Aurgument. Is Technology Making People Feel Alone?

Third essay
Note: This is an abbreviated handout. The full handout can be found in Week Seven.
Topic & Approach
Congratulations! You’ve already finished your analytical essay comparing an independent news source and a corporate news source, as well as a short research essay about a topic from John Perkins' book. Now that you're ready to tackle a longer and more complex research essay, please try not to feel anxious. It's a natural extension of the skills that you have been building as the term unfolds.
Be sure to consult the course calendar for details about assignment deadlines. The topic for your research paper is fairly open. You can pretty much choose to write about whatever you like, so long as the topic is not merely informational in nature. It must have at least two sides to the argument. Be this at it may, some topics will work better than others, given the college’s requirement that stipulates students create a research paper with a rhetorical thesis (one that puts forward an argument). As such, informational approaches will be harder to write than issue-based papers. Bear in mind that in Week Seven, I include a complete Essay Three assignment with a topic and sources. Using this topic is optional, however. For those who don't know what to write about, it is there as an option.

As you compose your paper, keep in mind that its introduction, body and conclusion should support a rhetorical thesis in the introduction (point of view). This won’t be hard because most of you have already done that, at least to some extent on Essays One and Two. If you didn’t, then you weren’t following the directions.
Repeat: No informational essays. You must argue for a point of view in the THIRD PERSON ONLY.
College Mandated Content Requirement: You will need to incorporate all of the concepts in Discussions Seven and Eight into this essay. The discussions are designed to give you a head start on this requirement, while awarding you up to 20 points (10 points for each discussion). How cool is that? Well, okay, call it "hand holding" if you must, but it will really help guide you through the college mandated requirements for WR 122. In addition, Discussion Nine is designed to pull together all of the rough information that you write about in D7 and D8 when you answer the questions (yes, you are actually answering questions in D7 and D8 as opposed to crafting an essay-caliber narrative). Discussion Nine will be your chance to fit all of the information you learn while completing D7 and D8 into an essay caliber narrative (which, incidentally, can be pretty much dropped into Essay Three).
All essays should use at least 8 sources. In addition, please include at least 4 direct quotations from sources, and at least 4 paraphrases. (Obviously, if you use 4 direct quotations then you must have at least 6 paraphrases, and vice versa. The combination is up to you.) No single direct quotation should be more than four lines in length.
Your entire essay must be no less than 1,999- 2,500 words in length. This includes the header, the title, and the Works Cited at the end. Please put your precise word count in the header. If you don't, there will be a fairly stiff penalty this time around since it is the third essay for the course and by now you should know the routine. Please do not exceed a maximum word count of 2,800 words. As always, it's worth remembering that longer essays do not necessarily receive higher grades. Quality is always emphasized over quantity. I only mention this because some students feel like they are entitled to a higher grade if they write the maximum number of words allowed rather than really polishing what they have written, which might only be 2,502. An essay that has around the minimum number of words is every bit as eligible for an A+ as an essay that has around the maximum number of words.
In addition, you will need to critique and address at least two logical fallacies in your essay. Chapter Nine in the Fourth Edition of From Critical Thinking to Argument explains the concepts of fallacies in detail. Kirk will present a lecture on fallacies that will explain this requirement. In addition, one of your freewrites will also involve analyzing a fallacy.
INSTRUCTOR VIDEO (MANDATORY VIEWING)
Submit the final version of your Essay Three here. This assignment does not need to be published. Essays that do not meet the minimum word count will be penalized heavily.
Technical Specifications
1. Word count: 2,500 minimum/3,000-word maximum.
2. 12 point font
3. Avoid run-ons, fragments, comma splices, and dangling modifiers LIKE THE PLAGUE
4. Title should be centered two spaces under header; body left justified with one of the following: block formatted paragraphs with one extra blank line between them, or, paragraphs indented 5 spaces with no extra lines between them
5. Header in the upper left that includes the following:
Your name (The name that appears in the class grade book. Do NOT change your first or last name from what appears in D2L!)
Date
Precise word count
Essay Three
EXAMPLES OF A ESSAY
Daidemang Francis
Kirk Sigurdson
WR122
Word Count: 2,092
31 May 2018
The Endless Cycle of Racial Equality
Shortly after Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States, a young woman stated, “At this point, the whole race thing is over . . . it doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve transcended it. Now we have a black president, so clearly we are not racist.” The mindset of this young woman is a common trend among many Americans in today’s “post-racial” society (Austin 2017). With Obama in the Oval Office, they believe that we have pass the days when the color of one’s skin would undermine his/her humane dignity—therefore we are all equal, regardless of race. But are we truly equal? Yes, Obama wining the 2009 elections broke one of the hardest historical record for African-Americans and our nation as a whole, but like the civil rights movement before him, his position as America’s first black president did not make any significant difference for African-American—at least not social justice.
