Group Discussion on Outlines and Projects:

Cally is discussing the state of the Architecture department’s resources and studio. She shared pictures with us of the architecture studio here at USF and how it does not promote creativity and light. I recommended she collect short testimonies from other USF architecture students about their experience with the studio and how it has or has not nurtured their education. CJ is gearing towards covering the story of the Gucci family and the corruption of fashion brands profiting off of exploitation. Both of my partners issues revolve around the topic of money and corrupt systems. USF really needs to reevaluate its progressive and inclusive ideals because its actions aren’t matching how they market themselves. The fashion industry is producing a system where people are not buying for the product but for the chance to show they bought an item from this brand.

Speech Analysis:

Opening: Obama did not open his speech with an alarming or exciting attention getter. This is most likely due to the fact that the context in which the speech was given already held a very significant value. However the choice of words and his tone were very reassuring and empowering. He invoked his crowd by creating unison as well as individuality by addressing the diversity of his supporters and how they ultimately all come together to make the United States of America. 

Body Preview: Obama in the body preview gives thanks to the people who have helped him during his election. He gives thanks to those who have supported his journey. This part of his speech humanizes him as a husband, father, a son. By reminding his audience that he is still just a normal person that succeeds due to the support of others allows the US citizens to feel a part of his victory. He lets the audience know that he knows that while some may not agree with what he has to say or will do for the United States he will try his best to do what’s best. He even states that he will listen to his US citizens, especially when they disagree with him. It is about promoting perseverance, change, and progress. He focuses his attention on opportunity and ties in unison as much as he can. “Yes we can,” he has the audience repeat multiple times. It isn’t about a leader fighting battles and making all decisions, it is about a nation working together to make life better for all and always. He is a talented speaker and he knows how to invoke emotion and pride. 

Aristotelian Persuasive Techniques: Given that this speech has to deal with America as a  whole unified country. Obama didn’t give false hope, he was real and honest. Giving America a future to look forward to. He gave an honest representation of where the government is at, and where it should be, bringing the ethos to his speech. Along with the pathos of the state of the economy, given that nothing is perfect nor will it be anytime soon Obama talked about how much can be done with the time he is given to help make America everything that it should already be.

One of the largest yet least talked about issues is violence against Native American/ Indigenous Identifying women. I have devoted much time to this topic in a prior research project but never really explored the serious and effective solutions for the issue. Native women have been targeted, abused, objectified, and dehumanized since the beginning of western colonization. Today the United States has not only done very little to nothing to repair damages imposed onto Indigenous communities but has in-fact upheld laws and regulations that directly harm these communities. Out of all members of Indigenous communities the women have been the most harmed, this is due to the nature of relationships between white men and Indigenous women that goes back centuries. The shear number of missing Indigenous women and girls is horrifying and the crimes committed against them go either un-noticed or un-condemned. The United States has positioned itself at the helm of Indigenous politics and has dismissed crime after crime that has taken place on or outside national reservations. The main and most systemic issues that have led to this targeted demographic are positioning of “man-camps” near reservations, Indigenous legal systems, and a history of sexualizing and dehumanizing of Indigenous women.

Outline:

Introduction:

• Grabber: use statistic or story to help audience understand the gravity of the issue
• Main message/ Call to action: Find specific strategies to combat violence against Native American/ Indigenous Identifying Women. (donating, hands-on grassroots work, activism/ protest/ speech, using privileged positions to give those without a voice a platform.)

Body:

• present the main source of violence against these women and girls and the connection to abuse of the land/ earth
• explain how this correlates to how the U.S failed to empower reservation communities to protect themselves
• this all connects back to history of objectification and how an Indigenous Woman’s body has been used throughout history as a means for power and control.

