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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT THE NEW EDITION OF “THEY SAY / I SAY”

“The new chapter, ‘In My Experience,’ validates students’ lived experiences and teaches them how to establish their ethos in their writing.”

—Lorelei Blackburn, Michigan State University

“This chapter is a worthy reminder of the value of story and a clear glimpse at the way professional writing is actually produced.”

—Eric Wardell, Normandale Community College

“Wow! I love the addition of this new chapter.”

—Cameron Wilson, William Jessup University

“This chapter will be a great help in getting students to do what I’m already asking them to do, which is connect a controversy that we are reading and writing about with the world as they have seen, experienced, and read about it.”

—Douglas Swartz, Indiana University Northwest

“I am a really, really big fan of this new chapter ‘Who Decides What Freedom Is?’ It introduces a diverse array of new and important topics through some excellent articles that will push students to think critically. The inclusion of this section elevates the reader from the sixth edition way above the reader from the fifth edition.”

—Max Hohner, Eastern Washington University

“The new readings offer a complex view of the world, sure to generate meaningful discussion in the classroom. I’m always impressed by how much work goes into updating the anthology from one edition to the next. It keeps the course engaging for me, as the instructor.”

—David Onofrychuk, Alaska Pacific University

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO A COLLEAGUE ABOUT “THEY SAY / I SAY” ?

“You need to teach with this text!”

—Dagmar Van Engen, Arizona State University

“I’ve never gotten student compliments on a textbook, and I get them every semester with ‘They Say / I Say’ .”

—Aaron Clark, Dallas College, Brookhaven Campus

“This book is integral to my writing course. I can’t really imagine teaching college writing without it.”

—Nicole Wendt, University of Minnesota

“The most effective book on teaching argumentative writing I have ever used.”

—Selina Marcille, Southern New Hampshire University

“This book has been transformative for my composition classes.”

—Doritta Fong, Douglass College

“The text isn’t just about writing arguments—it’s about reading and evaluating arguments, understanding who is saying what and why. That’s the heart of research and inquiry.”

—Kay Halasek, The Ohio State University

“Many students say that it is the first book they’ve found that actually helps them with writing in all disciplines.”

—Laura Sonderman, Marshall University

“Practical advice for writers in a welcoming tone, as if to say, ‘We’re all writers here. Let’s talk about what actually works.’ The approach is so different from every other book about writing.”

—Tiffaney Tiffin, Hope International University

W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By midcentury, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program—trade books and college texts—were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today—with a staff of five hundred and hundreds of trade, college, and professional titles published each year—W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.

Composition: KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd

Cover design: Pete Garceau

Cover images: Panimoni/Getty Images

Permission to use copyrighted material is included in the credits section of this book, which begins on page 719 .

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023949207

ISBN: 9781324046660

Ebook ISBN: 9781324070153

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

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W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS

Retailer ebook version 6.0

To the great rhetorician Wayne Booth, who cared deeply about the democratic art of listening closely to what others say.

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION xv

PREFACE: Demystifying Academic Conversation xxi

INTRODUCTION: Entering the Conversation 1

PART 1. “THEY SAY”

1 “THEY SAY”: Starting with What Others Are Saying 19

2 “HER POINT IS”: The Art of Summarizing 32

3 “AS HE HIMSELF PUTS IT”: The Art of Quoting 47

PART 2. “I SAY”

4 “YES / NO / OK, BUT”: Three Ways to Respond 59

5 “AND YET”: Distinguishing What You Say from What They Say 74

6 “SKEPTICS MAY OBJECT”: Planting a Naysayer in Your Text 84

* 7 “IN MY EXPERIENCE”: Using Personal Stories to Energize Your Argument 97

8 “SO WHAT? WHO CARES?”: Saying Why It Matters 112

PART 3. TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

9 “AS A RESULT”: Connecting the Parts 123

10 “YOU MEAN I CAN JUST SAY IT THAT WAY?”: Academic Writing Doesn’t Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice

139

11 “BUT DON’T GET ME WRONG”: The Art of Metacommentary 154

12 “WHAT I REALLY WANT TO SAY IS”: Revising Substantially 165

PART 4. IN SPECIFIC ACADEMIC CONTEXTS

13 “I TAKE YOUR POINT”: Entering Class Discussions 188

14 “WHAT’S MOTIVATING THIS WRITER?”: Reading for the Conversation 193

15 “BUT AS SEVERAL SOURCES SUGGEST”: Research as Conversation 205

16 “ON CLOSER EXAMINATION”: Entering Conversations about Literature 234

17 “THE DATA SUGGEST”: Writing in the Sciences 252

18 “ANALYZE THIS”: Writing in the Social Sciences 271

* 19 “HELP ME UNDERSTAND . . .”: When Your “They Say” Is a Bot 290

READINGS 307

* 20 WHO DECIDES WHAT FREEDOM IS? 309

* NESRINE MALIK, The Myth of the Free Speech Crisis 313

* KATHA POLLITT, The Left Needs Free Speech 322

* ERIC HOLDER, Our Unfinished March 328

* ARTHI SIVENDRA, American Democracy: One Person, One Vote? 340

MICHELLE ALEXANDER, The New Jim Crow 347

* JOHN PFAFF, A Response to the “Standard Story” about US Incarceration Rates 362

* LUTICHA DOUCETTE, If You’re in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives 373

* CARISSA VÉLIZ, If AI Is Predicting Your Future, Are You Still Free? 380

* MARTIN E. DEMPSEY, 90 Seconds Together 388

21 HOW IS TECHNOLOGY CHANGING US? 397

KENNETH GOLDSMITH, Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet 401

* CHRISTINE ROSEN, Keep Them Offline 406

NICHOLAS CARR, How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds 418

JUSTIN VINH, Social Media: The Screen, the Brain, and Human Nature 428

* JOE GARCIA, Left Behind: Internet Access for People behind Bars 435

* ANNA ROMINA GUEVARRA, Here Come the Robot Nurses 439

* LANA SWARTZ, In Praise of the Dollar Bill 449

CAROLE CADWALLADR, Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search 454

22 WHY CARE ABOUT THE PLANET? 475

* EMMA BARNES, The Fast and the Fashionable: How Your Closet Contributes to a Global Crisis 479

BEN ADLER, Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast 487

* AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON, What I Know about the Ocean 495

* DAVID WALLACE-WELLS, The Uninhabitable Earth 505

ALICE CHEN AND VIVEK MURTHY, Should We Be More Optimistic about Fighting Climate Change? 514

* MATT RIDLEY, Going Nuclear 525

SANDIS EDWARD WAIALAE WIGHTMAN, Mauna Kea: The Fight to Preserve Culture 531

* DINA GILIO-WHITAKER, Environmental Justice Is Only the Beginning 540

23 WHAT’S COLLEGE FOR? 551

* CARINE M. FEYTEN, The Boys Are Doing Just Fine 556

* RICHARD V. REEVES, No, the Boys Are Not Doing Just Fine 561

* YAEL LENGA, Disability in Higher Education: Building Access and Building Futures 566

SYLVIA MATHEWS BURWELL, Generation Stress: The Mental Health Crisis on Campus 578

* MIKE ROSE, Community College: The Great Equalizer? 589

ANNA CLARK, Why We Need to Keep the “Community” in Community Colleges 599

GERALD GRAFF, Hidden Intellectualism 606

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN, The Student Loan Trap: When Debt Delays Life 614

* ANNA GIFTY OPOKU-AGYEMAN AND FENABA ADDO, Student Loan Forgiveness Critics Are Wrong about Who Benefits and Why 625

24 HOW CAN WE BRIDGE THE DIFFERENCES THAT DIVIDE US? 633

SEAN BLANDA, The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb 637

* YASCHA MOUNK, The Everyday Patriotism of Diverse Democracies 644

* DAVID BROOKS, The Triumph of the Ukrainian Idea 653

SUKETU MEHTA, Jobs, Crime, and Culture: The Threats That Aren’t 658

DAVID FRUM, How Much Immigration Is Too Much? The Wrong Debate 674

* ANDRE M. PERRY, Addressing Poverty Can Heal an Increasingly Divided Country 684

KELLY CORYELL, All Words Matter: The Manipulation behind “All Lives Matter” 689

* PAOLA RAMOS, Finding Latinx 700

* BRYAN BETANCUR, It’s Time to Drop “Latinx” 712

CREDITS 719

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 724

* APPENDIX: CITING WHAT “THEY SAY” 738

INDEX OF TEMPLATES 744

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND TITLES 765

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 770

ENDNOTES

NOTE *: NEW TO THIS EDITION RETURN TO REFERENCE *

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION

* * *

SINCE ITS INCEPTION , this book has been animated by several interlocking goals:

To demystify academic argument by showing that it involves one central move: that of stating one’s own view (what “I say”) not in isolation, but in conversation or debate with the views of others (what “they say”). To provide flexible, user-friendly templates—“Although it is often said that __________ , I argue __________ , ” for instance—that help students put this “they say / I say” move into practice, showing that such formulas need not result in writing that is “formulaic.” To show how important the “they say / I say” move is to a healthy democracy, which requires that we step outside our increasingly polarized comfort zones and listen carefully to those who see things differently. To show that, despite the many differences between the academic disciplines, the “they say / I say” move is central to them all, as well as high order workplace and public sphere communication. To refute the common perception that academic writing must be dry, lifeless, and devoid of personality, by showing that it can often accommodate different dialects, colloquial expressions, and personal voices.

WHAT’S NEW IN THIS EDITION

“In My Experience”: Using Personal Stories to Energize Your Argument —one of the two chapters new to this edition—advances this last goal by encouraging students to draw on their personal experiences. Written for students who feel, as an undergraduate once told us, that academic writing “just isn’t me,” the chapter shows how personal stories can be used in such writing to make virtually any of the moves we cover in this book, including summarizing and challenging what “they say,” revising what you “used to think,” planting a naysayer, and answering the “so what?” question. Personal stories, we show, can be a great way to connect the academic world to our lives outside the classroom. They can also help students demonstrate that the essay they have submitted was written by a real human being and not artificial intelligence.

“Help Me Understand . . .”: When Your “They Say” Is a Bot. Speaking of generative AI, the second new chapter addresses how today’s hyper-advanced chatbots can be used not as substitutes for students’ own writing skills but as tools for advancing them. When used responsibly, we show, these new chatbots can be deployed in the service of “they say / I say” argument, and we provide templates for prompting these technologies to help us understand our own positions and those of others, to identify naysayers, to address the ever-important “so what?” and “who cares?” questions, and to make a host of other moves that matter in academic writing.

New readings and visual texts. More than half of the readings are new, including an entirely new chapter, “Who Decides What Freedom Is?” (Chapter 20 ), featuring writers in conversation about what’s at stake in a democracy—from free speech and voting rights to freedom of movement. See, for example, Eric Holder’s proposal for automaic voter registration, with a response to it from college student Arthi Sivendra, “American Democracy: One Person, One Vote?,” and John Pfaff’s “A Response to the ‘Standard Story’ about US Incarceration Rates,” in direct conversation with the selection from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.

Note: all new readings are indicated with an * in the Table of Contents.

Every chapter features new readings in conversation on topics ranging from robot nurses to age requirements for social media, from the role of community college in society to the war in Ukraine. For example: a selection from Paola Ramos’s book, Finding Latinx , is in conversation with Professor Bryan Betancur’s piece, “It’s Time to Drop ‘Latinx’ ” (Chapter 24 ), and Carine M. Feyten’s “The Boys Are Doing Just Fine” appears alongside Richard V. Reeves’s piece in response, “No, the Boys Are Not Doing Just Fine” (Chapter 23 ).

New visual texts open every chapter of readings . From a historic photo of the Statue of Liberty under construction to a billboard advertising college to a New Yorker cartoon about echo chambers, each chapter now opens with a visual text accompanied by prompts for analysis, writing, and discussion.

New examples. In most of the core chapters (1–15) of the book, we have replaced the examples used to illustrate the rhetorical moves with more recent writing from a wide range of academic and popular sources and a range of authors, from established writers such as Michelle Alexander, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Suketu Mehta, Maya Phillips, and Kenneth Goldsmith to emerging voices such as Damond Williams and Joe Garcia, and students like Felicity Noahubi and Yael Lenga.

New appendix, “Citing What ‘They Say’.” This appendix offers a quick-start guide to documenting sources, including examples of how to cite generative AI, and points students to where they can find additional models and advice.

A reading experience that is more hands-on than ever with the new Norton Illumine Ebook . Students don’t just read “They Say / I Say” — they interact with it. Building on the book’s already popular templates, exercises, and tutorials, the new Norton Illumine Ebook gets students practicing the moves while they read, through interactive new features conceived and written by author Laura J. Panning Davies. Each chapter offers “Check Your Understanding” questions that are auto-graded with immediate feedback. And instructors can easily embed their own notes, videos, or links to share with their students, customizing each chapter as they see fit. In the readings part of the book, challenging words are glossed for students right on the page.

A collection of new videos. The Sixth Edition offers a new collection of animated videos on key concepts—from understanding academic argument to using signal phrases—that help students visualize and apply the book’s advice. Each video is two to three minutes long. Some videos are embedded directly in the ebook, and all are available for streaming online.

Tutorials give students hands-on practice using the rhetorical moves taught in the book. Each tutorial helps students analyze an essay with an eye to the “moves that matter” and then use the book’s templates to begin writing themselves. The Sixth Edition is updated with a new tutorial for Chapter 7, “In My Experience,” as well as new essay examples.

InQuizitive for Writers assignments allow students to practice new writing, editing, and research skills in a low-stakes, feedback-driven environment. Interactive questions are adaptive, so students receive additional practice in the areas where they need more help, and explanatory feedback offers advice precisely when it’s needed, along with direct links toThe Little Seagull Handbook ebook, which is automatically included with all new copies of “They Say / I Say.” New activities cover rhetorical situations, elements of argument, thesis statements, critical reading strategies, and more.

Norton Teaching Tools is a new, searchable website that can be filtered by chapter or by resource type, making it easy to find exactly what you need, download, customize, and import it into your LMS course. Written by new co-author Laura J. Panning Davies, with special contributions from instructors across the country, all of the revised contents from the instructor’s guide for “They Say / I Say” can now be found here: summaries of the rhetoric chapters and each of the essays; in-class activities, discussion prompts, and assignment suggestions for each chapter; advice and assignment ideas for using theysayiblog.com ; teaching notes, lists of related essays, and suggested responses to the “Joining the Conversation” questions; and sample syllabi. New to the Sixth Edition is a comprehensive guide to teaching first-year writing that covers everything from designing a course to assessing student writing to engaging difficult conversations in the classroom. You will also find tips and best practices for assigning Check Your Understanding questions in the Norton Illumine Ebook, InQuizitive for Writers, The Little Seagull

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

Handbook ebook, the new collection of animated videos, and other digital resources.

“They Say / I Blog” provides current readings that use the rhetorical moves covered in the book, along with questions that prompt students to join the conversation online. Updated monthly by author Laura J. Panning Davies, the blog offers a rich archive of additional readings on important issues. Visit theysayiblog.com .

Resources for your learning management system (LMS) files provide integrated links to all of Norton’s high-quality digital resources. All activities can be accessed from within your existing learning management system, and graded activities can be configured to report to the LMS course gradebook.

Even as we have updated “They Say / I Say,” our basic goals remain unchanged: to help students engage closely with others, particularly those who challenge what we say. Our additions, in other words, are meant to reinforce our longstanding goal of demystifying academic discourse by identifying its key moves in forms that students can put into practice. Given the deeply divided society we continue to live in, this practice of engaging in dialogue and entertaining counterarguments seems more urgent than ever.

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

PREFACE

Demystifying Academic Conversation

* * *

EXPERIENCED WRITING INSTRUCTORS have long recognized that writing well means entering into conversation with others. Academic writing in particular calls on writers not simply to express their own ideas but to do so as a response to what others have said. The first-year writing program at our own university, according to its mission statement, asks “students to participate in ongoing conversations about vitally important academic and public issues.” A similar statement by another program holds that “intellectual writing is almost always composed in response to others’ texts.” These statements echo the ideas of many recent rhetorical theorists, who argue that writing well means engaging the voices of others and letting them in turn engage us.

Yet despite this growing consensus that writing is a social, conversational act, helping student writers actually participate in these conversations remains a formidable challenge. This book aims to meet that challenge. Its goal is to demystify academic writing by isolating its basic moves, explaining them clearly, and representing them in the form of templates. In this way, we hope to help students become active participants in the important conversations of the academic world and the wider public sphere.

HIGHLIGHTS

Shows that writing well means entering a conversation, summarizing others (“they say”) to set up one’s own argument (“I say”) Demystifies academic writing, showing students “the moves that matter” in language they can readily apply Provides user-friendly templates to help writers make those moves in their own writing Includes a chapter on reading, showing students how the authors they read are part of a conversation that they themselves can enter—and thus to see reading as a matter not of passively absorbing information but of understanding and actively entering dialogues and debates

HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE

The original idea for this book grew out of our shared interest in democratizing academic culture. First, it grew out of arguments that Gerald Graff has been making throughout his career that schools and colleges need to invite students into the conversations and debates that surround them. More specifically, it is a practical, hands-on companion to his book Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind , in which he looks at academic conversations from the perspective of those who find them mysterious and proposes ways in which such mystification can be overcome. Second, this book grew out of writing templates that Cathy Birkenstein developed in the 1990s, for use in writing and literature courses she was teaching. Many students, she found, could readily grasp what it meant to support a thesis with evidence, to entertain a counterargument, to identify a textual contradiction, and ultimately to summarize and respond to challenging arguments, but they often had trouble putting these concepts into practice in their own writing. When Cathy sketched out templates on the board, however, giving her students some of the language and patterns that these sophisticated moves require, their writing—and even their quality of thought—significantly improved.

This book began, then, when we put our ideas together and realized that these templates might have the potential to open up and clarify academic conversation. We proceeded from the premise that all writers rely on certain stock formulas that they themselves didn’t invent—and that many of these formulas are so commonly used that they can be represented in model templates that students can use to structure and even generate what they want to say.

As we developed a working draft of this book, we began using it in first-year writing courses that we teach at UIC. In classroom exercises and writing assignments, we found that students who otherwise struggled to organize their thoughts, or even to think of something to say, did much better when we provided them with templates like the following:

◼ In discussions of __________, a controversial issue is whether __________. While some argue that __________, others contend that __________.

◼ This is not to say that __________ .

One virtue of such templates, we found, is that they focus writers’ attention not just on what is being said but also on the forms that structure what is being said. In other words, they make students more conscious of the rhetorical patterns that are key to academic success but often pass under the classroom radar.

THE CENTRALITY OF “THEY SAY / I SAY”

The central rhetorical move that we focus on in this book is the “they say / I say” template that gives our book its title. In our view, this template represents the deep, underlying structure, the internal DNA as it were, of all effective arguments. Effective persuasive writers do more than make well-supported claims (“I say”); they also map those claims relative to the claims of others (“they say”).

Here, for example, the “they say / I say” pattern structures a passage from an essay by the media and technology critic Steven Johnson:

For decades, we’ve worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the “masses” want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But . . . the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less.

STEVEN JOHNSON , “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”

In generating his own argument from something “they say,” Johnson suggests why he needs to say what he is saying: to correct a popular misconception.

Even when writers do not explicitly identify the views they are responding to, as Johnson does, an implicit “they say” can often be discerned, as in the following passage by Zora Neale Hurston:

I remember the day I became colored.

ZORA NEALE HURSTON , “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”

In order to grasp Hurston’s point here, we need to be able to reconstruct the implicit view she is responding to and questioning: that racial

identity is an innate quality we are simply born with. On the contrary, Hurston suggests, our race is imposed on us by society—something we “become” by virtue of how we are treated.

As these examples suggest, the “they say / I say” model can improve not just student writing but student reading comprehension as well. Since reading and writing are deeply reciprocal activities, students who learn to make the rhetorical moves represented by the templates in this book figure to become more adept at identifying these same moves in the texts they read. And if we are right that effective arguments are always in dialogue with other arguments, then it follows that in order to understand the types of challenging texts assigned in college, students need to identify the views to which those texts are responding.

Working with the “they say / I say” model can also help with invention, finding something to say. In our experience, students best discover what they want to say not by thinking about a subject in an isolation booth but by reading texts, listening closely to what other writers say, and looking for an opening through which they can enter the conversation. In other words, listening closely to others and summarizing what they have to say can help writers generate their own ideas.

THE USEFULNESS OF TEMPLATES

Our templates also have a generative quality, prompting students to make moves in their writing that they might not otherwise make or even know they should make. The templates in this book can be particularly helpful for students who are unsure about what to say or who have trouble finding enough to say, often because they consider their own beliefs so self-evident that they need not be argued for. Students like this are often helped, we’ve found, when we give them a simple template like the following one for entertaining a counterargument (or planting a naysayer, as we call it in Chapter 6 ):

◼ Of course some might object that __________. Although I concede that __________, I still maintain that __________.

What this particular template helps students do is make the seemingly counterintuitive move of questioning their own beliefs, of looking at them from the perspective of those who disagree. In so doing, templates can bring out aspects of students’ thoughts that, as they themselves sometimes remark, they didn’t even realize were there.

Other templates in this book help students make a host of sophisticated moves that they might not otherwise make: summarizing what someone else says, framing a quotation in one’s own words, indicating the view that the writer is responding to, marking the shift from a source’s view to the writer’s own view, offering evidence for that view, entertaining and answering counterarguments, and explaining what is at stake in the first place. In showing students how to make such moves, templates do more than organize students’ ideas; they help bring those ideas into existence.

“OK—BUT TEMPLATES?”

We are aware, of course, that some instructors may have reservations about templates. Some, for instance, may object that such formulaic devices represent a return to prescriptive forms of instruction that encourage passive learning or lead students to put their writing on automatic pilot.

This is an understandable reaction, we think, to kinds of rote instruction that have indeed encouraged passivity and drained writing of its creativity and dynamic relation to the social world. The trouble is that many students will never learn on their own to make the key intellectual moves that our templates represent. While seasoned writers pick up these moves unconsciously through their reading, many students do not. Consequently, we believe, students need to see these moves represented in the explicit ways that the templates provide.

The aim of the templates, then, is not to stifle critical thinking but to be direct with students about the key rhetorical moves that it comprises. Since we encourage students to modify and adapt the templates to the particularities of the arguments they are making, using such prefabricated formulas as learning tools need not result in writing and thinking that are themselves formulaic. Admittedly, no teaching tool can guarantee that students will engage in hard, rigorous thought. Our templates do, however, provide concrete prompts that can stimulate and shape such thought: What do “they say” about my topic? How would a naysayer respond to my argument? What is my evidence? Do I need to qualify my point? Who cares?

In fact, templates have a long and rich history. Public orators from ancient Greece and Rome through the European Renaissance studied rhetorical topoi or “commonplaces,” model passages and formulas that represented the different strategies available to public speakers. In many respects, our templates echo this classical rhetorical tradition of imitating established models.

The journal Nature requires aspiring contributors to follow a guideline that is like a template on the opening page of their manuscript: “Two or three sentences explaining what the main result [of their study] reveals in direct comparison with what was thought to be the case previously, or how the main result adds to previous knowledge.” In the field of education, a form designed by the education theorist Howard Gardner asks postdoctoral fellowship applicants to complete the following template: “Most scholars in the field believe __________ . As a result of my study, __________ . ” That these two examples are geared toward postdoctoral fellows and veteran researchers shows that it is not only struggling undergraduates who can use help making these key rhetorical moves but experienced academics as well.

Templates have even been used in the teaching of personal narrative. The literary and educational theorist Jane Tompkins devised the following template to help student writers make the often difficult move from telling a story to explaining what it means: “X tells a story about __________ to make the point that __________ . My own experience with __________ yields a point that is similar / different / both similar and different. What I take away from my own experience with __________ is __________ . As a result, I conclude __________ . ” We especially like this template because it suggests that “they say / I say” argument need not be mechanical, impersonal, or dry and that telling a story and making an argument are more compatible activities than many think.

WHY IT’S OK TO USE “I”

But wait—doesn’t the “I” part of “they say / I say” flagrantly encourage the use of the first-person pronoun? Aren’t we aware that some teachers prohibit students from using “I” or “we” on the grounds that these pronouns encourage ill-considered, subjective opinions rather than objective and reasoned arguments? Yes, we are aware of this first-person prohibition, but we think it has serious flaws. First, expressing ill- considered, subjective opinions is not necessarily the worst sin beginning writers can commit; it might be a starting point from which they can move on to more reasoned, less self-indulgent perspectives. Second, prohibiting students from using “I” is simply not an effective way of curbing students’ subjectivity, since one can offer poorly argued, ill- supported opinions just as easily without it. Third and most important, prohibiting the first person tends to hamper students’ ability not only to take strong positions but also to differentiate their own positions from those of others, as we point out in Chapter 5 . To be sure, writers can resort to various circumlocutions—“it will here be argued,” “the evidence suggests,” “the truth is”—and these may be useful for avoiding a monotonous series of “I believe” sentences. But except for avoiding such monotony, we see no good reason why “I” should be set aside in persuasive writing. Rather than prohibit “I,” then, we think a better tactic is to give students practice at using it well and learning its use, both by supporting their claims with evidence and by attending closely to alternative perspectives—to what “they” are saying.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

Because of its centrality, we have allowed the “they say / I say” format to dictate the structure of this book. So while Part 1 addresses the art of listening to others, Part 2 addresses how to offer one’s own response. Part 1 opens with the chapter “Starting with What Others Are Saying,” which explains why it is generally advisable to begin a text by citing others rather than plunging directly into one’s own views. Subsequent chapters take up the arts of summarizing and quoting what these others have to say. Part 2 begins with a chapter on different ways of responding, followed by chapters on marking the shift between what “they say” and what “I say,” on introducing and answering objections, on using personal stories, and on answering the all-important questions “so what?” and “who cares?” Part 3, “Tying It All Together,” includes a chapter on connection and coherence; one on academic language, which encourages students to draw on their everyday voice as a tool for writing; and others on the art of metacommentary and using the templates to revise a text. Part 4 offers guidance for entering conversations in specific academic contexts, with chapters on entering class discussions, writing online, and reading and writing in the social sciences. It also includes a new chapter on how to use and cite chatbots in essays. Finally, we provide forty-three readings and an index of templates.

WHAT THIS BOOK DOESN’T DO

There are some things that this book does not try to do. We do not, for instance, cover logical principles of argument, such as syllogisms, warrants, logical fallacies, or the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. Although such concepts can be useful, we believe most of us learn the ins and outs of argumentative writing not by studying logical principles in the abstract but by plunging into actual discussions and debates, trying out different patterns of response, and in this way getting a sense of what works to persuade different audiences and what doesn’t. In our view, people learn more about arguing from hearing someone say, “You miss my point. What I’m saying is not __________ but __________ , ” or “I agree with you that __________ and would even add that __________ , ” than they do from studying the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. Such formulas give students an immediate sense of what it feels like to enter a public conversation in a way that studying abstract warrants and logical fallacies does not.

ENGAGING WITH THE IDEAS OF OTHERS

One central goal of this book is to demystify academic writing by returning it to its social and conversational roots. Although writing may require some degree of quiet and solitude, the “they say / I say” model shows students that they can best develop their arguments not just by looking inward but by doing what they often do in a good conversation with friends and family—listening carefully to what others are saying and engaging with other views.

This approach to writing therefore has an ethical dimension, since it asks writers not simply to keep proving and reasserting what they already believe but also to stretch what they believe by putting it up against beliefs that differ, sometimes radically, from their own. In an increasingly diverse, global society, this ability to engage with the ideas of others is especially crucial to democratic citizenship.

Gerald Graff

Cathy Birkenstein

INTRODUCTION

Entering the Conversation

* * *

THINK ABOUT AN ACTIVITY that you do particularly well: cooking, playing the piano, shooting a basketball, even something as basic as driving a car. If you reflect on this activity, you’ll realize that once you mastered it you no longer had to give much conscious thought to the various moves that go into doing it. Performing this activity, in other words, depends on your having learned a series of complicated moves— moves that may seem mysterious or difficult to those who haven’t yet learned them.

The same applies to writing. Often without consciously realizing it, accomplished writers routinely rely on a stock of established moves that are crucial for communicating sophisticated ideas. What makes writers masters of their trade is not only their ability to express interesting thoughts but also their mastery of an inventory of basic moves that they probably picked up by reading a wide range of other accomplished writers. Less experienced writers, by contrast, are often unfamiliar with these basic moves and unsure how to make them in their own writing. Hence this book, which is intended as a short, user-friendly guide to the basic moves of academic writing.

One of our key premises is that these basic moves are so common that they can be represented in templates that you can use right away to structure and even generate your own writing. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this book is its presentation of many such templates, designed to help you successfully enter not only the world of

academic thinking and writing but also the wider worlds of civic discourse and work.

Instead of focusing solely on abstract principles of writing, then, this book offers model templates that help you put those principles directly into practice. Working with these templates will give you an immediate sense of how to engage in the kinds of critical thinking you are required to do at the college level and in the vocational and public spheres beyond.

Some of these templates represent simple but crucial moves, like those used to summarize some widely held belief:

◼ Many Americans assume that __________ .

Others are more complicated:

◼ On the one hand, __________. On the other hand, __________.

◼ Author X contradicts herself. At the same time that she argues __________, she also implies __________.

◼ I agree that __________. However, __________.

◼ This is not to say that __________ .

It is true, of course, that critical thinking and writing go deeper than any set of linguistic formulas, requiring that you question assumptions, develop strong claims, offer supporting reasons and evidence, consider opposing arguments, and so on. But these deeper habits of thought cannot be put into practice unless you have a language for expressing them in clear, organized ways.

STATE YOUR OWN IDEAS AS A RESPONSE TO OTHERS

The single most important template that we focus on in this book is the “they say __________ ; I say __________ ” formula that gives our book its title. If there is any one point that we hope you will take away from this book, it is the importance not only of expressing your ideas (“I say”) but also of presenting those ideas as a response to some other person or group (“they say”). For us, the underlying structure of effective academic writing—and of responsible public discourse—resides not just in stating our own ideas but in listening closely to others around us, summarizing their views in a way that they will recognize, and responding with our own ideas in kind. Broadly speaking, academic writing is argumentative writing, and we believe that to argue well you need to do more than assert your own position. You need to enter a conversation, using what others say (or might say) as a launching pad or sounding board for your own views. For this reason, one of the main pieces of advice in this book is to write the voices of others into your text.

In our view, then, the best academic writing has one underlying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other people’s views. Too often, however, academic writing is taught as a process of saying “true” or “smart” things in a vacuum, as if it were possible to argue effectively without being in conversation with someone else. If you have been taught to write a traditional five-paragraph essay, for example, you have learned how to develop a thesis and support it with evidence. This is good advice as far as it goes, but it leaves out the important fact that in the real world we don’t make arguments without being provoked. Instead, we make arguments because someone has said or done something (or perhaps not said or done something) and we need to respond: “I can’t see why you like football so much”; “I agree: it was a great film”; “That argument is contradictory.” If it weren’t for other people and our need to challenge, agree with, or otherwise respond to them, there would be no reason to argue at all.

“WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS?”

To make an impact as a writer, then, you need to do more than make statements that are logical, well supported, and consistent. You must also find a way of entering into conversation with the views of others, with something “they say.” The easiest and most common way writers do this is by summarizing what others say and then using it to set up what they want to say.

“But why,” as a student of ours once asked, “do I always need to summarize the views of others to set up my own view? Why can’t I just state my own view and be done with it?” Why indeed? After all, “they,” whoever they may be, will have already had their say, so why do you have to repeat it? Furthermore, if they had their say in print, can’t readers just go and read what was said themselves?

The answer is that if you don’t identify the “they say” you’re responding to, your own argument probably won’t have a point. Readers will wonder what prompted you to say what you’re saying and therefore motivated you to write. As the figure on the following page suggests, without a “they say,” what you are saying may be clear to your audience, but why you are saying it won’t be.

Even if we don’t know what film he’s referring to, it’s easy to grasp what the speaker means here when he says that its characters are very complex. But it’s hard to see why the speaker feels the need to say what he is saying. “Why,” as one member of his imagined audience wonders, “is he telling us this?” So the characters are complex—so what?

The speaker has a speech bubble, saying The characters in the film are very complex! The heads of the audience have thought and speech bubbles expressing confusion. They say, Yeah, so? and Why is he telling us this? One member of the audience is sleeping.

Now look at what happens to the same proposition when it is presented as a response to something “they say”:

The speaker has a speech bubble, saying, Some say that the characters in the film are sexist stereotypes. In fact, however, the characters in the film are very complex! The audience has thought and speech bubbles expressing comprehension. They say, Hmm... Good point! and Gee, never thoughta that!

We hope you agree that the same claim—“the characters in the film are very complex”—becomes much stronger when presented as a response to a contrary view: that the film’s characters “are sexist stereotypes.” Unlike the speaker in the first cartoon, the speaker in the second has a clear goal or mission: to correct what he sees as a mistaken characterization.

THE AS-OPPOSED-TO-WHAT FACTOR

To put our point another way, framing your “I say” as a response to something “they say” gives your writing an element of contrast without which it won’t make sense. It may be helpful to think of this crucial element as an “as-opposed-to-what factor” and, as you write, to continually ask yourself, “Who says otherwise?” and “Does anyone dispute it?” Behind the audience’s “Yeah, so?” and “Why is he telling us this?” in the first cartoon above lie precisely these types of “As opposed to what?” questions. The speaker in the second cartoon, we think, is more satisfying because he answers these questions, helping us see his point that the film presents complex characters rather than simple sexist stereotypes.

HOW IT’S DONE

Many accomplished writers make explicit “they say” moves to set up and motivate their own arguments. One famous example is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which consists almost entirely of King’s eloquent responses to a public statement by eight clergymen deploring the civil rights protests he was leading. The letter— which was written in 1963, while King was in prison for leading a demonstration against racial injustice in Birmingham—is structured almost entirely around a framework of summary and response, in which King summarizes and then answers their criticisms. In one typical passage, King writes as follows:

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR ., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

King goes on to agree with his critics that “it is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham,” yet he hastens to add that “it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” King’s letter is so thoroughly conversational, in fact, that it could be rewritten in the form of a dialogue or play.

King’s critics:

King’s response:

Critics:

Response:

Clearly, King would not have written his famous letter were it not for his critics, whose views he treats not as objections to his already-formed

arguments but as the motivating source of those arguments, their central reason for being. He quotes not only what his critics have said (“Some have asked: ‘Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?’ ”), but also things they might have said (“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ ”)—all to set the stage for what he himself wants to say.

The “they” you respond to in crafting an argument need not be a famous author or someone known to your audience. It can be a friend or family member, a classmate who has made a provocative claim, or something a group or individual might say. It can even be a side of yourself: something you partly believe but also doubt, or something you once believed but no longer do, as Michelle Alexander suggests in the introduction to her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (included in this book):

I reached the conclusions presented in this book reluctantly. Ten years ago, I would have argued strenuously against the central claim made here—namely, that something akin to a racial caste system currently exists in the United States. Indeed, if Barack Obama had been elected president back then, I would have argued that his election marked the nation’s triumph over racial caste—the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow. (349)

MICHELLE ALEXANDER , The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

In this passage, Alexander identifies a view that she used to hold and that many to this day continue to hold: namely, that the United States is a caste-free, colorblind society that, as Barack Obama’s election illustrates, has finally left Jim Crow–style racism behind. In so doing, Alexander avoids two common temptations: to either bury challenges to her argument, or to acknowledge them but in mocking, dismissive ways. Instead, Alexander writes this counterview into her text—and in a way that does it justice. She then uses the remainder of her book to answer it, arguing that today’s penal system inflicts so much undeserved damage on the Black community that it can only be understood as an extension of Jim Crow–era repression.