One may ask, how can a nation elect its first black leader and still be consider racially unequal? To fully understand the answer to this puzzle, we will have to start with a much larger puzzle—the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s. This came at a time when African-American were suppressed the right to vote in segregated states across the country, and the purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to put an end it and transition America towards a post-racial society. Once it signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, it became a tremendous milestone for African-American in segregated states. In fact, in a 1965 public pull by Gallup, 95% of American approved the passing of the new law and they believed that it was the right move for America to achieve racial equalit (Weldon 2015). Even 50 years later, in 2015, thousands of people gathered in Alabama to march from Selma to Montgomery, in commemorating the 50th anniversary of African-American voting rights (Moore 2015). For a nation marching towards a post-racial society, this seem like a remarkable moment or “Jubilee” as they puts it. However, few are aware that the same system which granted blacks the right to vote has been redesigned to steal it away.
According to a recent pull presented in ABC News “…nearly 1.4 million voting-age black men—more than one in eight—will be ineligible to cast ballots because of state laws that strip felons of the right to vote.” Prior they had the privilege to exercise their rights as Americans, but once a black man is labeled a felon, he no longer have such privilege—a striking resemblance to the pre-voting rights ear (Schroeder). Sure, it is arguable that African-Americans are not the only victims to felony convections or discriminated against due to it stigma and therefore, it could be concluded that post-racism exist in the criminal justice system.
However, when we take a deeper look at the state of our criminal justice system, we find that it has a significant downfall when it comes to race—a downfall that is beyond the limitation of voting rights. As Michelle Alexander, author of the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” puts it, “What is completely missed in the rare public debates today about the plight of African Americans is that a huge percentage of them are not free to move up…It is not just that they lack opportunity, attend poor schools, or are plagued by poverty. They are barred by law from doing so.” In other words, many African-Americans are not exceeding due to the increased tension in our criminal policies over the years—policies that have nearly tripped the black incarceration rate from the 1980s to today (Smith 2017).
As the grips of the criminal justice system increased, so did the black-to-white male incarcerations ratio. A rate that the Bureau of Justice Statistics puts at 5 to 1. What this means is that a black male is five times more like to go to prison or jail than a white male (Smith 2017). Of course, the same argument for the felony could be applied to this scenario as well—one could go as far as to say the 5 to 1 ratio is simply due to the fact that African-American males are committing more crimes than white males, but let’s not make that mistake. Justice policies such as stop-and-frisk and drug laws have had more effect on African-American communities than any other race (Maucer, 2011).
The first contact a person have before entering jail is often with the police. Not surprisingly, when deciding over who to stop-and-frisk, police officers use race as a leading factor of judgment. In his article “40 Reasons Why Our Jails Are Full of Black and Poor People,” Bill Quigley states, in New York City “…police stopped over 500,000 people annually without any indication that the people stopped had been involved in any crime at all. About 80 percent of those stopped were Black and Latinos…” based on Quigley’s statement, it can be argued that 5 to 1 ratio exist because African-Americans and other minority group come in more contact with the police and they are far more likely to be questioned or searched—which could potential lead them to incarceration front door (Vara Institute of Justice). Furthermore, New York City is not the only place where racially stop-and-frisk is currently active, many major cities across the United States are know for this practice. In a city where 32 percent of it population are black, 72 percent of all stop-and-frisk carried out by Chicago police in 2014 were African-American (Quigley 2016). In other words, as nonracial as it sounds, the stop-and-frisk police that were enforced by our Criminal Justice System causes more policing towards minorities than whites.
Additionally, drug laws that were put into place with the intention to be nonracial has also had negatives effect on African-American. In particular, studies have found that the black incarceration rate increased drastically during the “tough on crime” era. Preventing drug abuse in America was the main agenda of this ear, and it made sure that low-level drug user feel the full weight of our criminal justice system. However, even-though drugs were enjoyed equally among all races, the drug laws introduce during the tough-on-crime era, has placed more weight on crack, a drug commonly associated with blacks than powder cocaine, which is commonly associated with whites. Carrying 28 grams of crack is weighted with a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, while 500 grams of powder cocaine carries the same punishable weight—five-years (Frank 2016). Looking at these weights, we clearly see racial disparity reflecting in the criminal justice system. Yet in the blink of an eye, people are still holding onto the believe that America has reached racial equality. But as we can see, this is not the case.
