Month: September 2020

The Mecca? Why does Coates refer to Howard University as his Mecca? What does he mean by “the crossroads of the black diaspora” (40)? In your explanation, be sure to include a quote from Coates.

1.) Coates refers to Howard University as his Mecca possibly due to the sheer amount of black history that had taken place there. Mecca, to people of religion, see Mecca as the very center of their religion and their beliefs, and an integral part of their history. “I first witnessed this power out on the Yard, that communal green space in the center of the campus where the students gathered and I saw everything I knew of my black self multiplied out into seemingly infinite variations.”(Coates 40). A diaspora is the dispersion of people of the Jewish faith outside of Israel. With this quote, Coates explains that in seeing all of these balck students, along with the placement of the university and the alumni before them, this was where black people from all walks of life came and joined together. Just as Mecca was important to the history and culture of the Jews, Howard University to Coates was the center of so many notable black people in recent history.

Coates writes of his “working theory” (46) and “imagining history to be a unified narrative” (47). Why might this have been important for Coates? What did he find/realize in his investigation? In your response, be sure to provide textual evidence from Coates. Note: we’re exploring together; it’s ok not to have all the answers, the right answer, etc.

2.)Trying to put together one coherent timeline of history was probably important to Coates because he wanted to learn at what point did people decide that having a different skin tone made someone below someone else. “The smokescreen would lift. And the villains who manipulated the schools and the streets would be unmasked.”(Coates 47). Although this was what he desired to learn by reading the history books, he quickly learned that it would not be that cut and dry. So many historical accounts had contradicted one another and he discovered “factions, and factions within factions.”(Cotes 47) of people who all had varying versions of the same time period. He simply set out in order to find the whole truth of why things were the way they were, but he found it to be a much more complicated topic than he had first expected.

How does Coates make meaning of his college experience? What’s his college story? Explain with evidence.

3.)When Coates was going through college, he thought that the classes that he was taking were kind of important, but not nearly as much as what he learned by reading in the library. “The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”(Coates 48). In college, he wanted to guide his own education, not learn about something because someone told him to. He instead would rather have educated himself about what he thought was interesting and important, than feel trapped by a higher education curriculum. By basically only studying what he wanted to, he shaped his own education regardless of what he was told to do. This gave his education more meaning to him than doing what he was told in his classes.

Freebie. Help us examine some specific part of Coates’ text by offering a Quotation, providing a 3-4 sentence Comment on it, and asking a Question that flows from the quote and/or comment.

4.)“What was required was a new story, a new history told through the lens of our struggle. I had always known this, had heard the need for a new history in Malcolm, had seen the need addressed in my father’s books.”(Coates 44). This assertion by Coates seems to be a monumental task, and also an incredibly difficult one. Not only is he saying that history itself is incomplete, but that it must also be wrong in some places. But through what he discovered in his history research, he learned that there is almost no part of history that doesn’t have multiple versions. If this is the case, then how are himself and others meant to even begin to figure out how to retell history from another perspective, especially since it has already passed.

Annotations

“But however it appears… all history.”(Coates 42). Coates is once again bringing up his idea that there is really no such thing as white. This still confuses me a lot, especially when he says that white could cease to exist, and there would still be people with straight hair and blue eyes. Does he mean that people should identify each other as their nationality and not the color of their skin?

“Through The Mecca I saw that we were, in our own segregated body politic, cosmopolitans.”(Coates 43). This connects to my English 110 Composition class, where we have just finished learning about cosmopolitanism and the implications for everyday life. We also learned about why it is so difficult to carry out cosmopolitanism when people’s views can be so different from each other. In a part of one of the articles that we read (Appiah), he described cosmopolitanism as the name of a challenge rather than a solution. We also wrote an essay and some reading responses on how cosmopolitanism can be used to cause a change in perspective.

“Would it not be better, then, if our bodies were civilized, improved, and put to some legitimate Christian use?”(Coates 44). Does Coates think that this is how black people are viewed today? I thought that maybe some really good strides toward equality had been made. His view could also have been shaped by how he grew up, which could be much different from how children grow up now.

1.)“Race is the child of racism, not the father” (7). Let’s puzzle through what Coates might mean by this. To do so, we need to grasp a bit of how the idea of White as a race emerged – and how Black as a race emerged. We need to read more than just that sentence or that paragraph in Coates. It might help if we ask why Coates uses language like “believing themselves white” or “raised to be white.”