See Chapter 4 for more on agreeing, but with a difference.

While King and Alexander both identify the views they are responding to, some authors do not, instead allowing readers to infer what view they’re responding to on their own. See, for instance, if you can identify the implied or unnamed “they say” that the following claim is responding to:

I like to think I have a certain advantage as a teacher of literature because when I was growing up I disliked and feared books.

GERALD GRAFF , “Disliking Books at an Early Age”

In case you haven’t figured it out already, the phantom “they say” here is the common belief that in order to be a good teacher of literature, one must have grown up liking and enjoying books.

COURT CONTROVERSY, BUT . . .

As you can see from these examples, many writers use the “they say / I say” format to challenge standard ways of thinking and thus to stir up controversy. This point may come as a shock to you if you have always had the impression that in order to succeed academically you need to play it safe and avoid controversy in your writing, making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with. Though this view of writing may appear logical, it is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing and for writing that fails to answer what we call the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions. “William Shakespeare wrote many famous plays and sonnets” may be a perfectly true statement, but precisely because nobody is likely to disagree with it, it goes without saying and thus would seem pointless if said.

But just because controversy is important doesn’t mean you have to become an attack dog who automatically disagrees with everything others say. We think this is an important point to underscore because some who are not familiar with this book have gotten the impression from the title that our goal is to train writers simply to disparage whatever “they say.”

LISTEN BEFORE YOU LEAP

There certainly are occasions when strong critique is needed. It’s hard to live in a deeply polarized society like our current one and not feel the need at times to criticize what others think. But even the most justified critiques fall flat, we submit, unless we really listen to and understand the views we are criticizing:

◼ While I understand the impulse to __________, my own view is __________.

Even the most sympathetic audiences, after all, tend to feel manipulated by arguments that scapegoat and caricature the other side.

Furthermore, genuinely listening to views we disagree with can have the salutary effect of helping us see that beliefs we’d initially disdained may not be as thoroughly reprehensible as we’d imagined. Thus the type of “they say / I say” argument that we promote in this book can take the form of agreeing up to a point or of both agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously, as in:

◼ While I agree with X that __________, I cannot accept her overall conclusion that __________.

◼ While X argues __________, and I argue __________, in a way we’re both right.

Agreement cannot be ruled out, however:

◼ I agree with __________ that __________.

THE TEMPLATE OF TEMPLATES

There are many ways, then, to enter a conversation and respond to what “they say.” But our discussion of ways to do so would be incomplete were we not to mention the most comprehensive way that writers enter conversations, which incorporates all the major moves discussed in this book:

◼ In recent discussions of __________, a controversial issue has been whether __________. On the one hand, some argue that __________. From this perspective, __________. On the other hand, however, others argue that __________. In the words of X, one of this view’s main proponents, “__________. ” According to this view, __________. In sum, then, the issue is whether __________ or __________.

My own view is that __________. Though I concede that __________, I still maintain that __________. For example, __________. Although some might object that __________, I would reply that __________. The issue is important because __________.

This “template of templates,” as we like to call it, represents the internal DNA of countless articles and even entire books. Writers commonly use a version of it not only to stake out their “they say” and “I say” at the start of their manuscript, but—just as important—to form the overarching blueprint that structures what they write over the entire length of their text.

Taking it line by line, this master template first helps you open your text by identifying an issue in some ongoing conversation or debate (“In recent discussions of __________ , a controversial issue has been __________ ” ) and then map some of the voices in this controversy (by using the “on the one hand / on the other hand” structure). The template then helps you introduce a quotation (“In the words of X”) and explain

the quotation in your own words (“According to this view”). Then, in a new paragraph, it helps you state your own argument (“My own view is that”), qualify your argument (“Though I concede that”), and support your argument with evidence (“For example”). In addition, the template helps you make one of the most crucial moves in argumentative writing, what we call “planting a naysayer in your text,” in which you summarize and then answer a likely objection to your own central claim (“Although it might be objected that __________ , I reply __________ ” ). Finally, this template helps you shift between general, overarching claims (“In sum, then”) and smaller-scale, supporting claims (“For example”).

Again, none of us is born knowing these moves, especially when it comes to academic writing—hence the need for this book.

BUT ISN’T THIS PLAGIARISM?

“But isn’t this plagiarism?” at least one student each year will usually ask. “Well, is it?” we respond, turning the question around into one the entire class can profit from. “We are, after all, asking you to use language in your writing that isn’t your own—language that you ‘borrow’ or, to put it less delicately, steal from other writers.”

Often, a lively discussion ensues that raises important questions about authorial ownership and helps everyone better understand the frequently confusing line between plagiarism and the legitimate use of what others say and how they say it. Students are quick to see that no one person owns a conventional formula like “on the one hand / on the other hand.” Phrases like “a controversial issue” are so commonly used and recycled that they are generic—community property that can be freely used without fear of committing plagiarism. It is plagiarism, however, if the words used to fill in the blanks of such formulas are borrowed from others without proper acknowledgment. In sum, then, while it is not plagiarism to recycle conventionally used formulas, it is a serious academic offense to take the substantive content from others’ texts without citing the authors and giving them proper credit.

“OK—BUT TEMPLATES?”

Nevertheless, if you are like some of our students, your initial response to templates may be skepticism. At first, many of our students complain that using templates will take away their originality and creativity and make them all sound the same. “They’ll turn us into writing robots,” one of our students insisted. “I’m in college now,” another student asserted. “This is third-grade-level stuff.”

In our view, however, the templates in this book, far from being “third-grade-level stuff,” represent the stock-in-trade of sophisticated thinking and writing, and they often require a great deal of practice and instruction to use successfully. As for the belief that preestablished forms undermine creativity, we think it rests on a very limited vision of what creativity is all about. In our view, the templates in this book will actually help your writing become more original and creative, not less. After all, even the most creative forms of expression depend on established patterns and structures. Most songwriters, for instance, rely on a time-honored verse-chorus-verse pattern, and few people would call Shakespeare uncreative because he didn’t invent the sonnet or the dramatic forms that he used to such dazzling effect. Even the most avant- garde, cutting-edge artists like improvisational jazz musicians need to master the basic forms that their work improvises on, departs from, and goes beyond, or else their work will come across as uneducated child’s play. Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them.

Furthermore, these templates do not dictate the content of what you say, which can be as original as you can make it, but only suggest a way of formatting how you say it. In addition, once you begin to feel comfortable with the templates in this book, you will be able to improvise creatively on them to fit new situations and purposes and find others in your reading. In other words, the templates offered here are learning tools to get you started, not structures set in stone. Once you get used to using them, you can even dispense with them altogether, for the rhetorical moves they model will be at your fingertips in an unconscious, instinctive way.

But if you still need proof that writing templates need not make you sound stiff and artificial, consider the following opening to an essay by Kelly Coryell that we’ve included in the book:

I’ve never understood the popular saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I grew up as a tomboy; I’ve had more than my fair share of scrapes, bruises, and stitches. But I’ve found that words inflict the most painful injuries.

KELLY CORYELL , “All Words Matter: The Manipulation behind ‘All Lives Matter’ ”

Although Coryell relies on a version of the “they say / I say” formula— they say that words are less harmful than physical wounds, but I say the opposite is the case—her writing is anything but dry, robotic, or uncreative. A few things that add warmth to the passage are Coryell’s use of everyday colloquial language (a technique we discuss in Chapter 10 ) and her inclusion of her own personal experience (a technique we discuss in Chapter 7 ).

PUTTING IN YOUR OAR

Though the immediate goal of this book is to help you become a better writer, at a deeper level it invites you to become a certain type of person: a critical, intellectual thinker who, instead of sitting passively on the sidelines, can participate in the debates and conversations of your world in an active and empowered way. Ultimately, this book invites you to become a critical thinker who can enter the types of conversations described eloquently by the philosopher Kenneth Burke in the following widely cited passage. Likening the world of intellectual exchange to a never-ending conversation at a party, Burke writes:

You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. . . . You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you. . . . The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

KENNETH BURKE , The Philosophy of Literary Form

What we like about this passage is its suggestion that stating an argument (putting in your oar) can only be done in conversation with others; that entering the dynamic world of ideas must be done not as isolated individuals but as social beings deeply connected to others.

This ability to enter complex, many-sided conversations has taken on a special urgency in today’s polarized red state / blue state America, where the future for all of us may depend on our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of those who think very differently from us. The central piece of advice in this book—that we listen carefully to others, including those who disagree with us, and then engage with them thoughtfully and respectfully—can help us see beyond our own pet beliefs, which may not be shared by everyone. The mere act of crafting a sentence that begins

“Of course, someone might object that __________ ” may not seem like a way to change the world; but it does have the potential to jog us out of our comfort zones, to get us thinking critically about our own beliefs, and even to change minds, our own included.

Exercises

1. Write two paragraphs in which you first summarize our rationale for the templates in this book and then articulate your own position in response. If you want, you can use the template below to organize your paragraphs, expanding and modifying it as necessary to fit what you want to say:

In the Introduction to “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing , Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates designed to __________. Specifically, Graff and Birkenstein argue that the types of writing templates they offer __________. As the authors themselves put it, “__________. ” Although some people believe __________, Graff and Birkenstein insist that __________. In sum, then, their view is that __________.

I [agree / disagree / have mixed feelings]. In my view, the types of templates that the authors recommend __________. For instance, __________. In addition, __________. Some might object, of course, on the grounds that __________. Yet I would argue that __________. Overall, then, I believe __________— an important point to make given __________.

2. Read the following paragraph from an essay by Emily Poe, written when she was a student at Furman University. Disregarding for the moment what Poe says, focus your attention on the phrases she uses to structure what she says (italicized here). Then write a new paragraph using Poe’s as a model but replacing her topic, vegetarianism, with one of your own.

The term “vegetarian” tends to be synonymous with “tree- hugger” in many people’s minds. They see vegetarianism as a cult that brainwashes its followers into eliminating an essential part of their daily diets for an abstract goal of “animal welfare.” However , few vegetarians choose their lifestyle just to follow the crowd.

On the contrary , many of these supposedly brainwashed people are actually independent thinkers, concerned citizens, and compassionate human beings. For the truth is that there are many very good reasons for giving up meat. Perhaps the best reasons are to improve the environment, to encourage humane treatment of livestock, or to enhance one’s own health. In this essay, then , closely examining a vegetarian diet as compared to a meat-eater’s diet will show that vegetarianism is clearly the better option for sustaining the Earth and all its inhabitants.

ONE

“THEY SAY”

Starting with What Others Are Saying

* * *

NOT LONG AGO we attended a talk at an academic conference where the speaker’s central claim seemed to be that a certain sociologist—call him Dr. X—had done very good work in a number of areas of the discipline. The speaker proceeded to illustrate his thesis by referring extensively and in great detail to various books and articles by Dr. X and by quoting long passages from them. The speaker was obviously both learned and impassioned, but as we listened to his talk, we found ourselves somewhat puzzled: the argument—that Dr. X’s work was very important —was clear enough, but why did the speaker need to make it in the first place? Did anyone dispute it? Were there commentators in the field who had argued against X’s work or challenged its value? Was the speaker’s interpretation of what X had done somehow novel or revolutionary? Since the speaker gave no hint of an answer to any of these questions, we could only wonder why he was going on and on about X. It was only after the speaker finished and took questions from the audience that we got a clue: in response to one questioner, he referred to several critics who had vigorously questioned Dr. X’s ideas and convinced many sociologists that Dr. X’s work was unsound.

The hypothetical audience in the figure on p. 5 reacts similarly.

This story illustrates an important lesson: that to give writing the most important thing of all—namely, a point—writers need to indicate clearly not only what their thesis is but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to. Because our speaker failed to mention what others had said about Dr. X’s work, he left his audience unsure about why he felt the need to say what he was saying. Perhaps the point was clear to other sociologists in the audience who were more familiar with the debates over Dr. X’s work than we were. But even they, we bet, would have understood the speaker’s point better if he’d sketched in some of the larger conversation his own claims were a part of and reminded the audience about what “they say.”

This story also illustrates an important lesson about the order in which things are said: to keep an audience engaged, writers need to explain what they are responding to—either before offering that response or, at least, very early in the discussion. Delaying this explanation for more than one or two paragraphs in a very short essay or blog entry, three or four pages in a longer work, or more than ten or so pages in a book reverses the natural order in which readers process material—and in which writers think and develop ideas. After all, it seems very unlikely that our conference speaker first developed his defense of Dr. X and only later came across Dr. X’s critics. As someone knowledgeable in his field, the speaker surely encountered the criticisms first and only then was compelled to respond and, as he saw it, set the record straight.

Therefore, when it comes to constructing an argument (whether orally or in writing), we offer you the following advice: remember that you are entering a conversation and therefore need to start with “what others are saying,” as the title of this chapter recommends, and then introduce your own ideas as a response. Specifically, we suggest that you summarize what “they say” as soon as you can in your text and remind readers of it at strategic points as your text unfolds. Though it’s true that not all texts follow this practice, we think it’s important for all writers to master it before they depart from it.

This is not to say that you must start with a detailed list of everyone who has written on your subject before you offer your own ideas. Had our conference speaker gone to the opposite extreme and spent most of his talk summarizing Dr. X’s critics with no hint of what he himself had to say, the audience probably would have had the same frustrated “why is he going on like this?” reaction. What we suggest, then, is that as soon as possible you state your own position and the one it’s responding to together , and that you think of the two as a unit. It is generally best to summarize the ideas you’re responding to briefly, at the start of your text, and to delay detailed elaboration until later. The point is to give your readers a quick preview of what is motivating your argument, not to drown them in details right away.

Starting with a summary of others’ views may seem to contradict the common advice that writers should lead with their own thesis or claim. Although we agree that you shouldn’t keep readers in suspense too long about your central argument, we also believe that you need to present that argument as part of some larger conversation, indicating something about the arguments of others that you are supporting, opposing, amending, complicating, or qualifying. One added benefit of summarizing others’ views as soon as you can: you let those others do some of the work of framing and clarifying the issue you’re writing about.

Consider, for example, how George Orwell starts his famous essay “Politics and the English Language” with what others are saying:

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. . . .

[But] the process is reversible. Modern English . . . is full of bad habits . . . which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

GEORGE ORWELL , “Politics and the English Language”

Orwell is basically saying, “Most people assume that we cannot do anything about the bad state of the English language. But I say we can.”

Of course, there are many other powerful ways to begin. Instead of opening with someone else’s views, you could start with an illustrative quotation, a revealing fact or statistic, or—as we do in this chapter—a relevant anecdote. If you choose one of these formats, however, be sure that it in some way illustrates the view you’re addressing or leads you to that view directly, with a minimum of steps.

In opening this chapter, for example, we devote the first paragraph to an anecdote about the conference speaker and then move quickly at the start of the second paragraph to the misconception about writing exemplified by the speaker. In the following opening, from an opinion piece in the New York Times Book Review , Christina Nehring also moves quickly from an anecdote illustrating something she dislikes to her own claim—that book lovers think too highly of themselves:

“I’m a reader!” announced the yellow button. “How about you?” I looked at its bearer, a strapping young guy stalking my town’s Festival of Books. “I’ll bet you’re a reader,” he volunteered, as though we were two geniuses well met. “No,” I replied. “Absolutely not,” I wanted to yell, and fling my Barnes & Noble bag at his feet. Instead, I mumbled something apologetic and melted into the crowd.

There’s a new piety in the air: the self-congratulation of book lovers.

CHRISTINA NEHRING , “Books Make You a Boring Person”

Nehring’s anecdote is really a kind of “they say”: book lovers keep telling themselves how great they are.

TEMPLATES FOR INTRODUCING WHAT “THEY SAY”

There are lots of conventional ways to introduce what others are saying. Here are some standard templates that we would have recommended to our conference speaker:

◼ A number of sociologists have recently suggested that X’s work has several fundamental problems .

◼ It has become common today to dismiss __________ .

◼ In their recent work, Y and Z have offered harsh critiques of __________ for __________.

TEMPLATES FOR INTRODUCING “STANDARD VIEWS”

The following templates can help you make what we call the “standard view” move, in which you introduce a view that has become so widely accepted that by now it is essentially the conventional way of thinking about a topic:

◼ Americans have always believed that individual effort can triumph over circumstances .

◼ Conventional wisdom has it that __________ .

◼ Common sense seems to dictate that __________ .

◼ The standard way of thinking about topic X has it that __________ .

◼ It is often said that __________ .

◼ My whole life I have heard it said that __________ .

◼ You would think that __________ .

◼ Many people assume that __________ .

These templates are popular because they provide a quick and efficient way to perform one of the most common moves that writers make: challenging widely accepted beliefs, placing them on the examining table, and analyzing their strengths and weaknesses.

TEMPLATES FOR MAKING WHAT “THEY SAY” SOMETHING YOU SAY

Another way to introduce the views you’re responding to is to present them as your own. That is, the “they say” that you respond to need not be a view held by others; it can be one that you yourself once held or one that you are ambivalent about:

◼ I’ve always believed that museums are boring .

◼ When I was a child, I used to think that __________ .

◼ Although I should know better by now, I cannot help thinking that __________ .

◼ At the same time that I believe __________, I also believe __________.

TEMPLATES FOR INTRODUCING SOMETHING IMPLIED OR ASSUMED

Another sophisticated move a writer can make is to summarize a point that is not directly stated in what “they say” but is implied or assumed:

◼ Although none of them have ever said so directly, my teachers have often given me the impression that education will open doors .

◼ One implication of X’s treatment of __________ is that __________.

◼ Although X does not say so directly, she apparently assumes that __________ .

◼ While they rarely admit as much, __________ often take for granted that __________.

These are templates that can help you think analytically—to look beyond what others say explicitly and to consider their unstated assumptions, as well as the implications of their views.

TEMPLATES FOR INTRODUCING AN ONGOING DEBATE

Sometimes you’ll want to open by summarizing a debate that presents two or more views. This kind of opening demonstrates your awareness that there are conflicting ways to look at your subject, the clear mark of someone who knows the subject and therefore is likely to be a reliable, trustworthy guide. Furthermore, opening with a summary of a debate can help you explore the issue you are writing about before declaring your own view. In this way, you can use the writing process itself to help you discover where you stand instead of having to commit to a position before you are ready to do so.

Here is a basic template for opening with a debate:

◼ In discussions of X, one controversial issue has been __________. On the one hand, __________ argues __________. On the other hand, __________ contends __________. Others even maintain __________. My own view is __________.

The cognitive scientist Mark Aronoff uses this kind of template in an essay on the workings of the human brain:

Theories of how the mind/brain works have been dominated for centuries by two opposing views. One, rationalism, sees the human mind as coming into this world more or less fully formed— preprogrammed, in modern terms. The other, empiricism, sees the mind of the newborn as largely unstructured, a blank slate.

MARK ARONOFF , “Washington Sleeped Here”

A student writer, Michaela Cullington, uses a version of this template near the beginning of an essay to frame a debate over online writing abbreviations like “LOL” (“laughing out loud”) and to indicate her own position in this debate:

Some people believe that using these abbreviations is hindering the writing abilities of students, and others argue that texting is actually having a positive effect on writing. In fact, it seems likely that texting has no significant effect on student writing.

MICHAELA CULLINGTON , “Does Texting Affect Writing?”

Another way to open with a debate involves starting with a proposition many people agree with in order to highlight the point(s) on which they ultimately disagree:

◼ When it comes to the topic of __________, most of us will readily agree that __________. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of __________. Whereas some are convinced that __________, others maintain that __________.

The political writer Thomas Frank uses a variation on this move:

That we are a nation divided is an almost universal lament of this bitter election year. However, the exact property that divides us—elemental though it is said to be—remains a matter of some controversy.

THOMAS FRANK , “American Psyche”

KEEP WHAT “THEY SAY” IN VIEW

We can’t urge you too strongly to keep in mind what “they say” as you move through the rest of your text. After summarizing the ideas you are responding to at the outset, it’s very important to continue to keep those ideas in view. Readers won’t be able to follow your unfolding response, much less any complications you may offer, unless you keep reminding them what claims you are responding to.

In other words, even when presenting your own claims, you should keep returning to the motivating “they say.” The longer and more complicated your text, the greater the chance that readers will forget what ideas originally motivated it—no matter how clearly you lay them out at the beginning. At strategic moments throughout your text, we recommend that you include what we call “return sentences.” Here is an example:

◼ In conclusion, then, as I suggested earlier, defenders of __________ can’t have it both ways. Their assertion that __________ is contradicted by their claim that __________.

We ourselves use such return sentences at every opportunity in this book to remind you of the view of writing that our book questions—that good writing means making true or smart or logical statements about a given subject with little or no reference to what others say about it.

By reminding readers of the ideas you’re responding to, return sentences ensure that your text maintains a sense of mission and urgency from start to finish. In short, they frame your argument as a genuine response to others’ views rather than just a set of observations about a given subject. The difference is huge. To be responsive to others and the conversation you’re entering, you need to start with what others are saying and continue keeping it in the readers’ view.

Exercises

1. Following is a list of topics people have debated. Working by yourself or with a partner, compose a “they say” argument for each of these topics, using any of the templates from this chapter.

Example:

Self-driving vehicles. “Many people think that self-driving cars will make roads safer by reducing accidents caused by unavoidable human errors.”

a. Free college tuition at public universities b. Social media use among teenagers c. The value of studying the humanities in college d. Public-funded clean needle exchanges e. Assigning homework in elementary school

When you finish, read aloud and compare your “they say” arguments with a partner or a small group. Which template moves were more challenging than others to use? Why do you think so?

2. Read the following passage from Kenneth Goldsmith’s 2016 Los Angeles Times op-ed, “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet.”

The notion that the Internet is bad for you seems premised on the idea that the Internet is one thing—a monolith. In reality it’s a befuddling mix of the stupid and the sublime, a shattered, contradictory, and fragmented medium. Internet detractors seem to miss this simple fact, which is why so many of their criticisms disintegrate under observation.

The way Internet pundits tell it, you’d think we stare for three hours at clickbait—those articles with hypersensational headlines —the way we once sat down and watched three hours of cartoons on Saturday morning TV. But most of us don’t do any one thing on the Internet. Instead, we do many things, some of it frivolous,

some of it heavy. Our time spent in front of the computer is a mixed time, a time that reflects our desires—as opposed to the time spent sitting in front of the television where we were fed shows we didn’t necessarily enjoy. TV gave us few choices. Many of us truly did feel like we wasted our time—as our parents so often chided us—“rotting away” in front of the TV.

I keep reading—on screens—that in the age of screens we’ve lost our ability to concentrate, that we’ve become distracted. But when I look around me and see people riveted to their devices, I notice a great wealth of concentration, focus, and engagement.

a. Where in this passage do you see Goldsmith introducing what others are saying about the internet and the amount of time we spend on screens? What do you notice about the different ways Goldsmith introduces “they say” arguments?

b. Summarize Goldsmith’s argument by using the following template for introducing an ongoing debate (p. 26 ):

In discussions of how the internet affects people , one controversial issue has been __________. On one hand, __________ argues __________. On the other hand, __________ contends __________. Others even maintain __________. My own view is __________.

3. Read over something you’ve written for one of your classes—a paragraph, a short response, or an essay—and then respond to the following questions. You can do this exercise with a partner or by yourself.

a. Where do you introduce what others are saying? Underline or highlight where you include a “they say.” If you can’t find a “they say” in your writing, add one using one of the templates from this chapter.

b. How soon in your argument do you introduce these other views? Make sure that you include a “they say” early in your writing (in the first paragraph or two for a short response or essay). If the views you’re responding to are

buried later in your piece, revise your writing so that they appear earlier.

TWO

“HER POINT IS”

The Art of Summarizing

* * *

IF IT IS TRUE , as we claim in this book, that to argue persuasively you need to be in dialogue with others, then summarizing others’ arguments is central to your arsenal of basic moves. Because writers who make strong claims need to map their claims relative to those of other people, it is important to know how to summarize effectively what those other people say. (We’re using the word “summarizing” here to refer to any information from others that you present in your own words, including that which you paraphrase.)

Many writers shy away from summarizing—perhaps because they don’t want to take the trouble to go back to the text in question and wrestle with what it says, or because they fear that devoting too much time to other people’s ideas will take away from their own. When assigned to write a response to an article, such writers might offer their own views on the article’s topic while hardly mentioning what the article itself argues or says. At the opposite extreme are those who do nothing but summarize. Lacking confidence, perhaps, in their own ideas, these writers so overload their texts with summaries of others’ ideas that their own voice gets lost. And since these summaries are not animated by the writers’ own interests, they often read like mere lists of things that X thinks or Y says—with no clear focus.

As a general rule, a good summary requires balancing what the original author is saying with the writer’s own focus. Generally speaking, a summary must at once be true to what the original author says while also emphasizing those aspects of what the author says that interest you, the writer. Striking this delicate balance can be tricky, since it means facing two ways at once: both outward (toward the author being summarized) and inward (toward yourself). Ultimately, it means being respectful of others but simultaneously structuring how you summarize them in light of your own text’s central argument.

ON THE ONE HAND, PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR SHOES

To write a really good summary, you must be able to suspend your own beliefs for a time and put yourself in the shoes of someone else. This means playing what the writing theorist Peter Elbow calls the “believing game,” in which you try to inhabit the worldview of those whose conversation you are joining—and whom you are perhaps even disagreeing with—and try to see their argument from their perspective. This ability to temporarily suspend one’s own convictions is a hallmark of good actors, who must convincingly “become” characters whom in real life they may detest. As a writer, when you play the believing game well, readers should not be able to tell whether you agree or disagree with the ideas you are summarizing.

If, as a writer, you cannot or will not suspend your own beliefs in this way, you are likely to produce summaries that are so clearly biased that they undermine your credibility with readers. Consider the following summary of an article by Kenneth Goldsmith that we’ve included in the book:

Kenneth Goldsmith’s article “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet” is a total defense of the internet against its critics. I disagree because I see so much on the internet that’s just terrible.

If you review what Goldsmith actually says (pp. 401–05 ), you should immediately see that this summary amounts to a distortion. While Goldsmith does defend the internet, he does not do so in a “total” or categorical way. Instead, he argues, the internet is “a befuddling mix of the stupid and the sublime” (401).

Another problem here is the hasty way the writer abandons the summary after only one sentence and rushes on to their own response. So eager is this writer to disagree, apparently, that they not only caricature what Goldsmith says but also give it a hasty, perfunctory reading. Granted, there are many writing situations in which, because of matters of proportion, a one- or two-sentence summary is precisely what you

want. Indeed, as writing professor Karen Lunsford (whose own research focuses on argument theory) points out, it is standard in the natural and social sciences to summarize the work of others quickly, in one pithy sentence or phrase, as in the following example:

Several studies (Crackle, 2021; Pop, 2019; Snap, 2023) suggest that these policies are harmless; moreover, other studies (Dick, 2019; Harry, 2022; Tom, 2020) argue that they even have benefits.

But if your assignment is to respond in writing to a single author, like Goldsmith, you will need to tell your readers enough about the argument so they can assess its merits on their own, independent of you.

When summarizing something you’ve read, be sure to provide a rigorous and thoughtful summary of the author’s words, or you may fall prey to what we call “the closest cliché syndrome,” in which what gets summarized is not the view the author in question has actually expressed but a familiar cliché that the writer mistakes for the author’s view (sometimes because the writer believes it and mistakenly assumes the author must too). So, for example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s passionate defense of civil disobedience in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” might be summarized not as the defense of political protest that it actually is but as a plea for everyone to “just get along.”

Whenever you enter into a conversation with others in your writing, then, it is extremely important that you go back to what those others have said, that you study it very closely, and that you not confuse it with something you already believe. Writers who fail to do this end up essentially conversing with imaginary others who are really only the products of their own biases and preconceptions.

ON THE OTHER HAND, KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING

Even as writing an effective summary requires you to temporarily adopt the worldview of another person, it does not mean ignoring your own view altogether. Paradoxically, at the same time that summarizing another text requires you to represent fairly what it says, it also requires that your own response exert a quiet influence. A good summary, in other words, has a focus or spin that allows the summary to fit with your own agenda while still being true to the text you are summarizing.

Thus if you are writing in response to the essay by Goldsmith, you should be able to see that an essay addressing the internet’s impact on our social skills will call for a different summary than one addressing the internet’s impact on our ability to concentrate. If you want to address both these topics, you’ll need to subordinate them both to one of Goldsmith’s general claims, then summarize this larger claim in a way that sets up your own two-pronged argument.

For example, suppose you want to argue that, far from being a blend of both good and bad qualities, as Goldsmith asserts, online technologies are mostly bad, that they actually do discourage sustained and serious thinking. To set up this argument, you will want to compose a summary that foregrounds what Goldsmith says about the internet’s effect on thought, while keeping any other aspects of Goldsmith’s argument in the background:

In his essay “Go Ahead, Waste Time on the Internet,” Kenneth Goldsmith argues that, instead of being the big “waste of time” that many see it as, the internet, as Goldsmith himself puts it, “is a befuddling mix of the stupid and the sublime.” Specifically, Goldsmith argues that the internet does not always undermine our social skills, as many contend, or always dumb us down, as others assume. With respect to this last concern, Goldsmith describes an incident in which his wife was reading an online version of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography with such great rapture that she didn’t even notice

Goldsmith’s presence in the room. The implication here is that, instead of simply “making us shallow” and “destroying our ability to concentrate,” the internet often enables us to focus intensely on high- quality, edifying material. Although it is often said that the internet encourages “skimming, not reading,” Goldsmith claims that it can actually encourage intellectual thought.

I disagree. The internet may improve a few people’s cognitive functioning, but nobody I know has ever read Frederick Douglass’s writings or anything like them on the internet—unless they were forced to do so in school. In suggesting the internet can make us smarter, Goldsmith seems to be thinking of cerebral types like (apparently) his wife, who comprise a small percentage of the population . . .

The summary in this first paragraph works, we think, because, unlike the flawed summary we saw earlier, it generously quotes Goldsmith, hugging up closely to Goldsmith’s own words (see Chapter 3, pp. 47–58 , on the art of quoting). Furthermore, at the same time this successful summary stays true to Goldsmith’s argument, it also simultaneously moves the focus in the writer’s own direction. While the writer acknowledges Goldsmith’s concern with both our social and cognitive functioning, their emphasis falls on the latter. In this way, they do justice to Goldsmith’s argument while paving the way for their own ensuing critique.

This advice—to summarize authors in light of your own agenda— may seem painfully obvious. But writers often summarize a given author on one issue even though their text actually focuses on another. To avoid this problem, you need to make sure that your “they say” and “I say” are well matched. In fact, aligning what they say with what you say is a good thing to work on when revising what you’ve written.

Often writers who summarize without regard to their own agenda fall prey to what might be called “list summaries,” summaries that simply inventory the original author’s various points but fail to focus those points around any larger overall claim. If you’ve ever heard a talk in which the points were connected only by words like “and then,” “also,” and “in addition,” you know how such lists can put listeners to sleep—as shown in the figure above. A typical list summary sounds like this:

The cartoon is captioned, The effect of a typical list summary. The speaker has a speech bubble, saying, And then he says… Then also he points out… And then another thing he says is… And then…

The author says many different things about his subject. First he says . . . Then he makes the point that . . . In addition he says . . . And then he writes . . . Also he shows that . . . And then he says . . .

It may be boring list summaries like this that give summaries in general a bad name and even prompt some instructors to discourage their students from summarizing at all.

Not all lists are bad, however. A list can be an excellent way to organize material—but only if, instead of being a miscellaneous grab bag, it is organized around a larger argument that informs each item listed. Many well-written summaries, for instance, list various points made by an author, sometimes itemizing those points (“First, she argues . . . ,” “Second, she argues . . . ,” “Third . . .”), and sometimes even itemizing those points in bullet form.

Many well-written arguments are organized in a list format as well. In “The New Liberal Arts,” Sanford J. Ungar lists what he sees as seven common misperceptions that discourage college students from majoring in the liberal arts, the first of which begin:

Misperception No. 1: A liberal-arts degree is a luxury that most families can no longer afford. . . .

Misperception No. 2: College graduates are finding it harder to get good jobs with liberal-arts degrees. . . .

Misperception No. 3: The liberal arts are particularly irrelevant for low-income and first-generation college students. They, more than their more-affluent peers, must focus on something more practical and marketable.

SANFORD J. UNGAR , “The New Liberal Arts”

What makes Ungar’s list so effective, and makes it stand out in contrast to the type of disorganized lists our cartoon parodies, is that it has a clear, overarching goal: to defend the liberal arts. Had Ungar’s article lacked such a unifying agenda and instead been a miscellaneous grab bag, it almost assuredly would have lost its readers, who wouldn’t have known what to focus on or what the final “message” or “takeaway” should be.

In conclusion, writing a good summary means not just representing an author’s view accurately but doing so in a way that fits what you want to say, the larger point you want to make. On the one hand, it means playing Peter Elbow’s believing game and doing justice to the source; if the summary ignores or misrepresents the source, its bias and unfairness will show. On the other hand, even as it does justice to the source, a summary has to have a slant or spin that prepares the way for your own claims. Once a summary enters your text, you should think of it as joint property—reflecting not just the source you are summarizing but your own perspective or take on it as well.

SUMMARIZING SATIRICALLY

Thus far in this chapter we have argued that, as a general rule, good summaries require a balance between what someone else has said and your own interests as a writer. Now, however, we want to address one exception to this rule: the satiric summary, in which writers deliberately give their own spin to someone else’s argument in order to reveal a glaring shortcoming in it. Despite our previous comments that well- crafted summaries generally strike a balance between heeding what someone else has said and your own independent interests, the satiric mode can at times be a very effective form of critique because it lets the summarized argument condemn itself without overt editorializing by you, the writer.

One such satiric summary can be found in Sanford J. Ungar’s essay “The New Liberal Arts,” which we just mentioned. In his discussion of the “misperception,” as he sees it, that a liberal arts education is “particularly irrelevant for low-income and first-generation college students,” who “must focus on something more practical and marketable,” Ungar restates this view as “another way of saying, really, that the rich folks will do the important thinking, and the lower classes will simply carry out their ideas.” Few who would dissuade disadvantaged students from the liberal arts would actually state their position in this insulting way. But in taking their position to its logical conclusion, Ungar’s satire suggests that this is precisely what their position amounts to.

USE SIGNAL VERBS THAT FIT THE ACTION

In introducing summaries, try to avoid bland formulas like “she says” or “they believe.” Though language like this is sometimes serviceable enough, it often fails to reflect accurately what’s been said. Using these weaker verbs may lead you to summarize the topic instead of the argument. In some cases, “he says” may even drain the passion out of the ideas you’re summarizing.

