English

I'm flipping through my copy of Between the World and Me and I'm looking for something I can write about but I can't bring myself to turn away from the horrible unreality of the election. I'm shaken and I'm fearful of what tomorrow might look like. I'm speechless but I'm somehow not surprised...yes, America is proving herself to be just as fundamentally, cruelly racist as she always was. The sharpness of the moment hits me as I'm scrolling through multiple feeds on different media platforms, through posts about election coverage and the DAPL and BLM and SJP. The pain of the fact that social movements like BLM and protests against the DAPL can happen alongside the rise of D*nald T*ump is very real.

On page 7 of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

"Americans believe in the reality of 'race' as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism--the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them--inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men."

Coates asserts that race cannot be separated from racism. He writes that there are no inherent qualities in a race (Coates 7). I was interested in the way he talks about naming: “And the process of naming ‘the people’ has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy” (7) Coates goes on to discuss white washing and the elevation of the belief in being white (8). Coates critiques the American dream and has high moral standards for a country that prides itself on exceptionalism. “One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our country’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjection our country to an exceptional moral standard” (8).

Hello 360 folk, 

The Construction of Lies: The Novel vs. The Play

Why is Suzan-Lori Parks’s Getting Mother’s Body A Novel? 

class today was amazing! thank u ~nkechi~ and anne! 

the last barometer statement we discussed today was about how Binh was "... exoticized into obscurity (and) obscures the way other people can see you". i'm thinking about this in two ways: (i) with reference to his father and being haunted by the Old Man and (ii) sexuality and Binh's identity as part of a queer diaspora. 

pg 193: "every day, i hear the Old Man's voice shouting at me from beneat the earth, where, I tell myself, he now lies." Binh's father is constantly admonishing him, shaming him for his homosexuaility and his struggle with his own sexuality is apparent in this. 

**I'm being really open here and doing a lot of work to contribute. so if you read this, please keep an open mind. and sit with the thoughts a little to really understand where im coming from**

hi everyone,

There are many things that I want us to read. I would like to teach my own class, and pick books because I love books, and the hole some feel could be filled if we read the right books and thought different thoughts. I am very tired and I have many books for us to read. We should stop reading a book per week, and instead read a few, and have supplementary texts, we could spend time on ourselves. We should be reading "the wretched of the earth" and "black skin white masks" WITH "the book of salt" wow, what beautiful thoughts could be thought. if only. I do not have the time to make scans of these books so I apologize. This morning I was reading some things that make me cry, but fill me up, I wish these courses could do the same. I am not a professor but I want to be one.

the mission statement of the norristown neighborhood project is:

"To promote positive change through youth education, community leadership, green spaces, the arts, and the celebration of Latino culture."