Conclusion:

• clear and concise summary of main points and the connections between them
• main main message understandable and digestible to guarantee that the audience hears what it is you want them to
• call to action and what is possible to take action on right now

Review of Speech:

Despite the fact that this speech was given by a young child, it is very cohesive, clear, and convincing! We felt that he took advantage and utilized his position as a kid to amplify the power of his speech and his understanding of the topic. He spoke in a passionate and lively manner and even got his audience physically engaged in his message. His bluntness with information and logic was easy to follow and allowed him to condense the topic without sacrificing vital information. We ultimately found that it doesn’t take a lot of time or complexity to deliver a convincing and informationally valid speech. It is about how you utilize your time and perspective on the issue!

Group discussion on speech topics + outlines:

We each shared our topics and explained partially our outlines and plans of argumentation. We spent the majority of the time clearing up our understanding of the assignment and how to formulate the different pieces we need to create a cohesive speech. Everyone has fascinating topics regarding adoption, the environment, and marginalized communities, I am excited to see what we all develop in this assignment!

When prompted with this assignment one specific and heart wrenching topic comes to mind, the femicide taking place in Latin America. I know that this is unfortunately not a specific historical event, however, it is an extremely underreported and devastating issue everyone must understand to understand Latin America. Many are not even aware that a femicide epidemic is taking place in our southern hemisphere. Women all throughout but especially in Central American countries are being tortured, raped, and killed by gangs. Their bodies are left in plastic bags on the side of the road, in agricultural fields, or wherever else is most convenient for their attacker. It is even said that many women take birth control before they begin their migration from their native country to the United States border so that if they get raped along the way they will not end up with child.

Since this topic is very important to me and I believe very important to inform others on I want to hone in on a more specific example or starting point as to when the femicide began getting so bad. It is unfortunately for this reason that my father does not always allow us to go see and share with our family in South America and why we have been disconnected from our culture and loved ones.

Femicide in Latin America is relevant today because of feminism and how prominent it is in our society. The definition of feminism in the States versus in Latin America are two very very different ideas, yet Latin America has a multitude of female presidents. I think it relates to our society and our discussion as a generation because the women in Latin America have vastly different obstacles.

Group work 4/26:

Group Members: Alec Hakimian, Alessandra Aguirre, Celeste Addison 

White rhinos are famous for their big horns; they are among the endangered species.

The teacher didn’t know if she should laugh or cry, but she knew it was quite hilarious.

Three things matter in life: perseverance, commitment, and aptitude for learning.

A dog trotted over to the computer in Sara’s office, typed out a perfect letter, and printed it!

The manager was stunned, but she told the dog; “The sign says you have to be good with the computer, just because you’re good at typing doesn’t mean that you are good with it”.

A man walked into a pet shop and ordered three things: a centipede, a kitten, and a parrot.

Sama was the best person for the job because she had an excellent service record in one key area; community health training. 

Amy served with 4 stars in the army, therefore, she was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Rhetorical Analysis:

Julia Chang’s award winning speech about the loss of heritage and language was extremely strong in structure, content, and organization. Chang used her own personal experience with her mother and being raised speaking a second language to open her topic and indeed closed with her personal story as well. This symmetry and connection to emotion not only humanized her and her message but also created an underlying sense of understanding and credibility. The use of other examples such as proposition 227 strengthened Chang’s words. I do however have one criticism to this award winning speech.

Yes, it is important to acknowledge the content in Chang’s speech is vastly different from the CNN speech by Emma Gonzalez after the parkland shooting, the tone and difference in reality are complete opposites. I felt that Chang’s speech sounded very dry and fake. She did have certain bouts of emotion but she mostly sounded like she was reading off of notecards. I thought that this made it hard to follow. As I watched Gonzalez’s speech I felt every word of their message. The parkland shooting speech may have not been as structurally or factually developed, but it I felt it more and understood it easier. I think ultimately with a speech you need to find a balance between formality and casualness. Ultimately each speech was extremely impressive and I hope to be able to formulate a final project that aims to be on their level.