We suspect that the habit of ignoring the action when summarizing stems from the mistaken belief we mentioned earlier, that writing is about playing it safe and not making waves, a matter of piling up truths and bits of knowledge rather than a dynamic process of doing things to and with other people. People who wouldn’t hesitate to say “X totally misrepresented,” “attacked,” or “loved” something when chatting with friends will in their writing often opt for far tamer and even less accurate phrases like “X said.”

But the authors you summarize at the college level seldom simply “say” or “discuss” things; they “urge,” “emphasize,” and “complain about” them. For example, in the introduction to her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (pp. 347–60 ), Michelle Alexander doesn’t just say that today’s prison system oppresses African Americans; she condemns the system for doing so, indicting and deploring it. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t just talk about the treatment of the colonies by the British; it protests against it. To do justice to the authors you cite, we recommend that when summarizing—or when introducing a quotation—you use vivid and precise signal verbs as often as possible. Though “he says” or “she believes” will sometimes be the most appropriate language for the occasion, your text will often be more accurate and lively if you tailor your verbs to suit the precise actions you’re describing.

TEMPLATES FOR WRITING SUMMARIES

To introduce a summary, use one of the signal verbs above in a template like these:

◼ In her essay X, she advocates a radical revision of the juvenile justice system .

◼ They celebrate the fact that __________ .

◼ __________ , he admits.

When you tackle the summary itself, think about what else is important beyond the central claim of the argument. For example, what are the conversations the author is responding to? What kinds of evidence does the author’s argument rely on? What are the implications of what the author says, both for your own argument and for the larger conversation?

Here is a template that you can use to develop your summary:

◼ X and Y, in their article __________, argue that __________. Their research, which demonstrates that __________, challenges the idea that __________. They use __________ to show __________. X and Y’s argument speaks to __________ about the larger issue of __________.

VERBS FOR INTRODUCING SUMMARIES AND QUOTATIONS

VERBS FOR MAKING A CLAIM

argue

assert

believe

claim

emphasize

insist

observe

remind us

report

suggest

VERBS FOR EXPRESSING AGREEMENT

acknowledge

admire

admit

agree

celebrate

concede

corroborate

do not deny

endorse

extol

praise

reaffirm

support

verify

VERBS FOR QUESTIONING OR DISAGREEING

complain

complicate

contend

contradict

deny

deplore the tendency to

qualify

question

refute

reject

renounce

repudiate

VERBS FOR MAKING RECOMMENDATIONS

advocate

call for

demand

encourage

exhort

implore

plead

recommend

urge

warn

Exercises

1. To get a feel for Peter Elbow’s believing game, think about a debate you’ve heard recently—perhaps in class, at your workplace, or at home. Write a summary of one of the arguments you heard. Then write a summary of another position in the same debate. Give both your summaries to a classmate or two. See if they can tell which position you endorse. If you’ve succeeded, they won’t be able to tell.

2. Read the following passage from “Our Manifesto to Fix America’s Gun Laws,” an argument written by the editorial board of the Eagle Eye , the student newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in response to the mass shooting that occurred there on February 14, 2018.

We have a unique platform not only as student journalists but also as survivors of a mass shooting. We are firsthand witnesses to the kind of devastation that gross incompetence and political inaction can produce. We cannot stand idly by as the country continues to be infected by a plague of gun violence that seeps into community after community and does irreparable damage to the hearts and minds of the American people. . . .

The changes we propose:

Ban semi-automatic weapons that fire high-velocity rounds Civilians shouldn’t have access to the same weapons that soldiers do. That’s a gross misuse of the second amendment . . .

Ban accessories that simulate automatic weapons High-capacity magazines played a huge role in the shooting at our school. In only 10 minutes, 17 people were killed, and 17 others were injured. This is unacceptable . . .

Establish a database of gun sales and universal background checks

We believe that there should be a database recording which guns are sold in the United States, to whom, and of what caliber and capacity they are . . .

Raise the firearm purchase age to 21 In a few months from now, many of us will be turning 18. We will not be able to drink; we will not be able to rent a car. Most of us will still be living with our parents. We will not be able to purchase a handgun. And yet we will be able to purchase an AR- 15 . . .

a. Do you think the list format is appropriate for this argument? Why or why not?

b. Write a one-sentence summary of this argument, using one of the verbs from the list on pages 43–44 .

c. Compare your summary with a classmate’s. What are the similarities and differences between them?

3. A student was asked to summarize an essay by writer Ben Adler, “Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast” (pp. 487–92 ). Here is the draft: “Ben Adler says that climate change is too big of a problem for any one person to solve.”

a. How does this summary fall prey to the “closest cliché syndrome” (p. 35 )?

b. What’s a better verb to use than “say”? Why do you think so?

THREE

“AS HE HIMSELF PUTS IT”

The Art of Quoting

* * *

A KEY PREMISE OF THIS BOOK is that to launch an effective argument you need to write the arguments of others into your text. One of the best ways to do so is not only by summarizing what “they say,” as suggested in Chapter 2 , but also by quoting their exact words. Quoting someone else’s words gives a tremendous amount of credibility to your summary and helps ensure that it is fair and accurate. In a sense, then, quotations function as a kind of proof of evidence, saying to readers: “Look, I’m not just making this up. She makes this claim, and here it is in her exact words.”

Yet many writers make a host of mistakes when it comes to quoting, not the least of which is the failure to quote enough in the first place, if at all. Some writers quote too little—perhaps because they don’t want to bother going back to the original text and looking up the author’s exact words or because they think they can reconstruct the author’s ideas from memory. At the opposite extreme are writers who so overquote that they end up with texts that are short on commentary of their own—maybe because they lack confidence in their ability to comment on the quotations, or because they don’t fully understand what they’ve quoted and therefore have trouble explaining what the quotations mean.

But the main problem with quoting arises when writers assume that quotations speak for themselves. Because the meaning of a quotation is

obvious to them , many writers assume that this meaning will also be obvious to their readers, when often it is not. Writers who make this mistake think that their job is done when they’ve chosen a quotation and inserted it into their text. They draft an essay, slap in a few quotations, and whammo, they’re done. Such writers fail to see that quoting means more than simply enclosing what “they say” in quotation marks. In a way, quotations are orphans: words that have been taken from their original contexts and that need to be integrated into their new textual surroundings. This chapter offers two key ways to produce this sort of integration: (1) by choosing quotations wisely, with an eye to how well they support a particular part of your text, and (2) by surrounding every major quotation with a frame explaining whose words they are, what the quotation means, and how the quotation relates to your own text. The point we want to emphasize is that quoting what “they say” must always be connected with what you say.

QUOTE RELEVANT PASSAGES

Before you can select appropriate quotations, you need to have a sense of what you want to do with them—that is, how they will support your text at the particular point where you insert them. Be careful not to select quotations just for the sake of demonstrating that you’ve read the author’s work; you need to make sure they support your own argument.

However, finding relevant quotations is not always easy. In fact, sometimes quotations that were initially relevant to your argument, or to a key point in it, become less so as your text changes during the process of writing and revising. Given the evolving and messy nature of writing, you may sometimes think that you’ve found the perfect quotation to support your argument, only to discover later on, as your text develops, that your focus has changed and the quotation no longer works. It can be somewhat misleading, then, to speak of finding your thesis and finding relevant quotations as two separate steps, one coming after the other. When you’re deeply engaged in the writing and revising process, there is usually a great deal of back-and-forth between your argument and any quotations you select.

MAKE A QUOTATION SANDWICH

Finding relevant quotations is only part of your job; you also need to present them in a way that makes their relevance and meaning clear to your readers. Since quotations do not speak for themselves, you need to build a frame around them in which you do that speaking for them.

Quotations that are inserted into a text without such a frame are sometimes called “dangling” quotations for the way they’re left dangling without any explanation. One teacher we’ve worked with, Steve Benton, calls these “hit-and-run” quotations, likening them to car accidents in which the driver speeds away and avoids taking responsibility for the dent in your fender or the smashed taillights, as in the figure that follows.

A cartoon of a car running over a book. The book has Plato written on it. The car leaves a trail over the book and speeds away.

What follows is a typical hit-and-run quotation that might be written in response to the 2021 essay “Left Behind” by Joe Garcia, an incarcerated journalist who writes for the San Quentin News :

Joe Garcia writes about technology and prison. “Without more open and frequent internet access, there’s no way we’ll ever truly keep pace with the changing world outside our prison walls.”

This is an excellent point. I have always felt that . . .

Since this student fails to introduce the quotation adequately or explain why they find it worth quoting, readers will have a hard time reconstructing what Garcia argued. First, the student simply gives us the quotation from Garcia without telling us who Garcia is (a family friend? a scholar? a journalist?) or even indicating that the quoted words are his. In addition, the student does not explain what they take Garcia to be saying or how his claims connect with their own. Instead, it’s as if the student could stay focused on the quotation only long enough to transcribe it and hurry on to what they have “always felt.”

See Appendix, “Citing What They Say,” for examples of how to document a quotation in an essay.

To adequately frame a quotation, you need to insert it into what we like to call a “quotation sandwich,” with the statement introducing it serving as the top slice of bread and the explanation following it serving as the bottom slice. The introductory or lead-in claims should explain who is speaking and set up what the quotation says; the follow-up statements should explain why you consider the quotation to be important and what you take it to say. Finally, don’t forget that in researched academic writing, quoting what someone else says means citing what they say, to give credit where credit is due, but also to help others follow the conversation. The templates below are shown without documentation, but you can find more information and examples in the Appendix, “Citing What They Say,” on pp. 738–43 .

TEMPLATES FOR INTRODUCING QUOTATIONS

◼ X states, “ Not all steroids should be banned from sports .”

◼ As the prominent philosopher X puts it, “__________. ”

◼ According to X, “__________. ”

◼ X himself writes, “__________. ”

◼ In her book, __________, X maintains that “__________. ”

◼ Writing in the journal __________, X complains that “__________. ”

◼ In X’s view, “__________. ”

◼ X agrees when she writes, “__________. ”

◼ X disagrees when he writes, “__________. ”

◼ X complicates matters further when she writes, “__________. ”

TEMPLATES FOR EXPLAINING QUOTATIONS

The one piece of advice about quoting that our students say they find most helpful is to get in the habit of following every major quotation by explaining what it means, using a template like one of the ones below.

◼ Basically, X is warning that the proposed solution will only make the problem worse .

◼ In other words, X believes __________ .

◼ In making this comment, X urges us to __________ .

◼ X is corroborating the age-old adage that __________ .

◼ X’s point is that __________ .

◼ The essence of X’s argument is that __________ .

When offering such explanations, it is important to use language that accurately reflects the spirit of the quoted passage. It is often serviceable enough in introducing a quotation to write “X states” or “X asserts,” but in most cases you can add precision to your writing by introducing the quotation in more vivid terms. Since, in the article referred to above, Garcia is clearly alarmed by prisoners’ lack of access to computer technologies, it would be more accurate to use evaluative language that reflects that alarm: “Garcia is dismayed that,” “Garcia is disturbed by,” “Garcia worries that,” or “Garcia deplores.”

See pp. 43–44 for a list of verbs for introducing summaries.

Using some of these moves, the passage above might be revised as follows:

Joe Garcia, a staff writer for the San Quentin News at the San Quentin State Prison where he is incarcerated, complains in his 2021 article “Left Behind” that prisoners like him are denied access to the very technologies that they will eventually need to re-enter society. As Garcia himself puts it, “without more open and frequent internet access, there’s no way we’ll ever truly keep pace with the changing world outside our prison walls.” In this way, Garcia makes us wonder how prisoners are supposed to prepare for the job market that awaits them when they cannot develop the very technology skills that the market now runs on. Ultimately, he challenges what he sees as the overly draconian treatment of prisoners, suggesting that it undermines our national belief in rehabilitation.

This is an excellent point. As reports show, . . .

This revision succeeds, we think, because it frames or “sandwiches” Garcia’s words, integrating them into the surrounding discussion and thus guiding readers about how they should be read. Instead of leaving us to guess whom the quoted words belong to, as the previous draft had done, this revised version clearly indicates that the words belong to Garcia (“As Garcia himself puts it”), identifies who Garcia is (“a staff writer for the San Quentin News at the San Quentin State Prison”), and tells us when he wrote (“2021”). In addition, instead of being presented as an illustration of the overly broad domains of “technology and prison,” the quotation is now presented as an illustration of a very specific point that is repeated in different ways: that the prison system sets up prisoners for failure. (See our discussion of how to repeat yourself without being repetitive, pp. 134–36 ). In this way, the writer explains the quotation while restating it in their own words, using it purposefully instead of simply to pad an essay or a Works Cited list.

BLEND THE AUTHOR’S WORDS WITH YOUR OWN

This new framing material also works because it accurately represents Garcia’s words while emphasizing what the writer deems important. Instead of simply repeating Garcia’s claim word-for-word, the writer now keeps echoing its language in the sentences around it. Garcia’s “internet access,” for instance, gets reinforced in the surrounding references to “access to . . . technologies” and the ability to “develop technology skills.” Similarly, Garcia’s “keep pace with” is echoed in the related phrase “prepare for,” while Garcia’s reference to “the changing world outside our prison walls” is translated as “society,” “the job market,” and “the market.” In this way, the new framing material creates a kind of hybrid mix of Garcia’s words and those of the writer.

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CAN YOU OVERANALYZE A QUOTATION?

But is it possible to overexplain a quotation? And how do you know when you’ve explained a quotation thoroughly enough? After all, not all quotations require the same amount of explanatory framing, and there are no hard-and-fast rules for knowing how much explanation any quotation needs. As a general rule, the most explanatory framing is needed for quotations that may be hard for readers to process: quotations that are long and complex, that are filled with details or jargon, or that contain hidden complexities.

And yet, though the particular situation usually dictates when and how much to explain a quotation, we will still offer one piece of advice: when in doubt, go for it. It is better to risk being overly explicit about what you take a quotation to mean than to leave the quotation dangling and your readers in doubt. Indeed, we encourage you to provide such explanatory framing even when writing to an audience that you know to be familiar with the author being quoted and able to interpret your quotations on their own. Even in such cases, readers need to see how you interpret the quotation, since words—especially those of controversial figures—can be interpreted in various ways and used to support different, sometimes opposing, agendas. Your readers need to see what you make of the material you’ve quoted, if only to be sure that your reading of the material and theirs are on the same page.

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HOW NOT TO INTRODUCE QUOTATIONS

We want to conclude this chapter by surveying some ways not to introduce quotations. Although some writers do so, you should not introduce quotations by saying something like “Orwell asserts an idea that” or “A quote by Shakespeare says.” Introductory phrases like these are both redundant and misleading. In the first example, you could write either “Orwell asserts that” or “Orwell’s assertion is that” rather than redundantly combining the two. The second example misleads readers, since it is the writer who is doing the quoting, not Shakespeare (as “a quote by Shakespeare” implies).

The templates in this book will help you avoid such mistakes. Once you have mastered templates like “as X puts it” or “in X’s own words,” you probably won’t even have to think about them—and will be free to focus on the challenging ideas that templates help you frame.

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Exercises

1. Examine the ways in which journalism professor Suketu Mehta embeds quotations from former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, in a passage below from his 2019 book, This Land is Our Land , which argues that immigrants do not steal jobs or undermine the US economy. Mehta writes:

Bloomberg said there were half a millon undocumented immigrants in New York City. “And let’s be honest: they arrive for a good reason—they want a better life for themselves and their families, and our businesses need them and hire them! . . . [O]ur City’s economy . . . would collapse if they were deported. The same holds true for the nation.”

The self-made billionaire laid out the business case for immigration: many other countries are growing their economies faster than the United States is, reversing the century-long advantage America has enjoyed. Baby boomers are retiring, America’s birthrate is slowing, and there aren’t enough young workers to pay for the old folks’ pensions. “The economics are very simple: We need more workers than we have.”

He called for increasing immigration, because it’s good for the economy, and for legalizing those who’re already here. “There is only one practical solution, and it is a solution that respects the history of our nation: Offer those already here the opportunity to earn permanent status and keep their families together.” It is a moral argument. “For decades, the Federal government has tacitly welcomed them into the workforce, collected their income and social security taxes, which about two-thirds of undocumented workers pay, and benefited immeasurably from their contributions to our country.” (659)

a. How well does Mehta set up his quotations?

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b. How successfully does Mehta integrate Bloomberg’s words with his own? Can you identify which of Mehta’s words echo Bloomberg’s words?

c. Notice that Mehta ends three of his paragraphs with quotations—a practice we suggest you avoid. Are these quotations “dropped” or “dangled”? Why or why not? How, if at all, would you revise what Mehta wrote?

2. Below is a passage from Christine Michel Carter’s 2019 Harper’s Bazaar essay, “How Feminism Is Stifling Our Sons.” In this essay, Carter points out how gender stereotypes are harmful to both girls and boys, and she argues that popular media needs to present more positive models of masculinity. Read this passage and choose a phrase or sentence to quote as a “they say” for an argument of your own. Use the templates from this chapter to sandwich this quote: introduce the quote, explain what it means, and connect it to your own ideas. Your entire response (the introduction, quote, explanation, and connection to your ideas) should be three or four sentences long.

We’ve committed so strongly to teaching girls they’re equal to boys that we’ve forgotten to extend the message to the boys themselves in a healthy, inclusive way. Along with our focus on feminism, we need to embrace a new men’s movement too— one that pays attention to the young boys who are discovering their manhood against a backdrop of hashtags and equality campaigns that tend to either overlook or vilify where masculinity fits in.

3. Read over something you’ve written for one of your classes. Have you quoted any sources? If so, highlight or underline all the quotations. How have you integrated each quotation into your own text? How have you introduced it? explained what it means? indicated how it relates to your text? If you haven’t done all these things, revise your text to do so using the list of verbs for introducing summaries and quotations (pp. 43–44 ) and the templates for introducing quotations (p. 51 ) and explaining quotations (p. 52 ). If you haven’t written anything with

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quotations, revise an academic text you’ve written so that it uses quotations.

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FOUR

“YES / NO / OK, BUT”

Three Ways to Respond

* * *

THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS of this book discuss the “they say” stage of writing, in which you devote your attention to the views of some other person or group. In this chapter, we move to the “I say” stage, in which you offer your own argument as a response to what “they” have said.

Moving to the “I say” stage can be daunting in academia, where it often may seem that you need to be an expert in a field to have an argument at all. Many students have told us that they have trouble entering some of the high-powered conversations that take place in college or graduate school because they do not know enough about the topic at hand or because, they say, they simply are not “smart enough.” Yet often these same students, when given a chance to study in depth the contribution that some scholar has made in a given field, will turn around and say things like “I can see where they are coming from, how they make their case by building on what other scholars have said. Perhaps if I had studied the situation longer, I could have come up with a similar argument.” What these students come to realize is that good arguments are based not on knowledge that only a special class of experts has access to but on everyday habits of mind that can be isolated, identified, and used by almost anyone. Though there’s certainly no substitute for expertise and for knowing as much as possible about one’s topic, the arguments that finally win the day are built, as the title of this chapter

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suggests, on some very basic rhetorical patterns that most of us use on a daily basis.

There are a great many ways to respond to others’ ideas, but this chapter concentrates on the three most common and recognizable ways: agreeing, disagreeing, or some combination of both. Although each way of responding is open to endless variation, we focus on these three because readers come to any text needing to learn fairly quickly where the writer stands, and they do this by placing the writer on a mental map consisting of a few familiar options: the writer agrees with those being responded to, disagrees with them, or presents some combination of both agreeing and disagreeing.

When writers take too long to declare their position relative to views they’ve summarized or quoted, readers get frustrated, wondering, “Is this guy agreeing or disagreeing? Is he for what this other person has said, against it, or what?” For this reason, this chapter’s advice applies to reading as well as to writing. Especially with difficult texts, you need not only to find the position the writer is responding to—the “they say”—but also to determine whether the writer is agreeing with it, challenging it, or some mixture of the two.

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ONLY THREE WAYS TO RESPOND?

Perhaps you’ll worry that fitting your own response into one of these three categories will force you to oversimplify your argument or lessen its complexity, subtlety, or originality. This is certainly a serious concern for academics who are rightly skeptical of writing that is simplistic and reductive. We would argue, however, that the more complex and subtle your argument is, and the more it departs from the conventional ways people think, the more your readers will need to be able to place it on their mental map in order to process the complex details you present. That is, the complexity, subtlety, and originality of your response are more likely to stand out and be noticed if readers have a baseline sense of where you stand relative to any ideas you’ve cited. As you move through this chapter, we hope you’ll agree that the forms of agreeing, disagreeing, and both agreeing and disagreeing that we discuss, far from being simplistic or one-dimensional, are able to accommodate a high degree of creative, complex thought.

It is always a good tactic to begin your response not by launching directly into a mass of details but by stating clearly whether you agree, disagree, or both, using a direct, no-nonsense formula such as: “I agree,” “I disagree,” or “I am of two minds. I agree that __________ , but I cannot agree that __________ . ” Once you have offered one of these straightforward statements (or one of the many variations discussed below), readers will have a strong grasp of your position and then be able to appreciate the complications you go on to offer as your response unfolds.

See Chapter 1 for suggestions on previewing where you stand.

Still, you may object that these three basic ways of responding don’t cover all the options—that they ignore interpretive or analytical responses, for example. In other words, you might think that when you

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interpret a literary work, you don’t necessarily agree or disagree with anything but simply explain the work’s meaning, style, or structure. Many essays about literature and the arts, it might be said, take this form —they interpret a work’s meaning, thus rendering matters of agreeing or disagreeing irrelevant.

We would argue, however, that the most interesting interpretations tend to be those that agree, disagree, or both—that instead of being offered solo, the best interpretations take strong stands relative to other interpretations. In fact, there would be no reason to offer an interpretation of a work of literature or art unless you were responding to the interpretations or possible interpretations of others. Even when you point out features or qualities of an artistic work that others have not noticed, you are implicitly disagreeing with what those interpreters have said by pointing out that they missed or overlooked something that, in your view, is important. In any effective interpretation, then, you need not only to state what you yourself take the work of art to mean but also to do so relative to the interpretations of other readers—be they professional scholars, teachers, classmates, or even hypothetical readers (as in, “Although some readers might think that this poem is about __________ , it is in fact about __________ ” ).

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DISAGREE—AND EXPLAIN WHY

Disagreeing may seem like one of the simpler moves a writer can make, and it is often the first thing people associate with the celebrated skill of critical thinking. Disagreeing can also be the easiest way to generate an essay: find something you can disagree with in what has been said or might be said about your topic, summarize it, and argue with it. But disagreement in fact poses hidden challenges. Perhaps the biggest of these challenges is the temptation to scapegoat those we disagree with. Academic writing, as we keep insisting in this book, is an act of entering into conversation with others; but conversations often go south when, instead of listening to others, we caricature them, attributing beliefs to them that they simply don’t hold and might even find repugnant. Though the goal in scapegoating is to garner sympathy for our own position, the unintended result is that we end up looking unreliable, if not dishonest. A far better approach, we submit, is to play the “believing game” (see pp. 33–34 ), which requires us to seriously imagine what it would be like to hold another’s perspective before we allow ourselves to disagree with it.

Another challenge posed by disagreeing with others has to do with what might be called “is too” / “is not” thinking. When disagreeing, you need to do more than simply assert that you disagree with a particular view; you also have to offer persuasive reasons why you disagree. After all, disagreeing means more than adding “not” to what someone else has said, more than just saying, “Although they say women’s rights are improving, I say women’s rights are not improving.” Such a response merely contradicts the view it responds to and fails to add anything interesting or new. To turn it into an argument, you need to give reasons to support what you say: because another’s argument fails to take relevant factors into account; because it is based on faulty or incomplete evidence; because it rests on questionable assumptions; or because it uses flawed logic, is contradictory, or overlooks what you take to be the real issue. To move the conversation forward (and, indeed, to justify your very act of writing), you need to demonstrate that you have something to contribute.

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This does not mean that, in disagreeing with another view, you cannot be strong and direct in your opposition. Consider, for instance, the 2015 essay on artificial intelligence by the education scholar Michael Littman. In no uncertain terms, Littman insists that “the nightmare scenario . . . in which humans are enslaved or destroyed by superintelligent machines of our own creation is purely science fiction .” Along similar lines, consider how the freelance journalist Anna Clark, in her 2015 article “Why We Need to Keep the ‘Community’ in Community Colleges,” offers an equally hard-hitting critique of the “escalating movement of community colleges dropping the word ‘community’ from their names.” Without mincing words—and in a one- sentence paragraph that’s sure to get noticed—she states: “This is a bad move.” One thing that saves these critiques from being caricatures is how generously the authors entertain the views they’re challenging. Clark, for instance, devotes seven sentences to the counterview she’s challenging before declaring it “a bad move,” and over three more paragraphs to the counterview after making this bold declaration.

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TEMPLATES FOR DISAGREEING, WITH REASONS

◼ X is mistaken because she overlooks recent fossil discoveries in the South .

◼ X’s claim that __________ rests on the questionable assumption that __________.

◼ I disagree with X’s view that __________ because, as recent research has shown, __________.

◼ X contradicts herself / can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, she argues __________. On the other hand, she also says __________.

◼ By focusing on __________, X overlooks the deeper problem of __________.

You can also disagree by making what we call the “twist it” move, in which you agree with the evidence that someone else has presented but show through a twist of logic that this evidence actually supports your own, contrary position. For example:

X argues for stricter gun control legislation, saying that the crime rate is on the rise and that we need to restrict the circulation of guns. I agree that the crime rate is on the rise, but that’s precisely why I oppose stricter gun control legislation. With proper training, people should be able to own a gun to protect themselves against criminals.

In this example of the “twist it” move, the writer agrees with X’s claim that the crime rate is on the rise but then argues that this increasing crime rate is in fact a valid reason for opposing gun control legislation.

At times you might be reluctant to express disagreement, for any number of reasons—not wanting to be unpleasant, to hurt someone’s feelings, or to make yourself vulnerable to being disagreed with in

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return. One of these reasons may in fact explain why the conference speaker we described at the start of Chapter 1 avoided mentioning the disagreement he had with other scholars until he was provoked to do so in the discussion that followed his talk.

As much as we understand such fears of conflict and have experienced them ourselves, we nevertheless believe it is better to state our disagreements in frank yet considerate ways than to deny them. After all, suppressing disagreements doesn’t make them go away; it only pushes them underground, where they can fester in private unchecked. Nevertheless, disagreements do not need to take the form of personal put-downs. Furthermore, there is usually no reason to take issue with every aspect of someone else’s views. You can single out for criticism only those aspects of what someone else has said that are troubling and then agree with the rest—although such an approach, as we will see later in this chapter, leads to the somewhat more complicated terrain of both agreeing and disagreeing at the same time.

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AGREE—BUT WITH A DIFFERENCE

Like disagreeing, agreeing is less simple than it may appear. Just as you need to avoid simply contradicting views you disagree with, you also need to do more than simply echo views you agree with. Even as you’re agreeing, it’s important to bring something new and fresh to the table, adding something that makes you a valuable participant in the conversation.

There are many moves that enable you to contribute something of your own to a conversation even as you agree with what someone else has said. You may point out some unnoticed evidence or line of reasoning that supports X’s claims that X herself hadn’t mentioned. You may cite some corroborating personal experience or a situation not mentioned by X that her views help readers understand. If X’s views are particularly challenging or esoteric, what you bring to the table could be an accessible translation—an explanation for readers not already in the know. In other words, your text can usefully contribute to the conversation simply by pointing out unnoticed implications or explaining something that needs to be better understood.

Whatever mode of agreement you choose, the important thing is to open up some difference or contrast between your position and the one you’re agreeing with rather than simply parroting what it says.

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TEMPLATES FOR AGREEING

◼ I agree that diversity in the student body is educationally valuable because my experience at Central University confirms it.

◼ X is surely right about __________ because, as they may not be aware, recent studies have shown that __________ .

◼ X’s theory of __________ is extremely useful because it sheds light on the difficult problem of __________.

◼ Those unfamiliar with this school of thought may be interested to know that it basically boils down to __________ .

Some writers avoid the practice of agreeing almost as much as others avoid disagreeing. In a culture like America’s, which prizes originality, independence, and competitive individualism, writers sometimes don’t like to admit that anyone else has made the same point, seemingly beating them to the punch. In our view, however, as long as you can support a position taken by someone else without merely restating what was said, there is no reason to worry about being “unoriginal.” Indeed, there is good reason to rejoice when you agree with others since those others can lend credibility to your argument. While you don’t want to present yourself as a mere copycat of someone else’s views, you also need to avoid sounding like a lone voice in the wilderness.

But do be aware that whenever you agree with one person’s view, you are likely disagreeing with someone else’s. It is hard to align yourself with one position without at least implicitly positioning yourself against others. The psychologist Carol Gilligan does just that in an essay in which she agrees with scientists who argue that the human brain is “hard-wired” for cooperation but in so doing aligns herself against anyone who believes that the brain is wired for selfishness and competition:

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These findings join a growing convergence of evidence across the human sciences leading to a revolutionary shift in consciousness. . . . If cooperation, typically associated with altruism and self-sacrifice, sets off the same signals of delight as pleasures commonly associated with hedonism and self-indulgence; if the opposition between selfish and selfless, self vs. relationship biologically makes no sense, then a new paradigm is necessary to reframe the very terms of the conversation.

CAROL GILLIGAN , “Sisterhood Is Pleasurable: A Quiet Revolution in Psychology”

In agreeing with some scientists that “the opposition between selfish and selfless . . . makes no sense,” Gilligan implicitly disagrees with anyone who thinks the opposition does make sense. Basically, what Gilligan says could be boiled down to a template:

◼ I agree that __________, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people still believe __________.

◼ If group X is right that __________, as I think they are, then we need to reassess the popular assumption that __________.

What such templates allow you to do, then, is to agree with one view while challenging another—a move that leads into the domain of agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously.

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AGREE AND DISAGREE SIMULTANEOUSLY

This last option is often our favorite way of responding. One thing we particularly like about agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously is that it helps us get beyond the kind of “is too” / “is not” exchanges that often characterize the disputes of young children and the more polarized shouting matches of talk radio and TV.

Sanford J. Ungar makes precisely this move in his essay “The New Liberal Arts” when, in critiquing seven common “misperceptions” of liberal arts education, he concedes that several contain a grain of truth. For example, after summarizing “Misperception No. 2,” that “college graduates are finding it harder to get good jobs with liberal-arts degrees,” that few employers want to hire those with an “irrelevant major like philosophy or French,” Ungar writes: “Yes, recent graduates have had difficulty in the job market. . . .” But then, after making this concession, Ungar insists that this difficulty affects graduates in all fields, not just those from the liberal arts. In this way, we think, Ungar paradoxically strengthens his case. By admitting that the opposing argument has a point, Ungar bolsters his credibility, presenting himself as a writer willing to acknowledge facts as they present themselves rather than one determined to cheerlead only for his own side.

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TEMPLATES FOR AGREEING AND DISAGREEING SIMULTANEOUSLY

“Yes and no.” “Yes, but . . .” “On the one hand, . . . On the other hand, . . .” These are just some of the phrases you can use to make one of the most impressive academic moves: both agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously. The parallel structure—“yes and no,” “on the one hand, I agree; on the other hand, I disagree”—allows you to make a complicated response while containing it in a clear, reader-friendly framework, thus helping readers to place your claim on that mental map of positions we spoke of earlier.

Look, for instance, at how Charles Murray uses this parallel structure in his 2008 essay “Are Too Many People Going to College?” In this essay, Murray responds to what he sees as the prevailing wisdom about a college, liberal arts degree, which holds that

We should not restrict the availability of a liberal education to a rarified intellectual elite. More people should be going to college, not fewer.

He answers:

Yes and no. More people should be getting the basics of a liberal education. But for most students, the places to provide these basics are elementary and middle school.

In other words, Murray answers “Yes” to more students getting a liberal arts education, but “No” to their getting this education in college.

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TEMPLATES FOR AGREEING AND DISAGREEING SIMULTANEOUSLY

◼ Yes, it’s true that __________. But __________.

◼ I’m of two minds about X’s claim that __________. On the one hand, X seems right that __________. On the other hand, X seems wrong to suggest __________.

Formats like these help you enter particularly challenging debates in which, after weighing all sides, you conclude that the smartest position is a divided verdict.

One nice aspect of such moves like these is that the balance can be tipped subtly toward agreement or disagreement, depending on where you lay your stress. To emphasize the agreement end of the spectrum, you can use a template like:

◼ Although I [must] question some of X’s assumptions, I fully endorse the most important part of their argument: their conclusion that __________.

Conversely, to emphasize the disagreement end of the spectrum, you might write:

◼ Although I have no problem with X’s claim that __________, I strongly disagree with their main conclusion that __________.

In short, then, whether you are agreeing, disagreeing, or a combination of both, you need to be as clear as possible with readers about what type of response you are making—even if, and perhaps especially if, your response is marked by ambivalence or mixed feelings.

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IS BEING UNDECIDED OK?

Nevertheless, writers often have as many concerns about expressing ambivalence as they do about expressing disagreement or agreement. Some worry that by expressing ambivalence they will come across as evasive, wishy-washy, or unsure of themselves. Others worry that their ambivalence will end up confusing readers who require decisive, clear- cut conclusions.

The truth is that in some cases these worries are legitimate. At times ambivalence can frustrate readers, leaving them with the feeling that you failed in your obligation to offer the guidance they expect from writers. At other times, however, acknowledging that a clear-cut resolution of an issue is impossible can demonstrate your sophistication as a writer. In an academic culture that values complex thought, forthrightly declaring that you have mixed feelings can be impressive, especially after having ruled out the one-dimensional positions on your issue taken by others in the conversation. Ultimately, then, how ambivalent you end up being comes down to a judgment call based on different readers’ responses to your drafts, on your knowledge of your audience, and on the challenges of your particular argument and situation.

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Exercises

1. Below is a passage from Chris Nowinski’s 2019 Vox essay, “Youth Tackle Football Will Be Considered Unthinkable 50 Years from Now.” In this essay, Nowinski (director of the Concussion Legacy Foundation and former college football player) argues that tackle football should be banned for kids under fourteen years old.

a. Read the passage. Then respond to Nowinski’s argument using one of the templates from this chapter: one that responds by agreeing and one that responds by disagreeing.

b. Work with a partner to compare your responses. Which response do you think is the strongest, and why?

The science is clearer than ever: Exposure data shows children as young as 9 are getting hit in the head more than 500 times in one season of youth tackle football. That should not feel normal to us. Think of the last time, outside of sports, you allowed your child to get hit hard in the head 25 times in a day. Better yet, when was the last time you were hit hard in the head?

Scientists are now beginning to understand the long-term consequences of all those hits. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a degenerative brain disease that was once thought to be confined only to “punch-drunk” boxers. Yet in the past decade, Boston University and Veterans Affairs researchers have diagnosed CTE in American football, soccer, ice hockey, and rugby players, along with other collision sport athletes. . . .

Our society is committed to protecting children—that’s why we ban smoking, remove children from homes with lead paint, and force parents to put their children in car seats. We should also protect children from unnecessary brain damage in youth sports.

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2. Working together with a partner, write a response where you agree and disagree simultaneously—the “OK, but” move. You can write your response using the Nowinski passage above as your “they say,” or you can respond to a reading posted on theysayiblog.com . Use the templates from this chapter to compose your response. Decide if you want to emphasize disagreement or agreement, and revise your response accordingly.

