Lab Exercise: Blog Comments & They Say/I Say

Directions

1. Read over any latest comments on your blog. Make a mental note of how you might revise your blog accordingly, and then move onto to the lab exercise below.

2.  King and Carmichael: non-violence and black power

Find Your Templates

In the They Say / I Say book chapters "Three Ways to Respond" and "Distinguishing What You Say From What They Say," Graff and Birkenstein offer several ways to paraphrase texts and authors, explain those paraphrases, and negotiate between what texts say and what you say. Please make a note to briefly re-read the template for agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously (64-65), the idea of "voice markers" (69), and the template for identifying who is speaking (73-74).

Work from Passages

To make this assignment easier, I'll give you a couple passages below to work from today. Here is King and and Carmichael on non-violence.


King: "When legal contests were the sole form of activity, the ordinary Negro was involved as a passive spectator. His interest was stirred, but his energies were underemployed. Mass marches transformed the common man into the star performer and engaged him in a total commitment. Yet non-violence resistance caused no explosions of anger - it instigated no riots -- it controlled anger and released it under discipline for maximum effect. What lobbying and imploring could not do in legislative halls, marching feet accomplished a thousand miles away" (18).

Carmichael: "If we were to be real and honest, we would have to admit that most people in this country see things black and white. We live in a country that's geared that way. White people would have to admit that they are afraid to go into a black ghetto at night. They're afraid because they'd be 'beat up,'...etc. It happens to black people inside the ghetto every day, incidentally. Since white people are afraid of that, they get a man to do it for them - a policeman. Figure his mentality. The first time a black man jumps, that white man's going to shoot him. Police brutality is going to exist on that level. The only time I hear people talk about nonviolence is when black people move to defend themselves against white people. Black people cut themselves every night in the ghetto - nobody talks about nonviolence. Lyndon Baines Johnson is busy bombing the hell out of Vietnam - nobody talks about nonviolence. White people beat up black people everyday - nobody talks about nonviolence. But as soon as black people start to move, the double standard comes into being. You can't defend yourself" (58-9). 

After reading these passages, it would appear that we can't make easy intellectual divisions between King and Carmichael, as if one is non-violent and the other isn't. They are making more subtle arguments, and each sees violence and non-violence working in particular ways for particular ends. Rather than summarize these two statements, I'm asking you to do something differently here: write a paragraph on how each thinker understands how violence works. What do King and Carmichael's ideas on nonviolence have in common? Where do they divide?

Using the They Say/ I Say templates, figure out a way to compare and contrast how each of these American thinkers reacted to the role of violence in organizing social movements against white supremacy. Expect to write a paragraph 7-10 sentences long that

- introduces the authors and the texts
- paraphrases their main points on the subject
- uses a "yes/no" and "but/yet" template model for introducing your own analysis.