Today’s Plan:
- Attendance
- Campus Climate Survey
- Writing Center on Thesis Statements
- Look for my feedback (Dulce, Sydney, JaRay, Elena, Hannah)
- Links, Transitions, and Evidence
- Workshopping
- Reviewing Homework
Links, Transitions, and Evidence
We are at the part of the semester where I will be a bit more diligent in checking that you are actually reading, and making sure that you are incorporating that reading into your writing in sophisticated and responsible ways. With that in mind, I want to do a quick demonstration to show the difference between a 3 (or a C) and a 4 (or an A) on the weekly writing reports.
Here’s a strong paragraph from last week’s writing:
First off, the movement is not anti-police. There are tons of great police officers out there that take their job seriously and treat everyone equally like they should. However, there are some officers who don’t treat everyone the same. Every officers job is to serve and protect. The three sisters (Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza) who started the movement also stated, “Police officers are people. Their lives have inherent value. This movement is not an anti-people movement; therefore, it is not an anti-police-officer movement. Most police officers are just everyday people who want to do their jobs, make a living for their families, and come home safely at the end of their shift”.There is no reason that an innocent black man should fear being pulled over or confronted by an officer. There have been way too many cases that a black man was killed for allegedly “reaching for a weapon” while they were asked to show their license and registration.
As on Wednesday, I think we can read this paragraph and find a moment where there is a big logical jump, where one sentence doesn’t speak to what came immediately before it. Let’s talk about that.
But I also want to talk about arrangement and logical development. I haven’t said too much about thesis statements in the class because I think they carry a lot of baggage and generally confuse people. What I want to talk about instead is making claims. At the core, good writing is structured to make a claim and then provide evidence and reasons to support that claim (evidence and reasons are the two major categories of logos). My guess is that we all have a good sense of “evidence.” Evidence is tangible, measurable, quantitative, material. One can point to it. A videotape of a robbery, for instance. Evidence isn’t necessarily invented, it is found or measured. Reasons are different. Wikipedia offers a nice, concise definition for “reason”: “A reason is a consideration which justifies or explains.” Reasons are invented (or, using Aristotle’s language, “artistic”). A strong argumentative paragraph will blend a mix of evidence and reasons in support of a claim.
Looking at the paragraph above, we see a clear claim: BLM is not anti-police. And we see evidence of this, too: a quote from the founders of BLM that clearly indicates that BLM isn’t anti-police. Good.
First off, the movement is not anti-police. From the beginning the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, have maintained that “Police officers are people. Their lives have inherent value. This movement is not an anti-people movement; therefore, it is not an anti-police-officer movement. Most police officers are just everyday people who want to do their jobs, make a living for their families, and come home safely at the end of their shift.” Contrary to Bill O’Reilly, Breibart, and others in the media, BLM does not promote violence against police officers. There are tons of great police officers out there that take their job seriously and treat everyone equally like they should. However, there are some officers who don’t treat everyone the same.
There have been way too many cases like that of Philando Castile, a black man was killed for allegedly “reaching for his weapon” during a routine traffic stop. Just this week we are coping with the deaths of Keith Lamont Scott and Terence Crutcher. And while CNN reports that the police suggest that Scott was holding a gun and not a book when he was shot (in contrast to earlier media reports that he was holding a book), the larger concern is the role race plays in police shootings and in our justice system in general. Black Lives Matter isn’t responding to one or two isolated events, but to a larger systemic problem. A recent Vanity Fair article explores 18 academic studies on police shootings, one of which, by UC Davis professor Cody Ross found that an unarmed black person was 3.5 times more likely to be shot that an unarmed white person. Similarly, several other studies in the article report how much more likely black people are to be searched or stopped by police. Black Lives Matter isn’t advocating killing police or rejecting their need or authority. Rather, it wants America to recognize that there are a select few police officers are more likely to target black suspects and seem much more willing to escalate to lethal force when a suspect is black and not white.
Homework
Week 6 Writing Reports (the 3rd report so far) is due this weekend. As I said on Wednesday, I’m looking for a few specific things this week:
- First, I will be looking for reading–deep reading–and engagement with other people’s facts and ideas
- Second, I want to see you using my magic sentence and links to bring these readings into your writing. Summarize a reading in a sentence or two
- Third, I want to see one use of a direct quote using my complete four-part process: signal, quote, summary, and analysis
- Fourth, I will be paying close attention to your first sentences. MY ADVICE IS TO MAKE SURE THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF A POST IS THE LAST ONE YOU WRITE
- Fifth, and finally, I want to see you craft a post that makes a strong claim and then backs it up with 3 reasons or evidence