3. Read an essay that is posted on theysayiblog.com .

a. Is the writer agreeing, disagreeing, or both? Where do you see the writer doing this? Point to a particular sentence or passage.

b. How connected is the writer’s argument (“I say”) to the larger conversation (“they say”)?

c. If the writer is disagreeing, how considerate is the writer to the views being rebutted? Why do you think being considerate while disagreeing is important in academic writing?

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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FIVE

“AND YET”

Distinguishing What You Say from What They Say

* * *

IF GOOD ACADEMIC WRITING involves putting yourself into dialogue with others, it is extremely important that readers be able to tell at every point when you are expressing your own view and when you are stating someone else’s. This chapter takes up the problem of moving from what they say to what you say without confusing readers about who is saying what.

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DETERMINE WHO IS SAYING WHAT IN THE TEXTS YOU READ

Before examining how to signal who is saying what in your own writing, let’s look at how to recognize such signals when they appear in the texts you read—an especially important skill when it comes to the challenging works assigned in school. Frequently, when students have trouble understanding difficult texts, it is not just because the texts contain unfamiliar ideas or words but also because the texts rely on subtle clues to let readers know when a particular view should be attributed to the writer or to someone else. Especially with texts that present a true dialogue of perspectives, readers need to be alert to the often subtle markers that indicate whose voice the writer is speaking in.

Consider how the social critic and educator Gregory Mantsios uses these “voice markers,” as they might be called, to distinguish the different perspectives in his essay on America’s class inequalities:

“We are all middle-class,” or so it would seem. Our national consciousness, as shaped in large part by the media and our political leadership, provides us with a picture of ourselves as a nation of prosperity and opportunity with an ever expanding middle-class life- style. As a result, our class differences are muted and our collective character is homogenized.

Yet class divisions are real and arguably the most significant factor in determining both our very being in the world and the nature of the society we live in.

GREGORY MANTSIOS , “Rewards and Opportunities: The Politics and Economics of Class

in the U.S.”

Although Mantsios makes it look easy, he is actually making several sophisticated rhetorical moves here that help him distinguish the common view he opposes from his own position.

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In the opening sentence, for instance, the phrase “or so it would seem” shows that Mantsios does not necessarily agree with the view he is describing, since writers normally don’t present views they themselves hold as ones that only “seem” to be true. Mantsios also places this opening view in quotation marks to signal that it is not his own. He then further distances himself from the belief being summarized in the opening paragraph by attributing it to “our national consciousness, as shaped in large part by the media and our political leadership,” and then further attributing to this “consciousness” a negative, undesirable “result”: one in which “our class differences” get “muted” and “our collective character” gets “homogenized,” stripped of its diversity and distinctness. Hence, even before Mantsios has declared his own position in the second paragraph, readers can get a pretty solid sense of where he probably stands.

Furthermore, the second paragraph opens with the word “Yet,” indicating that Mantsios is now shifting to his own view (as opposed to the common view he has thus far been describing). Even the parallelism he sets up between the first and second paragraphs—between the first paragraph’s claim that class differences do not exist and the second paragraph’s claim that they do—helps throw into sharp relief the differences between the two voices. Finally, Mantsios’s use of a direct, authoritative, declarative tone in the second paragraph also suggests a switch in voice. Although he does not use the words “I say” or “I argue,” he clearly identifies the view he holds by presenting it not as one that merely seems to be true or that others tell us is true but as a view that is true or, as Mantsios puts it, “real.”

Paying attention to these voice markers is an important aspect of reading comprehension. Readers who fail to notice these markers often take an author’s summaries of what someone else believes to be an expression of what the author himself or herself believes. Thus, when we teach Mantsios’s essay, some students invariably come away thinking that the statement “we are all middle-class” is Mantsios’s own position rather than the perspective he is opposing, failing to see that in writing these words Mantsios acts as a kind of ventriloquist, mimicking what others say rather than directly expressing what he himself is thinking.

To see how important such voice markers are, consider what the Mantsios passage looks like if we remove them:

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We are all middle-class. . . . We are a nation of prosperity and opportunity with an ever expanding middle-class life-style. . . .

Class divisions are real and arguably the most significant factor in determining both our very being in the world and the nature of the society we live in.

In contrast to the careful delineation between voices in Mantsios’s original text, this unmarked version leaves it hard to tell where his voice begins and the voices of others end. With the markers removed, readers cannot tell that “We are all middle-class” represents a view the author opposes and that “Class divisions are real” represents what the author himself believes. Indeed, without the markers, especially the “yet,” readers might well miss the fact that the second paragraph’s claim that “Class divisions are real” contradicts the first paragraph’s claim that “We are all middle-class.”

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TEMPLATES FOR SIGNALING WHO IS SAYING WHAT IN YOUR OWN WRITING

To avoid confusion in your own writing, make sure that at every point your readers can clearly tell who is saying what. To do so, you can use as voice-identifying devices many of the templates presented in previous chapters.

◼ Although X makes the best possible case for universal, government-funded health care , I am not persuaded .

◼ My view, however, contrary to what X has argued, is that __________ .

◼ Adding to X’s argument, I would point out that __________ .

◼ According to both X and Y, __________ .

◼ Politicians, X argues, should __________ .

◼ Most athletes will tell you that __________ .

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BUT I’VE BEEN TOLD NOT TO USE “I”

Notice that the first three templates above use the first person, as do many of the templates in this book, thereby contradicting the common advice about avoiding the first person in academic writing. Although you may have been told that the “I” word encourages subjective, self- indulgent opinions rather than well-grounded arguments, we believe that texts using “I” can be just as well supported—or just as self-indulgent— as those that don’t. For us, well-supported arguments are grounded in persuasive reasons and evidence, not in the use or nonuse of any particular pronouns.

Furthermore, if you consistently avoid the first person in your writing, you will probably have trouble making the key move addressed in this chapter: differentiating your views from those of others or even offering your own views in the first place. But don’t just take our word for it. See for yourself how freely the first person is used by the writers quoted in this book and by the writers assigned in your courses.

Nevertheless, certain occasions may warrant avoiding the first person and writing, for example, that “they are correct” instead of “I think that they are correct.” Since it can be monotonous to read an unvarying series of “I” statements (“I believe . . . I think . . . I argue . . . ”), it is a good idea to mix first-person assertions with ones like the following:

◼ X is right that certain common patterns can be found in the communities .

◼ The evidence shows that __________ .

◼ X’s assertion that __________ does not fit the facts.

◼ Anyone familiar with __________ should agree that __________.

One might even follow Mantsios’s lead, as in the following template:

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◼ Yet __________ are real, and are arguably the most significant factor in __________.

On the whole, however, academic writing today, even in the sciences and social sciences, makes use of the first person fairly liberally.

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ANOTHER TRICK FOR IDENTIFYING WHO IS SPEAKING

To alert readers about whose perspective you are describing at any given moment, you don’t always have to use overt voice markers like “X argues” followed by a summary of the argument. Instead, you can alert readers about whose voice you’re speaking in by embedding a reference to X’s argument in your own sentences. Hence, instead of writing

Liberals believe that cultural differences need to be respected. I have a problem with this view, however.

you might write

I have a problem with what liberals call cultural differences .

There is a major problem with the liberal doctrine of so-called cultural differences .

You can also embed references to something you yourself have previously said. So instead of writing two cumbersome sentences like

Earlier in this chapter we coined the term “voice markers.” We would argue that such markers are extremely important for reading comprehension.

you might write

We would argue that “voice markers,” as we identified them earlier, are extremely important for reading comprehension.

Embedded references like these allow you to economize your train of thought and refer to other perspectives without any major interruption.

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TEMPLATES FOR EMBEDDING VOICE MARKERS

◼ X overlooks what I consider an important point about cultural differences .

◼ My own view is that what X insists is a __________ is in fact a __________.

◼ I wholeheartedly endorse what X calls __________ .

◼ These conclusions, which X discusses in __________, add weight to the argument that __________.

When writers fail to use voice-marking devices like the ones discussed in this chapter, their summaries of others’ views tend to become confused with their own ideas—and vice versa. When readers cannot tell if you are summarizing your own views or endorsing a certain phrase or label, they have to stop and think: “Wait. I thought the author disagreed with this claim. Has she actually been asserting this view all along?” or “Hmmm, I thought she would have objected to this kind of phrase. Is she actually endorsing it?” Getting in the habit of using voice markers will keep you from confusing your readers and help alert you to similar markers in the challenging texts you read.

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Exercises

1. Look at the short passages below. Right now, it’s unclear who is saying what. Use the templates from this chapter to revise these passages so they include voice markers that allow a reader to distinguish between the two voices.

Example:

Students who major in preprofessional programs like accounting or medical technology are trained for in-demand careers. Students who study the humanities learn valuable skills that prepare them for many jobs, including some that may not even exist today.

Revision:

Well-meaning advisers argue that students who major in preprofessional programs like accounting or medical technologies are trained for in-demand careers. However, they overlook what I consider an important point , that studying the humanities gives students valuable skills that prepare them for many jobs, including some that may not even exist today.

a. Fracking, or drilling deeply into the ground to reach natural gas, can contaminate drinking water in communities near the drilling operations. Natural gas is a cleaner form of energy than coal, and fracking is a cost- effective way to access the reserves of natural gas in the United States.

b. Charter schools give families in struggling school districts options to choose which schools their kids will attend. Charter schools, controlled by private individuals or corporations, divert essential funds away from the public education systems that serve all children.

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2. To see how one writer signals when she is asserting her own views and when she is summarizing those of someone else, read the following passage from Anne-Marie Slaughter’s essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” As you do so, identify those spots where Slaughter refers to the views of others and the signal phrases she uses to distinguish her views from theirs.

Seeking out a more balanced life is not a women’s issue; balance would be better for us all. Bronnie Ware, an Australian blogger who worked for years in palliative care and is the author of the 2011 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, writes that the regret she heard most often was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” The second-most common regret was “I wish I didn’t work so hard.” She writes: “This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.”

Juliette Kayyem, who several years ago left the Department of Homeland Security soon after her husband, David Barron, left a high position in the Justice Department, says their joint decision to leave Washington and return to Boston sprang from their desire to work on the “happiness project,” meaning quality time with their three children. (She borrowed the term from her friend Gretchen Rubin, who wrote a best-selling book and now runs a blog with that name.)

It’s time to embrace a national happiness project. As a daughter of Charlottesville, Virginia, the home of Thomas Jefferson and the university he founded, I grew up with the Declaration of Independence in my blood. Last I checked, he did not declare American independence in the name of life, liberty, and professional success. Let us rediscover the pursuit of happiness, and let us start at home.

3. Read over a draft of your own writing—a paragraph or an essay —and then respond to the following questions. How do you distinguish your own voice from the argument(s) you are summarizing, quoting, and responding to? How could you use a

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template from this chapter to clarify the distinction between your argument and their argument(s)? Where could you use first- person voice markers or embedded references in your writing?

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SIX

“SKEPTICS MAY OBJECT”

Planting a Naysayer in Your Text

* * *

THE WRITER Jane Tompkins describes a pattern that repeats itself whenever she writes a book or an article. For the first couple of weeks when she sits down to write, things go relatively well. But then in the middle of the night, several weeks into the writing process, she’ll wake up in a cold sweat, suddenly realizing that she has overlooked some major criticism that readers will surely make against her ideas. Her first thought, invariably, is that she will have to give up on the project or that she will have to throw out what she’s written thus far and start over. Then she realizes that “this moment of doubt and panic is where my text really begins.” She then revises what she’s written in a way that incorporates the criticisms she’s anticipated, and her text becomes stronger and more interesting as a result.

This little story contains an important lesson for all writers, experienced and inexperienced alike. It suggests that even though most of us are upset at the idea of someone criticizing our work, such criticisms can actually work to our advantage. Although it’s naturally tempting to ignore criticism of our ideas, doing so may in fact be a big mistake, since our writing improves when we not only listen to these objections but also give them an explicit hearing in our writing. Indeed, no single device more quickly improves a piece of writing than planting a naysayer in the text—saying, for example, that “although some readers

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may object” to something in your argument, you “would reply that ____________________ . ”

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ANTICIPATE OBJECTIONS

But wait, you say. Isn’t the advice to incorporate critical views a recipe for destroying your credibility and undermining your argument? Here you are, trying to say something that will hold up, and we want you to tell readers all the negative things someone might say against you?

Exactly. We are urging you to tell readers what others might say against you, but our point is that doing so will actually enhance your credibility, not undermine it. As we argue throughout this book, writing well does not mean piling up uncontroversial truths in a vacuum; it means engaging others in a dialogue or debate—not only by opening your text with a summary of what others have said, as we suggest in Chapter 1 , but also by imagining what others might say against your argument as it unfolds. Once you see writing as an act of entering a conversation, you should also see how opposing arguments can work for you rather than against you.

Paradoxically, the more you give voice to your critics’ objections, the more you tend to disarm those critics, especially if you go on to answer their objections in convincing ways. When you entertain a counterargument, you make a kind of preemptive strike, identifying problems with your argument before others can point them out for you. Furthermore, by entertaining counterarguments, you show respect for your readers, treating them not as gullible dupes who will believe anything you say but as independent, critical thinkers who are aware that your view is not the only one in town. In addition, by imagining what others might say against your claims, you come across as a generous, broad-minded person who is confident enough to be open to debate— like the writer in the figure on the following page.

Conversely, if you don’t entertain counterarguments, you may very likely come across as closed-minded, as if you think your beliefs are beyond dispute. You might also leave important questions hanging and concerns about your arguments unaddressed. Finally, if you fail to plant a naysayer in your text, you may find that you have very little to say. Our own students often say that entertaining counterarguments makes it

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easier to generate enough text to meet their assignment’s page-length requirements.

Planting a naysayer in your text is a relatively simple move, as you can see by looking at the following passage from the essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor who formerly served in the U.S. State Department. Slaughter’s central argument is that, “given the way America’s economy and society are currently structured,” women cannot “have it all”—that women won’t be able to strike a reasonable work/life balance until the workplace is radically restructured. Knowing that not everyone will agree with her, Slaughter explains:

As I write this, I can hear the reaction of some readers to many of the proposals in this essay: It’s all fine and well for a tenured professor to write about flexible working hours, investment intervals, and family- comes-first management. But what about the real world? Most American women cannot demand these things, particularly in a bad economy, and their employers have little incentive to grant them voluntarily.

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In the top frame of the cartoon, the person has a concerned expression on their face as they type on their laptop. A thought bubble that says, Oh, no! Theyre gonna say that Ive misrepresented Xs work! In the bottom frame of the cartoon, there is text above the person smiling while typing. The text says, You will probably object that I have misrepresented Xs work here, and I concede that X never says ___ in so many words, nevertheless...

One reason this naysayer works, we think, is that Slaughter stays with it for several sentences, as you can see above, and even adds one more sentence beyond the material we’ve quoted. Although it is often tempting to give views we disagree with short shrift, if not to mock them or ignore them altogether, Slaughter gives this objection a generous hearing before she proceeds to answer it, no sarcasm or ridicule included.

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TEMPLATES FOR ENTERTAINING OBJECTIONS

To entertain an objection in your own writing, you might want to borrow some of Slaughter’s language above:

◼ As I write this, I can hear the reaction of some skeptics to many of the proposals in this essay: It’s all fine and well for __________. But what about __________?

You might also write:

◼ Yet some may challenge my view on the grounds that __________ .

◼ Yet some readers may challenge my view by insisting that __________ .

◼ Of course, many will probably disagree on the grounds that __________ .

Note that the objections in the above templates are attributed not to any specific person or group but to “skeptics,” “readers,” “some,” or “many.” This kind of nameless, faceless naysayer is perfectly appropriate in many cases. But the ideas that motivate arguments and objections often can— and, where possible, should—be ascribed to a specific ideology or school of thought (for example, liberals, Christian fundamentalists, neopragmatists) rather than to anonymous anybodies. In other words, naysayers can be labeled, and you can add precision and impact to your writing by identifying what those labels are.

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TEMPLATES FOR NAMING YOUR NAYSAYERS

◼ Here many feminists would probably object that gender does influence language .

◼ But social Darwinists would certainly take issue with the argument that __________.

◼ Biologists , of course, may want to question whether __________.

◼ Nevertheless, both followers and critics of Malcolm X will probably suggest otherwise and argue that __________.

To be sure, some people dislike such labels and may even resent having labels applied to themselves. Some feel that labels put individuals in boxes, stereotyping them and glossing over what makes each of us unique. And it’s true that labels can be used inappropriately, in ways that ignore individuality and promote stereotypes. But since the life of ideas, including many of our most private thoughts, is conducted through groups and types rather than solitary individuals, intellectual exchange requires labels to give definition and serve as a convenient shorthand. If you categorically reject all labels, you give up an important resource and even mislead readers by presenting yourself and others as having no connection to anyone else. You also miss an opportunity to generalize the importance and relevance of your work to some larger conversation. When you attribute a position you are summarizing to liberalism, say, or historical materialism, your argument is no longer just about your own solitary views but also about the intersection of broad ideas and habits of mind that many readers may already have a stake in.

The way to minimize the problem of stereotyping, then, is not to categorically reject labels but to refine and qualify their use, as the following templates demonstrate:

◼ Although not all gamers think alike, some of them will probably dispute my claim that __________.

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◼ Local politicians are so diverse in their views that it’s hard to generalize about them, but some are likely to object on the grounds that __________.

Another way to avoid needless stereotyping is to qualify labels carefully, substituting “pro bono lawyers” for “lawyers” in general, for example, or “quantitative sociologists” for all “social scientists,” and so on.

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TEMPLATES FOR INTRODUCING OBJECTIONS INFORMALLY

Objections can also be introduced in more informal ways. For instance, you can frame objections in the form of questions:

◼ But is my proposal realistic? What are the chances of its actually being adopted?

◼ Yet is it necessarily true that __________? Is it always the case, as I have been suggesting, that __________?

◼ However, does the evidence I’ve cited prove conclusively that __________ ?

You can also let your naysayer speak directly:

◼ “Impossible,” some will say. “You must be reading the research selectively.”

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REPRESENT OBJECTIONS FAIRLY

Once you’ve decided to introduce a differing or opposing view into your writing, your work has only just begun, since you still need to represent and explain that view with fairness and generosity. Although it is tempting to give opposing views short shrift, to hurry past them, or even to mock them, doing so is usually counterproductive. When writers make the best case they can for their critics (playing Peter Elbow’s “believing game”), they actually bolster their credibility with readers rather than undermine it. They make readers think, “This is a writer I can trust.”

See Chapter 2 for more on the believing game.

We recommend, then, that whenever you entertain objections in your writing, you stay with them for several sentences or even paragraphs and take them as seriously as possible. We also recommend that you read your summary of opposing views with an outsider’s eye: put yourself in the shoes of someone who disagrees with you and ask if such a reader would recognize themselves in your summary. Would that reader think you have taken their views seriously, as beliefs that reasonable people might hold? Or would they detect a mocking tone or an oversimplification of their views?

There will always be certain objections, to be sure, that you believe do not deserve to be represented, just as there will be objections that seem so unworthy of respect that they inspire ridicule. Remember, however, that if you do choose to mock a view that you oppose, you are likely to alienate those readers who don’t already agree with you—likely the very readers you want to reach. Also be aware that in mocking another’s view you may contribute to a hostile argument culture in which someone may ridicule you in return.

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ANSWER OBJECTIONS

Do be aware that when you represent objections successfully, you still need to be able to answer those objections persuasively. After all, when you write objections into a text, you take the risk that readers will find those objections more convincing than the argument you yourself are advancing. Some writers take the risk that readers will identify more with the view that’s summarized than with the view they actually endorse.

This is precisely what Benjamin Franklin describes happening to himself in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1793), when he recalls being converted to Deism (a religion that exalts reason over spirituality) by reading anti -Deist books. When he encountered the views of Deists being negatively summarized by authors who opposed them, Franklin explains, he ended up finding the Deist position more persuasive. To avoid having this kind of unintentional reverse effect on readers, you need to do your best to make sure that any counterarguments you address are not more convincing than your own claims. It is good to address objections in your writing but only if you are able to overcome them.

One surefire way to fail to overcome an objection is to dismiss it out of hand—saying, for example, “That’s just wrong.” The difference between such a response (which offers no supporting reasons whatsoever) and the types of nuanced responses we’re promoting in this book is the difference between bullying your readers and genuinely persuading them.

Often the best way to overcome an objection is not to try to refute it completely but to agree with part of it while challenging only the part you dispute. In other words, in answering counterarguments, it is often best to say “yes, but” or “yes and no,” treating the counterview as an opportunity to revise and refine your own position. Rather than build your argument into an impenetrable fortress, it is often best to make concessions while still standing your ground, as Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill do in their 2013 report for the Brookings Institute,

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“Should Everyone Go to College?” Owen and Sawhill are responding to the commonly held belief that

See Chapter 4 for more on agreeing, with a difference.

a college degree is a prerequisite to entering the middle class . . . that, on average, college graduates make significantly more money over their lifetimes than those with only a high school education.

They assert:

While the average return on obtaining a college degree is clearly positive, we emphasize that it is not universally so. For certain schools, majors, occupations, and individuals, college may not be a smart investment.

In this way, Owen and Sawhill show how you can improve and refine your argument by making a concession. Even as they concede that “the average return on . . . a college degree is clearly positive,” Owen and Sawhill insist that this positive outcome is not realized for every student.

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TEMPLATES FOR MAKING CONCESSIONS WHILE STILL STANDING YOUR GROUND

◼ Although I grant that the book is poorly organized , I still maintain that it raises an important issue .

◼ Proponents of X are right to argue that __________. But they exaggerate when they claim that __________.

◼ While it is true that __________, it does not necessarily follow that __________.

◼ On the one hand, I agree with X that __________. But on the other hand, I still insist that __________.

Templates like these show that answering naysayers’ objections does not have to be an all-or-nothing affair in which either you definitively refute your critics or they definitively refute you. Often the most productive engagements among differing views end with a combined vision that incorporates elements of each one.

But what if you’ve tried out all the possible answers you can think of to an objection you’ve anticipated and you still have a nagging feeling that the objection is more convincing than your argument itself? In that case, the best remedy is to go back and make some fundamental revisions to your argument, even reversing your position completely if need be. Although finding out late in the game that you aren’t fully convinced by your own argument can be painful, it can actually make your final text more intellectually honest, challenging, and serious. After all, the goal of writing is not to keep proving that whatever you initially said is right, but to stretch the limits of your thinking. So if planting a strong naysayer in your text forces you to change your mind, that’s not a bad thing. Some would argue that that is what the academic world is all about.

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Exercises

1. Read the following passage from “A People’s Democratic Platform” by the cultural critic Eric Schlosser. As you’ll see, he hasn’t planted any naysayers in this text. Do it for him. Insert a brief paragraph stating an objection to his argument and then responding to the objection as he might.

The United States must declare an end to the war on drugs. This war has filled the nation’s prisons with poor drug addicts and small-time drug dealers. It has created a multibillion-dollar black market, enriched organized crime groups and promoted the corruption of government officials throughout the world. And it has not stemmed the widespread use of illegal drugs. By any rational measure, this war has been a total failure.

We must develop public policies on substance abuse that are guided not by moral righteousness or political expediency but by common sense. The United States should immediately decriminalize the cultivation and possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Marijuana should no longer be classified as a Schedule I narcotic, and those who seek to use marijuana as medicine should no longer face criminal sanctions. We must shift our entire approach to drug abuse from the criminal justice system to the public health system. Congress should appoint an independent commission to study the harm-reduction policies that have been adopted in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. The commission should recommend policies for the United States based on one important criterion: what works.

In a nation where pharmaceutical companies advertise powerful antidepressants on billboards and where alcohol companies run amusing beer ads during the Super Bowl, the idea of a “drug-free society” is absurd. Like the rest of

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American society, our drug policy would greatly benefit from less punishment and more compassion.

2. Think of a debate you recently had with a friend or classmate. Compose a one-sentence summary of your argument. Then, by yourself or with a partner, brainstorm a list of possible objections or alternative perspectives on the issue. Pick one, and use it to write a naysayer objection that responds to your argument. Use the templates in this chapter to introduce and respond to this naysayer fairly.

3. Read over something you’ve written that makes an argument. Work with a partner to review your draft to see if you’ve anticipated and responded to any objections. Use these questions to guide your review: Have you anticipated all the likely objections to your argument? Whom, if anyone, have you attributed the objections to? Have you represented the objections fairly? Have you answered them well enough, or do you think you now need to qualify your own argument? Does the introduction of the naysayer strengthen your argument? Why or why not?

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SEVEN

“IN MY EXPERIENCE”

Using Personal Stories to Energize Your Argument

* * *

OUR COLLEAGUE STEVE BENTON often finds that his students’ writing significantly improves when it includes a personal story. In one such case, Benton tells us, he received an essay from a student named Felicity Noahubi, in which she defended going to college on the grounds that it helps people get better jobs. But when Benton asked Felicity why she thought it was important to make this argument—the “so what?” question, as we call it—she explained that she had an aunt who, in her job in a meat-processing factory, used to work a mechanical cutting saw that vibrated so intensely that she eventually required surgery on her hands. Why not revise your essay, Benton asked, and make this story central to your argument? Felicity did, and it made her essay much more powerful and compelling.

We open the chapter this way because it helps overturn the common perception that personal experiences and stories have no place in academic argumentative writing. All too often, it is thought, while such personal material is OK for the early grades, it’s off limits in the advanced world of college, that personal experience and academic, college-level argument are opposites. To be sure, a more personal voice may not be welcome in the sciences and mathematics, but even in those fields the issue is far from simple. Ask even the most high-powered

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academics why they became physicists or economists and you’ll likely hear a personal story. Once you start looking for it, you’ll probably be surprised to find how often the writers you read in college draw on their personal experiences, and how you can energize your own writing by doing the same. Indeed, a personal story can be used to make virtually all the “moves that matter in academic writing” covered in this book, the “they say / I say” move chief among them:

◼ Although it is often said that __________, a recent experience I had suggests __________.

To be effective, however, personal stories need to be used with care. Such stories, once again, will not be appropriate for every academic assignment, especially in some sciences. And they cannot take the place of abstract scholarly claims, references to established research, or statistics, which enable us to move beyond our private experiences and generalize about large numbers of cases.

At the same time, personal stories can be an appealing way to enliven standard scholarly content and even to shape such content. Imagine, for instance, how an otherwise straightforward argument about an assigned text might be presented as a mini-story:

◼ The other night, when I told my roommates about author X’s argument, that __________, they responded that X seemed to be overlooking __________. I agree, and would even add that __________.

You might also imagine how a story could be used to address the kind of objection we discuss in Chapter 6 :

◼ When my stepmother read an early draft of this paper, she exclaimed, “__________? ” And I had to admit that __________. Nevertheless, I still would argue __________.

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USE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE TO ESTABLISH YOUR CREDIBILITY

Personal stories can also be a helpful way to establish your credibility as a writer. For instance, consider how the founder of the Chicago Basketball Academy (CBA), Damond Williams, uses personal experience to establish his credentials as someone who has “been there” and knows something about his subject from the inside. In a book Williams is writing that addresses the lack of career options available to young athletes from disadvantaged backgrounds, he writes:

I know a lot about the challenges of life after basketball because I lived them. As an avid Black basketball player who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, I was always painfully unsure what would happen to me if I couldn’t make a living as a professional athlete. I saw a lot of my peers who were just as passionate about basketball as I was eventually fall prey to idleness or even crime because they had nowhere to turn when they didn’t make it to the pros. I didn’t want to become another negative statistic in my low income community, and I felt like I was on an island all by myself. As it turned out, I did achieve a certain level of success in college and, afterward, in professional leagues overseas, but I always knew that my athletic career was only temporary, and that something else would be needed when it was time to hang it up.

DAMOND WILLIAMS , The Basketball Economy

Williams founded the CBA, he explains, to be that “something else” and provide the kind of career alternatives that many disadvantaged athletes need. Without his personal story, readers might wonder what authority Williams has for writing about his subject, and why he in particular chose to make the CBA his life’s mission.

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USE STORIES TO DRAMATIZE YOUR “THEY SAY” AND “I SAY”

A personal story can also be a useful way to make the “they say / I say” move, as we can see in the opening to a 2022 article by Beth Macy, author of the book-turned-cable-series Dopesick . In “A Simple Way to End the Opioid Epidemic,” Macy dramatizes one of the many fault lines in our increasingly polarized society, admitting that the Indiana sheriffs she gave a talk to in 2020 viewed her liberal position with open scorn. Macy explains that, as she stood at the podium, she made the case that, instead of arresting addicts and sending them to jail, we should enter them in treatment centers and offer them medication to curb their addiction. But her conservative audience would have none of it. One sheriff, for instance, caustically called out, “ ‘They’re clean when they leave my jail’ ”; and when her talk ended, she “was met with the sound of a solitary audience member slow-clapping.”

You might think the last thing Macy would want to foreground would be this kind of ridicule she was greeted with. For an expert writer like Macy, however, it’s a perfect “they say” to set up her own argument.

For another example of how stories can be used to make the “they say / I say” move, consider poet-critic Kenneth Goldsmith’s 2016 essay, “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet,” in which Goldsmith complicates the view “that in the age of screens we’ve lost our ability to concentrate.” Goldsmith writes:

To read Goldsmith’s article, see pp. 401–05 .

The other night I walked into the living room and my wife was glued to her iPad, reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass . Hours later, when I headed to bed, she hadn’t moved an inch, still

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transfixed by the 171-year-old narrative on her 21st-century device. When I said good night, she didn’t even look up.

Through this story, Goldsmith clearly challenges what “they say”: that screens impair our ability to concentrate.

A few paragraphs later, Goldsmith tells another story to challenge a related “they say”: the common view that computers make us “antisocial.” He writes:

After reading one of those hysterical “devices are ruining your child” articles, my sister-in-law decided to take action. She imposed a system whereby, after dinner, the children were to “turn in” their devices— computers, smartphones, and tablets. . . . Upon confiscating my nephew’s cell phone one Friday night, she asked him on Saturday morning, “What plans do you have with your friends today?” “None,” he responded. “You took away my phone.”

In other words, these stories suggest, although we often vilify the internet, we need to appreciate its social and cultural virtues .

Using Goldsmith as a model, you might write:

◼ Many often worry that __________. But the other night I __________.

And following Macy’s trick of transforming a potentially painful experience into a “they say / I say” story, you might use a template like:

◼ I knew there was a problem the instant I __________. When I suggested __________, I was met with __________. When I proposed __________, X told me __________. It may be true, I grant, that __________. But I still hold to my belief that __________.

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USE A STORY TO REVISE WHAT YOU USED TO THINK

Stories can also help you answer not only what others say, but what you yourself used to say or think, as the legal theorist and political activist Michelle Alexander demonstrates in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness . Recalling a day years earlier when she happened across a poster on a telephone pole that read, “THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW ,” Alexander writes:

I paused for a moment, and skimmed the text . . . about police brutality, the new three-strikes law in California, and the expansion of America’s prison system. . . . I sighed, and muttered to myself something like, “Yeah, the criminal justice system is racist in many ways, but it really doesn’t help to make such an absurd comparison. People will just think you’re crazy.”

Years later, however, Alexander realized that she’d been mistaken, that the comparison she’d formerly dismissed was actually right. After more than a decade of legal work against racial discrimination, she explains,

I had come to suspect that I was wrong about the criminal justice system. It was not just another institution infected with racial bias but rather a different beast entirely. The activists who posted the sign on the telephone pole were not crazy. . . . Quite belatedly, I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a matter strikingly similar to Jim Crow.

In fact, Alexander came belatedly to see the poster as so convincing that she used its claim about the “New Jim Crow” as her book’s very title. What we get here, then, is a classic “I used to think / but now I realize” argument presented in narrative form. Like Williams, Macy, and Goldsmith, Alexander could have relied solely on abstract generalizations to make her case, but it is made more engaging and

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powerful by her use of the kind of first-person language usually found in short stories and novels:

“I paused . . .”

“I sighed and muttered . . .”

“I came to see . . .”

Following Alexander, you might write:

◼ There once was a time when I was passionately committed to the idea that __________. I remember encountering a __________ one day and thinking __________. Now, however, having __________, I have come to realize __________.

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USE A STORY TO BEGIN WITH A BANG

A personal story can also be an effective way to open a text, as the example above from Beth Macy suggests. Consider also how the journalist Anna Clark opens with a story about her parents in her 2015 article “Why We Need to Keep the ‘Community’ in Community Colleges”:

My parents took turns going to college. While raising three kids, my father lost his left big toe in an accident at a tool-and-die shop and Mom babysat dozens of neighborhood rugrats. We didn’t have enough. The kitchen cabinets were too bare. So, Dad signed up for classes at Lake Michigan College, the two-year school formerly known as Benton Harbor Community College.

With his hands cupping his chin at a lamplit table, he softly read aloud from his textbooks; for years, his murmuring carried down the hallway to my bedroom, like a lullaby. When I was 11, he earned his bachelor’s degree through an extension program hosted by LMC and got a job at Whirlpool Corporation. Then it was Mom’s turn. She did her homework alongside my siblings and [me] at the kitchen table. The same year I graduated high school, she earned her associate’s degree, on her way to her own B.A. My mother and I posed in front of the fireplace, each in cap and gown, grinning for the camera, for each other, for wherever it was we were headed next.

It is not a coincidence that my parents are the only people I’ve witnessed who have worked their way out of poverty. With open admission and low-cost tuition, community colleges are the champions of people just like them: full-time workers and parents; older folks and younger ones; military veterans and people who speak English as a second language. That is, the true multiplicity of our communities.

But there is an escalating movement of community colleges dropping the word “community” from their names. . . .

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This opening succeeds, we think, in grabbing the reader’s attention. It also sets up the “they say” Clark is challenging: namely, the view that community colleges should drop the word “community” from their titles. Such a change, Clark insists, will only erase the institutions’ most laudable and distinctive feature, their openness to everyone, including working adults like her parents.

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VIEW YOUR STORY THROUGH AN ARGUMENTATIVE LENS

Perhaps the most important thing to remember, then, when including personal experience in your writing is to use it in the service of a larger moral or argument.

◼ I tell this story because it shows __________ .

Few things are more annoying than reading—or listening to!—a story that hooks you in with an engaging incident that, in the end, doesn’t go anywhere and lacks a discernible point. To avoid this common problem, you need to think of your personal experiences through an academic lens and present them not just as events that are interesting in and of themselves, but as arguments in a larger debate or conversation. Though this intellectual way of thinking may feel strange at first and take some getting used to, it’s precisely what allows Clark to present her parents’ stories as critiques of a new trend in education, and what allows Goldsmith to present his sister-in-law’s parenting experience as an argument in defense of surfing the internet.

This intellectual way of seeing is what allows the influential education writer Mike Rose to turn his mother’s career as a waitress into an argument about working-class labor in his 2009 article “Blue Collar Brilliance.” Challenging the common assumption that manual work requires brawn but not brains, Rose describes how his mother’s waitressing job, far from being mindless, involved the kind of cognitive “brilliance” named in his title.

