SPE101+ENG230+WRI207=ENG316?

In reading this section of Rhetoric For Radicals I couldn’t help but feel I was back in Speech Class. Or even Composition. And I felt like I was certainly in the Writing For The Workplace class. All these classes were very important to me and helped me become the writer, reader, and public speaker I am today.
At first this part of the book really angered me because I couldn’t help but feel like all this was doing was re-itterating my previous classes and reminding me of all the things I already know, use, and utilize today. Then I re-read it because Mr. Del Gandio recommended I do so. Luckily I did.
Although time consuming, i found myseslf looking at this particular part of his book completely different. ((insert heavenly “ahhh” here)) Epiphany!

It made sense. Although most of this was review, it was all in preparation. I have always seen school as preparing me for pretty much nothing because in reality, school is NOT like the real world. It is nothing that can be physically prepped for. There are no grades at work. There are paper re-writes on reports given to my boss. Life and reality are nothing like college. But I realized, when reviewing these pages, that I had done many of these things.

pg. 38

“Public speaking begins with courage.”

This is exactly what I had when I was speaking to my speech class my Freshmen year about Invisible Children. Courage is what I had when standing in front of that classroom and explaining why I needed their help; why I needed their support; why I needed them to get involved. They looked at me funny. They asked questions about why I supported a cause thousands of miles away instead of supporting the children in the US. I needed to be sure of myself and my beliefs way before I stood in front of them.

pg. 49

“The trick is to turn your radical expressions into well-written public texts.”

Oh, there it is. Advanced Composition. Taking me back to my second semester of Freshmen year…again. I remember feeling like my teacher was annoying. A few weeks into the course, Amy Lynch-Biniek told our class to choose a topic for our final paper to be on. Ofcourse, I chose something that interested me and has interested me for years: Invisible Children. Writing was much different than that speech I had to outline and talk about in front of my 20 classmates. This paper was even more important because I had to plan on sending it in to a specific publication.
The Process:
-Choose topic
-Choose thesis
-Choose target audience
-Choose publication
-Write a rough draft
-Proofread
-Get Feedback
-Re-write
-Final draft
-Send out
Funny that this is the SAME process discussed in the book. I followed the book in my class almost verbatim. It’s astonishing at how well I wrote that paper, only being a freshman here at KU. I did very well in the class and I was the only under-classmen in the entire class. Mostly juniors and seniors made up my classmates and even they struggled.
pg. 50

“Reading is labor intensive.”

Truth. I spent countless hours researching and speaking with representatives from Invisible Children before turning in my paper. I spent an entire semester making it just right and probably could have spent much more time on it.
Pg. 68

“Activists are in the business of persuasion.”

That was the goal of my paper. That was the goal of my speech. And the goal of my story telling in my Creative Writing class is to persuade people to understand things from my point of view. Everything I have ever done to inform people of the organizations i feel passionate about, I could have learned from these classes. It wasn’t until reading Del Gandio’s book that I put these three classes together and realized that the outcome is Rhetoric, Democracy, & Advocacy. If I had been able to apply all three classes to this class from the very beginning, I’m sure I’d be much more interested and understanding of the material. Now that I actually get it i can begin to appreciate it more. It’s amazing.
I guess I have Del Grandio to thank for his recommendation to re-read!
It’s amazing how much you get out of something with a little more effort.

Time May Change Me…

I sometimes feel like I am being impatient when I’m waiting for something in my life to change. I put so much effort into working on that one part of my life (that seems so big) to change, that when I don’t see immediate results, I tend to get frustrated, give up, and walk away.

Imagine if that had been the case in the Civil Rights movement. Something that significant took a lot of effort, a lot of work, and a lot of patience. The change wasn’t immediate. It wasn’t even witnessed by all of the people who had a hand in the Civil Rights movement. I take for granted the changes that have been made because I never had to experience the hardships that others pressed through. Being an English major, it seems second nature to be reading works by people of a race other than European or Caucasian.

Over the past several years, the population on college campuses is no longer dominantly white. The population is becoming more and more diverse and people are from all corners of the earth. (It’s cliche, I know.) This change, which seems like it should have always been the societal norm, was what prompted educators to re-evaluate the curricula they bring to the table for their students. It never occurred to me that my Psychology of the Black Experience Class and World Literature are relatively new installments here at KU. These classes were brought around to accommodate all types of people on the campus and to educate those who may have escaped High School without reading good literature from anyone other than the dead white men.

