Third Essay: Learning to Write about Difference READING :  Rereading America , from chapter five: Parrillo, “Causes of Prejudice” Fredrickson, “Models of American Ethnic relations: A Historical Perspective” Harris and Carbado, “Loot or Find: Fact or Frame?” Kaplan, “Barack Obama: “Miles Traveled, Miles to Go” CONTEXT : Making arguments in our lives usually means persuading an audience; often it means, if it is a real argument, addressing a group that is not completely open to hearing and understanding our point of view. This assignment will address two issues: · Building an argument using convincing textual evidence · Writing in order to persuade an unsympathetic argument THE ASSIGNMENT : Chapter 5 in Rereading America addresses the history and present realities of the tensions that have surrounded, and still surround, racial and ethnic differences in the United States. We can broaden the range of this topic to include areas of class, sexual orientation, religion, gender, and political affiliation, at the least. Each of these categories, including race, are populated by groups we could call “others”—groups that both are seen by the majority culture as being somehow “outside” and are viewed by the majority culture with a degree of suspicion. In a four-and-a-half to five page, double-spaced, 12-point typeface essay, argue for how some of the ideas in TWO of the essays in chapter 5 of Rereading America apply to ONE of these groups of “others” of your choosing. Define the group carefully.  Write to an audience who would doubt the validity of your topic, the book’s texts, and your argument.  If you choose to write about an “other” that is defined by race or ethnicity, be specific in naming this group (e.g., Korean, or mixed-race, or Persian). For example, I might take the arguments in Harris and Carbado’s essay and apply them to similar thought patterns I see in Orange County about people whom the majority culture in the OC might consider “others”—those out of the cultural mainstream.  Perhaps I would select French people as my group of others.  I could talk about how Orange Countians see French speaking people suspiciously—people who spend too much time thinking about food.  This would be a fairly silly paper, but I could nonetheless choose this topic. IMPORTANT ADVICE :  Read all four essays and the discussion board entries on the essays.  Try choosing the focus of your essay by writing about ideas from the essays that strongly affect you; don’t start out with a particular group in mind.  Once you have identified interesting ideas, then think about a group of “others.” AUDIENCE :  Each of the assigned essays from Rereading America for this assignment are written for audiences that likely will not agree with the respective writer’s ideas.  Note the following areas in both the essays you read, and in constructing your own essays: · Tone—how does the writer decide to present these issues to a potentially unsympathetic a.

1. Third Essay:
Learning to Write about Difference
READING
:
Rereading America
, from chapter five:
Parrillo, “Causes of Prejudice”
Fredrickson, “Models of American Ethnic relations: A
Historical Perspective”
Harris and Carbado, “Loot or Find:
Fact or Frame?”
Kaplan, “Barack Obama:
“Miles Traveled, Miles to Go”
CONTEXT
:
Making arguments in our lives usually means persuading an
audience; often it means, if it is a real argument, addressing a
group that is not completely open to hearing and understanding
our point of view.
This assignment will address two issues:
·
Building an argument using convincing textual evidence
·

2. Writing in order to persuade an unsympathetic argument
THE ASSIGNMENT
:
Chapter 5 in Rereading America addresses the history and
present realities of the tensions that have surrounded, and still
surround, racial and ethnic differences in the United States.
We can broaden the range of this topic to include areas of class,
sexual orientation, religion, gender, and political affiliation, at
the least.
Each of these categories, including race, are populated by
groups we could call “others”—groups that both are seen by the
majority culture as being somehow “outside” and are viewed by
the majority culture with a degree of suspicion.
In a four-and-a-half to five page, double-spaced, 12-point
typeface essay, argue for how some of the ideas in TWO of the
essays in chapter 5 of
Rereading America
apply to ONE of these groups of “others” of your choosing.
Define the group carefully. Write to an audience who would
doubt the validity of your topic, the book’s texts, and your
argument. If you choose to write about an “other” that is
defined by race or ethnicity, be specific in naming this group
(e.g., Korean, or mixed-race, or Persian).
For example, I might take the arguments in Harris and
Carbado’s essay and apply them to similar thought patterns I
see in Orange County about people whom the majority culture
in the OC might consider “others”—those out of the cultural