For instance, Rose explains, as a waitress, his mother had to master an esoteric, specialized vocabulary:

Fry four on two , my mother would say as she clipped a check onto the metal wheel. Her tables were deuces , four-tops , or six-tops according to their size; seating areas also were nicknamed. The racetrack , for

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instance, was the fast-turnover front section. Lingo conferred authority and signaled know-how.

Waiting on as many as nine tables at a time, his mother also had to learn to juggle a host of competing demands and “devised memory strategies so that she could remember who ordered what.”

[She] took customers’ orders, pencil poised over pad, while fielding questions about food. She walked full tilt through the room with plates stretching up her left arm and two cups of coffee somehow cradled in her right hand. She stood at a table or booth and removed a plate for this person, another for that person, then another, remembering who had the hamburger, who had the fried shrimp, almost always getting it right.

In general, Rose explains that, though his mother only had a seventh- grade education:

[She] learned to work smart , as she put it, to make every move count . She’d sequence and group tasks: What could she do first, then second, then third as she circled through her station? What tasks could be clustered? She did everything on the fly, and when problems arose— technical or human—she solved them within the flow of her work.

Rose’s story, then, serves a clear argumentative purpose: to challenge our culture’s tendency to see intelligence as an abstract quality “based solely on grades in school and numbers on IQ tests.” On the contrary, Rose argues, there is an alternate type of intelligence that is just as important, one based on the sorts of “hands-on knowledge” and “thinking in motion” that blue collar work like his mother’s embodies. In this way, Rose’s story is not just a sequence of events, but an argument about the kind of work our culture does or does not value.

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MAKE SURE YOUR STORY AND ARGUMENT MATCH

Given how important it is to use any story you tell to make a larger argument, it is also important to ensure that your story and argument are in sync—that your story says what you say it says. Often, the two of us find, it’s easy to come up with a personal story that looks from a distance as if it’s going to support the argument we want to make, only to realize as we start writing that the story has gotten away from us and created the kind of “uh-oh moment” that we discuss in Chapter 12 , on revision.

Such problems arise because, like other forms of evidence, personal narratives can have an unintended reverse effect that allows readers to wrest their meanings away from you. In fact, it might even be argued that such unintended effects are inevitable, that no matter how well chosen and crafted it may be, almost any personal story you tell can be used against you. After all, just because the personal experience you’re relaying happens to be your own, it doesn’t mean that you’re the expert on it, that nobody else can say what it means. Readers can always make a version of the “twist it” move we discuss in Chapter 4 and interpret your experience very differently.

Imagine, for instance, how skeptical readers might use Kenneth Goldsmith’s story about his wife’s online reading against him. Couldn’t they see her deep absorption in the ebook she was reading not as a point in favor of the internet, but as a strike against it? Specifically, couldn’t they interpret his wife’s near obliviousness to his presence as evidence that the internet, far from fostering social interaction as Goldsmith insists, actually undermines such interaction and even furthers anti-social behavior?

To disarm such unwelcome counter-readings, it’s a good idea to follow any personal stories you tell with a template for anticipating naysayers like those we provide in Chapter 6 , as in:

◼ Lest anyone read this story as evidence that __________, I

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would point out that __________.

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DRAW ON YOUR ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

Nevertheless, in the end you may still wonder if your personal experiences will carry much weight in the high-level academic arena. “Can I really make a trip to the mall or last week’s family picnic relevant to academic subjects? Can an ‘intellectual way of seeing’ really make a story about my dog relevant to my course in macroeconomics?” Perhaps —or perhaps not. But there is at least one domain of your experience that’s bound to be relevant to any course or assignment: what you learned in another academic setting—another college course, say, or even in elementary or high school.

Note, for instance, how the New York Times culture critic Maya Phillips opens a review of a play about women’s suffrage. Drawing a contrast between the play and what she’d learned in her “grade school history books,” Phillips writes:

I don’t remember my grade school history books dedicating more than a few sentences to the women’s suffrage movement. The nearly 100- year history of women fighting for the right to vote is often trimmed down to two main talking points—Susan B. Anthony and the 19th Amendment—and the suffragists dismissed as self-serious rabble- rousers.

To contradict those notions of these revolutionary women and their fight, the new musical “Suffs” . . . begins. . . .

MAYA PHILLIPS , “Young, Scrappy, and Hungry for the Right to Vote”

Following Phillips, you might use a template like the following:

◼ A central lesson of my English course last semester was that __________. But author X, whom we are reading in this history course, suggests __________. My own opinion is that

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__________ has the better argument, largely because __________.

Templates like this can help you build bridges in your studies, making connections between texts, courses, and subjects that you might not otherwise notice and that educators should appreciate.

As we were writing this chapter, we couldn’t stop thinking about a student we once had who said that, while he was willing to engage in it when necessary, “academic writing just isn’t me .” While we concede that some academic writing requires a degree of formality that can feel foreign, we also argue that it has room for deeply personal experiences that may initially look nonacademic. In this respect, our point in this chapter is similar to the one Gerald makes in his essay included in the back of this book, “Hidden Intellectualism”: that there is no experience, no matter how seemingly humble—a spouse’s leisure-time reading, your mother’s waitressing job, a poster stapled to a telephone pole—that can’t be made academically relevant if you view it “through academic eyes.”

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Exercises

1. Try using the following templates to practice connecting a personal experience to a broader debate or conversation. Feel free to modify the templates if necessary:

◼ An experience I had sheds light on the controversial issue of __________ .

◼ The point I draw from this incident is __________ .

2. Now imagine somebody objecting that the experience you related above should be interpreted differently from the way you interpreted it. Using the following template or a version of it, add two or three sentences to what you wrote in which you summarize and answer this objection:

◼ Of course, some may read my experience as illustrating not __________, but __________. They would argue, in other words, that __________. I would respond, however, by pointing out that __________.

3. Following the example from Maya Phillips on page 109 , tell a story about something that you learned in one course and explain how it supports or conflicts (or both) with something you learned in another course.

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EIGHT

“SO WHAT? WHO CARES?”

Saying Why It Matters

* * *

BASEBALL IS THE NATIONAL PASTIME . Langston Hughes was the greatest poet of the Harlem Renaissance. All writing is conversational. So what? Who cares? Why does any of this matter?

How many times have you had reason to ask these questions? Regardless of how interesting a topic may be to you as a writer, readers always need to know what is at stake in a text and why they should care. All too often, however, these questions are left unanswered—mainly because writers and speakers assume that audiences will know the answers already or will figure them out on their own. As a result, students come away from lectures feeling like outsiders to what they’ve heard, just as many of us feel left hanging after talks we’ve attended. The problem is not necessarily that the speakers lack a clear, well-focused thesis or that the thesis is inadequately supported with evidence. Instead, the problem is that the speakers don’t address the crucial question of why their arguments matter.

That this question is so often left unaddressed is unfortunate since the speakers generally could offer interesting, engaging answers. When pressed, for instance, most academics will tell you that their lectures and articles matter because they address some belief that needs to be corrected or updated—and because their arguments have important, real- world consequences. Yet many academics fail to identify these reasons

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and consequences explicitly in what they say and write. Rather than assume that audiences will know why their claims matter, all writers need to answer the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions up front. Not everyone can claim to have a cure for cancer or a solution to end poverty. But writers who fail to show that others should care or already do care about their claims will ultimately lose their audiences’ interest.

This chapter focuses on various moves that you can make to answer the “who cares?” and “so what?” questions in your own writing. In one sense, the two questions get at the same thing: the relevance or importance of what you are saying. Yet they get at this significance in different ways. Whereas “who cares?” literally asks you to identify a person or group who cares about your claims, “so what?” asks about the real-world applications and consequences of those claims—what difference it would make if they were accepted. We’ll look first at ways of making clear who cares.

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“WHO CARES?”

To see how one writer answers the “who cares?” question, consider the following passage from the science writer Denise Grady. Writing in the New York Times , she explains some of the latest research into fat cells:

Scientists used to think body fat and the cells it was made of were pretty much inert, just an oily storage compartment. But within the past decade research has shown that fat cells act like chemical factories and that body fat is potent stuff: a highly active tissue that secretes hormones and other substances with profound and sometimes harmful effects. . . .

In recent years, biologists have begun calling fat an “endocrine organ,” comparing it to glands like the thyroid and pituitary, which also release hormones straight into the bloodstream.

DENISE GRADY , “The Secret Life of a Potent Cell”

Notice how Grady’s writing reflects the central advice we give in this book, offering a clear claim and also framing that claim as a response to what someone else has said. In so doing, Grady immediately identifies at least one group with a stake in the new research that sees fat as “active,” “potent stuff ”: namely, the scientific community, which formerly believed that body fat is inert. By referring to these scientists, Grady implicitly acknowledges that her text is part of a larger conversation and shows who besides herself has an interest in what she says.

Consider, however, how the passage would read had Grady left out what “scientists used to think” and simply explained the new findings in isolation:

Within the past few decades research has shown that fat cells act like chemical factories and that body fat is potent stuff: a highly active tissue that secretes hormones and other substances. In recent years, biologists have begun calling fat an “endocrine organ,” comparing it to

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glands like the thyroid and pituitary, which also release hormones straight into the bloodstream.

Though this statement is clear and easy to follow, it lacks any indication that anyone needs to hear it. OK, one thinks while reading this passage, fat is an active, potent thing. Sounds plausible enough; no reason to think it’s not true. But does anyone really care? Who, if anyone, is interested?

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TEMPLATES FOR INDICATING WHO CARES

To address “who cares?” questions in your own writing, we suggest using templates like the following, which echo Grady in refuting earlier thinking:

◼ Parents used to think yelling at their kids was necessary . But recently experts suggest that it can be counterproductive .

◼ This interpretation challenges the work of those critics who have long assumed that __________ .

◼ These findings challenge the work of earlier researchers, who tended to assume that __________ .

◼ Recent studies like these shed new light on __________, which previous studies had not addressed.

Grady might have been more explicit by writing the “who cares?” question directly into her text, as in the following template:

◼ But who really cares? Who besides me and a handful of recent researchers has a stake in these claims? At the very least, the researchers who formerly believed __________ should care.

To gain greater authority as a writer, it can help to name specific people or groups who have a stake in your claims and to go into some detail about their views:

◼ Researchers have long assumed that __________. For instance, one eminent scholar of cell biology, __________, assumed in __________, her seminal work on cell structures and functions, that fat cells __________. As __________ herself put it, “__________” (2012). Another leading scientist, __________, argued that fat cells “__________” (2011). Ultimately, when it

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came to the nature of fat, the basic assumption was that __________.

◼ But a new body of research shows that fat cells are far more complex and that __________ .

In other cases, you might refer to certain people or groups who should care about your claims:

◼ If sports enthusiasts stopped to think about it, many of them might simply assume that the most successful athletes __________. However, new research shows __________.

◼ These findings challenge the common assumption that __________ .

◼ At first glance, teenagers might say __________. But on closer inspection __________.

As these templates suggest, answering the “who cares?” question involves establishing the type of contrast between what others say and what you say that is central to this book. Ultimately, such templates help you create a dramatic tension or clash of views in your writing that readers will feel invested in and want to see resolved.

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“SO WHAT?”

Although answering the “who cares?” question is crucial, in many cases it is not enough, especially if you are writing for general readers who don’t necessarily have a strong investment in the particular clash of views you are setting up. In the case of Grady’s argument about fat cells, such readers may still wonder why it matters that some researchers think fat cells are active, while others think they’re inert. Or, to move to a different field of study, American literature, so what if some scholars disagree about Huck Finn’s relationship with the Jim, an enslaved man who has run away, in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ? Why should anyone besides a few specialists in the field care about such disputes? What, if anything, hinges on them?

The best way to answer such questions about the larger consequences of your claims is to appeal to something that your audience already figures to care about. Whereas the “who cares?” question asks you to identify an interested person or group, the “so what?” question asks you to link your argument to some larger matter that readers already deem important. Thus, in analyzing Huckleberry Finn , a writer could argue that seemingly narrow disputes about the hero’s relationship with Jim actually shed light on whether Twain’s canonical, widely read novel is a critique of racism in America or is itself marred by it.

Let’s see how Grady invokes such broad, general concerns in her article on fat cells. Her first move is to link researchers’ interest in fat cells to a general concern with obesity and health:

Researchers trying to decipher the biology of fat cells hope to find new ways to help people get rid of excess fat or, at least, prevent obesity from destroying their health. In an increasingly obese world, their efforts have taken on added importance.

Further showing why readers should care, Grady’s next move is to demonstrate the even broader relevance and urgency of her subject matter:

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Internationally, more than a billion people are overweight. Obesity and two illnesses linked to it, heart disease and high blood pressure, are on the World Health Organization’s list of the top 10 global health risks. In the United States, 65 percent of adults weigh too much, compared with about 56 percent a decade ago, and government researchers blame obesity for at least 300,000 deaths a year.

What Grady implicitly says here is “Look, dear reader, you may think that these questions about the nature of fat cells I’ve been pursuing have little to do with everyday life. In fact, however, these questions are extremely important—particularly in our ‘increasingly obese world’ in which we need to prevent obesity from destroying our health.”

Notice that Grady’s phrase “in an increasingly __________ world” can be adapted as a strategic move to address the “so what?” question in other fields as well. For example, a sociologist analyzing back-to-nature movements of the past thirty years might make the following statement:

In a world increasingly dominated by cell phones and sophisticated computer technologies, these attempts to return to nature appear futile.

This type of move can be readily applied to other disciplines because no matter how much disciplines may differ from one another, the need to justify the importance of one’s concerns is common to them all.

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TEMPLATES FOR ESTABLISHING WHY YOUR CLAIMS MATTER

◼ Huckleberry Finn matters / is important because it is one of the most widely taught novels in the American school system .

◼ Although X may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial in terms of today’s concern over __________ .

◼ Ultimately, what is at stake here is __________ .

◼ These findings have important implications for the broader domain of __________ .

◼ If we are right about __________, then major consequences follow for __________.

◼ These conclusions / This discovery will have significant applications in __________ as well as in __________.

Finally, you can also treat the “so what?” question as a related aspect of the “who cares?” question:

◼ Although X may seem of concern to only a small group of __________, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about __________.

All these templates help you hook your readers. By suggesting the real- world applications of your claims, the templates not only demonstrate that others care about your claims but also tell your readers why they should care. Again, it bears repeating that simply stating and proving your thesis isn’t enough. You also need to frame it in a way that helps readers care about it.

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WHAT ABOUT READERS WHO ALREADY KNOW WHY IT MATTERS?

At this point, you might wonder if you need to answer the “who cares?” and “so what?” questions in everything you write. Is it really necessary to address these questions if you’re proposing something so obviously consequential as, say, a treatment for autism or a program to eliminate illiteracy? Isn’t it obvious that everyone cares about such problems? Does it really need to be spelled out? And what about when you’re writing for audiences who you know are already interested in your claims and who understand perfectly well why they’re important? In other words, do you always need to address the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions?

As a rule, yes—although it’s true that you can’t keep answering them forever and at a certain point must say enough is enough. Although a determined skeptic can infinitely ask why something matters—“Why should I care about earning a salary? And why should I care about supporting a family?”—you have to stop answering at some point in your text. Nevertheless, we urge you to go as far as possible in answering such questions. If you take it for granted that readers will somehow intuit the answers to “so what?” and “who cares?” on their own, you may make your work seem less interesting than it actually is, and you run the risk that readers will dismiss your text as irrelevant and unimportant. By contrast, when you are careful to explain who cares and why, it’s a little like bringing a cheerleading squad into your text. And though some expert readers might already know why your claims matter, even they need to be reminded. Thus the safest move is to be as explicit as possible in answering the “so what?” question, even for those already in the know. When you step back from the text and explain why it matters, you are urging your audience to keep reading, pay attention, and care.

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Exercises

1. Below are two claims. Who might have a stake in these arguments? Use the templates in this chapter to answer in one or two sentences the “who cares?” question for both arguments.

a. The benefits of online shopping don’t justify the environmental consequences of shipping items purchased online.

b. The federal government should fund universal health care.

2. Here are two more claims. What are the possible real-world consequences of these arguments? Use the templates in this chapter to answer, in one or two sentences, the “so what?” question for both arguments.

a. Violent video games do not cause mass shootings. b. Because all combat roles are now open to women, both

men and women should be required to register for the Selective Service.

3. Read the following passage from Elizabeth Silkes’s 2020 essay “Cultural Heritage Reminds Us of Our Shared Humanity. That’s Why Threats against Them Are So Dangerous” found on theysayiblog.com . Where do you see Silkes answering the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions? Who does she say should care about preserving cultural sites, and why should they?

The destruction of cultural sites—from libraries to places of worship to museums—is ultimately about erasing a people’s entire history. During the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, Serb and Croat forces destroyed or damaged hundreds of mosques in their efforts to rid the region of Muslims. In Zvornik, which had been a historic Muslim trading post on the Drina River, so many traces of the town’s past had been eliminated that Brano Grujic, the Serb-installed mayor there, could falsely boast in

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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1993 that “there were never any mosques in Zvornik.” As Helen Walasek, the author of Bosnia and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage , writes, sites such as archives and museums were targeted in part because they reflected Bosnia’s pluralistic past. Such attacks were aimed at “eradicating any trace of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s historic diversity and traditions of coexistence.” . . .

The current conversation around preservation of cultural heritage in the Middle East comes at a critical time for the region, when conflict and atrocity have put a number of marginalized cultures at risk. . . .

While cultural heritage is not the only way we form bonds with others, it is one of the most powerful and effective means of doing so across barriers. It is heartening to see the public outcry at this latest threat, but the risk to cultural sites during conflict remains extraordinarily high. This is especially so given the limited funding for multilateral organizations dedicated to their protection such as UNESCO, from which the United States formally withdrew a year ago. If our children and our children’s children cannot access the most fundamental aspects of our own histories and those of others, they will never be able to identify the common threads that bind us all. And it is only through this binding that we can tap into—and act on— our shared humanity.

4. Read over the draft of an essay you are working on. Work with a partner to identify the answers to the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions for your argument. Then revise your draft to say why your argument matters by using the following template:

My point here, that __________, should interest those who __________. Beyond this limited audience, however, my point should speak to anyone who cares about the larger issue of __________.

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NINE

“AS A RESULT”

Connecting the Parts

* * *

WE ONCE HAD A STUDENT named Alex, whose characteristic sentence pattern went something like this:

Spot is a good dog. He has fleas.

“Connect your sentences,” we urged in the margins of Alex’s papers. “What does Spot’s being good have to do with his fleas? These two statements seem unrelated. Can you connect them in some logical way?” When comments like these yielded no results, we tried inking in suggested connections for him:

Spot is a good dog, but he has fleas.

Spot is a good dog, even though he has fleas.

But our message failed to get across, and Alex’s disconnected sentence pattern persisted to the end of the semester.

And yet Alex did focus well on his subjects. When he mentioned Spot the dog (or Plato or any other topic) in one sentence, we could count on Spot (or Plato) being the topic of the following sentence as well. This was not the case with some of Alex’s classmates, who sometimes changed topic from sentence to sentence or even from clause to clause within a single sentence. But because Alex neglected to mark

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his connections, his writing was as frustrating to read as theirs. In all these cases, we had to struggle to figure out on our own how the sentences and paragraphs connected or failed to connect with one another.

What makes such writers so hard to read, in other words, is that they never gesture back to what they have just said or forward to what they plan to say. “Never look back” might be their motto, almost as if they see writing as a process of thinking of something to say about a topic and writing it down, then thinking of something else to say about the topic and writing that down, too, and on and on until Alex’ve filled the assigned number of pages and can hand the paper in. Each sentence basically starts a new thought rather than growing out of or extending the thought of the previous sentence.

When Alex talked about his writing habits, he acknowledged that he never went back and read what he had written. Indeed, he told us that, other than using his computer software to check for spelling errors and make sure that his tenses were all aligned, he never actually reread what he wrote before turning it in. As Alex seemed to picture it, writing was something one did while sitting at a computer, whereas reading was a separate activity generally reserved for an easy chair, book in hand. It had never occurred to Alex that to write a good sentence he had to think about how it connected to those that came before and after; that he had to think hard about how that sentence fit into the sentences that surrounded it. Each sentence for Alex existed in a sort of tunnel isolated from every other sentence on the page. He never bothered to fit all the parts of his essay together because he apparently thought of writing as a matter of piling up information or observations rather than building a sustained argument. What we suggest in this chapter, then, is that you converse not only with others in your writing but with yourself: that you establish clear relations between one statement and the next by connecting those statements.

This chapter addresses the issue of how to connect all the parts of your writing. The best compositions establish a sense of momentum and direction by making explicit connections among their different parts, so that what is said in one sentence (or paragraph) both sets up what is to come and is clearly informed by what has already been said. When you write a sentence, you create an expectation in the reader’s mind that the

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next sentence will in some way echo and extend it, even if—especially if —that next sentence takes your argument in a new direction.

It may help to think of each sentence you write as having arms that reach backward and forward, as the figure below suggests. When your sentences reach outward like this, they establish connections that help your writing flow smoothly in a way readers appreciate. Conversely, when writing lacks such connections and moves in fits and starts, readers repeatedly have to go back over the sentences and guess at the connections on their own. To prevent such disconnection and make your writing flow, we advise following a “do-it-yourself” principle, which means that it is your job as a writer to do the hard work of making the connections rather than, as Alex did, leaving this work to your readers.

This chapter offers several strategies you can use to put this principle into action: (1) using transition terms (like “therefore” and “as a result”); (2) adding pointing words (like “this” or “such”); (3) developing a set of key terms and phrases for each text you write; and (4) repeating yourself, but with a difference—a move that involves repeating what you’ve said, but with enough variation to avoid being redundant. All these moves require that you always look back and, in crafting any one sentence, think hard about those that precede it.

Notice how we ourselves have used such connecting devices thus far in this chapter. The second paragraph of this chapter, for example, opens with the transitional “And yet,” signaling a change in direction, while the opening sentence of the third includes the phrase “in other words,” telling you to expect a restatement of a point we’ve just made. If you look through this book, you should be able to find many sentences that contain some word or phrase that explicitly hooks them back to something said earlier, to something about to be said, or both. And many

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sentences in this chapter repeat key terms related to the idea of connection: “connect,” “disconnect,” “link,” “relate,” “forward,” and “backward.”

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USE TRANSITIONS

For readers to follow your train of thought, you need not only to connect your sentences and paragraphs to each other but also to mark the kind of connection you are making. One of the easiest ways to make this move is to use transitions (from the Latin root trans , “across”), which help you cross from one point to another in your text. Transitions are usually placed at or near the start of sentences so they can signal to readers where your text is going: in the same direction it has been moving or in a new direction. More specifically, transitions tell readers whether your text is echoing a previous sentence or paragraph (“in other words”), adding something to it (“in addition”), offering an example of it (“for example”), generalizing from it (“as a result”), or modifying it (“and yet”).

The following is a list of commonly used transitions, categorized according to their different functions:

ADDITION

also

and

besides

furthermore

in addition

in fact

indeed

moreover

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so too

ELABORATION

actually

by extension

in other words

in short

that is

to put it another way

to put it bluntly

to put it succinctly

ultimately

EXAMPLE

after all

as an illustration

consider

for example

for instance

specifically

to take a case in point

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CAUSE AND EFFECT

accordingly

as a result

consequently

hence

since

then

therefore

thus

COMPARISON

along the same lines

in the same way

likewise

similarly

CONTRAST

although

but

by contrast

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conversely

despite

even though

however

in contrast

nevertheless

nonetheless

on the contrary

on the other hand

regardless

whereas

while

yet

CONCESSION

admittedly

although it is true

granted

naturally

of course

to be sure

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CONCLUSION

as a result

consequently

hence

in conclusion

in short

in sum

therefore

thus

to sum up

to summarize

Ideally, transitions should operate so unobtrusively in a piece of writing that they recede into the background and readers do not even notice that they are there. It’s a bit like what happens when drivers use their turn signals before turning right or left: just as other drivers recognize such signals almost unconsciously, readers should process transition terms with a minimum of thought. But even though such terms should function unobtrusively in your writing, they can be among the most powerful tools in your vocabulary. Think how your heart sinks when someone, immediately after praising you, begins a sentence with “but” or “however.” No matter what follows, you know it won’t be good.

Notice that some transitions can help you not only move from one sentence to another but also combine two or more sentences into one. Combining sentences in this way helps prevent the choppy, staccato effect that arises when too many short sentences are strung together, one after the other. For instance, to combine Alex’s two choppy sentences (“Spot is a good dog. He has fleas.”) into one, better-flowing sentence, we suggested that he rewrite them as “Spot is a good dog, even though he has fleas.”

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Transitions like these not only guide readers through the twists and turns of your argument but also help ensure that you have an argument in the first place. In fact, we think of words like “but,” “yet,” “nevertheless,” “besides,” and others as argument words, since it’s hard to use them without making some kind of argument. The word “therefore,” for instance, commits you to making sure that the claims preceding it lead logically to the conclusion that it introduces. “For example” also assumes an argument, since it requires the material you are introducing to stand as an instance or proof of some preceding generalization. As a result, the more you use transitions, the more you’ll be able not only to connect the parts of your text but also to construct a strong argument in the first place. And if you draw on them frequently enough, using them should eventually become second nature.

To be sure, it is possible to overuse transitions, so take time to read over your drafts carefully and eliminate any transitions that are unnecessary. But following the maxim that you need to learn the basic moves of argument before you can deliberately depart from them, we advise you not to forgo explicit transition terms until you’ve first mastered their use. In all our years of teaching, we’ve read countless essays that suffered from having few or no transitions, but we cannot recall one in which the transitions were overused. Seasoned writers sometimes omit explicit transitions but only because they rely heavily on the other types of connecting devices that we turn to in the rest of this chapter.

Before doing so, however, let us warn you about inserting transitions without really thinking through their meanings—using “therefore,” say, when your text’s logic actually requires “nevertheless” or “however.” So beware. Choosing transition terms should involve a bit of mental sweat, since the whole point of using them is to make your writing more reader- friendly, not less. The only thing more frustrating than reading Alex-style passages like “Spot is a good dog. He has fleas” is reading mis- connected sentences like “Spot is a good dog. For example, he has fleas.”

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USE POINTING WORDS

Another way to connect the parts of your argument is by using pointing words—which, as their name implies, point or refer backward to some concept in the previous sentence. The most common of these pointing words include “this,” “these,” “that,” “those,” “their,” and “such” (as in “these pointing words” near the start of this sentence) and simple pronouns like “his,” “he,” “her,” “she,” “it,” and “their.” Such terms help you create the flow we spoke of earlier that enables readers to move effortlessly through your text. In a sense, these terms are like an invisible hand reaching out of your sentence, grabbing what’s needed in the previous sentences and pulling it along.

Like transitions, however, pointing words need to be used carefully. It’s dangerously easy to insert pointing words into your text that don’t refer to a clearly defined object, assuming that because the object you have in mind is clear to you it will also be clear to your readers. For example, consider the use of “this” in the following passage:

Alexis de Tocqueville was highly critical of democratic societies, which he saw as tending toward mob rule. At the same time, he accorded democratic societies grudging respect. This is seen in Tocqueville’s statement that . . .

When “this” is used in such a way, it becomes an ambiguous or free- floating pointer since readers can’t tell if it refers to Tocque-ville’s critical attitude toward democratic societies, his grudging respect for them, or some combination of both. “This what?” readers mutter as they go back over such passages and try to figure them out. It’s also tempting to try to cheat with pointing words, hoping that they will conceal or make up for conceptual confusions that may lurk in your argument. By referring to a fuzzy idea as “this” or “that,” you might hope the fuzziness will somehow come across as clearer than it is.

You can fix problems caused by a free-floating pointer by making sure there is one and only one possible object in the vicinity that the pointer could be referring to. It also often helps to name the object the

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pointer is referring to at the same time that you point to it, replacing the bald “this” in the example above with a more precise phrase like “this ambivalence toward democratic societies” or “this grudging respect.”

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REPEAT KEY TERMS AND PHRASES

A third strategy for connecting the parts of your argument is to develop a constellation of key terms and phrases, including their synonyms and antonyms, that you repeat throughout your text. When used effectively, your key terms should be items that readers could extract from your text in order to get a solid sense of your topic. Playing with key terms also can be a good way to come up with a title and appropriate section headings for your text.

Notice how often Martin Luther King Jr. uses the keywords “criticism,” “statement,” “answer,” and “correspondence” in the opening paragraph of his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:

Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR ., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Even though King uses the terms “criticism” and “answer” three times each and “statement” twice, the effect is not overly repetitive. In fact, these key terms help build a sense of momentum in the paragraph and bind it together.

For another example of the effective use of key terms, consider the following passage, in which the academic legal theorist, Michelle

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Alexander, develops a constellation of key terms around the idea of voting. In the opening paragraph of her best-selling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness , Alexander writes,

Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great- grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. Cotton’s family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.

MICHELLE ALEXANDER , The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Note how many times Alexander refers to the concept of voting in this passage. She uses the term “vote” five times, the term “voting” twice, and echoes the concept in phrases like “the right to participate in our electoral democracy” and “the most basic freedom that democracy promises.” Indeed, Alexander includes some version of the key terms in every sentence above, creating a tight and unified focus in the paragraph from start to finish.

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REPEAT YOURSELF—BUT WITH A DIFFERENCE

The last technique we offer for connecting the parts of your text involves repeating yourself, but with a difference—which basically means saying the same thing you’ve just said but in a slightly different way that avoids sounding monotonous. To effectively connect the parts of your argument and keep it moving forward, be careful not to leap from one idea to a different idea or introduce new ideas cold. Instead, try to build bridges between your ideas by echoing what you’ve just said while simultaneously moving your text into new territory.

Several of the connecting devices discussed in this chapter are ways of repeating yourself in this special way. Key terms, pointing terms, and even many transitions can be used in a way that not only brings something forward from the previous sentence but in some way alters it, too.

In addition, when you use transition phrases like “in other words” and “to put it another way,” you repeat yourself with a difference, since these phrases help you restate earlier claims but in a different register. When you open a sentence with “in other words,” you are basically telling your readers that in case they didn’t fully understand what you meant in the last sentence, you are now coming at it again from a slightly different angle, or that since you’re presenting a very important idea, you’re not going to skip over it quickly but will explore it further to make sure your readers grasp all its aspects.

We would even go so far as to suggest that after your first sentence, almost every sentence you write should refer back to previous statements in some way. Whether you are writing a “furthermore” comment that adds to what you have just said or a “for example” statement that illustrates it, each sentence should echo at least one element of the previous sentence in some discernible way. Even when your text changes direction and requires transitions like “in contrast,” “however,” or “but,” you still need to mark that shift by linking the sentence to the one just before it, as in the following example:

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Cheyenne loved basketball. Nevertheless, she feared her height would put her at a disadvantage.

These sentences work because even though the second sentence changes course and qualifies the first, it still echoes key concepts from the first. Not only does “she” echo “Cheyenne,” since both refer to the same person, but “feared” echoes “loved” by establishing the contrast mandated by the term “nevertheless.” “Nevertheless,” then, is not an excuse for changing subjects radically. It too requires repetition to help readers shift gears with you and follow your train of thought.

Repetition, in short, is the central means by which you can move from point A to point B in a text. To introduce one last analogy, think of the way experienced rock climbers move up a steep slope. Instead of jumping or lurching from one handhold to the next, good climbers get a secure handhold on the position they have established before reaching for the next ledge. The same thing applies to writing. To move smoothly from point to point in your argument, you need to firmly ground what you say in what you’ve already said. In this way, your writing remains focused while simultaneously moving forward.

“But hold on,” you may be thinking. “Isn’t repetition precisely what sophisticated writers should avoid, on the grounds that it will make their writing sound simplistic—as if they are belaboring the obvious?” Yes and no. On the one hand, writers certainly can run into trouble if they merely repeat themselves and nothing more. On the other hand, repetition is key to creating continuity in writing. It is impossible to stay on track in a piece of writing if you don’t repeat your points throughout the length of the text. Furthermore, writers would never make an impact on readers if they didn’t repeat their main points often enough to reinforce those points and make them stand out above subordinate points. The trick therefore is not to avoid repeating yourself but to repeat yourself in varied and interesting enough ways that you advance your argument without sounding tedious.

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Exercises

1. The statements below aren’t yet connected to each other. Use any of the transitions listed on pages 127 through 129 to connect them. You can combine the statements into one sentence, or you can keep them as two separate sentences, adding or deleting words. Once you’re done, compare your responses with a partner’s. How does your choice of transition words affect the meaning of the statements?

a. Herd immunity is established when 93 percent of a population is vaccinated. Vaccinations can wear off in early adolescence.

b. Writing can look like an individual pursuit. It requires other people. Other people help writers imagine how their audience will understand and respond to their claims.

c. Some ski resorts have begun to diversify their operations to increase year-round profitability. Some have added zip lines that draw in people in the summer months.

2. Read the following passage from MIT professor Sherry Turkle’s essay “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.” Annotate the connecting devices you see. Underline the transitions, circle the key terms, and put boxes around the pointing terms.

Across generations, technology is implicated in this assault on empathy. We’ve gotten used to being connected all the time, but we have found ways around conversation—at least from conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, in which we play with ideas and allow ourselves to be fully present and vulnerable. But it is in this type of conversation—where we learn to make eye contact, to become aware of another person’s posture and tone, to comfort one another and respectfully challenge one another—that empathy and intimacy flourish. In these conversations, we learn who we are.

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Of course, we can find empathic conversations today, but the trend line is clear. It’s not only that we turn away from talking face to face to chat online. It’s that we don’t allow these conversations to happen in the first place because we keep our phones in the landscape.

In our hearts, we know this, and now research is catching up with our intuitions. We face a significant choice. It is not about giving up our phones but about using them with greater intention. Conversation is there for us to reclaim. For the failing connections of our digital world, it is the talking cure.

3. Read over something you’ve written with an eye for the devices you’ve used to connect the parts. Working either by yourself or with a partner, do the following:

a. Underline all the transitions, pointing terms, key terms, and repetitions.

b. Describe the patterns you see. Do you rely on certain devices more than others?

c. Locate a passage that could use better connections. Revise it using the devices introduced in this chapter. Is it easier to read now?

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TEN

“YOU MEAN I CAN JUST SAY IT THAT WAY?”

Academic Writing Doesn’t Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice

* * *

WE WISH WE HAD A DOLLAR for each time a student has asked us a version of the above question. It usually comes when the student is visiting us during our office hours, seeking advice about how to improve a draft of an essay. When we ask the student to tell us in simple words the point being made in the essay, the student will almost invariably produce a statement that is far clearer and more incisive than anything in the draft.

“Write that down,” we will urge. “What you just said is sooo much better than anything you wrote in your draft. We suggest going home and revising your paper in a way that makes that claim the focal point of your essay.”

“Really?” our student will ask, looking surprised. “You mean I can just say it that way?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Well, saying it that way seems just so elementary—so obvious. I mean, I don’t want to sound stupid.”

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The goal of this chapter is to counteract this common misconception: that relying in college on the straightforward, down-to-earth language you use every day will make you sound stupid; that to impress your teachers you need to set aside your everyday voice and write in a way that is hard to understand.

It’s easy to see how this misconception took hold, since academic writing is notoriously obscure. Students can’t be blamed for such obscurity when much of the writing they’re assigned to read is so hard to understand—as we can see in the following sentence from a science paper that linguist Steven Pinker quotes in his essay “Why Academics Stink at Writing”:

Participants read assertions whose veracity was either affirmed or denied by the subsequent presentation of an assessment word.

