Some people love controversy; some despise it. Regardless of how one views a controversial topic, odds are he is fascinated by it and has his own thoughts on the matter. Journalist Leonard Pitts, Jr., who authors editorial articles for the Miami Herald, writes extremely opinionated pieces on current controversial topics targeting those who are not minorities. He writes with the goal of bringing to light issues that people would rather not discuss. Pitts’ style can be seen through pieces such as “Don’t Lower the Bar on Education Standards;” “Torture Might Work, but That’s Not the Issue;” and “If the Gunman is White, We’re OK With Mass Murder. No, Really, We Are.” In “Don’t Lower the Bar,” Pitts addresses the standards gap in the education system …show more content…
In “Don’t Lower the Bar,” he compares the educational standards difference with an athletic gap: “The best analogy I can give you is based in the fact that some coaches and athletic directions have noted a steep decline in the number of white kids going out for basketball. They feel as if they cannot compete with their black classmates. What if we addressed that by lowering the rim for white kids? What if we allowed them four points for each made basket?” (Pitts). The example of basketball makes the idea of the standards gap easier to fathom for readers who might not completely understand the issue. The analogy also puts into perspective the way minority students may feel when different expectations are set for them. Comparisons between one idea and another are also made in “Torture Might Work.” Pitts postulates that “...if you wanted to stop that carnage, it would be simple. Just make drunk driving a capital crime with instant punishment...We could execute the miscreants within a day...It would work...But we won’t make drunk driving a capital crime for one simple reason. It would be wrong” (“Torture Might Work”). By correlating one controversial topic with a seperate one, the author captures the reader’s attention and gets him or her thinking. When such a hot topic as drunk driving is introduced, any reader, regardless of whether or not he agrees with Pitts, is more inclined to hear out the argument. In addition, the …show more content…
For instance, “Can you imagine how those white kids would feel whenever they took the court? How long would it be before they internalized the lie that there is something about being white that makes you inherently inferior when it comes to hoops…?” (Pitts, “Don’t Lower the Bar”). Not only do these questions cause the reader to speculate about possible answers, but they also touch the reader’s emotions. The audience can put themselves in the position of the athletes and feel the way they might. This all comes together to make Pitts’ point stronger because articles that leave a reader with something to consider after the piece has been read are what stick in one’s mind. In “Torture Might Work,” the writer also uses rhetorical questions. For example, “Does torture work?” or “...if [effectiveness] were the only important metric, what other things might we do, condone or defend?” (Pitts, “Torture might Work”). The questions in this article are asked with the assumption that the reader already knows the answer; the purpose of them, then, is to segway into Pitts’ ideas. The inquisitional format is effective because it piques the curiosity of the audience and keeps them wondering what will come next. There are also questions in the third article: “Shall I parse the killer’s motivations? Shall I praise the heroism in the midst of massacre? Shall I call out the evil in this world? Shall I demand a
Leading into the topic of the current political and racial status of the United States today. This opening statement allows the article to open in a neutral standpoint before expressing negative views against Trump and his beliefs. In response, the audience feels prompted to bring more attention to the damage and impact that Trump and his racially biased views have caused the United States and people of color to endure.
The institution of public education has been one of the most controversial establishments in the United States since its inception. More specifically, equality in the conditions and the opportunities it provides has been sought as one of its major goals. There is little doubt that minority ethnic groups have struggled to achieve educational equality, just as they have struggled for equality in other aspects of life. One way that minorities have tried to achieve equality in education is through lobbying for help in college admissions for their respective groups. This social practice has been debated on many grounds, including necessity and ethical permissibility.
concerns racial equality in America. The myth of the “Melting Pot” is a farce within American society, which hinders Americans from facing societal equality issues at hand. Only when America decides to face the truth, that society is not equal, and delve into the reasons why such equality is a dream instead of reality. Will society be able to tackle suc...
In the wake of the 1992 Riots, the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Wall Street Journal both jumped to politicize the riots, assigning blame, responsibility and power to certain groups and individuals. However that is where the similarities end because the Wall Street Journal tends to steer responsibility away from the Republican government and towards the black communities and leaders associated with the violence. This appears to have been the dominant discourse of the time, seeking to diagnose problems within specific racial communities instead of the country’s institutional structure. Conversely, the Los Angeles Sentinel put all of the focus on the government and the people with the most power and privilege. It maintained a discourse of victimization
According to Jerry Rosenfeld, American schooling is failing minority students in widespread proportions. In his ethnographic book “Shut Those Thick Lips!” (1971), African American students arrive at a Harlem school with deficient baseline skills, resulting in less than optimal academic outcomes. The predominantly white teaching staff accepts these deficiencies as a consequence of “cultural poverty,” whereby the minority culture itself is lacking and wanting for successful integration into the larger society. By excepting the culture as impoverished, teachers shift responsibility for such common minority failure directly onto the students.