Consequently, in the midst of our post-racial society, African-Americans are still trying to get their voice hear and they are doing so through a new movement called Black Lives Matter (BLM). Though such movement is not a stranger to America, BLM rose to prominence after the election of Barack Obama—a time when many American believes things have change for African-Americans (Miller 2016). Conversely, from New York City to Ferguson, Missouri, America have seen the senseless deaths of young African-Americans at the hands of the Police. In 2016 alone, 258 African-American were killed by the police and 34 percent were unarmed black males. The numbers might seem low, but consider the fact that black males make up 6 percent of the US population, the numbers becomes quite disproportional (Kelly, Lowery, Rich, Tate & Jenkins, 2016). Thus the purpose of BLM movement is not to only bring a cause to the fetal shooting of many unarmed black male, but to also ensure that all American in this “post-racial” era are aware of the systemic racism that still divides our nation (Miller 2016). Therefore, this lead us back to the question: How can a nation elect its first black leader and still be consider racially unequal? The last piece to this puzzle is quite simple, but rarely acknowledge.
America has yet to reach a true post-racial society—a society where race plays less importance in its criminal justice system and the race does not cloud the judgment of its police. So the believes that the election of a black president has suddenly entitled us to a post-racial nation is far from true or perhaps an illusion. What contributes to this illusion is the continence denial that racism is dead and the accusation that African-American are playing the race card (Nelson 2017). But we are not making any progress by living in denial of racism. Racial disparity still exist and continue to undermine the lives of many African-American. As Michelle Alexander puts it in a note to The Marshall Project, “until we learn the true value of the lives we have wasted, and until we truly reckon with our nation’s history…and until we muster, as a nation, a willingness to invest heavily in the communities that have suffered the most, we will find ourselves in an endless cycle of reform and retrenchment—periods of apparent progress followed by the creation of new systems of racial and social control.”
Works Cited
Austin, Algernon. “Why We Are Not Making Progress Against Racism.” Demos, 21 Sept. 2017, www(dot)demos(dot)org/blog/9/21/17/why-we-are-not-making-progress-against-racism.
Frank, Thomas. “Bill Clinton's Crime Bill Destroyed Lives, and There's No Point Denying It | Thomas Frank.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 2016, www(dot)theguardian(dot)com/commentisfree/2016/apr/15/bill-clinton-crime-bill-hillary-black-lives-thomas-frank.
Hager, Eli. “Analysis | A Mass Incarceration Mystery.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 15 Dec. 2017, www(dot)washingtonpost(dot)com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/15/a-mass-incarceration-mystery/?utm_term=.98a42144b375.
“How Systemic Racism Keeps Millions of Black People from Voting.” Vera, Vara Institute of Justic, 16 Feb. 2018, www(dot)vera(dot)org/blog/how-systemic-racism-keeps-millions-of-black-people-from-voting.
Kelly, Kimbriell, et al. “Fatal Shootings by Police Remain Relatively Unchanged after Two Years.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 30 Dec. 2016, www(dot)washingtonpost(dot)com/investigations/fatal-shootings-by-police-remain-relatively-unchanged-after-two-years/2016/12/30/fc807596-c3ca-11e6-9578-0054287507db_story.html?utm_term=.5e56c36fe3cb.
Mauer, Marc. “Addressing Racial Disparities in Incarceration.” The Prison Journal, vol. 91, no. 3_suppl, 2011. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1177/0032885511415227.
Miller, Ryan W. “Black Lives Matter: A Primer on What It Is and What It Stands For.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 8 Aug. 2016, www(dot)usatoday(dot)com/story/news/nation/2016/07/11/black-lives-matter-what-what-stands/86963292/.
Moore, Jesse. “President Obama Marks the 50th Anniversary of the Marches from Selma to Montgomery.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 8 Mar. 2015, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/03/08/president-obama-marks-50th-anniversary-marches-selma-montgomery.
Nelson, Steve. “Enough Already About Racism!! Racism Is a Thing of the Past.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 31 Jan. 2017, www(dot)huffingtonpost(dot)com/entry/enough-already-about-raci_b_9125484.html.
“The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.” Maps to the Other Side, 10 Feb. 2015, www(dot)mapstotheotherside(dot)net/the-new-jim-crow/.
Quigley, Bill. “40 Reasons Why Our Jails Are Full of Black And Poor People.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 2 June 2016, www(dot)huffingtonpost(dot)com/bill-quigley/40-reasons-why-our-jails-are-full-of-black-and-poor-people_b_7492902.html.
Sheley, Karen. “Chicago Cops Are Abusing Stop-and-Frisk.” Newsweek, 23 Mar. 2016, www(dot)newsweek(dot)com/chicago-cops-are-abusing-stop-and-frisk-317314.
Smith, Phillip. “4 Reasons for a Surprising Change in Racial Incarceration Trendlines.” Alternet, 25 Dec. 2017, www(dot)alternet(dot)org/drugs/black-incarceration-rates-going-down-white-4-reasons.
“Study: Non-Voting Felons Increasing.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 21AD, abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121724.
Weldon, Kathleen. “Public Opinion on the Voting Rights Act.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Dec. 2017, www(dot)huffingtonpost(dot)com/kathleen-weldon/public-opinion-on-the-voting-rights-act_b_7935836.html.
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