Update on Paper 3 on Bayoumi Text

On October 22, we responded to the following In-Class Writing prompt:

 

        If you're Muslim or Arab American, you are in the news every day. Since 9/11, these two groups appear daily represented as Al Qaeda, Taliban, terrorists or sometimes in derogatory terms such as "towelhead" and "immigrant."

       Much like those of Japanese descent in the 1940s faced discrimination and slurs, now America has undertaken a new kind of conditioning of our national attitudes. This is a powerful and convincing political fiction that drives all activities and the related attitudes.

       How are Americans being conditioned to think, fundamentally, about FELLOW Americans and how does this impact the experience of Arab and Muslim Americans?
       Draw on your reading of Moustafa Bayoumi's How Does It Feel To Be A Problem? to identify examples of this new American conditioning, explain how this conditioning is happening and a specific experience from one or more of those interviewed in the book.

 

Your next draft for Paper 3 will include the writing you completed in class and developed further:

• Identify and develop reasons (all carefully explained in the text) why any of the seven portrait subjects faces a negative experience as fellow Americans (this is the conditioning from the larger American society)
• Idenitfy THREE of the portraits and their experiences to illustrate your ideas about the impact of conditioning
• Be sure to explain how this conditioning is happening:  the sources, the purveyors, the supporters, the actions and attitudes that get spread outward into American society

For advanced students (you know who you are):  Frame the entire paper in terms of how the treatment of Muslims and Arab Americans in America today is itself a "political fiction" (with real consequences). 

 

Reminders:
No class on October 29.
DUE ON NOVEMBER 5:  Final draft of Paper 2 (Angels) and TWO COPIES of draft of Paper 3.

 

Thank you to those students who come prepared for class.  When a student attends class having read the assigned pages, is ready to hand in TWO copies of the draft of the paper, and makes the effort to be really engaged in our discussion, it makes it a more menaingful class for everyone.