Anthony Jack’s Ted Talk was assertive, powerful, and clear. He highlighted the graveness and relevance of two specific issues which allowed him to show the scope of racist and privilege based systems in the U.S. and how each can have wide spread and surprising implications in multiple different systems and structures.

The topic of accessibility not meaning inclusion is similar to that of what I focused on in my discussion post. Once students are given the platforms, resources, or confidence to go and share in experiences they also need the understanding of how to make these experiences happen. It is similar to many philosophies by educators that simply leveling the playing field to some degree is not effective enough. Once we are all on the same level of equity and/ or equality THEN we can begin the real work. Just as Jack mentioned about the term “office hours,” knowing and understanding this term as well as other vocabulary used in educational or vocational systems is a privilege and we must be aware that with inclusion and diversity comes the awareness of different backgrounds, comfortability levels, and unique perspectives.

Tatum wrote about how not feeling comfortable in your environments and not feeling nurtured by your superiors affects performance. In talking on this issue we come around again to Jack’s discussion about creating relationships or allies in your communities. The bond or lack thereof that we have with our educators is one of the most formative parts of learning. We have people to look up to, to expect great things from us, to give us a break when times get tough. Many students of color, especially those who attend PWI miss out on this experience and therefore miss out on leaning the skills to navigate and create said relationships. As far as creating solutions to the many issues at hand, it needs to be centric around the young adults or kids who themselves are suffering at the hands of the system. The solution is to hear them while assuming the responsibility of improving on transparency and inclusivity.

The United States has painted itself as a country that allows any individual with 1) drive and 2) the willingness to work hard, to succeed and move up through social and economic classes. We preach ideals of “the American Dream” just come to the U.S and opportunity is waiting to be pursued. The sad reality and truth is that this part of our national identity, whether it was true any any point, certainly is not true today and is ultimately a lie that brings people in seek of a refuge to a place that does not offer them this opportunity. I believe one of our biggest social issues as a country is our perspective on, treatment of, and lack of resources provided for: immigrants. Immigrants are essentially the structure on which America has positioned itself and they are the reason we are all able to live the lives we do. Everything down to the products we use, the food we consume, the homes we inhabit, even our living spaces here at USF are taken care of by many people who are themselves immigrants. Without this part of our society the lives of people in the U.S would be unrecognizable. Despite this fact immigrants are treated worse today probably than almost any other point in the history of our country. The risk people are putting themselves at simply trying to seek safety and security is only our doing and the U.S needs to take action to improve living conditions, opportunity, compensation/ benefits, and overall mental and physical well being of immigrants. In my essay I want to touch upon the current state of our immigration practices in the U.S, how harmful they are, and what we could be doing to improve them.

Outline Essay 3:

• Introduction
  • current state of immigration in the U.S
• Body Paragraphs
  • exploitation of immigrants in the U.S throughout history
    • ex: agricultural labor strike: dolores huerta + cesar chávez
  • impossible process of gaining citizenship and/ or residency
  • criminalizing perspective of immigrants
  • how we can improve the social issue of immigration in the u.s
  • conclusion

Identifying Plagiarism:

after reading lauren’s discussion blog post I conclude that we each ultimately made the same final point in our reactions to the reading but I believe she went slightly more in depth with a multitude of examples from the reading, I learned a lot from her response. lauren made an excellent point about one of the more identifiable quotes from the reading, “it bees that way sometimes.” she analyzed how the quote revealed a march larger and more complex perspective of how black women have come to accept a society that does not serve them. i thought lauren’s focus on this quote and how she framed her response around it showed that she was reading between the lines and taking time in her response to truly understand the nuances of language within different cultures or groups. i didn’t pick up on that when reading so it impressed me that she also connected her points to various minority groups as well. she also shared that she had a nurturing group of individuals she was similar to that she relied on in her past, something I did not have other than with my siblings. despite this difference lauren and i both acknowledged how we have had vastly different experiences from the women in the readings, though ultimately through life experience and analyzing the readings we understand the importance of peers or mentors who can validate, relate to, and help you work through your shared experiences.