Paul Buck once said, “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday” (Buck, P.). Considering that the relationship between America and minorities is entrench with bias, prejudice, and oppression it isn’t difficult to see why the public education system is over flowing with policies that promote institutional racism. The novel, The Shame of a nation by Jonathan Kozol and the short film, Eyes on the prize aim to educate the masses about the history of oppression in America’s educational system and the residual effects of the oppression on the present. Although many of the overt struggles outlined in these two pieces of work are no longer seen in schools today there residual effects are still covertly visible
Racism exists in many forms and is unavoidable. A major cause of biased racial dissertation is that is has been the way it is for so long. Caucasians do represent a disproportionate percent of wealthy and powerful businessmen and political leaders in American and their influence contributes to the racial stereotypes that are in existent today. When President Barack Obama first ran for his presidency in 2008 it is safe to say the world was shocked to say the least. President Obama’s race is a mix of Hawaiian and African American. In 2009 Michal Payne wrote an article in The Daily Item on President Obama’s election and Tim Wise’s novel, Between Barack and A Hard Place. In the article Payne disuses Wises two forms of racism; ‘Racism 1.0 is “old-fashioned racism” and Racism 2.0 is “enlightened exceptio...
Minimalizing racial bias prevents students from being the victims of preference, rather than being judged on personal merit. As Roger Clegg’s response to the Wall Street Journal’s thoughts on banning race-conscious admissions illustrates,
In today’s society, the pressure to appear politically correct can play a major role in one’s social life. This pressure can even trigger people to support issues that are politically correct, such as affirmative action. Affirmative action is a highly controversial issue in the United States today, it has many supporters and it also has many detractors. This issue can separate many ethnic groups and even turn people of the same racial group against each other. There are many ideas that are thought of as a cure for racial inequality, but none fit the role better than affirmative action.
“The media serve as a tool that people use to define, measure, and understand American society” (Deo et al., 149). Thinking of the media as a tool for the American people also extends into the realm of race and ethnicity. The United States has had a long and difficult history pertaining to the racial and ethnic identities of the many different people that reside within and outside of it’s borders. That history is still being created and this country still struggles with many of the same problems that have plagued this area since before the founding of the U.S. As stated above, the popular media has a large impact on the way that race and ethnicity are understood by people, especially when considering the prevalence of segregation in the U.S.
Smith, Peter J. "Affirmative action can hurt qualifited whites." The State News: Michigan State University's Independent Voice. 15 Sept. 1998. 21 Oct. 2003 <http://www.statenews.com/editionsfall98/091598/op_ltr3.html>. "What is affirmative action?" Hrnext.com. 2003. 21 Oct. 2003 <http://www2.hrnext.com/Article.cfm/Nav/1.41.105.0.6829.6829>.
The backlash that Sotomayor experiences because of her decision to apply to and her acceptance into Princeton reveals how most Puerto Ricans experienced forms of racialization, or racial classification, by Caucasian Americans. Sotomayor experiences the culmination of years of racial discrimination and oppression when her school nurse asks with an “accusatory tone” and a “baleful gaze” how she got a “likely” and the “two top-ranking girls in the school only got a ‘possible’” (Sotomayor 102). She expects Sotomayor to experience “shame” under her gaze because he...
Main Point I: I’d like to start off by talking about the penalties of drinking and driving. Did you know that drunk driving is the nation’s most frequently committed violent crime? A chronic drunk driver is a person who has driven over 1,000 times before being caught. They do not respond to social pressures, law enforcement, and the messages that have been combined to reform the drinking and driving behavior of our society.
During the 60’s and 70’s, people have thrashed out with their words and each other. This caused some awareness in schools due to the offensiveness of the matter. During the 80’s schools began on focusing on preventing this kind of speech on their campuses. Since then, students have become more and more sensitive in a negative way. The authors used an example of a kid shouting “Shut up, you water buffalo” at an Israeli born student. That incident made national news, just for calling another kid a “water buffalo.” Another example is when a university found a student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book honoring student opposition to the Ku Klux Clan. The picture on the cover of the book offended one of the student’s co-workers. Just because the student was reading a book, minding his own business, the student was punished from the university. Never said anything or hurt anyone physically, and his education was ruined by someone taking offense to a book he was reading. The authors used this extreme example to prove that accepting the fact that student are fragile and letting them be fragile is not the right way to go and the past can prove
This is exemplified in Rich’s article regarding the lack of Latino representation in books which led students to thinking their “values as not belonging in school” (Rich, 3). Tokenism is not a solution, and depicting Latinos of their stereotype is merely another form of transferring ahistorical facts. Without education, history will be neglected and Chicano would not be re-signified, but continue to enforce boundaries and leave the double aims unresolved. With the absence of Chicano representation, history would remain ahistorical in the hands of Anglo-Americans who have generated “deficit thinking discourses in efforts to blame Mexican Americans for the social and economic problems” (Menchaca, 15). This refers to Du Bois’ blaming the victim in which underrepresented groups were blamed for their status due to their beliefs and were denied of their contribution in the nation’s infrastructure. There is the issue of choosing one culture over the other, because one will either be criticized by their peers for assimilating, or remain excluded from opportunities. The basis of American Negro history is strife, similar to the Chicanos being struggle. Both require the community to acknowledge this adversity, and to reflect and understand why the system functions that way and what needs to be done to enact changes and transform the community’s way of