1.) When Coates says this, he might mean that over time, this distinction of black and white was the result of the collective desire to create an “us” and “them”. Whether this was intentional or not, the desire of separation, or the feeling that one race was better than the other, led to the idea that there was such a thing as race. Race could be easily used to mark others as different, which made it easier to create more differences between race then there originally was. The idea of race being put above things like country of origin/nationality meant that the color of a person’s skin could be used to determine certain stereotypes about a person. Although it is unclear why people felt the need to place people into categories, maybe to make more clear cut lines between people perceived as different, something as obvious as someone’s skin color made them incredibly distinguishable. In this way, Coates is saying that the concept that one race is better or superior to another is what led to the idea of race in the first place, not the other way around.

Body. Find two places where Coates focuses on the matter of the body. Why do you think the “body” seems to loom so large for Coates? Explain.

2.) One place where Coates focuses on the matter of the body is on page 19, where he describes a boy not too much older than him pulled a gun on him. “There the boy stood, with the gun brandished, which he slowly untucked, tucked, then untucked once more, and in his small eyes I saw a surging rage that could, in an instant, erase my body.” Then again on page 24, where he says “I recall learning these laws clearer than I recall learning my colors and shapes, because these laws were essential to the security of my body.” In both of these instances, Coates recalls fearing for the safety of his body. This idea seems to loom so large for Coates because it is the one thing that can’t be replaced. Being robbed does not destroy a person mentally as much as having their body taken from them. Constantly fearing for their body takes a mental toll on people that is different than just normal stress. This creates a constant sense of fear that people attempt to cover with aggression or anger. The fastest way to hurt somebody is by showing them that they are powerless when it comes to protecting their own bodies.

The “Dream.” This idea is important throughout the book. Let’s find a passage in our section where Coates discusses it and start to figure out what it is and why it might be important. Quote and offer your provisional/preliminary explanation or thoughts.

3.) Coates discusses the “Dream” on page 11, where he says that “I have seen all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts.” After he describes this dream, it is implied that this is basically the ideal life in America, but that this Dream can only be lived out by white people, and that blacks will never be able to achieve it. He establishes what he says is basically an impenetrable wall between the “good life” and the life of blacks in America. Although to me this does seem like the American dream, and it could be due to my own lack of exploration and experience, but in recent years, I don’t believe that it is completely impossible for blacks in America to gain the life that they want and deserve. I do think that black people make up a disproportionate amount of the poor class in America, but I also think that there are many successful black people today. I could be wrong, but this is based off of my own experiences, and I haven’t exactly done any research on the topic.

Freebie. Find one passage of interest to you. Maybe it’s something you don’t understand. Maybe it frustrates you. Maybe it seems really important to you. Quote and explain a bit. We’ll have an opportunity in class to share some of these to discuss.

4.) I chose a passage on page 11 “And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists by warring with the known world, I was sad for the host, I was sad for all those families, I was sad for my country, but above all, in that moment, I was sad for you.” I chose this because it confused me a little bit. I don’t really understand why Coates says that he is sorry for white people, the country, and the person he is addressing in the book. Does he feel bad that people don’t know the whole truth? Does it have to do with the Dream that he mentioned? Is he saying that this Dream that some people live in is not the same as the real world, and if this is the case, isn’t each person’s reality the world they live in?

Personal Goal:

I want to join some clubs that I think that I might be interested in, so that maybe I can find some friends that have similar interests. Also, I want to try new things that I may not have had experience in before, to expand my horizons on the front of interests. This would fit into the idea of cultural citizenship, which is mentioned in the Scheuer article. In this, he says that “the overall goal is to foster vibrant and prosperous communities with broad and deep participation…”(pg 4). I know that when I graduate college, I want to be able to say that I was active in the community that I spent four years in. The years of college are meant to be some of the greatest years of my life, where I learn new things and meet new people who may become my friends for life. Although it is off to a rough start, I still want to make it my goal to find new things that interest me or maybe even pick up some old ones that I had left behind.

Academic Goal:

I want to be able to figure out what I want my major to be. I want to be able to somewhat confidently say that I would like going into a certain field. This connects to the Bain article where he discussed how people choose what major they want to go into from their liberal arts education. “They found what fascinated them.”(pg 203). I realized that I want that for myself. I want to do something that I am passionate about. Too often I hear about people who are caught in a dead end job and have nowhere to go. Bain also stated that “a liberal arts education afforded them the chance to enjoy a richer life because they could get more out of every moment and every experience.”(pg 204). Although I am undecided, and I am not really sure what I want to do for most of my life, I hope that by getting a liberal education I can experience what Bain showed in the article.

