently Racist?
Purpose
In this assignment you will work to explore the dimensions in the act of writing that, when taken together, constitute the writing process. I have designed the lessons and activities that accompany this assignment to provide you with an overview of the major stages (prewriting, drafting, revising) of the writing process. In addition, it is of particular importance to me that the class as a whole becomes focused on writing concise and precise thesis statements.
Readings
Feagin, Joe R. Racist America: Roots, Current Policies, and Future Reparations. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. 1-36.
Magnet, Myron. The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 1993. (Paperback edition published in 2000.) Pp. 1-21.
Topic and Writing Task
According to Myron Magnet, the activist policing style that former mayor Rudolph Giuliani instituted in New York City in the 1990s has produced significant cultural changes, particularly with regard to the criminal portions of the city's (largely non-white) underclass. Magnet's description of post-1994 New York reads as follows:
Freed from fear, New Yorkers came out at night and flocked into the theaters and restaurants, joined by hordes of tourists, who crowded into the city once it lost the reputation of violence and disorder that had previously kept them away. And this concrete, real-world success left in tatters the cultural revolution's orthodoxy that society can't cut crime without curing its "root causes" of inequality and racism. (3)
By championing Giuliani's policy changes, Magnet makes a distinction between what he sees as effective cultural reform and the type of reforms supported by those who believe that "inequality and racism" are the "root causes" of crime in the United States. Magnet argues that Giuliani's activist policing style could be an important part of a holistic solution to the problem of cleaning-up America's underclass, a process that, for Magnet, has nothing to do with the question of race. Magnet believes that, were more American cities to follow New York's example, the United States as a whole would move toward a more wholesome, "traditional" American culture, the kind of American life envisaged by the founding fathers and that allegedly existed up until the nineteen sixties.
In his book Racist America, Joe Feagin indirectly argues against Magnet's view. For Feagin, the kind of policing lauded by Magnet constitutes an extreme form of racism as it aims, first and foremost, to cleanse white society of the presence of poor minorities (especially black Americans). In the following passage, Feagin links aggressive law enforcement to racism, and furthermore argues that such behavior and the attitudes that motivate it comprise a fundamental aspect of the American way of life:
Police harassment and brutality directed at black men, women, and children are as old as American society, dating back to the days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Such police actions across the nation today reveal important aspects of . . . the commonplace discriminatory practices of individual whites . . . [and] white dominated institutions that allow or encourage such practices. (2)
While Feagin's conception of American society is diametrically opposed to that of Magnet, both authors agree about one thing: the existence of a traditional American culture. For Magnet, "traditional" American culture exemplifies the "right life for man" (5), that is, it seeks to uphold the import of personal responsibility, sexual restraint, moderation, sobriety, families that nurture children, truthfulness, honesty, and liberty under law (5). Again, Feagin would likely embrace such values, but point out, too, that the ways in which we interpret the so-called "reality of human nature" (5) that Magnet describes may differ radically. What does it mean, after all, to practice "sexual restraint"? Does it mean, simply, that one should avoid promiscuity, or does it mean that the lives of homosexuals are "unrestrained"? What does it mean to have liberty under the law? If the laws privilege one group over another, how, then, can liberty, which would ideally be commensurate, exist? Feagin's assessment, then, of Magnet's "traditional" America is that it does indeed exist, but, far from Magnet's utopic conception, Feagin's "traditional" America is at its core inequitable and discriminatory.
Please read the excerpts from both texts that I have assigned, consider the points I have raised, and in a four to six page thesis-driven essay answer the following prompt:
Which description - Magnet's or Feagin's - of "traditional" American life as it relates to race and racism seems most convincing and why?
Paper 1 is due on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 at the beginning of class!