After struggling to determine what the writer of this sentence was trying to say, Pinker finally decided it was probably something as simple as this:

Participants read sentences, each followed by the word true or false .

Had the author revised the original statement by tapping into more relaxed, everyday language, as Pinker did in revising it, much of this struggle could have been avoided. In our view, then, mastering academic writing does not mean completely abandoning your normal voice for one that’s stiff, convoluted, or pompous, as students often assume. Instead, it means creating a new voice that draws on the voice you already have.

This is not to suggest that any language you use among friends has a place in academic writing. Nor is it to suggest that you may fall back on your everyday voice as an excuse to remain in your comfort zone and avoid learning the rigorous forms and habits that characterize academic culture. After all, learning new words and rhetorical moves is a major part of getting an education. We do, however, wish to suggest that everyday language can often enliven such moves and even enhance your precision in using academic terminology. In our view, then, it is a mistake to assume that the academic and everyday are completely separate languages that can never be used together. Ultimately, we suggest, academic writing is often at its best when it combines what we call “everydayspeak” and “academicspeak.”

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BLEND ACADEMIC AND COLLOQUIAL STYLES

In fact, we would point out that many academics are highly successful writers who themselves blend everyday and academic styles. Note, for example, how Judith Fetterley, a prominent scholar in the field of literary studies, blends academic and everyday ways of talking in the following passage on the novelist Willa Cather:

As Merrill Skaggs has put it, “[Cather] is neurotically controlling and self-conscious about her work, but she knows at all points what she is doing. Above all else, she is self-conscious.”

Without question, Cather was a control freak.

JUDITH FETTERLEY , “Willa Cather and the Question of Sympathy: An Unofficial Story”

In this passage, Fetterley makes use of what is probably the most common technique for blending academic and everyday language: she puts them side by side, juxtaposing “neurotically controlling” and “self- conscious” from a quoted source with her own colloquial term, “control freak.” In this way, Fetterley lightens a potentially dry subject and makes it more accessible and even entertaining.

See pp. 589–97 for an essay that mixes colloquial and academic styles.

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A TRANSLATION RECIPE

But Fetterley does more than simply put academicspeak and everydayspeak side by side. She takes a step further by translating the one into the other. By translating Skaggs’s polysyllabic description of Cather as “neurotically controlling and self-conscious” into the succinct, if blunt, “control freak,” Fetterley shows how rarefied, academic ways of talking and more familiar language can not only coexist but can also actually enhance one another—her informal “control freak” serving to explain the formal language that precedes it.

To be sure, slangy, colloquial expressions like “control freak” may be far more common in the humanities than in the sciences, and even in the humanities such casual usages are a recent development. Fifty years ago academic writing in all disciplines was the linguistic equivalent of a black-tie affair. But as times have changed, so has the range of options open to academic writers—so much so that it is not surprising to find writers in all fields using colloquial expressions and referring to movies, music, and other forms of popular culture.

Indeed, Fetterley’s passage offers a simple recipe for mixing styles that we encourage you to try out in your own writing: first state the point in academic language, and then translate the point into everyday language. Everyone knows that academic terms like “neurotically controlling” and “self-conscious”—and others you might encounter like “subject position” or “bifurcate”—can be hard to understand. But this translation recipe, we think, eases such difficulties by making the academic familiar. Here is one way you might translate academicspeak into everydayspeak:

◼ Scholar X argues, “__________. ” In other words, __________.

Instead of “In other words,” you might try variations like the following:

◼ Essentially, X argues __________ .

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◼ X’s point, succinctly put, is that __________ .

◼ Plainly put, __________ .

Following Fetterley’s lead and making moves like these can help you not only demystify challenging academic material but also reinterpret it, showing you understand it (and helping readers understand it) by putting it into your own terms.

The speaker has a speech bubble, saying, Historical continuity aside, the rupture within the Zeitgeist significantly impacted all sectors of the electorate. The speaker points to a slide that has arrows connecting the words zeitgeist, rupture, and sectors. One audience member has a speech bubble, saying, What? Im lost! Another audience member responds, saying, Hes basically saying as the times changed, so did the voters.

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SELF-TRANSLATION

But this translation recipe need not be limited to clarifying the ideas of others. It can also be used to clarify your own complex ideas, as the following passage by the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein illustrates:

We can hardly get through our lives—in fact, it’s hard to get through a week—without considering what makes specific actions right and others wrong and debating with ourselves whether that is a difference that must compel the actions we choose. (Okay, it’s wrong! I get it! But why should I care?)

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN , Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away

Though Goldstein’s first sentence may require several rereadings, it is one that most of us, with varying degrees of effort, can come to understand: that we all wrestle regularly with the challenging philosophical questions of what the ethics of a given situation are and whether those ethics should alter our behavior. But instead of leaving us entirely on our own to figure out what she is saying, Goldstein helps us out in her closing parenthetical remarks, which translate the abstractions of her first sentence into the kind of concrete everydayspeak that runs through our heads.

Yet another example of self-translation—one that actually uses the word “translation”—can be found on the opening page of a book by scholar Helen Sword:

There is a massive gap between what most readers consider to be good writing and what academics typically produce and publish. I’m not talking about the kinds of formal strictures necessarily imposed by journal editors—article length, citation style, and the like—but about a deeper, duller kind of disciplinary monotony, a compulsive proclivity for discursive obscurantism and circumambulatory diction (translation: an addiction to big words and soggy syntax).

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HELEN SWORD , Stylish Academic Writing

In this passage, Sword gives her own unique twist to the translation technique we’ve been discussing. After a stream of difficult polysyllabic words—“a compulsive proclivity for discursive obscurantism and circumambulatory diction”—she then concludes by translating these words into everydayspeak: “an addiction to big words and soggy syntax.” The effect is to dramatize her larger point: the “massive gap between what most readers consider to be good writing and what academics typically produce and publish.”

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FAMOUS EXAMPLES

Even notoriously difficult thinkers could be said to use the translation practice we have been advocating in this chapter, as the following famous and widely quoted claims illustrate:

I think, therefore I am.

—RENÉ DESCARTES

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

—AUDRE LORDE

The medium is the message.

—MARSHALL MC LUHAN

Form follows function.

—LOUIS SULLIVAN

These sentences can be read almost as sound bites—short, catchy statements that express a more complex idea. Though the term “sound bite” is usually used to refer to mindless media simplifications, the succinct statements above show what valuable work they can do. These distillations are admittedly reductive in that they do not capture all the nuances of the more complex ideas they represent. But consider their power to stick in the minds of readers. Without these memorable translations, we wonder if these authors’ ideas would have achieved such widespread circulation.

Consider Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am,” for example, which comes embedded in the following passage, in which Descartes is struggling to find a philosophical foundation for absolute truth in the face of skeptical doctrines that doubt that anything can be known for certain. After putting himself in the shoes of a radical skeptic and

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imagining what it would be like to believe all apparent truths to be false, Descartes “immediately . . . observed,” he writes:

whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum ), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.

RENÉ DESCARTES , “Discourse on the Method, Part IV”

Had Descartes been less probing and scrupulous, we speculate, he would have stopped writing and ended the passage after the statement “it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat.” After all, the passage up to this point contains all the basic ingredients that the rest of it goes on to explain, the simpler, more accessible formulation “I think, therefore I am” being merely a reformulation of this earlier material. But just imagine if Descartes had decided that his job as a writer was finished after his initial claim and had failed to add the more accessible phrase “I think, therefore I am.” We suspect this idea of his would not have become one of the most famous touchstones of Western philosophy.

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EVERYDAY LANGUAGE AS A THINKING TOOL

As the examples in this chapter suggest, then, translating academic language into everydayspeak can be an indispensable tool for clarifying and underscoring ideas for readers. But at an even more basic level, such translation can be an indispensable means for you as a writer to clarify your ideas to yourself. In other words, translating academicspeak into everydayspeak can function as a thinking tool that enables you to discover what you are trying to say to begin with.

For as writing theorists often note, writing is generally not a process in which we start with a fully formed idea in our heads that we then simply transcribe in an unchanged state onto the page. On the contrary, writing is more often a means of discovery in which we use the writing process to figure out what our idea is. This is why writers are often surprised to find that what they end up with on the page is quite different from what they thought it would be when they started. What we are trying to say here is that everydayspeak is often crucial for this discovery process, that translating your ideas into more common, simpler terms can help you figure out what your ideas really are, as opposed to what you initially imagined they were. Even Descartes, for example, may not have had the formulation “I think, therefore I am” in mind before he wrote the passage above; instead, he may have arrived at it as he worked through the writing process.

We ourselves have been reminded of this point when engaged in our own writing. One major benefit of writing collaboratively, as the two of us do, is that it repeatedly forces us to explain in simpler terms our less- than-clear ideas when one of us doesn’t already know what the other means. In the process of writing and revising this book, for instance, we were always turning to each other after reading something the other had written and asking a version of the “Can you explain that more simply?” question that we described asking our students in our office in this chapter’s opening anecdote: “What do you mean?” “I don’t get it—can you explain?” “Huh!?” Sometimes, when the idea is finally stated in plain, everyday terms, we realize that it doesn’t make sense or that it amounts to nothing more than a cliché—or that we have something

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worth pursuing. It’s as if using everyday language to talk through a draft —as any writer can do by asking others to critique a draft—shines a bright light on our writing to expose its strengths and weaknesses.

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STILL NOT CONVINCED?

To be sure, not everyone will be as enthusiastic as we are about the benefits of everydayspeak. Many will insist that, while some fields in the humanities may be open to everyday language, colloquial expressions, and slang, most fields in the sciences are not. And some people in both the humanities and the sciences will argue that some ideas simply can’t be done justice to in everyday language. “Theory X,” they will say, “is just too complex to be explained in simple terms,” or “You have to be in the field to understand it.” Perhaps so. But at least one distinguished scientist, the celebrated atomic physicist Enrico Fermi, thought otherwise. Fermi, it is said, believed that all faculty in his field should teach basic physics to undergraduates, because having to explain the science in relatively plain English helped clarify their thinking. This last point can be stated as a rule of thumb: if you can’t explain it to your aunt Franny or your uncle Frank, chances are you don’t understand it yourself.

Furthermore, when writers tell themselves that their ideas are just too complex to be explained to nonspecialists, they risk fooling themselves into thinking that they are making more sense than they actually are. Translating academicspeak into everydayspeak functions as a kind of baloney detector, a way of keeping us honest when we’re in danger of getting carried away by our own verbosity.

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CODE-MESHING

“But come on,” some may say. “Get real! Academic writing must, in many cases, mean setting aside our own voices.” Sure, it may be fine to translate challenging academic ideas into plain everyday language, as Goldstein, Sword, and Descartes do above, when it’s a language that your audience will understand and find acceptable. But what if your everyday language—the one you use when you’re most relaxed, with family and friends—is filled with slang? And what if your everyday language is an ethnic or regional dialect—or a different language altogether? Is there really a place for such language in academic, professional, or public writing?

Yes and no. On the one hand, there are many situations—like when you’re applying for a job or submitting a proposal to be read by an official screening body—in which it’s probably safest to write in standardized English. On the other hand, the line between language that might confuse audiences and language that engages or challenges them is not always obvious. Nor is the line between foreign words that readers don’t already know and those that readers might happily learn. After all, standardized English is more open and inclusive than it may at first appear. And readers often appreciate writers who take risks and mix things up.

Many prominent writers mix standardized English with other dialects or languages, employing a practice that cultural and linguistic theorists Vershawn Ashanti Young and Suresh Canagarajah call “code-meshing.” For instance, in the titles of two of her books, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America and Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner , the language scholar Geneva Smitherman mixes African American vernacular phrases with more scholarly language in order to suggest, as she explicitly argues in these books, that Black vernacular English is as legitimate a variety of language as standardized English. Here are three typical passages:

In Black America, the oral tradition has served as a fundamental vehicle for gittin ovah. That tradition preserves the Afro-American

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heritage and reflects the collective spirit of the race.

Blacks are quick to ridicule “educated fools,” people who done gone to school and read all dem books and still don’t know nothin!

It is a socially approved verbal strategy for black rappers to talk about how bad they is.

GENEVA SMITHERMAN , Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America

In these examples, Smitherman blends the types of terms we expect in scholarly writing like “oral tradition” and “fundamental vehicle” with Black vernacular phrases like “gittin ovah.” She even blends the standard English spelling of words with African American English variants like “dem” and “ovah” in a way that evokes how some speakers of African American English sound. Some might object to these unconventional practices, but this is precisely Smitherman’s point: that our habitual language practices need to be opened up, and that the number of participants in the academic conversation needs to be expanded.

Along similar lines, the writer and activist Gloria Anzaldúa mixes standard English with what she calls Chicano Spanish to make a political point about the suppression of the Spanish language in the United States. In one typical passage, she writes:

From this racial, ideological, cultural, and biological cross- pollinization, an “alien” consciousness is presently in the making—a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer.

GLORIA ANZALDÚA , Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Anzaldúa gets her point across not only through what she says but also through the way she says it, showing that the new hybrid, or “mestiza consciousness,” that she celebrates is, as she puts it, “presently in the making.” Ultimately, such code-meshing suggests that languages, like the people who speak them, are not distinct, separate islands.

Because there are so many options in writing, then, there is no need to ever feel limited in your choice of words. You can always experiment

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with your language and improve it. Depending on your audience and purpose, and how much risk you’re willing to take, you can dress up your language, dress it down, or some combination of both. You could even recast the title of this book, “They Say / I Say,” as a teenager might say it: “She Goes / I’m Like.”

We hope you agree with us, then, that to succeed as a college writer, you need not always set aside your everyday voice, even when that voice may initially seem unwelcome in the academic world. It is by blending everyday language with standardized English that what counts as “standard” changes and the range of possibilities open to academic writers continues to grow.

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Exercises

1. Take a paragraph from this book and dress it down, rewriting it in informal colloquial language. Then rewrite the same paragraph again by dressing it up, making it much more formal. Then rewrite the paragraph in a way that blends the two styles. Share your paragraphs with a classmate and discuss which versions are most effective and why.

2. Find something you’ve written for a course, and study it to see whether you’ve used any of your own everyday expressions, any words or structures that are not “academic.” If by chance you don’t find any, see if there’s a place or two where shifting into more casual or unexpected language would help you make a point, get your reader’s attention, or just add liveliness to your text. Be sure to keep your audience and purpose in mind, and use language that will be appropriate to both.

3. Below is a short passage from Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill’s report, “Should Everyone Go to College?” Use one of the translation templates on page 143 to translate the academic language in the underlined sentence into everyday language. Compare your response with a classmate.

We all know that, on average, college graduates make significantly more money over their lifetimes than those with only a high school education. What gets less attention is the fact that not all college degrees or college graduates are equal. There is enormous variation in the so-called return to education depending on factors such as institution attended, field of study, whether a student graduates, and post-graduation occupation .

4. Find a reading on theysayiblog.com that blends academic and everyday styles, such as James Hatch’s 2019 essay, “My Semester with the Snowflakes.” Identify a sentence or passage where you see the author mixing everyday and academic language. Explain

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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how this blending affects the overall argument. How did you react as a reader?

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ELEVEN

“BUT DON’T GET ME WRONG”

The Art of Metacommentary

* * *

WHEN WE TELL PEOPLE that we are writing a chapter on the art of metacommentary, they often give us a puzzled look and tell us that they have no idea what “metacommentary” is. “We know what commentary is,” they’ll sometimes say, “but what does it mean when it’s meta ?” Our answer is that whether or not they know the term, they practice the art of metacommentary on a daily basis whenever they make a point of explaining something they’ve said or written: “What I meant to say was __________ , ” “My point was not __________ , but __________ , ” or “You’re probably not going to like what I’m about to say, but __________ . ” In such cases, they are not offering new points but telling an audience how to interpret what they have already said or are about to say. In short, then, metacommentary is a way of commenting on your claims and telling others how—and how not—to think about them.

It may help to think of metacommentary as being like the chorus in a Greek play that stands to the side of the drama unfolding on the stage and explains its meaning to the audience—or like a voice-over narrator who comments on and explains the action in a television show or movie. Think of metacommentary as a sort of second text that stands alongside your main text and explains what it means. In the main text you say

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something; in the metatext you guide your readers in interpreting and processing what you’ve said.

What we are suggesting, then, is that you think of your text as two texts joined at the hip: a main text in which you make your argument and another in which you “work” your ideas, distinguishing your views from others they may be confused with, anticipating and answering objections, connecting one point to another, explaining why your claim might be controversial, and so forth. The figure below demonstrates what we mean.

Two people joined at the hip. One person wears a shirt that says main text. The other person wears a shirt that says metatext. The main text person has a speech bubble, saying, All writing is conversational. The metatext person has a speech bubble, saying, Now, dont get me wrong. Im not saying…

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USE METACOMMENTARY TO CLARIFY AND ELABORATE

But why do you need metacommentary to tell readers what you mean and guide them through your text? Can’t you just clearly say what you mean up front? The answer is that no matter how clear and precise your writing is, readers can still fail to understand it in any number of ways. Even the best writers can provoke reactions in readers that they didn’t intend, and even good readers can get lost in a complicated argument or fail to see how one point connects with another. Readers may also fail to see what follows from your argument, or they may follow your reasoning and examples yet fail to see the larger conclusion you draw from them. They may fail to see your argument’s overall significance or mistake what you are saying for a related argument that they have heard before but that you want to distance yourself from. As a result, no matter how straightforward a writer you are, readers still need you to help them grasp what you really mean. Because the written word is prone to so much mischief and can be interpreted in so many different ways, we need metacommentary to keep misinterpretations and other communication misfires at bay.

Another reason to master the art of metacommentary is that it will help you develop your ideas and generate more text. If you have ever had trouble producing the required number of pages for a writing project, metacommentary can help you add both length and depth to your writing. We’ve seen many students who try to produce a five-page paper sputter to a halt at two or three pages, complaining they’ve said everything they can think of about their topic. “I’ve stated my thesis and presented my reasons and evidence,” students have told us. “What else is there to do?” It’s almost as if such writers have generated a thesis and don’t know what to do with it. When these students learn to use metacommentary, however, they get more out of their ideas and write longer, more substantial texts. In sum, metacommentary can help you extract the full potential from your ideas, drawing out important implications, explaining ideas from different perspectives, and so forth.

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So even when you may think you’ve said everything possible in an argument, try inserting the following types of metacommentary:

◼ In other words, she doesn’t realize how right she is .

◼ What __________ really means is __________.

◼ My point is not __________ but __________.

◼ Ultimately, then, my goal is to demonstrate that __________ .

Ideally, such metacommentary should help you recognize some implications of your ideas that you didn’t initially realize were there.

Let’s look at how the cultural critic Neil Postman uses metacommentary in the following passage describing the shift in American culture when it began to move from print and reading to television and movies:

It is my intention in this book to show that a great . . . shift has taken place in America, with the result that the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense. With this in view, my task in the chapters ahead is straightforward. I must, first, demonstrate how, under the governance of the printing press, discourse in America was different from what it is now—generally coherent, serious and rational; and then how, under the governance of television, it has become shriveled and absurd. But to avoid the possibility that my analysis will be interpreted as standard-brand academic whimpering, a kind of elitist complaint against “junk” on television, I must first explain that . . . I appreciate junk as much as the next fellow, and I know full well that the printing press has generated enough of it to fill the Grand Canyon to overflowing. Television is not old enough to have matched printing’s output of junk.

NEIL POSTMAN , Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

To see what we mean by metacommentary, look at the phrases above that we have italicized. With these moves, Postman essentially stands apart

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from his main ideas to help readers follow and understand what he is arguing.

He previews what he will argue: It is my intention in this book to show . . .

He spells out how he will make his argument: With this in view, my task in the chapters ahead is . . . I must, first, demonstrate . . . and then . . .

He distinguishes his argument from other arguments it may easily be confused with: But to avoid the possibility that my analysis will be interpreted as . . . I must first explain that . . .

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TITLES AS METACOMMENTARY

Even the title of Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business , functions as a form of metacommentary since, like all titles, it stands apart from the text itself and tells readers the book’s main point: that the very pleasure provided by contemporary show business is destructive.

Titles, in fact, are one of the most important forms of metacommentary, functioning rather like carnival barkers telling passersby what they can expect if they go inside. Subtitles, too, function as metacommentary, further explaining or elaborating on the main title. The subtitle of this book, for example, not only explains that it is about “the moves that matter in academic writing” but also indicates that “they say / I say” is one of these moves. Thinking of a title as metacommentary can actually help you develop sharper titles, ones that, like Postman’s, give readers a hint of what your argument will be. Contrast such titles with unhelpfully open-ended ones, like “Shakespeare” or “Steroids” or “English Essay” or essays with no titles at all. Essays with vague titles (or no titles) send the message that the writer has simply not bothered to reflect on what is being said and is uninterested in guiding or orienting readers.

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USE OTHER MOVES AS METACOMMENTARY

Many of the other moves covered in this book function as metacommentary: entertaining objections, adding transitions, framing quotations, answering “so what?” and “who cares?” When you entertain objections, you stand outside of your text and imagine what a critic might say; when you add transitions, you essentially explain the relationship between various claims. And when you answer the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions, you look beyond your central argument and explain who should be interested in it and why.

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TEMPLATES FOR INTRODUCING METACOMMENTARY

TO WARD OFF POTENTIAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS

The following moves help you differentiate certain views from ones they might be mistaken for:

◼ Essentially, I am arguing not that we should give up the policy but that we should monitor effects far more closely.

◼ This is not to say __________, but rather __________.

◼ X is concerned less with __________ than with __________.

TO ELABORATE ON A PREVIOUS IDEA

The following moves elaborate on a previous point, saying to readers: “In case you didn’t get it the first time, I’ll try saying the same thing in a different way.”

◼ In other words, __________ .

◼ To put it another way, __________ .

◼ What X is saying here is that __________ .

TO PROVIDE A ROAD MAP TO YOUR TEXT

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This move orients readers, clarifying where you have been and where you are going—and making it easier for them to process and follow your text:

◼ Chapter 2 explores __________, while Chapter 3 examines __________.

◼ Having just argued that __________, I want now to complicate the point by __________.

TO MOVE FROM A GENERAL CLAIM TO A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE

These moves help you explain a general point by providing a concrete example that illustrates what you’re saying:

◼ For example, __________ .

◼ __________, for instance, demonstrates __________.

◼ Consider __________, for example.

◼ To take a case in point, __________ .

TO INDICATE THAT A CLAIM IS MORE, LESS, OR EQUALLY IMPORTANT

The following templates help you give relative emphasis to the claim that you are introducing, showing whether that claim is of more or less weight than the previous one or equal to it:

◼ Even more important, __________ .

◼ But above all, __________ .

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◼ Incidentally, we will briefly note, __________ .

◼ Just as important, __________ .

◼ Equally, __________ .

◼ Finally, __________ .

TO EXPLAIN A CLAIM WHEN YOU ANTICIPATE OBJECTIONS

Here’s a template to help you anticipate and respond to possible objections:

◼ Although some readers may object that __________, I would answer that __________.

Chapter 6 has more templates for anticipating objections.

TO GUIDE READERS TO YOUR MOST GENERAL POINT

These moves show that you are wrapping things up and tying up various subpoints previously made:

◼ In sum, then, __________ .

◼ My conclusion, then, is that __________ .

◼ In short, __________ .

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In this chapter we have tried to show that the most persuasive writing often doubles back and comments on its own claims in ways that help readers negotiate and process them. Instead of simply piling claim upon claim, effective writers are constantly “stage-managing” how their claims will be received. It’s true, of course, that to be persuasive a text has to have strong claims to argue in the first place. But even the strongest arguments will flounder unless writers use metacommentary to prevent potential misreadings and make their arguments shine.

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Exercises

1. Complete each of the following metacommentary templates in any way that makes sense:

a. In making a case for raising the minimum wage, I am not saying that __________ .

b. But my argument will do more than prove that one particular industrial chemical has certain toxic properties. In this essay, I will also __________ .

c. My point about the national obsession with sports reinforces the belief held by many __________ that __________ .

d. I believe, therefore, that the war is completely unjustified. But let me back up and explain how I arrived at this conclusion: __________ . In this way, I came to believe that this war is a big mistake.

2. Read the following passage from Pau Gasol’s 2018 essay, “An Open Letter about Female Coaches.” You can find the link to the full essay on theysayiblog.com . Underline where Gasol uses the moves of metacommentary to guide his readers through the main text of his argument. Does the author use any of the chapter’s templates (see p. 160 )? How do you think the author’s use of metacommentary enhances (or harms) his writing?

The reason I wanted to start by telling you about my parents, is that their story makes me think about today’s NBA. Specifically about how, in the 72-year history of the league, there has never been a female head coach. Even more specifically, it makes me think of Becky Hammon: a coach who has been the topic of much conversation lately, and who I’ve had the opportunity to play for in San Antonio.

But if you think I’m writing this to argue why Becky is qualified to be an NBA head coach . . . well, you’re mistaken.

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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That part is obvious: One, she was an accomplished player— with an elite point guard’s mind for the game. And two, she has been a successful assistant for arguably the greatest coach in the game. What more do you need? But like I said—I’m not here to make that argument. Arguing on Coach Hammon’s behalf would feel patronizing. To me, it would be strange if NBA teams were not interested in her as a head coach.

3. Read over the draft of an essay, and try the following:

a. Locate a passage that needs more clarification or elaboration. Revise it using the metacommentary templates included in this chapter.

b. Add in “road map” metacommentary to help your reader follow your text, using the templates on page 160 .

c. Compose a title and subtitle that function as metacommentary on your whole argument.

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TWELVE

“WHAT I REALLY WANT TO SAY IS”

Revising Substantially

* * *

ONE OF THE MOST common frustrations teachers have—we’ve had it, too—is that students do not revise in any substantial way. As one of our colleagues put it, “I ask my classes to do a substantial revision of an essay they’ve turned in, emphasis on the word ‘substantial,’ but invariably little is changed in what I get back. Students hand in the original essay with a word changed here and there, a few spelling errors corrected, and a comma or two added. . . . I feel like all my advice is for nothing.” We suspect, however, that in most cases when students do merely superficial revisions, it’s not because they are indifferent or lazy, as some teachers may assume, but because they aren’t sure what a good revision looks like. Like even many seasoned writers, these students would like to revise more thoroughly, but when they reread what they’ve written, they have trouble seeing where it can be improved—and how. What they lack is not just a reliable picture in their head of what their draft could be but also reliable strategies for getting there. In this chapter, we supply ten such revision strategies and a revision checklist (see pp. 181–86 ) that are designed to work in virtually any academic setting, regardless of assignment, instructor, discipline, or course.

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1. THINK GLOBALLY

Perhaps the best strategy for revising your writing in a substantial way is to think globally, as we might put it, about your draft. This involves stepping back from your writing and looking at the big picture, asking yourself what, finally, you are trying to say. You might ask: Do I have a central argument, or do I just ramble and talk about my subject? And if I do have a central argument, does that argument make sense? Is it coherent and unified, or do I go off on tangents or even contradict myself? Do I logically link the parts, tying them together with clear connections between them all, developing a continuous line of argument over my essay’s entire length? Does my evidence match my central argument and, as we put it in our revision checklist, is it clear what is motivating my argument—why it needs to be made in the first place? That is, do I present my argument as an entry into some larger conversation or debate, as a response to something “they say”? Have I included the strongest possible objections that can be made against my argument or answered any counterarguments in a superficial way? In the end, might any such counterarguments I address be more convincing to readers—or even to me—than my own argument?

It was big questions like these that inspired a student several years ago to radically revise an essay she’d written on the Iraq War, transforming it from a series of disconnected observations about the war into a sharply focused critique of the view that the war promoted democracy. Her first draft had been a mere collection of scattered claims, all presented as if they were of equal importance: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The United States has the strongest military. Saddam Hussein was evil. Many Americans and Iraqis were killed. The war increased terrorism. And so forth. But her final draft nicely subordinated all its points to a larger “they say / I say” thesis: though Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, it makes no sense to wage war on Iraq’s innocent people. The final version was virtually a different essay.

We open with this suggestion to think globally not just because it is perhaps the central way to substantially revise an essay but also because it is so frequently neglected. Because writing is often associated with

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local, sentence-level mechanics and grammar, some writers picture revision as a small-scale matter of dotting an occasional “i” and crossing an occasional “t.” What often gets overlooked, as writing expert Nancy Sommers points out, are “strategies for handling the whole essay,” ones that would help writers “reorder lines of reasoning or ask questions about their purposes and readers.” It would be as if a jewelry appraiser were to assess a gem only by studying its smallest, microscopic details and never holding it back to form an overall impression.

Revising globally, then, may mean changing the way we think. It asks us to move beyond microlevel edits, beyond merely tweaking or refining an existing argument. At its best, revision is a messy process that often helps us discover what our argument is in the first place. In fact, a good way to test how substantial your revisions are is to ask how much you learned about your argument through the revision process.

The person has thought bubbles about revising. They think, That words gotta go! and I thought my point was… But now I see its… and What if I move this over here? The workspace is very messy, surrounded by several crumpled papers.

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2. BUT STILL SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

But just because the global level is very important in revising, it doesn’t mean that local, surface-level issues—word choice, sentence structure, grammar, style, and so forth—aren’t very important too. After all, everything you write is composed of countless small-scale decisions, and if you improve enough of them your next draft has a chance of constituting a significant revision. Also, it is always possible that changing just a single word will help you radically resee your central argument and lead to major, global changes. So while we suggest you think of global revisions as more important than microlevel ones, in practice the two levels are deeply interdependent. Although writers are often told to start out by focusing on their big idea—getting that big idea down on paper and only at a later stage worrying about small-scale mechanics—seasoned writers often move back and forth between the two levels throughout the revision process.

To see how we sweat the small stuff, consider the photo on the facing page of revisions we made on our last paragraph, none of which significantly alter the paragraph’s central point. The central point—about the importance of small edits and their connection to big edits—is recognizable from the one draft to the other. And yet we like to think that, taken together, these edits make the passage much more readable. The mere decision alone to move this section up in the chapter and make it the second strategy listed has a big impact. The reader no longer needs to struggle to recall what we’d said several items back about thinking globally. We now have just said it.

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Wording revisions, editing marks, and arrows are handwritten on top of the typed text represent how they revised a paragraph from the textbook.

The messiness of the revision process.

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3. READ YOUR OWN WRITING

But it is difficult to make any revisions, global or local, unless you do something even more fundamental, which is simply to read what you’ve written and then ideally reread and reread it again. It is very hard to set the revision process in motion if you don’t do at least one initial read- through of your draft, and then do as many additional read-throughs as needed to get a solid grasp of the material with which you’re dealing. As Donald Murray explains in A Writer Teaches Writing , “The writer reads and rereads and rereads, standing far back and reading quickly from a distance, moving in close and reading slowly line-by-line, reading again and again. . . .”

But why, you might wonder, should you read your own writing? You, after all, are the one who wrote it, so if anyone must know what your text says, shouldn’t it be you? The answer is that, precisely because you’re the author, you’re too close to your text to know what it says. As writers, we tend to be so invested in what we’ve written that we need to find ways of stepping back from our text to gain some critical distance.

Perhaps the central way of gaining such distance is by reading the draft from an outsider’s perspective—as if, instead of being the author, you were some other person who is on the lookout for logical glitches and inconsistencies, for better ways of stating a point, for parts that are hard to follow, for claims and subclaims that need more explanation, or for how your argument might be vulnerable to critique. You might also try reading your text aloud to yourself—or even try using text-to-speech technology on your computer or phone. And it never hurts, if you have time, to set your draft aside for a few days so that when you return to it you can reread it with fresh eyes.

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4. AND HAVE OTHERS READ YOUR WRITING, TOO

Of course there are other ways to get critical distance on your work and see it from an outsider’s perspective. One of the best ways is to show your work to someone who is willing to read it—a fellow student, family member, friend, or tutor—and ask for feedback. Teachers, in fact, may ask you to pair up with another student to comment on each other’s work. It’s a great way to get a sense of audience: how your text will be processed and received when it goes out into the world. In seeking out such readers, we often naturally gravitate toward those who share our opinions and predilections. But don’t underestimate the value of readers who may know little about your subject or disagree with your position. Often, the more readers differ from you, the more likely they will be able to see things that you yourself could not have thought of.

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5. GO BACK TO THE TEXT

While developing a deep familiarity with your own writing is essential in any revision process, developing a deep familiarity with your sources is also very important. It’s surprising how often errors are introduced when we haven’t read the text we’re responding to carefully enough and start writing about it before we really understand it. It’s also surprising how often errors are introduced when we fail to check and double-check our quotations against the originals and thus mistranscribe them in our texts. If we are right that the most persuasive writing responds to something that others have said, then writing that misquotes or misrepresents what those others say, as we suggested in Chapter 2 (see particularly our comments on the “closest cliché syndrome”), will be built on a false foundation.

If you’re anything like us, however, you might not like going back to your source. At times we don’t want to go back to a source because we don’t want to take the time to unpack its difficult, challenging language. At other times, we don’t want to return to a source because we fear, deep down, that it doesn’t quite say what we want it to say. When this happens, there is always a danger of creating a straw man: distorting what an author says in order to pursue our own agenda, transforming the author into a mere projection of ourselves. In this respect, accurately representing what “they say” is not just an intellectual obligation but a moral one as well.

As an example, let’s turn to Rosa, a student who wanted to write an essay defending the practice of meditation. In her first draft, Rosa made a strong case that meditation promotes democratic politics, but she misconstrued her essay’s central source, a scholarly article by Dean Mathiowetz that reads:

Meditation Is Good for Nothing

Does meditation bring political benefits in the sense of strengthening citizenship or democracy? Taking the Zen phrase “meditation doesn’t

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work—it’s good for nothing” as my point of departure . . . I argue that meditation can foster significant dimensions of democratic citizenship. . . .

Mathiowetz’s argument here is that meditation can in fact “foster significant dimensions of democratic citizenship”—or, as he goes on to claim, that, paradoxically, because “meditation . . . is good for nothing,” it can help citizens and politicians detach from their self-interested passions and biases and find common ground. Yet Rosa presented Mathiowetz as saying that meditation is literally “good for nothing” and has no political or civic benefits.

When Rosa realized her mistake, she was inspired to do a revision. And the following week, she produced a much improved draft that opens as follows:

Many people think that meditation is a waste of time. According to these skeptics, meditation is a useless activity that is only for self- absorbed flakes who have no concern for the give-and-take of politics. But I disagree. As Dean Mathiowetz argues, the very uselessness of meditation makes it a valuable political tool. It can make us less polarized—better able to listen to one another and move beyond our rigid political views, and more committed to the common good.

In this way, Rosa was able to continue using Mathiowetz as a central source in her essay but without distorting his position. Instead of casting him as a naysayer in her essay who opposes meditation, she now presents Mathiowetz as the pro-meditation ally he really is.

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6. DOES YOUR EXAMPLE SAY WHAT YOU SAY IT SAYS?

