From completing the blog assignment this semester, I learned more about how to express my own ideas and opinions and being able to express them on a blog for others to read. Also, being able to comment on other blogs was a good way to expand and listen to different perspectives and even though you might share an idea with someone, the fact that it is still expressed differently makes it enlightening.

What really helped with the learning for this assignment was being assigned to blog groups where you would be able to actually go on their blog and make comments based on what they have written. It is kind of like a dialogue between the author and the intended audience used to convey a message, and I thought that contributed the most for making this a fun assignment.

This new knowledge is significant because it allows for us to be more open minded and consider each other’s views even if you disagree. There are many problems in society today and the more views we have and the more aware we are of what is happening, then it makes it easier to discuss.

Next, I think it is important to not disregard the blog so I can still have an idea of the hard work I put in to making it as interesting and influential as possible.

Writers in these three fields take different paths on how to deliver a particular message to their audience. Writing in the humanities involves more of interpretation of human experience as well as others. A thesis statement is essential in this field because of trying to persuade someone to read and understand your argument and point of view.

Writing in the social sciences includes trying to prove a theory and thus includes more observations and evidence by writers in order to help achieve that purpose of making something credible. A hypothesis must be included because its a prediction about what you think will happen in a particular experiment and then after you conduct the research for it and try to prove it, you usually say if your hypothesis was right or wrong based on what you did. You write a hypothesis, conduct research, and try to prove a theory based on observations to try and answer a question are the main takeaways from writing in this field.

Writing in the natural sciences is pretty similar to writing in the social sciences and even in the humanities in terms of doing research to try and answer a particular research question. With natural sciences, it is about more scientific research and different methods of observation being used.

Although the overall field of study is different and there are different techniques used to write in these three fields, the overall context is similar in terms of needing to write a hypothesis and prove a theory using many unique forms of research. Without research, writing is almost impossible no matter what you are writing about, and I took that away from reading more about these.

From completing this project, some of the things I took from this and learned was how doing more extensive research can help lead to more clarity on a specific topic. This was effective in terms of citing credible sources and being able to take a deeper look at its overall purpose and rhetorical context. Being able to take a source, read it, and then summarize or annotate it is an important skill to have when it comes to being a good writer, so I took this into consideration when doing my project. This knowledge is significant because there is never a time to stop learning and there is never a limit on the amount of research that could be done. Because of this, I did not have much trouble finding articles related to my field of study and summarizing them was not much of a problem either. If there is anything I need to do next, it would be just to work more on synthesizing with other sources, but other than that, I think it went well.

My overall experience with project 2 has had some ups and downs. Some ups have been doing the necessary research about my major and finding many different sources that tie in with communications and television. My annotations that explain each source have overall gone well citing the author’s name along with the overall summary about what race conversations come into play with the source and on television where this is seen. Explaining the purpose and the audience hasn’t been too difficult, so I think my overall progress has been enhanced. On the other hand, some downs have been although the sources are different, in one way, I feel like I am just repeating myself over and over again as well as the synthesis with another source. However, I have learned a lot along the way about how television is a big part of a communications major and how the media is not reliable in some circumstances because of their tendency to put out false information and possibly damage reputations of individuals or in this case, an overall group of people. This information has been useful for not only this assignment in particular, but for my overall goal of a communications major that I hope to achieve and keep working towards.

The Bechdel Test is a way to interpret the representation of women in movies that are fiction. In order to pass this test, the three questions a movie must answer are whether or not there are at least two women in the movie that have names, do they talk to each other, and do they talk to each other about something other than men. Therefore, Rioux’s article does pass this test because it explains how the novel “Little Women” portrays the way girls act and even how girls have conversations about something other than boys, which automatically passes the test. Even boys can read it also, so it is not gender specific in any way. This advocates as well as Davis’s speech that women in general need to have more of an influence in society and the opportunities should arise in order to be just as successful as men.

Annotated bibliographies are writing genres that are used to explicitly put together a list of sources with a brief description about them and their purpose. They are especially useful when first starting the research process. They are used to demonstrate proficiency in citing sources in specifically MLA format and how you evaluate the sources you cited that will be included in your paper.

Mcintosh, Peggy. “Extending the Knapsack: Using the White Privilege Analysis to Examine Conferred Advantage and Disadvantage.” Women & Therapy, vol. 38, no. 3-4, 2015, pp. 232–245., doi:10.1080/02703149.2015.1059195.