-*-

pg. 101

As language constructs meaning, it shapes our world, informs our identities, and provides the cultural codes for perceiving and classifying the world.

Being an English major, I have developed the bad habit of correcting people when they speak. Sometimes when a teacher is speaking, I flinch if they said they did ‘good’ at something rather than well. I tend to correct my sister when she says things like ‘supposively’ instead of ‘supposedly’. I personally catch myself saying ‘drive safe’ instead of ‘drive safely’. It annoys me. But I never really thought about how the way people speak define who they are.

Being from Jersey, people tend to make fun of my accent and in speech class I remember Dr. Lambkin correcting my pronunciation of some words like ‘water’, ‘home’, and even ‘room’. It used to annoy me because that’s just how I’ve always talked. No one else had ever told me I was wrong or incorrect. I was offended. I didn’t know how to say things his way so I seemed to never get things right. I now see that I probably make my sister feel that way, and I’m sure she secretly hates me deep down inside.

This chapter was really interesting because I really hadn’t thought about the importance and history of the English language as a whole. I hadn’t really ever thought to myself that people who don’t speak proper English were inferior, but maybe by me correcting them, it makes them feel that way. Call me a nerd but it’s fun to think that English is continually changing it’s vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation of many words every year.

In 2009 I heard that the word ‘unfriend’ was made an official word and is now included in the Oxford Dictionary. ((check it out here)) At first I was mad. “Unfriend? Really?” Honestly, I never say unfriend. I say I defriended some one on facebook or MySpace. Who decided that unfriend was better than defriend? But then it hit me: unfriend may not be the term I use, but in other areas, and in other people’s daily language, that may have been the term they used. Things I say may sound strange to other people just as ‘unfriend’ sounds strange to me. Who am I to judge? And who are others to judge the way people speak and think of them as a lesser individual for it?

-*-

pg. 108

Perhaps no other media event better represents the controversy over language, identity, and race than the fury over Ebonics.

I was surprised to learn that Ebonics, of African American English, was considered a legitimate second language in California. I was even more surprised to learn that it helped African American students to learn Standard English. I guess me being judgmental and not open to change found this strange because I assumed that teaching your children Standard English from the start would have been the best way to teach anyone Standard English. Following my double-surprise was yet a third surprise hearing that California, of all states, revoked that word from the school district and dropped all curricula about it.

California is usually such a statement making state. It surprised me when they were angry that Prop 8 was even being considered. It shocked me when Ebonics was such an issue that the school district was forced to remove the course. I personally don’t think that Ebonics is a healthy or smart step in teaching people Standard English, but I wouldn’t want to ban it from a curriculum. Ebonics is a legitimate and well-used form of speaking. If there is a class on it, I just don’t see the hurt in educating people about it.

::for the sake of time and space, I’ll end there::

Women Who Made It

Most of what I’ve read in this book have been short recollections of incidents and protests that had been organized and headed by men who had an idea they wanted to get across.
Then again, some of what I’ve read have been about the big picture of an entire organization and their goal to be heard and change something about their typical view of the world they live in.
Rare is it in this, or any, book to read about women who have made a difference and are given the appropriate credit for their efforts.

pg. 95
“The determination to allow each individual to make a contribution and play a role in his or her own emancipation; the emphasis on giving voice and space to those who have previously been excluded from leadership…informed the creation of a fluid structure in which women’s leadership could and did thrive.”

The above was the goal of Ella Baker when she was a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Ella had many goals that she wanted to achieve not only for herself, but for women and under-represented people in their personal communities.
After experiencing some set backs due to her race, gender, age, and lack of education, she still over came these obstacles to finally be written and summarized in three whole paragraphs. [heavy sarcasm] This is really upsetting because upon further research, it is obvious just how much she changed the SNCC and made it encompass a larger and broader amount of issues. She may not have had a Ph.D but the women knew how to command and draw in a large group of people based on their beliefs.

pg. 102
“Hamer played a central role in the little-known and rarely discussed aspect of movement activity.”