Offering an example to support your argument is such a natural, familiar part of writing that it may seem easy. And yet providing examples is often a challenge, largely because of the kind of disconnection issues we discussed in Chapter 9 . When giving an example—which might take the form of a statistic, a quotation, evidence, or a story or anecdote—writers often discover that the example gets away from them. That is, the example they provide turns out not to support the point they want it to support and may even contradict it. So in revising your drafts, pay special attention to whether your example actually supports your argument, whether your example and what it is supposed to exemplify are united.

A student named Jacob needed help with this issue in an essay he’d written about how, as his title put it, “We All Need to Become More Green.” In an attempt to provide a model example of someone who, in Jacob’s words, has admirably “stopped using toxic, traditional household cleaners” that harm the environment, Jacob cites the case of his mother:

My mother is a perfect example. She cares a lot about the environment and has always opposed chemicals. She frequently uses cleaning products in our house that are environmentally friendly but claims they never work. She once spent almost a hundred dollars on eco-friendly cleaners for our house but ended up throwing most of them out and returning to the toxic products she’s always used. Nothing ever changes. She keeps using the old-fashioned cleaners but complaining about them.

Although each sentence here is admirably clear, Jacob ran into the classic problem of his thesis being out of sync with his example. Instead of showing that we should all stop using toxic cleaners, the story of his mother actually shows just how hard giving up such cleaners can be.

With Jacob’s permission, his instructor circulated his essay to his class and asked how it might be revised. One student proposed that Jacob

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modify his thesis so that it asserts not just that we should all be more green, but that, to echo Kermit the Frog, “it’s not easy being green,” which, the student added, might be a fun new title for Jacob’s essay. In his next draft, however, Jacob did decide to modify his argument, but in a different way by claiming that nobody, not even his deeply committed mother, will ever be able to become fully green if they don’t lower their expectations about cleanliness.

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7. KEEP ASKING “AS OPPOSED TO WHAT?”

Throughout this book we suggest that writers start “with what others are saying,” as the subtitle of Chapter 1 puts it, and that they use this “they say” to motivate their “I say.” But writers often neglect this important rhetorical move. They get so caught up in making their claims that they forget even the truest, most accurate, and well-supported claim will seem pointless if they fail to answer the all-important “as opposed to what?” or “who says otherwise?” question.

We sometimes forget to ask these questions ourselves. For example, it was only after years of writing and rewriting this very book that we realized there was an important “they say” or “as opposed to what?” contrast buried in our manuscript that we needed to draw out. At the end of a passage describing our templates as “one of the novel features of this book,” we’d written:

This book offers model templates to help you put key principles of writing directly into practice.

When we reread this sentence, we felt that it was missing something, that it sounded flat and uninspired. But why? After experimenting with different versions of the sentence, none of which seemed to help, we realized we weren’t following our own advice. “There’s no ‘they say’ here,” Cathy announced. “Nothing we push off against, no ‘as opposed to what.’ ” With this in mind, we embarked on another round of revisions and eventually came up with the following contrast, which now appears on page 2 of this edition:

Instead of focusing solely on abstract principles of writing, then , this book offers model templates to help you put those principles directly into practice.

Why did we prefer this version? Because its new material, which we’ve underlined, not only establishes that we offer templates but also indicates why: to depart from and, we hope, improve upon writing instruction that focuses only on “abstract principles.”

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Had this sentence been all we changed, however, it would not have amounted to the type of “substantial” revision we’ve been saying is so important. But as often happens in the revision process, this one revision led to several others, setting in motion a series of revisions that significantly transformed our core argument. As we went back and reread the parts of the book we’d already written, we found several ways to extend the contrast we draw above between our templates and more abstract approaches. In the preface and introduction, we added two sections—“OK—but Templates?,” and “What This Book Doesn’t Do”— which help us further explain our template-based approach by contrasting it with what it isn’t.

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8. MOVE IT UP!

In her memoir The Vanity Fair Diaries , the magazine’s former editor, Tina Brown, describes “the rewarding moment” in editing a manuscript:

when you see that the whole thing should start on page nine and flip the penultimate paragraph to the top of the piece, and all you want to do is call the writer immediately and tell him or her why.

Brown’s premise here is simple: where you say something matters, and the more important the point, the more it needs to be moved to “the top of the piece,” where it will better get your reader’s attention and infuse all you say that follows.

Imagine, after all, how frustrating it is for readers to have to slog through a lengthy text that doesn’t state what its big point is until the very end, which is precisely what happens in Charles R. Morris’s 333- page book, A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression: 1929–1939 . Although Morris demonstrates impressive knowledge of the Great Depression and its historical era, he doesn’t declare his central argument—that, contrary to what most people assume, “the 1929 stock market crash . . . did not cause the Depression”—until page 313 . Had Morris foregrounded this point early in the book and used it to structure all that followed, readers wouldn’t have been left wondering where he was going for the first three hundred pages: “Why is Morris telling us this?” “What’s his big point?” “And this matters because . . . ?”

Delays of this kind are so common among writers that journalists long ago coined a term for it: “burying the lead” (or “lede,” as it is sometimes spelled). Because writing is not a smoothly linear process of adding one perfectly polished paragraph on top of another until the last word is written, writers often don’t know what their most important, or “lead,” point will be until late in the writing process. As our cartoon on page 167 suggests, it is common for writers to start out thinking that their big idea will be one thing, only to realize later, just as they think their work is finished, that a different point needs to take center stage. When

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this happens, the best remedy, as Brown suggests, is to “flip” that point up “to the top of the piece,” near the opening, and edit the rest so that your belatedly discovered argument informs your entire text from start to finish.

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9. TAKE YOUR “UH-OH” MOMENTS SERIOUSLY

In our view, the best writers are always on the lookout for places in their writing that take their argument in the wrong direction. Especially when reading their work with a skeptical eye, as we suggested earlier, these self-critical writers keep looking for unanticipated implications in their writing that, for one reason or another, they are not comfortable with. As you reread your drafts, then, we suggest that you listen for any little voices in your head that say, “Uh-oh, what have I done? As I was arguing __________ , I accidentally suggested __________ . ” “Uh-oh” moments, as they might be called, can often be upsetting. But if you’re willing to put in the time and to experiment with different solutions, you can head off such problems in your draft and possibly even turn them to your advantage.

Gerald had several such “uh-oh” moments as he was writing “Hidden Intellectualism” (see p. 606 ), in which he makes the counterintuitive claim that schools should be organized like sports. One, for instance, came when he was arguing that the worlds of academic intellectual culture and of popular sports are more similar than one might assume. He had written:

[T]he real intellectual world, the one that existed in the big world beyond school, is organized very much like the world of team sports, with rival texts, rival interpretations and evaluations of texts, . . . and elaborate team competitions in which “fans” of writers, intellectual systems, methodologies, and -isms contend against one another.

“Oh, no,” Gerald thought to himself as he reread this passage. “Couldn’t someone misunderstand me? Couldn’t someone think that in saying schools should be organized like sports, I’m promoting the ugly side of sports, the side that’s filled with petty one-upmanship and, at times, even violence? How can I argue that schools should imitate the contentious domain of sports when schools already have too much small-minded and destructive competition?”

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For a while, Gerald was disturbed enough by thoughts like these that he was tempted to simply eliminate the comparison he makes between sports and school. But after wrestling with the problem, he realized that he was defending sports not at their worst but at their best. As a result, the next chance he got, Gerald sat down with his manuscript and added the following new material, which explains that sports not only promote rivalry but

also satisfy the thirst for community. When you entered sports debates, you became part of a community that was not limited to your family and friends, but was national and public.

In this way, Gerald was able to use his “uh-oh” moment to enhance his argument. What began as a serious problem ended up helping him discover an aspect of his own argument that he hadn’t seen before: that schooling should emulate not the uglier side of sports but the side that encourages camaraderie and broad, public excitement.

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10. DON’T LET THE MESS SHOW

At several points in this chapter we have suggested that revising your writing in a global, substantial way is often a messy undertaking. In this final section, however, we want to suggest that to create a coherent, unified, and reader-friendly text, you need to hide this very mess. In other words, when you find any problems in your text, you need to do what is often a lot of hard work to correct them and make it look as if they never existed. If, for instance, you find a problem with your thesis, you need to not only reframe your thesis but also make sure that all your supporting claims, evidence, and examples, as we suggested above, match that thesis, erasing any confusing disconnects between your thesis and the rest of your text. Along similar lines, if you find that a section of your text doesn’t make sense, you need to revise it until it does or eliminate that section altogether, making sure that the material that had preceded and followed the deleted material is well stitched together. And for a final example, if you realize that your best argument is buried too far back in your essay, you need not only to “move it up,” as we suggested above, but also revise your entire draft so that it looks as if that best argument is what you had originally planned to say.

Joseph M. Williams and Lawrence McEnerney, writing experts, make a version of this point:

If you find that the sentence from your conclusion is more insightful than the one from your introduction, then you have to revise your introduction to make it seem that you had this sentence in mind all along (even though when you started drafting the paper you may have had no idea how you were going to end it).

This advice holds true, we think, not just for introductions and conclusions but for virtually every part of a text. Even if you discover that your best claim appears mid-essay, you need to engage in a little smoke and mirrors, revising in a way that makes “it seem that you had” this claim in mind from the very outset, even though you hadn’t.

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A REVISION CHECKLIST

The checklist that follows is keyed both to this chapter on revision and to the writing advice throughout this book. It is composed of a series of questions designed to help you when rereading and revising your drafts.

Is Your Revision Really Substantial?

Look over the revisions you’ve made to your draft before turning it in and ask yourself if you have made enough changes to seriously improve it. If you’ve merely changed a few words or phrases, then you probably haven’t addressed these larger issues: How coherent is your argument? Does your argument enter in dialogue with a motivating “they say”? Does your argument address a naysayer’s counterargument? Is your argument consistent or contradictory?

Did you reread your draft several times and perhaps show it to other readers for feedback? If so, do you adequately respond to any concerns these readers raised, including ones possibly expressed to you by your instructor or a classmate?

Are the parts of your composition in the most effective order, or do some need to be moved? If you rearranged any of your text, have you revised the remaining material to avoid letting the “mess” show? (See pp. 179– 80 .)

How Well Do You Represent What Others Say?

Do you start with what “they say”? If not, try revising to do so. See pages 23–28 for templates that can help.

Is it clear what is motivating your argument —why it needs to be made in the first place? If not, see pages 23–27 for templates that can help.

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Do you summarize what others have said? If so, have you represented their views accurately—and adequately? Can you improve your summaries, perhaps by going back to the text and rereading the source you’re summarizing?

Do you quote others? Have you carefully checked your quotations against the original sources? Do you frame each quotation in a way that integrates it into your text, explaining the quotation in your own words, and have you carefully considered whether the quotation actually supports your argument? (See pp. 49–51 for tips on creating a “quotation sandwich.”)

Look at the verbs you use to introduce summaries and quotations, and consider how well they fit the action you’re describing. If you’ve used all-purpose signal verbs such as X “said” or “believes,” are there other such phrases that might be more precise, such as X “complains” or “predicts”? (See pp. 43–44 for a list of such signal verbs.)

Have you documented all of the sources you mention, both in parenthetical notations in the body of your text and at the end in a works- cited or references list?

Do you remind readers of the “they say” you’re responding to throughout your text, or do you get off track and inadvertently start responding to a different “they say”? Can you revise so as to respond more continuously throughout the entire length of your text? (See pp. 27–28 for advice on using return sentences to keep your argument focused.)

How Effective Is What You Say?

Is it clear how you are responding to your “they say”? Is it clear what your position is—agree, disagree, or a combination of both— or might readers be unsure and need clarification? Do you use signal verbs that fit your position and clear language (“I question whether . . .” or “I’m of two minds about . . .”)? (See Chapter 4 for three ways to respond and Chapter 5 for help in distinguishing the “I say” from “they say.”)

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If you disagree with the “they say” you’re responding to, do you give reasons why in a way that moves the conversation forward, or do you merely contradict the “they say”? If you agree with the “they say,” do you “agree with a difference,” adding something of your own to the conversation? (For help with this move, see p. 66 .) And finally, if you both agree and disagree with your “they say,” do you do so without contradicting yourself or seeming evasive? (See Chapter 4 for help in responding in these three different ways.)

Are your “I say” and “they say” clearly connected? Do your argument and the argument you are responding to address the same issue, or does a switch occur that takes you on a tangent? Do you use the same key terms for explaining both? (See p. 132 for our discussion of key terms.)

What reasons—evidence, data, or examples—do you offer to support your “I say”? Do your reasons actually support your position, or is there a mismatch between them? Could a naysayer use your reasons against you to support a contrary position, and if so, could you defend your reasoning by summarizing and answering this objection? (See Chapter 6 for tips on doing so.)

Will readers be able to distinguish what you say from what others say? Do you use voice markers (“My own view, however, is . . .” or “Skeptics, however, would disagree . . .”) to mark the shift from the views of others to your own view and back? (See Chapter 5 for advice about using voice markers to make that distinction clear.)

Have You Introduced Any Naysayers?

Have you acknowledged likely objections to your argument? If so, have you represented these objections fairly—and responded to them persuasively? If not, think about what other perspectives exist on your topic, and incorporate them into your draft. (See Chapter 6 for tips on planting and responding to naysayers in your text.)

Have You Used Metacommentary?

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How well, if at all, do you stand back from your writing and clarify what you do and don’t mean? Might your argument be improved if you did a better job of explaining what you mean—or don’t mean—with phrases like “in other words,” “don’t get me wrong,” or “what I’m really trying to say here is . . .” (See Chapter 11 for examples of how to reinforce your argument with metacommentary.)

Do you have a helpful title? Does your title merely identify your topic, or does it successfully point to the position you take on that topic? Is your title lively and engaging, and might a subtitle help indicate your position?

Have You Tied It All Together?

Can readers follow your argument from one sentence, paragraph, and section to the next? Can readers see how each successive point is joined together in service of your overall argument? Are there any tangents that need to be brought in line with your larger train of thought or perhaps eliminated altogether?

Do you use transition phrases like “however,” “in addition,” and “in other words,” which clarify how your ideas relate to one another? Are these phrases the right ones for your purposes—or do you use “however,” say, when you really mean “also” or “in addition”? (See pp. 127–28 for a list of transitions.)

Do you use pointing words like “this” and “that,” which help you gesture backward in your text and lead readers from one point to the next? If so, is it always clear what “this” and “that” refer to, or do you need to add nouns (e.g., “this book” or “this tendency to exaggerate”) to avoid ambiguity? (See pp. 130–32 for tips on using pointing words to connect parts of your argument.)

Have you used what we call “repetition with a difference” to help connect parts of your argument? That is, do you succeed in saying the same thing but in a slightly different way each time, which helps you move your argument forward and avoid being monotonous? ( See pp. 134–36 for help with this move.)

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Have You Shown Why Your Argument Matters?

Do you make clear why your argument is important—and why your readers should care? Might your draft be improved by using templates like “My critique here is important because __________ ” or “The stakes in how we answer this question are high, given that __________ ” ? (See Chapter 8 for advice on addressing the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions.)

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Exercises

1. Read over a draft of your writing, and think about it globally. Explain to yourself the “big picture” of your argument using the following template: “Aha! Now I see! What I’m really trying to say is not, as I initially thought, __________ but __________ . ” Use your response to write yourself a revision plan. Name two important things you need to do so that your argument matches what you’re “really trying to say.”

2. Read over a draft of your writing, paying particular attention to how you use sources.

a. Go back to your sources to check how accurately you are using them. Confirm that your summaries and paraphrases are fair representations of the sources’ arguments. Have you transcribed your quotations correctly? Have you properly cited all your sources?

b. Look critically at the examples—quotations, evidence, anecdotes, and so forth—that you use to support your claims. Ask yourself, “Does this example support my argument?” Revise your writing to unify your argument and examples.

3. Read a draft of your writing out loud or listen to it using text-to- speech technology.

a. As you read or listen, mark the places in the text that are hard to follow. Then go back to these places and revise them. Could you use better transitions? Might metacommentary help? Could you use more voice markers, such as “In Smith’s opinion . . .” or “She argues . . .”?

b. As you read or listen, also mark the places in the text where you find yourself saying “uh-oh” because your words or their implications don’t reflect your underlying

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intentions. Then go back to these “uh-oh” moments to clarify your intentions. Consider using a template like “This is not to suggest . . . It is, however, to suggest . . .”

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THIRTEEN

“I TAKE YOUR POINT”

Entering Class Discussions

* * *

HAVE YOU EVER been in a class discussion that feels less like a genuine meeting of the minds than like a series of discrete, disconnected monologues? You make a comment, say, that seems provocative to you, but the classmate who speaks after you makes no reference to what you said, instead going off in an entirely different direction. Then the classmate who speaks next makes no reference either to you or to anyone else, making it seem as if everyone in the conversation is more interested in their own ideas than in actually conversing with anyone else.

We like to think that the principles this book advances can help improve class discussions, which increasingly include various forms of online communication. Particularly important for class discussion is the point that our own ideas become more cogent and powerful the more responsive we are to others and the more we frame our claims not in isolation but as responses to what others before us have said. Ultimately, then, a good face-to-face classroom discussion (or online communication) doesn’t just happen spontaneously. It requires the same sorts of disciplined moves and practices used in many writing situations, particularly that of identifying to what and to whom you are responding.

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FRAME YOUR COMMENTS AS A RESPONSE TO SOMETHING THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN

SAID

The single most important thing you need to do when joining a class discussion is to link what you are about to say to something that has already been said.

◼ I really liked Aaron’s point about the two sides being closer than they seem . I’d add that both seem rather moderate .

◼ I take your point, Nadia, that __________. Still . . .

◼ Though Kayla and Ryan seem to be at odds about __________, they may actually not be all that far apart.

In framing your comments this way, it is usually best to name both the person and the idea you’re responding to. If you name the person alone (“I agree with Aaron because __________ ” ), it may not be clear to listeners what part of what Aaron said you are referring to. Conversely, if you only summarize what Aaron said without naming him, you’ll probably leave your classmates wondering whose comments you’re referring to.

But won’t you sound stilted and deeply redundant in class if you try to restate the point your classmate just made? After all, in the case of the first template above, the entire class will have just heard Aaron’s point about the two sides being closer than they seem. Why, then, would you need to restate it?

We agree that in oral situations it does often sound artificial to restate what others just said precisely because they just said it. It would be awkward if on being asked to pass the salt at lunch, one were to reply: “If I understand you correctly, you have asked me to pass the salt. Yes, I can, and here it is.” But in oral discussions about complicated issues that are open to multiple interpretations, we usually do need to resummarize what others have said to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

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Since Aaron may have made several points when he spoke and may have been followed by other commentators, the class will probably need you to summarize which point of his you are referring to. And even if Aaron made only one point, restating that point is helpful not only to remind the group what his point was (since some may have missed or forgotten it) but also to make sure that he, you, and others have interpreted his point in the same way.

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TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT, INDICATE EXPLICITLY THAT YOU ARE DOING SO

It is fine to try to change the conversation’s direction. There’s just one catch: you need to make clear to listeners that this is what you are doing. For example:

◼ So far we have been talking about the characters in the film . But isn’t the real issue here the cinematography ?

◼ I’d like to change the subject to one that hasn’t yet been addressed.

You can try to change the subject without indicating that you are doing so. But you risk that your comment will come across as irrelevant rather than as a thoughtful contribution that moves the conversation forward.

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BE EVEN MORE EXPLICIT THAN YOU WOULD BE IN WRITING

Because listeners in an oral discussion can’t go back and reread what you just said, they are more easily overloaded than are readers of a print text. For this reason, in a class discussion you will do well to take some extra steps to help listeners follow your train of thought. (1) When you make a comment, limit yourself to one point only, though you can elaborate on this point, fleshing it out with examples and evidence. If you feel you must make two points, either unite them under one larger umbrella point, or make one point first and save the other for later. Trying to bundle two or more claims into one comment can result in neither getting the attention it deserves. (2) Use metacommentary to highlight your key point so that listeners can readily grasp it.

◼ In other words, what I’m trying to get at here is __________ .

◼ My point is this: __________ .

◼ My point, though, is not __________ but __________.

◼ This distinction is important because __________ .

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Exercises

1. Choose a text you’ve read in class, and discuss the text’s argument in a small group. Use these questions to start your conversation:

a. Whom (or what) is the writer responding to? b. What perspectives does the writer include, and what

perspectives are missing? c. Why does this argument matter?

2. Listen carefully to a class discussion, either in this class or another one of your courses. Notice what moves from this chapter your classmates and your instructor make:

a. How do they frame their comments to link their ideas to something that has already been said?

b. How do they change the direction of the conversation? c. How do they use metacommentary to clarify their points? d. Reflect on the conversation as a whole. Were the people in

the conversation responsive to one another’s ideas, or did the conversation feel more like a series of unconnected points? Explain one strategy from this chapter that would improve class discussions.

3. In your next class discussion, try using use these strategies to help your classmates follow your ideas:

a. Write down your thoughts before you say them. b. Limit yourself to just one point per comment. c. Use metacommentary to highlight your key idea.

How did these strategies help clarify your ideas? How did they help you listen more attentively to others? How did they invite others to respond? What was challenging about this exercise?

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FOURTEEN

“WHAT’S MOTIVATING THIS WRITER?”

Reading for the Conversation

* * *

“WHAT IS THE AUTHOR’S ARGUMENT ? What is the author trying to say?” For many years, these were the first questions we would ask our classes in a discussion of an assigned reading. The discussion that resulted was often halting, as our students struggled to get a handle on the argument, but eventually, after some awkward silences, the class would come up with something we could all agree was an accurate summary of the author’s main thesis. Even after we’d gotten over that hurdle, however, the discussion would often still seem forced and would limp along as we all struggled with the question that naturally arose next: now that we had determined what the author was saying, what did we ourselves have to say?

For a long time we didn’t worry much about these halting discussions, justifying them to ourselves as the predictable result of assigning difficult, challenging readings. Several years ago, however, as we started writing this book and began thinking about writing as the art of entering conversations, we latched on to the idea of leading with some different questions: “What other argument(s) is the writer responding to?” “Is the writer disagreeing or agreeing with something, and if so, what?” “What is motivating the writer’s argument?” “Are there other ideas that you have encountered in this class or elsewhere that might be

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pertinent?” The results were often striking. The discussions that followed tended to be far livelier and to draw in a greater number of students. We were still asking students to look for the main argument, but we were now asking them to see that argument as a response to some other argument that provoked it, gave it a reason for being, and helped all of us see why we should care about it.

What had happened, we realized, was that by changing the opening question, we changed the way our students approached reading and perhaps the way they thought about academic work in general. Instead of thinking of the argument of a text as an isolated entity, they now thought of that argument as one that responded to and provoked other arguments. Since they were now dealing not with one argument but at least two (the author’s argument and the one[s] being responded to), they now had alternative ways of seeing the topic at hand. This meant that instead of just trying to understand the view presented by the author, they were more able to question that view intelligently and engage in the type of discussion and debate that is the hallmark of a college education. In our discussions, animated debates often arose between students who found the author’s argument convincing and others who were more convinced by the view it was challenging. In the best of these debates, the binary positions would be questioned by other students, who suggested each was too simple, that both might be right or that a third alternative was possible. Still other students might object that the discussion thus far had missed the author’s real point and suggest that we all go back to the text and pay closer attention to what it actually said.

We eventually realized that the move from reading for the author’s argument in isolation to reading for how the author’s argument is in conversation with the arguments of others helps readers become active, critical readers rather than passive recipients of knowledge. On some level, reading for the conversation is more rigorous and demanding than reading for what one author says. It asks that you determine not only what the author thinks but also how what the author thinks fits with what others think and ultimately with what you yourself think. Yet on another level, reading this way is a lot simpler and more familiar than reading for the thesis alone, since it returns writing to the familiar, everyday act of communicating with other people about real issues.

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DECIPHERING THE CONVERSATION

We suggest, then, that when assigned a reading, you imagine the author not as sitting alone in an empty room hunched over a desk or staring at a screen but as sitting in a crowded coffee shop talking to and engaging with others who are making claims. In other words, imagine an ongoing, multisided conversation in which all participants (including the author) are trying to persuade others to agree or at least to take their positions seriously.

The trick in reading for the conversation is to figure out what views the author is responding to and what the author’s own argument is —or, to put it in the terms used in this book, to determine the “they say” and how the author responds to it. One of the challenges in reading for the “they say” and “I say” can be figuring out which is which, since it may not be obvious when writers are summarizing others and when they are speaking for themselves. Readers need to be alert for any changes in voice that a writer might make, since instead of using explicit road- mapping phrases like “although many believe,” authors may simply summarize the view that they want to engage with and indicate only subtly that it is not their own.

Consider the opening to an article by David Zinczenko:

If ever there were a newspaper headline custom-made for Jay Leno’s monologue, this was it. Kids taking on McDonald’s this week, suing the company for making them fat. Isn’t that like middle-aged men suing Porsche for making them get speeding tickets? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

I tend to sympathize with these portly fast-food patrons, though. Maybe that’s because I used to be one of them.

DAVID ZINCZENKO , “Don’t Blame the Eater”

Whenever we teach this passage, some students inevitably assume that Zinczenko must be espousing the view expressed in his first paragraph:

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that suing McDonald’s is ridiculous. When their reading is challenged by their classmates, these students point to the page and reply, “Look. It’s right here on the page. This is what Zinczenko wrote. These are his exact words.” The assumption these students are making is that if something appears on the page, the author must endorse it. In fact, however, we ventriloquize views that we don’t believe in, and may in fact passionately disagree with, all the time. The central clues that Zinczenko disagrees with the view expressed in his opening paragraph come in the second paragraph, when he finally offers a first-person declaration and uses a contrastive transition, “though,” thereby resolving any questions about where he stands.

See Chapter 6 for more discussion of naysayers.

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WHEN THE “THEY SAY” IS UNSTATED

Another challenge can be identifying the “they say” when it is not explicitly identified. Whereas Zinczenko offers an up-front summary of the view he is responding to, other writers assume that their readers are so familiar with these views that they need not name or summarize them. In such cases, you the reader have to reconstruct the unstated “they say” that is motivating the text through a process of inference.

See, for instance, if you can reconstruct the position that Tamara Draut is challenging in the opening paragraph of her essay “The Growing College Gap”:

“The first in her family to graduate from college.” How many times have we heard that phrase, or one like it, used to describe a successful American with a modest background? In today’s United States, a four- year degree has become the all-but-official ticket to middle-class security. But if your parents don’t have much money or higher education in their own right, the road to college—and beyond—looks increasingly treacherous. Despite a sharp increase in the proportion of high school graduates going on to some form of postsecondary education, socio-economic status continues to exert a powerful influence on college admission and completion; in fact, gaps in enrollment by class and race, after declining in the 1960s and 1970s, are once again as wide as they were thirty years ago, and getting wider, even as college has become far more crucial to lifetime fortunes.

TAMARA DRAUT , “The Growing College Gap”

You might think that the “they say” here is embedded in the third sentence: they say (or we all think) that a four-year degree is “the all-but- official ticket to middle-class security,” and you might assume that Draut will go on to disagree.

If you read the passage this way, however, you would be mistaken. Draut is not questioning whether a college degree has become the “ticket

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to middle-class security” but whether most Americans can obtain that ticket, whether college is within the financial reach of most American families. You may have been thrown off by the “but” following the statement that college has become a prerequisite for middle-class security. However, unlike the “though” in Zinczenko’s opening, this “but” does not signal that Draut will be disagreeing with the view she has just summarized, a view that in fact she takes as a given. What Draut disagrees with is that this ticket to middle-class security is still readily available to the middle and working classes.

Were one to imagine Draut in a room talking with others with strong views on this topic, one would need to picture her challenging not those who think college is a ticket to financial security (something she agrees with and takes for granted) but those who think the doors of college are open to anyone willing to put forth the effort to walk through them. The view that Draut is challenging, then, is not summarized in her opening. Instead, she assumes that readers are already so familiar with this view that it need not be stated.

Draut’s example suggests that in texts where the central “they say” is not immediately identified, you have to construct it yourself based on the clues the text provides. You have to start by locating the writer’s thesis and then imagine some of the arguments that might be made against it. What would it look like to disagree with this view? In Draut’s case, it is relatively easy to construct a counterargument: it is the familiar faith in the American Dream of equal opportunity when it comes to access to college. Figuring out the counterargument not only reveals what motivated Draut as a writer but also helps you respond to her essay as an active, critical reader. Constructing this counterargument can also help you recognize how Draut challenges your own views, questioning opinions that you previously took for granted.

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WHEN THE “THEY SAY” IS ABOUT SOMETHING “NOBODY HAS TALKED ABOUT”

Another challenge in reading for the conversation is that writers sometimes build their arguments by responding to a lack of discussion. These writers build their case not by playing off views that can be identified (like faith in the American Dream or the idea that we are responsible for our body weight) but by pointing to something others have overlooked. As the writing theorists John M. Swales and Christine B. Feak point out, one effective way to “create a research space” and “establish a niche” in the academic world is “by indicating a gap in . . . previous research.” Much research in the sciences and humanities takes this “Nobody has noticed X” form.

In such cases, the writer may be responding to scientists, for example, who have overlooked an obscure plant that offers insights into global warming or to literary critics who have been so busy focusing on the lead character in a play that they have overlooked something important about the minor characters.

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READING PARTICULARLY CHALLENGING TEXTS

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out the views that writers are responding to, not because these writers do not identify those views but because their language and the concepts they are dealing with are particularly challenging. Consider, for instance, the first two sentences of Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , a book by the feminist philosopher and literary theorist Judith Butler, thought by many to be a particularly difficult academic writer:

Contemporary feminist debates over the meaning of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism. Perhaps trouble need not carry such a negative valence.

JUDITH BUTLER , Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

There are many reasons readers may stumble over this relatively short passage, not the least of which is that Butler does not explicitly indicate where her own view begins and the view she is responding to ends. Unlike Zinczenko, Butler does not use the first-person “I” or a phrase such as “in my own view” to show that the position in the second sentence is her own. Nor does Butler offer a clear transition such as “but” or “however” at the start of the second sentence to indicate, as Zinczenko does with “though,” that in the second sentence she is questioning the argument she has summarized in the first. And finally, like many academic writers, Butler uses abstract, challenging words that many readers may need to look up, like “indeterminacy” (the quality of being impossible to define or pin down), “culminate” (finally result in), and “negative valence” (a term borrowed from chemistry, roughly denoting “negative significance” or “meaning”). For all these reasons, we can imagine many readers feeling intimidated before they reach the third sentence of Butler’s book.

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But readers who break down this passage into its essential parts will find that it is actually a lucid piece of writing that conforms to the classic “they say / I say” pattern. Though it can be difficult to spot the clashing arguments in the two sentences, close analysis reveals that the first sentence offers a way of looking at a certain type of “trouble” in the realm of feminist politics that is being challenged in the second.

To understand difficult passages of this kind, you need to translate them into your own words—to build a bridge, in effect, between the passage’s unfamiliar terms and ones more familiar to you. Building such a bridge should help you connect what you already know to what the author is saying—and will then help you move from reading to writing, providing you with some of the language you will need to summarize the text. One major challenge in translating the author’s words into your own, however, is to stay true to what the author is actually saying, avoiding what we call “the closest cliché syndrome,” in which one mistakes a commonplace idea for an author’s more complex one (mistaking Butler’s critique of the concept of “woman,” for instance, for the common idea that women must have equal rights). The work of complex writers like Butler, who frequently challenge conventional thinking, cannot always be collapsed into the types of ideas most of us are already familiar with. Therefore, when you translate, do not try to fit the ideas of such writers into your preexisting beliefs, but instead allow your own views to be challenged. In building a bridge to the writers you read, it is often necessary to meet those writers more than halfway.

For more on translating, see Chapter 10 .

For more on the closest cliché syndrome, see Chapter 2 .

So what, then, does Butler’s opening say? Translating Butler’s words into terms that are easier to understand, we can see that the first sentence

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says that for many feminists today, “the indeterminacy of gender”—the inability to define the essence of sexual identity—spells the end of feminism; that for many feminists the inability to define “gender,” presumably the building block of the feminist movement, means serious “trouble” for feminist politics. In contrast, the second sentence suggests that this same “trouble” need not be thought of in such “negative” terms, that the inability to define femininity, or “gender trouble” as Butler calls it in her book’s title, may not be such a bad thing—and, as she goes on to argue in the pages that follow, may even be something that feminist activists can profit from. In other words, Butler suggests, highlighting uncertainties about masculinity and femininity can be a powerful feminist tool.

Pulling all these inferences together, then, the opening sentences can be translated as follows: “While many contemporary feminists believe that uncertainty about what it means to be a woman will undermine feminist politics, I, Judith Butler, believe that this uncertainty can actually help strengthen feminist politics.” Translating Butler’s point into our own book’s basic move: “They say that if we cannot define ‘woman,’ feminism is in big trouble. But I say that this type of trouble is precisely what feminism needs.” Despite its difficulty, then, we hope you agree that this initially intimidating passage does make sense if you stay with it.

We hope it is clear that critical reading is a two-way street. It is just as much about being open to the way that writers can challenge you, maybe even transform you, as it is about questioning those writers. And if you translate a writer’s argument into your own words as you read, you should allow the text to take you outside the ideas that you already hold and to introduce you to new terms and concepts. Even if you end up disagreeing with an author, you first have to show that you have really listened to what is being said, have fully grasped the arguments, and can accurately summarize those arguments. Without such deep, attentive listening, any critique you make will be superficial and decidedly uncritical . It will be a critique that says more about you than about the writer or idea you’re supposedly responding to.

In this chapter we have tried to show that reading for the conversation means looking not just for the thesis of a text in isolation but for the view or views that motivate that thesis—the “they say.” We

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have also tried to show that reading for the conversation means being alert for the different strategies writers use to engage the view(s) that are motivating them, since not all writers engage other perspectives in the same way. Some writers explicitly identify and summarize a view they are responding to at the outset of their text and then return to it frequently as their text unfolds. Some refer only obliquely to a view that is motivating them, assuming that readers will be able to reconstruct that view on their own. Other writers may not explicitly distinguish their own view from the views they are questioning in ways that all of us find clear, leaving some readers to wonder whether a given view is the writer’s own or one that is being challenged. And some writers push off against the “they say” that is motivating them in a challenging academic language that requires readers to translate what they are saying into more accessible, everyday terms. In sum, then, though most persuasive writers do follow a conversational “they say / I say” pattern, they do so in a great variety of ways. What this means for readers is that they need to be armed with various strategies for detecting the conversations in what they read, even when those conversations are not self-evident.

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Exercises

1. Read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” (pp. 347–60 ). Use the strategies described in this chapter to examine the conversation at the heart of her essay. Write a paragraph explaining what is motivating Alexander. What views of the US criminal justice system—and American culture—does Alexander think need correcting?

2. Annotate the concluding section of Michelle Alexander’s essay, found on pages 347–60 . Write “TS” in the margins where you see Alexander summarizing a “they say.” Write “IS” in the margins where you see her asserting her own “I say” position. Circle the voice markers you see in the text.

3. Read over a draft of your own writing, and choose an important text you rely on in it. Reread that text, and then do the following:

a. Ask yourself, “What view is motivating the author of this text?” Highlight where you see the writer naming or hinting at this motivating viewpoint.

b. Examine how you use the text to motivate your own argument. Have you presented its argument thoroughly and accurately? Have you aligned the text clearly with your own “I say” position, showing whether it supports your position, challenges it, or some combination of both? If not, revise how you frame, summarize, or interpret this source accordingly.