• Olsson, G. H., Rogell, A., Barnes, J., Glover, D., Arnö, A., Questlove, ., Keith, O. M., … MPI Media Group,. (2011). The Black power mixtape 1967-1975: A documentary in 9 chapters.

The first annotation is an article written by Peggy McIntosh about white privilege and comparing it to a knapsack that has no weight to it and how it seems to make certain people over privileged and disadvantaged. Some of the objects listed such as maps, clothes, and blank checks put into perspective to indicate how privilege seems to have an effect on the types of freedom and rights there are. It seems to prioritize one race over the other. The audience for this is white people, but could be for all races because it does a good job of informing us about what kinds of rights we should have, as does Oluo with her perspective of checking your privilege.

The second annotation is a video about how the black power movement has evolved from 1967 to 1975 that includes many different activists such as Angela Davis and Bobby Seale among others. The video captures many different filmmakers and journalists that view the movement very closely and understand how blacks were trying to live a better life and feel more prioritized. This took place in Sweden. The audience for this is black people because it is a message for them to join in on the fight for equality and an overall better lifestyle. This compares to Oluo also and Ramsey because of their takes on how racism has affected them and how changes are needed to be made to the system.

The most difficult part of this exercise was probably figuring out exactly how to annotate the sources and synthesize that with another viewing that we looked at such as Oluo. Nothing was really surprising and for project 2, this definitely helps with how to evaluate different sources and how to explain them. For my project, I will be researching about how situations about race take place in a communications field such as sports media. My first step will be evaluating sources and picking the most credible and informational ones that will help with my research plan.

 

 

 

From completing project 1, I learned more about how to write in APA style and although I have heard about it before, I never really used it and never knew much about it until coming to college and completing this assignment. Along with this, putting the whole concept of the paper into context, I also learned more about how to format my own ideas and participate in a conversation about race from viewing many different sources. In one way, the peer editing helps and specifically for me, getting feedback about how a certain point in the essay could be strengthened is a good revision plan.

This new way of knowledge is significant because overall, it helps to become a better writer and to be able to appeal to an audience. Not just for this course, but for anything else, it will come in handy if you are a good writer. The more we write and get our thoughts down on paper, the better off we will be.

For the next time, it is important for me to continue to enhance my skills on how to write a clear thesis in order for readers to understand exactly what I am trying to say because that was my problem the first time and I had to revise it. There was no clear understanding about what I was focusing on, and there has to be. Starting a paper as well is something that I want to get better at. That has given me trouble a lot of times because I want the reader to be drawn in and want to read it. I feel like in some ways I have improved, but there is always room to be better and it starts with drawing the reader in and having a clear point to focus on.

From the reading and the video, I came to a conclusion that although they are not true, they do seem hypothetically to prioritize one group of people over others. For example, model minority mentions specifically Asian Americans and how they seem to be the type of people that should be the most educated, the most wealthy, among others. Likewise, reverse racism is a myth as well and we know what regular racism is, so is there a need for this term? It does not make much sense to me because whichever way discrimination travels, you are not treating that race equally, so you are not being nice, which is what this concept really is because its the opposite. What stood out to me was when Wanda Sykes in her video claimed that the concept involves being nice to another race, so it really means not racist. If blacks treat whites nicely, that is reverse racism because it holds whites to a higher standard and makes it look like they exist as well. It indicates equality. So all in all, the information provided makes these terms seem truthful, but in context, they are just ways explaining how one race wants power over another.

The discussions that Oluo and Coates have about the N word is very interesting because their point of views are not that different from each other. It seems that they both believe that not just the N word, but words in general can have power and can impact a certain group of people. As Oluo writes on page 137, “Words have power. Words are more than their dictionary definition.” This illustrates the fact that the N word, since this is the specific word being discussed, is a way to really define racism where whenever it is said to black people, it can be defined as discrimination towards people of color. When speaking in terms of how rhetoric it is and how it applies to this class, it is important to learn about how something as little as one word can shape the world in a way where there are so many problems with race already without the use of the N word, and when it is used, the problems only continue to add up.

The language that Oluo writes with is very informational and serious. All of the chapters are a summary of her experiences and how she deals with racism on a daily basis. Specifically, her use of certain statistics put into perspective on how people of color are treated saying for example, how more black people or people of color are more likely to get arrested because of their perception, which seems to be that all black people are violent and cause the most trouble. This creates a feeling of sorrow for the reader towards Oluo because her overall ideas symbolize how racism is dividing people and making black people specifically searching for answers on how to define their role in society. The rhetoric effects speak for themselves in terms of persuading people to speak up and let their voice be heard and search for more equality in society.