Today’s Plan:
- Project Two
- Calendar
Project Two
Opening Tracks:
- Jimi Hendrix’s “How would you feel?”
- NWA’s “Fuck the Police”
- Ice Cube’s “The Product”
- Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of”
See the liner notes to Evil Empire (1996), sophomore year of college.
Our second project is built around Ersula J. Ore’s award winning 2019 book Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity. I believe the book will resonate with both Miller and with Blankenship, though probably more the latter than the former. Blankenship argues that rhetorical empathy can lead to more productive engagements with others, and that a more healthy relationship with difference begins with introspection, self-reflection. Realizing Corder’s “loving” practice starts with being aware of our “home,” (in the sense that Victor Vitanza or Emmanuel Levinas provides it–“narrative” in Corder’s sense). Working with others,then, beings with working through our selves.
I believe Ore’s book will challenge many of our narratives. As a white, progressive scholar, I have been working the past few years to “listen” more to other’s perspectives, and can attest to the affective and cognitive friction such listening can produce. I can’t claim to know your politics, but I imagine many of you firmly believe you aren’t racist, that you would not discriminate against any individual based on the color of their skin or the place of their birth, or perhaps that characterizations of others are based on facts. I might also anticipate that, while you might acknowledge that racism exists in America, you condemn it and are not implicated in it.
When I was planning this unit, I was deliberating between assigning Ore’s book and Kendi’s best-seller How to Be Anti-Racist. Ore’s book is more scholarly, while Kendi’s is written for a wider audience. It is more accessible–both in terms of the sophistication of its terminology and prose *and* in terms of its argument. Kendi’s argument is both eloquent and simple, and I think I mentioned it in our last class: rather than thinking about racism as something someone is (as ethos, or identity in Miller’s terms), we need to think about it as what someone does (more in terms of logos, or policy in Miller’s terms). So, being anti-racist requires (to use Miller’s stases for policy debate) that:
- Ill: We recognize a problem. Que up *a lot* of statistics on the unequal educational, financial, penal outcomes between blacks and whites
- Narrative of Causality: Debate why those inequalities exist (essentialism vs. contextualism). Read the Ta-Nihese Coates essay.
- Inherency: Argue whether the problem needs intervention, will it go away. Imagine and challenge the arguments for why racism doesn’t require intervention
Miller’s stases for productive policy, for invigorating rather than suppressing democracy require that we focus on *doing* something to fix an ill. Those stases were:
- Solvency (what do you propose?)
- Feasability (how is it possible?)
- Unintended Consequences (imagine and address to the best of one’s ability)
Kendi’s approach to anti-racism resonates with Miller because he argues that being anti-racist means supporting policies with measurable outcomes that actively work to redress racial inequalities (we’ll talk more about this later, after we read the Coates).
So, if Kendi’s work resonates so nicely with Miller, why didn’t I pick it? Because I do not think it will challenge many of us in the way that Ore’s book will. The premises and examples from Ore’s book aren’t meant to persuade us to a movement. Kendi wants to change how we act, and is quite rhetorical in how he operates. Yes, his argument is supported with examples, both personal and historical, that are meant to outrage. But he gives us a path down which we can challenge that outrage.
I’m not so sure with Ore. I have a longer write-up on Ore I wrote in fall 2020 for my grad class. I’ll share that Monday, after you’ve shared yours. I mentioned last class what I see as a few of the major arguments of Ore’s work:
- Critique of Color-Blindness
- Claim: The logic, discourse, violence of lynching has been adapted in the 21st century. Lynching is the public use of violence and/or fear to sustain white supremacy and suppress others who might challenge it (including other white people)
- America is built on, and built by, White Supremacy and the economic inequality it produces. American capitalism cannot exist without inequality.
Much of Ore’s work is historical, rather than analytical. By this, I mean that, chapter by chapter, she documents the construction, formalization, authorization of state sanctioned violence. Her argument is that violence isn’t something just outside of the system (like say, a hate group such as the KKK). And violence isn’t necessarily physical force. We can unpack these claims as we read the chapters.
I cannot know what you have been taught about America and race. I can make some assumptions, but I know enough to tread carefully lest what I make you and mean. I feel kind of safe assuming that you *probably* have not read a book like this one.
Santos: you left off here at block #3, which lays some of the theoretical ground for this project:
- Blankenship, Rhetorical Empathy as Self-Interrogationli>
- Corder (“AaE:RaL”: Time, how do we build time into conflict, affect, disequilibrium?
- Rice (“Rhetorical Ecologies”): Time #2, how do/can we trace a rhetorical object as it moves through an ecology?
- Rice (2): How do we focus attention on something that might *not* interest us (Distant Publics)
Calendar
Below is a day-by-day calendar from now until spring break. As always, check daily class notes for updates and changes.
- Friday, Feb 19: Discuss Ore 3-29. Homework: read Ore 30-85. Submit Write-Up #4 on Ore (and anything you want to say publicly about my opening bit or today’s lecture–just make sure you talk about Ore too!)
- Monday, Feb 22: Class, your Ore Write Ups, last 15 minutes is my Ore write up. Homework: Read Ore, 101-122
- Wednesday, Class is cancelled so you can read. I will spend this afternoon constructing the source list that will be passed out on Monday the 26. Homework: Read Coates, “A Case for Reparations”, Kendi selection from How to Be Anti-Racist (pdf coming to Canvas). Write Up #5 on Coates, Kendi, and last Ore chapter.
- Friday, Feb 26: 25 minutes on WU#5, 25 minutes on Rhetorical Mapping assignment (dwelling). Homework: Read and annotate 2 of your news sources.
- Monday, March 1: I want to reserve class today to talk about the Project 1 papers. This means I have to grade them by this day. Go me! Homework: read and annotate another source.
- Wednesday, March 3: I want to reserve this day to talk about your news stories (I think). Homework: Read and annotate 2 sources.
- Friday, March 5: By this point you should have read 5 sources. In class: Lay out the Letter assignment. Proof of completion. Read 2 more sources.
- Monday, March 8: Lay out final reflection assignment. Homework: make sure you have read and annotated all 7 sources. The weird timed thing on Wednesday will be open note.
- Wednesday, March 10: In class “quiz” on sources. (timed writing that should take around 30 minutes). Let me know if you need help locating a lap top.
- Friday, March 12: Class cancelled. Submit your Final Reflection. If you so choose, submit any other materials you wouldn’t mind me using anonymously in a conference paper or academic article.
