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- WRC 1013/1023: Freshman Composition: Exploring Critical Issues
WRC 1013/1023: Freshman Composition: Exploring Critical Issues
Sources for WRC 1013: Christina Frasier, Darren Meritz & Pamela Mahan
Identity
- Delgado, Daniel, “‘And You Need Me to Be the Token Mexican?’: Examining Racial Hierarchies and the Complexities of Racial Identities for Middle Class Mexican Americans,” Critical Sociology"This article examines the racial identities of middle class Mexican Americans, and provides a focus on how racial oppression plays a significant role in the formation, negotiation, and organization of these identities. This article sheds light on how Mexican Americans continue to experience racism despite being middle class and achieving socioeconomic parity with many middle class whites. Drawing on 67 semi-structured open-ended interviews (one to three hours each) in Phoenix and San Antonio this article shows how middle class Latinos/as negotiate racialized identities and racial oppression. This research concludes that these middle class Mexican Americans utilize different identity practices to navigate racism and racial hierarchies. These practices are attempts to access white coded middle class resources and to maintain and/or shift their positions in the race and class hierarchies of the USA."
- Hernández, Ellie, and Gloria Anzaldúa, “Re-Thinking Margins and Borders: An Interview with Gloria Anzaldúa,” Discourse"This article examines the racial identities of middle class Mexican Americans, and provides a focus on how racial oppression plays a significant role in the formation, negotiation, and organization of these identities. This article sheds light on how Mexican Americans continue to experience racism despite being middle class and achieving socioeconomic parity with many middle class whites. Drawing on 67 semi-structured open-ended interviews (one to three hours each) in Phoenix and San Antonio this article shows how middle class Latinos/as negotiate racialized identities and racial oppression. This research concludes that these middle class Mexican Americans utilize different identity practices to navigate racism and racial hierarchies. These practices are attempts to access white coded middle class resources and to maintain and/or shift their positions in the race and class hierarchies of the USA."
- Lalami, Laila, “The Identity Politics of Whiteness,” The New York Times Magazine"Three years ago, I read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to my daughter. She smiled as she heard about Huck’s mischief, his jokes, his dress-up games, but it was his relationship with the runaway slave Jim that intrigued her most. Huck and Jim travel together as Jim seeks his freedom; at times, Huck wrestles with his decision to help. In the end, Tom Sawyer concocts an elaborate scheme for Jim’s release. When we finished the book, my daughter had a question: Why didn’t Tom just tell Jim the truth — that Miss Watson had already freed him in her will? She is not alone in asking; scholars have long debated this issue. One answer lies in white identity, which needs black identity in order to define itself, and therefore cannot exist without it."Illustration by Javier Jaén
- Schlesinger Jr., Arthur, "The cult of ethnicity, good and bad," Time"Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argues that America 'escaped the divisiveness of a multiethnic society by the creation of a brand-new national identity. The point of America was not to preserve old cultures but to forge a new, American culture.' The cult of ethnicity among non-Anglo whites and among nonwhite minorities have had many healthy consequences, but pressed too far this cult has unhealthy consequences. Holding a highly differentiated society together."image: https://pixabay.com/en/queen-of-liberty-statue-of-liberty-202218/
- Appadurai, Arjun, "The Heart of Whiteness," Callaloo." The nation form thus presents itself as a special site for work on post-colonial discourse, work which goes beyond the archaeology of this discourse. Such work cannot be confined to the colored and colorful sites and boundaries which mark the history of colonialism. Nor can it be confined to those social forms that invite the gaze of "theory" because of their sheer discursivity. In looking at human rights movements as well as new literatures, migration as well as third world cinema, refugee camps as well as nationalist speeches, we can begin to construct a set of theoretical practices that are not only post-colonial but also post-discursive. Such practices might shift the academic gaze beyond the discourses of nation, to the space where post-colonial (and post-national) social formations are being incubated.https://pixabay.com/en/network-networking-earth-continents-1738084/
- Siddiqi, Tania, "Bridges not Barriers," Burnt Roti"Can I say that I am Muslim and not wear hijab? Yes. Can I say that I am both Pakistani and American? Of course."https://pixabay.com/en/bridge-river-italy-small-villages-3016725/
- Tannen, Deborah, "Sex, Lies and Conversation," The Washington Post"I was addressing a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room -- a women's group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening, one man had been particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening, I commented that women frequently complain that their husbands don't talk to them. This man quickly concurred. He gestured toward his wife and said, 'She's the talker in our family.' The room burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. 'It's true,' he explained. 'When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn't keep the conversation going, we'd spend the whole evening in silence'."
- Prior, Karen Swallow, “Why Walt Whitman Called America the ‘Greatest Poem’,” The Atlantic"The 19th-century writer believed that the power of poetry and democracy came from an ability to make a unified whole out of disparate parts."
Image: By Mathew Brady - Walt_Whitman_-_Brady-Handy.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9665739