Any topic (writer’s choice)
In 400-500 words (include word count) you will thoroughly answer one of the discussion prompts provided for the week. In order to gain full points for your post, you need to:
Cite specific examples or quotes from at least 3 different readings from the week; include appropriate in-text citations (author last name and page number/timestamp)
Cite specific examples or quotes from at least 1 lecture from the week; include appropriate in-text citations (last name and timestamp)
In your own words, define one of the key terms I list on the discussion board for the week. Please UNDERLINE it so your peer reviewers can evaluate your definition.
Prompts (OPs select one)
1) How has discussing the “afterlife of slavery” and “colorblind racism” throughout this week affected your understanding of racism? Was there anything that surprised you or didn’t surprise you? Things you felt were left out of the conversation? Things that were very impactful for you? Things you wish were spoken about more often when the topic of antiblackness comes up?
2) What do you think about Angela Davis’s arguments about the prison industrial complex and prison abolition? Do you think prison abolition is possible? Necessary? How has the content from this week added to or changed your understanding of police and prison in the US? How does all of this relate to the BLM uprisings of the last year?
3) How has your understanding of intersectionality changed or grown this week? Do you think you understand the concept at this point? Do you have questions about it? Was anything from this week particularly useful for you to understand it? How would you explain intersectionality to a friend who didn’t know anything about it?
4) Review the “Language for Writing/Talking about Slavery” (Links to an external site.) document again. Why does the way we talk about chattel slavery matter so much? Before now, have you ever thought about the effect of the language of calling people “slaves” versus “enslaved people”, or “enslavers” vs “masters”? Why is it important to use language that does not minimize or normalize the brutality of antiblackness in the United States? Do you think your schools in the past have been accurate in the way they teach about slavery, or do you think school curriculums themselves replicate antiblack language and ideas? Pick out a few examples given in the document, historic notes, or other parts of the document that seem particularly important or compelling, and explain why you think they’re important.
5) Analyze this Coates passage from page 18 in relation to this definition of ideology from page 74 of Bonilla-Silva:
Ideologies are about meaning in the service of power. They are expressions at the symbolic level of the fact of dominance. As such, the ideologies of the powerful are central in the production and reinforcement of the status quo. (Bonilla-Silva 74)
CW — DESCRIPTION OF ANTIBLACK VIOLENCE // CHATTEL SLAVERY: Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black bodyit is heritage. Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic borrowing of laborit is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape. It must be rape so regular as to be industrial. There is no uplifting way to say this. I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructiblethat is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings. The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first fruits of the American garden. And the fruits were secured through the bashing of children with stovewood, through hot iron peeling skin away like husk from corn. The bodies were pulverized into stock and marked with insurance. And the bodies were an aspiration, lucrative as Indian land, a veranda, a beautiful wife, or a summer home in the mountains. For the men who needed to believe themselves white, the bodies were the key to a social club, and the right to break the bodies was the mark of civilization. (Coates 18)
Suggested keywords to define **please UNDERLINE in your post
antiblackness, chattel slavery, intersectionality, epistemology, colorblind racism, ideology, abolition, prison industrial complex, the “afterlife of slavery”, Jim Crow, convict leasing, “hierarchy of the human”