video analysis:

In Taryn Coe’s Ted Talk about her practices to be an anti-racist teacher I saw arguments being made that would have dismantled issues in Kynard’s essay. Kynard and her students spoke about how it was because of the educators and the educational system that they felt stereotyped when acknowledged or not acknowledged at all. Coe discusses the multiple steps educators can take in order to avoid and eliminate these emotions of doubt within minority students and their expectations of their learning environments. I specifically like how Coe acknowledged that it isn’t the job of these minority students to be the educators of their peers and to lead the way for diversity and inclusion. She explicitly puts this responsibility on educators and other adult leaders in the academic realm. If we are aware of the complexities in America and the obstacles they have created for people not a part of the white race then we are able to not allow history to repeat itself or continue into today’s society.

It isn’t easy as a student to also be an activist, at least not for me. But ways that I have found to incorporate myself into these missions is to constantly be not only educating myself but allowing other people to educate me if they so choose. Many times it isn’t about doing something, it is about giving the power and respect to others to empower them to find justice for their own communities.

Parallel Structure Activity – Alessandra Aguirre, Rachel Ballard, Jacob Woods

Group Work

1. CORRECT
2. We can go dancing in the park or classroom.
3. Jeremy likes to read books that are historic, speculative and realistic.
4. I went to the bar to dance, drink and punch on the rowdy faces. 
5. Buying a car is not a decision to take lightly or to be careless about.
6. CORRECT
7. Sally needs a new stove, dishwasher, and knives for her kitchen. 
8. My first grade teacher taught me how to write, read, and play tic-tac-toe. 
9. She will not admit it or apologize.
10. The whole wheat pasta is better than the enriched wheat pasta.  
11. Literature classes teach students to analyze texts, think critically, and improve their writing. 
12. CORRECT
13. Drunk drivers thoughtlessly take the lives of other people in their own hands, risk their own lives, think only about their own pleasure and fun, and don’t consider the consequences of their actions. 
14. In order to convey the information correctly, the police officer spoke loudly to the crowd, told people where they should stand, repeated the information, and gestured to help people remember. 

Reading Response:

I read Lauren’s response and in the process I saw through her writing that we had very similar experiences with the text. We both had a slightly difficult time full understanding or comprehending the material at first but reached the conclusion that the main purpose was to shoe multi-cultural interaction through a “broken english” frame. We shared similar thought processes which I gathered from her writing and she formulated one of the thoughts I couldn’t communicate in my discussion post which was, “There are many negative connotations about broken English as people could see others as ‘illiterate’ but just because one’s grammar is not fluent does not mean that their points are not understood.” The beauty of Chin’s work was prominent and amazing because despite a slightly different delivery we all reached the same conclusion on the topic and our understanding of it.

Alessandra Aguirre, Celeste Addison, Sathwik Reddy Konatham

The video essay argues that diversity and inclusivity are important but can be done/ implemented poorly. Ultimately we want to include and promote members of all marginalized communities to increase representation throughout all fields, especially something as prevalent as media. The reason diversity in film is not appreciated and in fact is more criticized is because in the process of promoting that person’s marginalized identity you begin to lose the parts of that person that makes them human or more interesting. The entire point of diversity is to put everyone on an equal footing. Just as the essay states, “Iron Man is a movie about a superhero that just happens to be a man.” Representation of diversity in films should be treated the same way.

Clips from movies with female protagonists that are well written as well as clips from movies with poorly written female protagonists are the two dominant visual sources. By showing two examples of movies with female protagonists, one that received immense praise, and one that received immense criticism the author is able to better explain his main points. The examples used were convincing. They aided in his explanation and established clarity when he switched between movies. Movies that focus only on how diversity will be received lose their momentum with the audience.