3. mainstream. Perhaps I would select French people as my group
of others. I could talk about how Orange Countians see French
speaking people suspiciously—people who spend too much time
thinking about food. This would be a fairly silly paper, but I
could nonetheless choose this topic.
IMPORTANT ADVICE
: Read all four essays and the discussion board entries on the
essays. Try choosing the focus of your essay by writing about
ideas from the essays that strongly affect you; don’t start out
with a particular group in mind. Once you have identified
interesting ideas, then think about a group of “others.”
AUDIENCE
: Each of the assigned essays from
Rereading America
for this assignment are written for audiences that likely will
not agree with the respective writer’s ideas. Note the following
areas in both the essays you read, and in constructing your own
essays:
·
Tone—how does the writer decide to present these issues to a
potentially unsympathetic audience? Often times a level tone
(remember Devor’s essay) is used to dampen the emotions an
audience may feel.
·
Introductory content—oftentimes, when a writer believes an
audience may be unsympathetic, the introductory section of an
essay may be used to build bridges of understanding and shared
experience. Perhaps I could choose an anecdote from my own
experience that would echo the prejudiced behavior that the
group of Others I have selected has experienced. This is a way

4. to help people to understand what it feels like to be a recipient
of prejudiced thinking and behavior.
·
Thesis—in your thesis statement, make it clear as to what you
specifically want to argue.
Clearly identify your group of Others and the prejudiced
thinking and/or behavior you want to discuss.
The CONTEXT:
Making arguments in our lives usually means persuading an
audience; often it means, if it is a real argument, addressing a
group that is not completely open to hearing and understanding
our point of view.
This assignment will address two issues:
·
Building an argument using convincing textual evidence
·
Writing in order to persuade an unsympathetic argument
What this means:
Argument is something with which we struggle in our personal,
work, and public lives.
American culture does not “do” argument well.
Typically, we either argue by yelling and diminishing those who
disagree with us, we avoid arguing altogether, or we “argue” a
point to an audience who already agrees with us.

5. “Talking heads” on political television obfuscate the issues at
hand by giving us only one side of an argument, pretending that
the other side does not have a point.
Simply put, we have lost the art of arguing as a way of better
understanding a topic.
In your academic lives, you will write to argue a point of view,
but that point of view is reasoned:
it understands other points of view, conceding points that are
legitimate, and it does not try to antagonize its audience.
The goal is to increase a broad understanding of a problem and
to argue for a particular way of thinking that will help others to
better address the problem.
Here are a few examples of “bad argument” vs. academic
argument (or arguing to understand):
(1)
The downing of the Malaysian passenger plane over the
Ukraine:
“Bad argument” focuses on emotional charges of blame that
tend to make the facts of the case murky.
“Academic argument” might focus on the circumstances that put
the plane in peril in the first place.
Or, it might focus on evidence for what actually happened to the
plane.

6. (2)
Part of the “social safety net” in the United States, such as
unemployment benefits:
COntext (continued)
“Bad argument” might try to caricaturize the recipients of
unemployment benefits as “lazy” or those who propose to
reduce them as “misers.”
“Academic argument” would focus on the facts of the issue
itself to help the audience understand more: How long are
people typically on unemployment? How much are the benefits,
and can people live on them? Why do people go on
unemployment? (That is, have their jobs been eliminated?
Were they injured at work? Can they simply not find work?)
“Academic argument: would then make a proposal about how to
address part of the problem, or about what the problem really
is.
WRITING ABOUT “DiFFERENCE”
Despite the fact that the United States is an immigrant culture,
our society has trouble discussing (or arguing about) subjects
that pertain to cultural or racial differences. Chapter five in
Rereading America looks at one aspect of difference: race. It
looks at the history of racial prejudice in the United States, the
psychological underpinnings of racial prejudice, and ways in
which racial prejudice is still with us today.

7. We can take some of the historical, psychological, and
contemporary factors of racism, however, and apply them to
prejudiced thinking and behavior more generally. In racism, the
object of the prejudice—that is, the group that is on the
receiving end of prejudiced thinking and behavior—is defined
by its race. The group is referred to as “the other”—that is,
those who are racially different from the person engaging in the
racist thinking or action. When we consider prejudice more
generally, we understand that the “other” can be any sort of
group—young people, old people, Democrats, Republicans,
women, men, Christians, Muslims, Engineers, English majors,
artists, dancers, construction workers…anyone who can be
categorized and defined by generalizations.