While updating my goal table, I found it difficult to add from Bain to a lot of my goals, but the ones I did seemed like they fit just right. I think that having this table is a good visual for me, and who knows, maybe I will think of something inspirational from our discussions. But overall, I found it easier to add to existing ideas than to come up with new ones, but I guess that is true a lot of the time. I think this table will help to motivate me in the future.

Introduction: 1

“They have few notions about what the whole tradition of liberal education entails, except for some vague sense that it’s ‘good for students to be well-rounded.’” I chose this quote because it really resonated with me in the sense that before I started my classes at UNE, I also really didn’t know what liberal arts meant in terms of my education. All that I really knew was that it was so the student was exposed to all major subjects, but I never knew why it was like that or what we were expected to gain from it. I also think that maybe if more people were educated as to what this kind of education is all about, then they wouldn’t have such a distasteful notion if it. I am glad that I now have a better understanding of what a liberal arts education actually means and how it helps in everyday life. This also connects to Scheueur in that he specifically describes the importance of the liberal arts in any chosen discipline, stating that “free minds are flexible minds”. This further demonstrates how although many people don’t know much about the liberal arts, some knowledge in how it helps people in the future could change that perspective of uselessness.

Liberal Arts and Creativity: 2

“The subjects in our study didn’t just sit around expounding on the value of creativity. They found something that fascinated them. They became interested in problems they could solve, in work that they could do.” I chose this quote because it disproves the idea that many people have about the liberal arts. Many believe that liberal arts is just a fancy term for someone who gets a degree for the arts, and can only be a limited number of things, like a historian or an artist. This shows that even though all of these people went into a liberal arts program, they all found something that they enjoyed doing in widely varying fields. When they found their passion, they could use the skills that they had acquired from their varying range of study and apply it to the problems in their field. With this knowledge, they could approach problems in ways that they may not have thought of before.

Engage With History and Justice: 3

“They reject or accept arguments not out of personal whim but because they have engaged in the highest rational judgements. A liberal education helps them develop the ability to do that reflective thinking.” This quote connects directly with the Scheuer article in the “What Is Critical Thinking” section, it says that students who engage in critical thinking “venerate truth, for example, while recognizing that there are different types and degrees of truth, some more elusive or impermanent than others.” Both this quote and the one from Bain show that critical thinkers recognize that there are many different versions of “truth”, but just because it is from someone else’s view, that doesn’t mean they are completely false. Stories and history get twisted often enough that two people who lived through the same event may very well have different recollections of it, and that is okay, it is what being human is. Everyone has their own lens through which they view the world, and that is what the texts recognize.

Freedom To Choose:

“Researchers at the school recently compared the two groups and found that on a wide variety of measures the liberal arts students did just as well or better than students who didn’t necessarily pursue that broad undergraduate education.” This quote connects to Ungar’s article under the second misperception that a liberal arts degree is not worth as much as others. In it, it says that “a 2009 survey for the Association of American Colleges and Universities actually found that more than three-quarters of our nation’s employers recommend that college bound students pursue a ‘liberal education.’” Both of these quotes demonstrate how more and more people are realizing the utility of having a liberal arts education and how versatile it really is. This kind of education broadens a student’s mind and gives them the ability to look at problems in new and creative ways that they may not have been able to think of if they didn’t have that kind of education.

Selecting A Path:

“In his mind his intelligence and personality are not frozen in place but constantly evolving, permanently changed by everything he learns. ‘You think of yourself differently,’ he said, ‘if you have mastered something. You realize that you are separate, you are different. You have been empowered in a special way.’” I chose this quote because I know that when I had continued my French classes for six years, and I got to the highest class my high school offered, I was incredibly proud of myself. This distinction that only a few other people were in this class with me and had dedicated themselves this much really did make me feel different than the majority, and I really enjoyed that. It boosted my self-esteem and made me happier overall, even if I didn’t always enjoy the work that went into it.

While attempting to write my goals, I found it especially difficult to create goals that were specific enough to be achievable, but also broad enough to be able to be carried out over a period of time. I also found it hard to come up with more long-term goals, because I haven’t really taken time for myself to think about what I actually want for these categories in my life. After some research, I had some success in setting well-thought out goals that I can actually work towards and achieve. I definitely think that one of the hardest parts of this for me was to give myself enough information so that I could actually follow through on my goals.