Fannie Lou Hamer is a bit more elaborated on than Ella Baker. The book discusses her role in the SNCC but also the incredible amount of suppression she experienced. It was upsetting that they only focused on Hamer’s suppression because I’m sure Baker experienced it too. She was just as much a part of the SNCC as Baker. Bake went through very extreme cases of suppression. She was physically beaten, arrested, verbally and mentally abused by the people of her community. Others suffered because of her strong will to stick up for herself. Why is it that her story seems to be more important than Bakers? I know the book wanted to keep it short, but maybe showing that both these women went through a lot of hell to make a difference would have been a better way to prove that women had a rough time during the civil rights movement, just as men did.
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had so much coverage. They were both attacked by white supremacists. They were both oppressed and targeted. So many books, novels and biographies written about them but when it comes to women who made a change in that time, they are greatly under-researched and not well-known at all.
By the end of the chapter, i felt like both women had many accomplishments that were discussed. The strange part about this is that MLK was brought up and the authors discussed his treaty he made with a Mississsippi senator. I knew he had done this but I had never known that a woman, Hamer, had been the one to have the treaty revoked and the compromised denied.

Although I know there are MANY more women who made a difference during the civil rights movement, it was nice to hear in depth about the two. But still dissapointing to learn that they had not made the impression upon the American people like MLK and Malcolm X.

Avoidance & Suppression/Revoking Free Speech?

In reading and researching the different ways to control a threat or challenge, I started thinking from the perspective of the agitator. In a situation where avoidance would be the first response of an establishment, this may be seen as degrading to the organization posing the threat/challenge.
If the establishment came to the leaders saying their beliefs were wrong and that what they believed in was incorrect, the organization may feel like their beliefs have only been confirmed. If some one were to denounce them instead of talking in a way that they could come to an agreement, this may only fuel the fire.

However, in a situation where avoidance is taken and the leaders of the establishment meet with the leaders of the organization to better understand where both parties are coming from or where they stand, it would be easier to convince the organization that their threat/plan will be unsuccessful or will not have the desired out come they planned. This would maybe give the organization a different perspective about their beliefs or a better understanding. If the establishment listens to the complaints of the organization, maybe they can better understand why they have the issues they do. It is easier to talk things through than to do something rash to make a point.

Pg. 57
“The establishment’s actions may make agitators angry and energize them rather than causeing them to abandon their agitation”

When evasion is the chosen tactic it seems like a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, from an agitators point of view, it is easy for one to think that the establishment is incompetent or  even useless because they can never get through to the people in charge. When making the organization leaders or followers go through the runaround with the lower level employees who are told to avoid letting the agitators speak with the leaders of the establishment, this may cause the organization to make a rash decision. They can come up with more reasons in which the establishment is wrong/bad because they can never get any straight answers. If it is answers they are seeking, evasion may just cause more anger thus opening the door to a more irrational idea to spring up.
I know that when Invisible Children was holding their big movement called the RESCUE in April of ’09, they experienced quite a bit of evasion from the places we were asking to let us sleep overnight at. Chicago kept kicking the organization out of public parks, libraries, and they eventually ended up in the gymnasium of an old High School. This just made the IC try harder and become more persistent. It’s easier for the establishment to evade the organization at first, but some times it becomes quite hard when hundreds of people are calling for the same reason from open to close day after day.

Pg. 61
“Suppression requires a thorough understanding of the opponents and their ideology as well as a strong commitment to actively confront and defeat the agitators and their movement.”

I wonder why Suppression is not the main and most popular way that establishments try to avoid confrontation with an organization. Understanding where people are coming from makes negotiations much easier and makes people much more cooperative if they see that some one has taken the time to research their beliefs and efforts. Doing the research also helps the establishment to have a better reason to deny the organization their demands.
All in all I don’t really see how suppression is an answer to agitators. It seems to cause more problems whether the approach is harassment or denial. Denial seems like an immediate shut down and an immediate anger trigger to the organization. Harassment has no other point than to weaken the strength of the organization by attacking the people who are in charge. This shows the rest of the members of the organization that their leaders aren’t as strong as they thought and that the organization as a whole is pretty weak. However, the book never mentions that all these organizations that are protesting are necessarily bad. Why would an establishment tear it down when there are so many other tactful ways to deal with it?

As the chapter goes on, I find myself getting more and more angry because I don’t see how a book can write and devote an entire chapter to how to silence people from speaking what they believe. At first I thought this chapter was just about controlling an outbreak that may be a potentially bad situation. But the more I read, the more I realized that this whole chapter was about controlling and stopping free speech.

I finished the chapter, but ended up speechless.