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Endnotes

Jay Leno: Comedian and former host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. Return to reference Jay Leno

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FIFTEEN

“BUT AS SEVERAL SOURCES SUGGEST”

Research as Conversation

* * *

SO, YOU’VE BEEN ASKED to write a research essay. What exactly does that mean? What is your instructor asking you to do?

The best answer to these questions, of course, will always come from your instructors and from any assignment prompt or prompts that they may provide. Although most instructors will want a traditional paper or essay, some will want a webpage, podcast, or a poster that includes a visual component and may even be produced collaboratively with your classmates. Yet other instructors will urge you to produce what is often referred to as a “literature review,” in which you summarize a variety of sources on a topic (“literature,” in this case, referring not to poems and novels but to published commentary, such as the literature on the French Revolution). Chances are, however, if you’ve been assigned this book, your instructor will want whatever final project you produce to follow our “they say / I say” model. In our opinion, even the best literature reviews are not just disconnected summaries of various sources but coherent, unified documents that highlight the connections among these sources, framing—and very often entering—the conversation among them. As a result, though we speak throughout this chapter about “the research essay,” we hope you’ll be able to translate what we say about the conversational pattern at the heart of such essays to any alternative

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versions of the genre you may be producing. Regardless of what form it takes, the research essay, as we conceive it, is always about entering into conversation with others.

This might mean rethinking some common assumptions. In high school, you may have been asked to write research essays that involve reading various sources on a topic, learning as much as you could about it, and then reporting on what you learned in an essay or oral report. As a result, you may have formed the impression that the research essay is a kind of “data dump,” as it is often called, in which you gather a lot of data or information and then dump it into some prescribed number of pages. College-level research, however, as compositionist Joseph Bizup points out, generally means doing something with the information you gather, which for us above all means using it to take a stance in response to other researchers. “Sources,” in this model, are not merely storehouses of information that you cite, usually to support a thesis, but conversationalists like you who hold views that need to be challenged, agreed with, or some combination of both (for more on these three ways of responding, see Chapter 4 ). For this reason, we believe that the best research essays rely on the same “they say / I say” format that we’ve been describing for academic writing in general.

That being said, it does not follow that the college research essay and your standard college writing assignment are one and the same. As we illustrate below, the research paper poses special challenges, one of which has to do with its greater length; in most courses, including first- year writing, it is usually the longest paper you’ll be asked to write. How do you fill all those pages? How do you develop an argument or thesis that you can focus on over your essay’s entire length? And what about all the sources (articles, book chapters, and so forth) you need to find? How do you find sources that are relevant and credible? How do you select sources from among the often overwhelming number available on the internet? And perhaps most pressing of all, how do you find sources that you can fit together or synthesize as part of a common dialogue or debate?

Given how daunting such challenges can be, we have broken them down into the following issues, to be addressed one at a time.

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DEVELOP A GOOD RESEARCH QUESTION

One big challenge of the research essay is navigating the sheer volume of sources that the internet makes available on almost any topic you want to write about. Students often come to our offices in a panic, having found many more sources than they can possibly read in a single semester. We reassure them, however, that they don’t have to read everything that’s been written on their topic, that they aren’t expected to become experts on the subject (though nobody will complain if they do). Their goal instead should be to use a certain number of sources to develop some fundamental skills of intellectual inquiry, the central one of which, as we said before, is to enter a debate or conversation, terms that, as we suggest in our preface, are deeply related.

But still, students will ask, which sources do we focus on? How do we reduce a huge pile of sources to a manageable number? Our answer is pretty much the same one most writing instructors will give you: by coming up with a good research question. A good research question will help you cut through the clutter by identifying which sources are most important to you and how you’ll approach them.

But what is a good research question?

In our view, you probably won’t be surprised to hear, a good research question identifies a controversy, posing an issue that people can agree or disagree about. In other words, a good research question does more than identify a general topic, about which everything—and, hence, ultimately nothing—can be said. Instead, it focuses on a debate or conversation that both narrows down your sources and helps you integrate or synthesize those sources under a common umbrella issue. Consider these examples:

◼ Why did X happen? Was it, as __________ argues, because of __________ or, as __________ contends, because of __________?

◼ What should we do about X? Should we __________, as __________ urges, or __________, as __________ argues?

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◼ Is X as harmful as __________ insists, or does it have benefits, as __________ claims?

◼ Is it true, as some assert, that __________ ?

◼ What is the relationship between __________ and __________? Is it X, as most assume, or could it be Y, as one source suggests?

In addition, good research questions often come by tapping into your own personal interests:

◼ Throughout the many years that I have taken an interest in __________, I, probably like most people, have assumed that __________. When I researched the topic for this essay, however, I was surprised to discover that __________.

◼ X argues __________. In my experience, however, __________.

Templates like these are tailor-made for sources, helping you put writers who may not even mention one another into a dialogue as part of a common conversation. But remember, a good research question is not something you can nail down once and for all at the start of your project. It is something you revise, refine, and in some cases radically alter as you work with your sources and better identify the unifying issue that you and they are concerned with.

To appreciate how important a research question is, consider how a hypothetical research paper that lacks one might open:

Robotics

Robotics is a very interesting topic in today’s society. According to author X, human beings since time immemorial have been making tools to help them accomplish tasks, and in many respects artificial intelligence and robotics are no different. Authors Y and Z suggest that many companies are exploring robotics for ways it can help them make more money, and robots are a central concern in a lot of

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literature, film, and popular culture. The classic novel Frankenstein is basically about a robot. One study by author Z shows that young people take a special interest in robots, but many older people do, too.

Authors have touched on many different aspects of robotics. For example . . .

The problem with research papers like this is that they are untethered to any specific question or issue and therefore tend to lack direction, coming across as dumping grounds or grab bags of information without any unifying thread. As a result, such papers often take the form of a series of “and then” statements with references to sources sprinkled in— not unlike the “list summaries” we complained about in Chapter 2 .

A controversial question or issue can remedy this type of unfocused writing. Compare, for example, the opening above with the opening to an essay reproduced in full at the end of this chapter by student writer Jason Smith:

In recent years, many commentators have suggested that robots will take over most jobs in the next fifty years and leave the human workforce out in the cold. Experts even argue that this takeover is already happening. This paper challenges this alarmist way of thinking. The evidence, I argue, suggests that robots are not eliminating human jobs. In fact, they are creating new jobs.

JASON SMITH , “Roe Butt, Cy Borg, Ann Droid: Hint, They’re Not Taking Your Job”

Note here that Smith addresses the same topic—robots—as the hypothetical writer above, but he narrows it to the question of whether robots are likely to replace human workers. As a result, everything in this opening, as in the remainder of Smith’s essay, is quietly devoted to this controversial question. Smith’s title alone indicates that he is not going to just talk about robots but instead enter a conversation over whether or not robots should be feared.

You might also note here that Smith does not state his research question explicitly. But some exemplary writers do, as the environmental journalist Ben Adler illustrates when, in his very title, he asks, “Banning

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Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast.” In this way, Adler reaches out directly to his readers and draws them in, helping them invest in the conversation he’s entering.

See pp. 487–92 .

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LET ONE GOOD SOURCE LEAD TO ANOTHER

Thus far we’ve suggested that a controversial question is central to academic research. But here you might wonder where a controversial question comes from. How do you find a question or issue that different people—you and your sources—disagree about? By looking in your sources themselves.

Sources frequently respond to other sources, either to confirm what those other sources are saying, contradict it, or some combination of both, as in:

◼ X is far too pessimistic in her prediction that __________ .

◼ Authors X and Y focus on the wrong issue. The issue is not __________ but __________.

◼ I agree with X in her critique of the view that __________, but __________.

In such ways, sources are connected together in an intertextual network of conversation that the best researchers are always alert for. One major challenge of the research paper is to locate one of these conversations in your sources and then frame and enter that conversation.

This is no easy task. Nevertheless, you may be heartened to know that a single source alone can point you in the right direction. That is, just one effective source can provide you with a controversial issue or question that you can use in your own paper—as long as you appropriately credit the source, of course. If you’re interested in writing about the environmental or green movement, for instance, you wouldn’t have to go very far in Adler’s article alone to find such a controversy, since Adler starts identifying positions he agrees and disagrees with as early as his third paragraph. You could also track down some of these sources—which online writing often makes easy when it provides clickable links—and read them next. You might also want to search to see if any of the sources Adler mentions extended the conversation by

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responding to Adler after his article was published, perhaps by using the Cited By function, which we discuss below (p. 215 ).

Using one source in this way to find other sources actually has a name. It’s called “citation chaining” (or “reference mining”) and involves following the trail of a conversation or debate from one source to another, in much the same way as you might follow a trail of bread crumbs. To start such a chain, you might ask questions like these: “In the material I have read, whom are the authors in dialogue with? Who are their ‘they says’? What other sources are mentioned in this material that I might follow up on? Are there other texts these sources refer to that could be useful to me?”

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BEWARE OF CONFIRMATION BIAS

Before you start searching for sources, though, it is important to understand what you’re searching for—and not searching for. You’re not just looking for sources that support your own viewpoint. Sure, you’ll need some, or even many, sources that support your beliefs. But if you look only for the sources that you agree with, you will miss one of the central points of research—and of education itself—which is to get outside yourself and learn from different perspectives. Put another way, you could fall prey to so-called confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out and emphasize whatever confirms your preexisting beliefs and to ignore complicating and contradictory evidence.

Tips for Avoiding Confirmation Bias

Try searching journal databases (like JSTOR for the humanities or EBSCO for the sciences) instead of relying solely on the internet search engine you usually use. This is an important step, because the most commonly used search engines prioritize results based on what they have learned about you from previous searches and are thus prone to reinforcing what you already believe. For this reason, when you do use your favorite search engine, try scrolling down in the list of entries that come up rather than relying solely on the first one or two that appear. Seek out sources with a variety of perspectives. Do all your sources agree or toe the same general line? Do they come from the same websites, journals, or group of authors? If you have trouble finding opposing points of view, try returning to the sources you agree with to see if they mention authors they differ from. Become your own naysayer. Ask yourself, “If I had to challenge or critique my own argument, what would I say? What is the strongest objection that could be made against my position?” But above all else, be sure to treat other perspectives with an open mind. Play the “believing game,” as we discuss in Chapter 2 , in which

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you try to understand what they are saying on their own terms before rushing to judgment.

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APPRECIATE SCHOLARLY SOURCES

Some students might shy away from scholarly sources since they are usually a harder read than their nonscholarly counterparts. But such sources have many benefits, not least of which that they make chaining or tracking conversations relatively easy. Unlike most popular and journalistic sources, academic sources provide all the citation information you need to track down any source or sources that have been referred to. That is, scholarly sources are scholarly precisely because they draw so heavily on other sources and include key elements like works-cited pages, references, or bibliographies that tell you exactly where those other sources can be found.

Our goal here, however, is not to cover all the ins-and-outs of scholarly documentation (MLA and APA style, endnotes, footnotes, parenthetical notes, works-cited lists, and so forth). Nor is our goal to explain how these distinctive documentation features of academic writing differ from one discipline to another. There are many excellent writers’ handbooks and websites out there that provide this type of intricate instruction. And yet our discussion of research would be incomplete if it didn’t underscore how helpful it is that scholarly writers tell you exactly which sources they are responding to in any particular passage and that they end their publications with all the documentation information you need to track these sources down.

See Appendix, “Citing What ‘They Say.’”

In this way, scholarly, academic writers (like you!) are remarkably transparent, taking pains to identify their sources in ways that popular, journalistic, and literary writers do not. So, for instance, when Michelle Alexander, in the excerpt included in this book from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness , cites studies, she includes note numbers that direct readers to the precise studies she’s

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referring to. One of her sentences on page 356 , for instance, runs as follows:

Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates.9

To locate these studies, all you need to do is flip to the end of Alexander’s text and look for endnote 9, which cites several reports, such as the US Department of Health and Human Services and the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. So, for example, if you were examining illegal drug use in your community compared to national averages, you could turn to the sources cited by Alexander for relevant data. Through devices like these, scholarly writers are remarkably transparent, inviting any reader to independently assess the conversation that they are engaged in.

But looking inside a scholarly source is not the only way to piece together or “chain” a debate or conversation. Because it is unlikely that any one scholarly source will be the last word in a published conversation, you might want to find out if any other sources have responded to your source, something you can do by using the handy Cited By or Cited Reference functions provided by Google Scholar , and journal repositories like JSTOR or EBSCO . For example, when we keyed in “Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow ” into Google Scholar , here’s what we got:

Three search results are shown. The first is titled An Analysis of Michelle Alexanders The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and is from TaylorFrancis. The second is titled The new jim crow and is from HeinOnline, and the third result

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is titled The war on drugs and the New Jim Crow and is from reimaginerpe.org

Librarians are usually more than happy to help you use this function. But the upshot is that, the number to the right of “Cited by” tells you that Alexander’s book has inspired a tremendous amount of discussion, having been cited in no less than 15,171 other publications—far too many sources for you to possibly sort through. But no need to despair. By clicking on the “Cited by” link itself, you can do a more focused search by checking the box, “Search within citing articles,” and then entering into the new search bar keywords tailored to your particular interests, as in: “presidential election, voter suppression, Black Lives Matter, voter identification laws.” When we keyed in these more precise terms, we were able to reduce our list of 15,000+ publications to 2,910 results. And when we sorted by date, selecting, for example, only articles published “Since 2023,” we further reduced that number to an even more manageable 294 that can be scanned for relevant titles.

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EVALUATE YOUR SOURCES

Whether a source converges around a common question or issue is only one consideration when evaluating a source. Another factor is whether a source is reliable or not, which is often difficult to determine. Even as the internet greatly expands the amount of knowledge available to us, it is notoriously susceptible to misinformation and propaganda that look like objective fact. In their research article, “Lateral Reading: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information,” Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew of the Stanford History Education Group, found that even professional historians accustomed to online searches “often fell victim to easily manipulated features of websites such as official-looking logos and domain names.”

So even as the internet has made academic research easier in many ways, it makes it hard to tell if what you are looking at is or isn’t reliable. How are you to sort out one type of text from the other? How can you tell whether a source you’re looking at has been discredited? One common answer is to restrict your searches to a type of scholarly writing we discussed earlier: the type that appears in academic journals and university presses that rely on the peer-review process of only publishing submissions that have been approved by other expert scholars.

Despite its merits, however, this approach excludes such indispensable venues as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal , and general interest magazines like Harper’s and the Atlantic , not to mention many popular books and most of what appears on the internet. Limiting yourself only to peer-reviewed sources is especially difficult when writing about current events and contemporary issues, which tend to be the purview of news periodicals.

For this reason, you might want to know about a second approach for determining whether a source is credible: the strategy that Wineburg and McGrew recommend of “reading laterally,” which involves cross- checking all sources. Wineburg and McGrew suggest that in doing online research, we imitate professional fact-checkers, who tend to be more adept than even experienced academics at evaluating web sources. While

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most researchers, according to Wineburg and McGrew, “read vertically, staying within a website to evaluate its reliability,” fact-checkers “read laterally,” looking not just at what the source itself says but at what other sources say about it, too. In contrast to vertical readers, these savvy researchers are able to more accurately determine whether any group sponsors the website and who might have a financial stake in its claims. Fact-checkers are also able to more accurately assess whether a website has a bias that needs to be taken into account and whether it promotes suspicious information.

Tips for Researching Like a Fact-Checker

Open a browser tab and window and type in the website’s name along with key terms like “funding,” “credibility,” and “bias.” Hit Search and see what comes up. Go to the Wikipedia pages for the authors or website you’re investigating, and consider following up on the links at the bottom of the page under “References,” “Notes and References,” and “Internal Links.” Cross-check any claims presented by the source that strike you as improbable. In other words, when you come across claims that sound suspect, try investigating further to see if the claim is supported or refuted by other sources. That one source treats as factual what another source treats as questionable can, after all, be an excellent starting point for a paper. And again, if you’re using a popular search engine, be sure not to rely exclusively on the first two or three results that come up but to scroll down to the lower items. Remember that the results given in nonscholarly search engines are based on your previous searches and are designed to get clicks.

If we could add anything to Wineburg and McGrew’s suggestions here, it would be to not underestimate how interesting in itself reading laterally like this can be. You may just find that investigating whether a given source is reliable is so fascinating that you just have to make it the central question that your research paper addresses, as in:

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◼ While many observers seem to find website X trustworthy, others are suspicious of X because of __________. I, however, am of two minds about this site and argue that we need to use this website with great caution.

◼ X challenges the reliability of Blog Y on the grounds that __________. My own view is __________.

Templates like these can form the basis of a dynamite research paper. After all, throughout this chapter we have insisted that strong research writing requires a good controversial question, and it is hard to think of a controversial question that is better and more fundamental than whether the sources we rely on can be trusted.

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DON’T LET ALL THOSE VOICES DERAIL YOU

Avoiding tangents is important in any piece of writing. As we explained in Chapter 9 , regardless of the nature of the assignment, you need to stay focused throughout the entire length of your paper.

And yet, as we suggested at the start of this chapter, staying focused throughout a research paper can be especially challenging. This is not just because the research paper is relatively long but also because it requires you to synthesize a large number of sources that rarely come prepackaged in a ready-made conversation. In some cases, the sources you collect will not directly mention or address the others, and most will have an agenda that differs from your own. As a result, it can be difficult to reduce all your sources to a common conversation or issue and all too easy to let them throw you off track.

To see how one student manages to stay focused on his central research question over the full course of his research paper, let’s return to the essay by student writer Jason Smith (pp. 224–33 ). As we noted earlier, Smith does an excellent job stating his central question—whether or not robots threaten to eliminate human jobs—at the start of his essay and even in his title. What we now want to note is that he does an equally good job staying focused on this issue while piloting through numerous sources.

On page 227 , for instance, Smith opens one of his paragraphs with the following:

A second alarming view of robots taking home the paycheck comes from . . . McKinsey Quarterly . . . .

This topic sentence, which introduces a new article, may look unremarkably simple. Nevertheless, this sentence does something that is actually quite difficult: it puts this new article in dialogue not only with the previous article that Smith had just addressed but also with the controversial question that Smith established in his opening paragraph a full three pages earlier. How can we tell that this sentence makes all

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these connections? In part because it relies on the same key terms, or their synonyms and antonyms, that Smith has already established in his preceding pages: terms like “robots,” “alarmist,” “fear,” “taking over,” “paycheck,” “work,” “employments,” “workforce,” and “jobs.” Even the seemingly inconsequential word “second” makes connections, suggesting a parallel between this “second” article and the previous one that Smith addressed, suggesting that both adopt an “alarming view of robots taking home the paycheck.” If you need help with such moves, you might want to do the exercises below, which are designed to help.

In this chapter, we’ve given you, we hope, some useful tips on how to write the college research essay. But as the chapter draws to a conclusion, we’d like to step back from this how-to discussion and say a word about what such research, as we see it, is essentially all about. For some students, the research essay may seem to be just one more pointless hoop that some authority is asking them to jump through. But for us, it’s the highest expression of the conversational approach to writing that we discuss in this book, an opportunity to take off the training wheels and contribute to a conversation that instead of being preestablished by your instructor, you independently find and frame yourself. In this way, the academic research essay is far from merely academic in the negative sense. It is a chance to practice a set of skills that you can use the rest of your life: going out into the community, finding a space for yourself, and making a contribution of your own.

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Exercises

1. Read Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s 2020 essay, “What I Know about the Ocean” on pp. 495–504 in light of the techniques addressed in this chapter. Working with a partner or a small group, answer the following questions:

a. What do you take Johnson’s central research question to be? What debate does that question frame or set up? Choose one of the templates from this chapter that corresponds with Johnson’s question and then state that question using the template’s language.

b. Look at the sources Johnson includes in her essay, which are hyperlinked, and analyze what Johnson does with each one. Does the source support or challenge her position? And how do you know? How does Johnson synthesize that source into her essay’s central debate question?

c. Choose one of the sources Johnson includes and read it “laterally,” as the term is used in this chapter, to evaluate its credibility. “Fact-check” the source to determine its commitments and biases. In the end, do you think the source is reliable? Why or why not?

d. Use Google Scholar to determine who has cited Johnson’s essay and what conversations or debates her essay is part of. How might you enter this conversation in a research essay of your own?

2. Take a section of Johnson’s essay and annotate it in the same ways that we annotated Jason Smith’s essay (pp. 224–33 ). Identify as many “moves that matter” as you can, noting, for instance, how Johnson

entertains counterarguments sets up a debate or conversation synthesizes sources to a common issue

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uses transition terms uses pointing words uses voice markers repeats herself with a difference includes metacommentary develops a constellation of key terms and phrases frames, or “sandwiches,” quotations

3. To get going on a research essay, try the following steps:

Decide on a general topic for your essay, and then, working with a classmate, use the templates on page 208 to come up with at least two different research questions that address that topic. Analyze each question with your classmate, weighing its strengths and weaknesses until you decide which question you prefer.

Then, having decided on a question, continue working with your partner to develop a list of eight to ten key terms and phrases that you can use both in your paper itself and to search for sources on the internet.

After you’ve gathered your sources and written a draft of your paper, have a classmate read your draft to determine if it exhibits any of the confirmation bias discussed in this chapter. Do you use sources only to support your position, or do you bring in a variety of perspectives, including those of naysayers? Do other perspectives come to mind that could—or should—also be included in your text? Work together to either track down sources that represent any excluded perspectives or come up with language of your own to represent them, as in, “It is sometimes said that . . .”

Finally, have your partner evaluate how well you integrate or synthesize your sources. Are all your sources aligned with one another and with your essay’s central debate question or issue? Can you come up with strategies to heighten the alignment and eliminate any misalignment?

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Roe Butt, Cy Borg, Ann Droid: Hint, They’re Not Taking Your Job

Uses a humorous title to hint at his position.

JASON SMITH

* * *

JASON SMITH wrote this essay for his first-year writing course at Atlantic Cape Community College, where he is pursuing a general studies associate’s degree in science. This essay was nominated for the Norton Writer’s Prize and is documented in MLA style.

________

IN RECENT YEARS , many commentators have suggested that robots will take over most jobs in the next fifty years and leave the human workforce out in the cold. Experts even argue that this takeover is already happening. This paper challenges this alarmist way of thinking. The evidence, I argue, suggests that robots are not eliminating human jobs.

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In fact, they are creating new jobs. Throughout history, such innovative tools didn’t end work but increased it.

Succinctly previews the “they say” and “I say.”

To be sure, in periods when innovations take hold, workers tend to fear their own dislocation. For example, as researcher James Lacey notes, during the industrialization of the French silk industry, “French weavers threw their wooden shoes (sabots) into textile machines to make them break down. (Thus the term sabotage.)” However, it is likely that those displaced workers found other jobs—as auto mechanics, gas station attendants, and car makers, for example—just as those who worked in carriage houses and were replaced by the automobile did. Changes happen in every industry over time: the airplane replaced the train, for example, and lightbulbs replaced the need for the candlemaker, but in every era, many displaced workers found new professions. A well-defined pattern is beginning to emerge here—all technological advances bring with them new opportunities.

Makes a concession to the “they say” that actually bolsters his “I say.”

Predictions about the downfall of the workforce due to technological innovation have been happening for nearly a century. Jeff Borland notes that “in the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes envisaged that innovations such as electricity would produce a world where people spent most of their time on leisure.” Later, during the 1930s, as Richard Freeman notes, “US President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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blamed unemployment on his country’s failure to employ the surplus labor created by the efficiency of its industrial processes.” He also points out that “in the early 1960s, widespread fears that automation was eliminating thousands of jobs per week led the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to examine the link between productivity growth and employment.” Despite those worries and failed projections, studies through the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s (which includes the advent of computers) proclaimed the demise of work.

Summarizes some “they say” sources from the past.

Two more recent studies demonstrate contemporary arguments for the impact robots will have on our future. Race against the Machine , a book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, focuses on the results of their study of the recovery from the Great Recession of 2008. In his TED talk based on the book, McAfee uses a chart that presents a dramatic correlation between productivity and the labor force and notes that his research with coauthor Brynjolfsson reveals that from 2008 through 2011, while the US working- age population increased, the actual number of available jobs declined, even though the economy was recovering during that time frame and productivity actually increased. Their inevitable conclusion, according to McAfee, is that robots are already replacing the human workforce.

Previews the first of two “they say” sources to be addressed.

However, the data gathered in Race against the Machine is shortsighted. Had the study continued only three more

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years, the authors would have seen the graph’s job curve return to normal values. After any recession, the rebound in employment has always taken longer than the rebound in the GDP, for several reasons. Manufacturers reduce their inventories, which makes it look like fewer people are producing more. In a recession, the remaining workers always find ways to pick up the slack left behind by laid-off workers, often through the use of overtime, which is cheaper in the short run than hiring new workers or rehiring those laid off. Once again, the greater productivity stems from existing workers, not automation. The most recent recession, moreover, produced some unusual employment data. Part-time workers are not counted as full-time employees, yet their work output is included in the overall productivity numbers.

Answers this first “they say,” integrating sources.

A second alarming view of robots taking home the paycheck comes from Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi in a McKinsey Quarterly article titled “Where Machines Could Replace Humans—and Where They Can’t.” They write: “Last year, we showed that currently demonstrated technologies could automate 45 percent of the activities people are paid to perform and that about 60 percent of all occupations could see 30 percent or more of their constituent activities automated, again with technologies available today.” The problem with this report is its use of probability for its logic: just because a thing can be done does not mean it will be done. As Gillian B. White points out in her reporting on a study by two economists, “The authors note that just because an industry can automate doesn’t mean that it will.” Costs in every case must be examined, as well as return on investment. Theoretical predictions only go so far; there is a real-world cost/benefit analysis that must be applied to each of these

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possible robot advancements. In addition, Chui, Manyika, and Miremadi overlook arguments that it will require more humans to maintain and build robots than they replace (Metz).

Summarizes and answers the second “they say,” integrating yet more sources.

In fact, convincing, well-researched papers that examine data over a much greater time span find there is no evidence of a robot takeover. These studies indicate that the opposite is true. For example, Jeff Borland and Michael Coelli, two Australian researchers, published an exhaustive study in 2017 that found that

(i) the total amount of work available [in Australia] has not decreased following the introduction of computer- based technologies; and (ii) the pace of structural change and job turnover in the labor market has not accelerated with the increasing application of computer-based technologies. A review of recent studies that claim computer-based technologies may be about to cause widespread job destruction establishes several major flaws with these predictions. (377)

Borland and Coelli found that fears about job losses have happened often throughout history: “Our suggested explanation for why techno-phobia has such a grip on popular imagination is a human bias to believe that ‘we live in special times’ ” (377). In other words, we think that our particular era is unique—that now is truly the time that robots will take over our jobs—but such a scenario doesn’t come to pass.

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Continues to answer this second “they say,” integrating even more sources.

There are more practical reasons why robots will not replace humans in many fields, especially those areas of work that require direct interaction with humans. In his Tech.Co article “5 Reasons Why Robots Will Never Fully Replace Humans,” Lanre Onibalusi notes that robots cannot “understand irrational thought,” cannot “understand context,” and “lack creative problem solving” abilities and that “people prefer to talk with a human.” Additionally, as Ryan Nakashima reports, behind almost every form of robotization is an army of technocrats. This army of workers is considered the “dirty little secret” behind the artificially intelligent robot. Whether it be the hundreds of programmers or the vast numbers of call-center operators required to carry the load, robots require human helpers. It seems that robots simply cannot understand context, and enormous numbers of analysts are required to try to reteach an automated system every time it fails to understand a request from a customer (Nakashima). In fact, according to a recent New York Times article, grocery retailers who have started using robots report that “the robots are good for their workers. They free up employees from mundane and sometimes injury-prone jobs like unloading delivery trucks to focus on more fulfilling tasks like helping customers” (Corkery). In this case, as in others, robots help increase productivity rather than replace humans.

Engages more sources in support of the “I say.”

Some of these alarmists argue that as robots become smarter, laws must be instituted to guard against a massive

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upheaval, or even elimination, of the human workforce. The problem with this preemptive approach is that no one can possibly imagine where or when those laws should exist or how to apply them. The normal course of events is to first have solid evidence that some event is “bad” and later proceed to legislate. For example, those who oppose self- driving cars, another kind of robot, call for governmental restrictions on them, but before such vehicles are on the road, there’s no reason to fear them. In fact, they require human help. Many have heard of the self-driving truck that hauled two thousand cases of beer 120 miles in Colorado without a driver at the wheel (Isaac). What was not revealed was that there was a full police escort for the entire route and that the vehicle was incapable of negotiating the on- and off-ramps. I will admit that during the writing of this paper, a self-driving-car fatality did occur when an Arizona woman was struck and killed by a driverless vehicle owned by Uber. Uber immediately suspended all driverless test vehicles in the United States and Canada, and the following week Nvidia suspended all tests with the same product (Sage). Perhaps here is an example of a worthy event triggering the possibility of new laws, but an overall ban on automation itself in the workforce seems hasty.

Addresses a final naysayer.

As Jeff Borland has astutely observed, “The tale of new technologies causing the death of work is the prophecy that keeps on giving.” It is sensational, alarmist, and grossly premature. I agree with those who believe society should not worry about robots taking away all the jobs. Most of the predictions for the future are countered by past facts. The reality is that all new technologies bring about new avenues of invention, experimentation, and work and that much of the new technology requires the intervention of humans. It

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is therefore unnecessary for governments to regulate robots to protect jobs.

Succinctly recaps the essay’s “I say” position.

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WORKS CITED

Borland, Jeff. “Why We Are Still Convinced Robots Will Take Our Jobs despite the Evidence.” The Conversation , 25 Nov. 2017, theconversation.com/why-we-are-still-c onvinced-robots-will-take-our-jobs-despite-the-evidenc e-87188 . Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Borland, Jeff, and Michael Coelli. “Are Robots Taking Our Jobs?” The Australian Economic Review , vol. 50, no. 4, 2017, pp. 377–97. Wiley Online Library , doi:10.1111/1467-8462.12245. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. Race against the Machine. Digital Frontier Press, 2011.

Chui, Michael, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi. “Where Machines Could Replace Humans—and Where They Can’t (Yet).” McKinsey Quarterly , July 2016, w ww.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/ our-insights/where-machines-could-replace-humans-an d-where-they-cant-yet . Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Corkery, Michael. “Should Robots Have a Face?” The New York Times , 26 Feb. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/02/ 26/business/robots-retail-jobs.html . Accessed 4 April 2018.

Freeman, Richard B. “Who Owns the Robots Rules the World.” IZA World of Labor , May 2015, wol.iza.org/articles/who-owns-the-robots-rules-the- world/long. Accessed 3 Apr. 2018.

Isaac, Mike. “Self-Driving Truck’s First Mission: A 120- Mile Beer Run.” The New York Times , 25 Oct. 2016, w ww.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/technology/self-driving-tr

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ucks-first-mission-a-beer-run.html . Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Lacey, James. “Re: Should Governments Limit Corporations’ Abilities to Replace Human Workers with Technology?” Quora , 1 Jan. 2017, www.quora.co m/Should-governments-limit-corporations-abilities-to-r eplace-human-workers-with-technology . Accessed 3 Apr. 2018.

McAfee, Andrew. “Race against the Machine.” YouTube , TedxBoston, 17 July 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v =QfMGyCk3XTw . Accessed 3 Apr. 2018.

Metz, Cade. “Robots Will Steal Our Jobs, but They’ll Give Us New Ones.” Wired , 24 Aug. 2015, wired.com/2015/ 08/robots-will-steal-jobs-theyll-give-us-new-ones . Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Nakashima, Ryan. “AI’s Dirty Little Secret: It’s Powered by People.” AP News , 5 Mar. 2018, apnews.com/1f58465e 55d643ea84e51713f35ad214 . Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Onibalusi, Lanre. “5 Reasons Why Robots Will Never Fully Replace Humans.” Tech.Co , 2 Aug. 2017, tech.co/robots-replace-humans-work-2017-08. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Sage, Alexandria, and Sonam Rai. “Nvidia Halts Self- Driving Tests in Wake of Uber Accident.” Reuters , 27 Mar. 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-selfdrivin g-nvidia/nvidia-halts-self-driving-tests-in-wake-of-uber -accident-idUSKBN1H32E0 . Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

White, Gillian B. “How Many Robots Does It Take to Replace a Human Job?” The Atlantic , 30 Mar. 2017, w ww.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/work-aut omation/521364 . Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

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SIXTEEN

“ON CLOSER EXAMINATION”

Entering Conversations about Literature

* * *

IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S NOVEL Things Fall Apart , Okonkwo, the main character, is a tragic hero.

So what? Who cares?

Why does this typical way of opening an essay on a literary work leave readers wondering, “Why are you telling me this?” Because, in our view, such statements leave it unclear who would say otherwise. Would anyone deny that the main character of Achebe’s novel is a tragic hero? Is there some other view of the subject that this writer is responding to? Since no such alternative interpretation is indicated, the reader thinks, “OK, Okonkwo is a tragic hero—as opposed to what?”

Now compare this opening with another possible one:

Several members of our class have argued that Okonkwo, the main character of Things Fall Apart , represents what we now call “toxic masculinity.” My own view, however, is that, while it is true that Okonkwo commits violent acts spurred by his need not to be seen as weak, he is ultimately a tragic hero—a deeply flawed but ultimately sympathetic figure.

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We hope you agree that the second version, which responds to what someone else says about Okonkwo, makes for more engaging writing than the first. Since the first version fails to present itself as a response to any alternative view of its subject, it comes at readers out of the blue, leaving them wondering why it needs to be said at all.

As we stress in this book, it is the views of others and our desire to respond to these views that gives our writing its underlying motivation and helps readers see why what we say matters, why others should care, and why we need to say it in the first place. In this chapter we suggest that this same principle applies to writing about literature. Literary critics, after all, don’t make assertions about literary works out of the blue. Rather, they contribute to discussions and debates about the meaning and significance of literary works, some of which may continue for years and even centuries.

Indeed, this commitment to discussion animates most literature courses, in which students discuss and debate assigned works in class before writing papers about them. The premise is that engaging with classmates and teachers enables us to make discoveries about the work that we might not arrive at in simply reading the work alone.

We suggest that you think of writing about literature as a natural extension of such in-class discussions, listening carefully to others and using what they say to set up and motivate what you have to say.

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START WITH WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

But in writing about literature, where do views to respond to—“they say”s—come from? Many sources. Published literary criticism is perhaps the most obvious:

◼ Critic X complains that author Y’s story is compromised by their __________ perspective. While there’s some truth to this critique, I argue that critic X overlooks __________ .

◼ According to critic A, novel X suggests __________. I agree, but would add that __________.

But the view that you respond to in writing about literature can be far closer to home than published literary criticism. As our opening example illustrates, it can be something said about the literary work by a classmate or teacher:

◼ Several members of our class have suggested that the final message of play X is __________. I agree up to a point, but I still think that __________.

Another tactic is to start with something you yourself thought about the work that on second thought you now want to revise:

◼ On first reading play Z, I thought it was an uncritical celebration of __________. After rereading the play and discussing it in class, however, I see that it is more critical of __________ than I originally thought.

You can even respond to something that hasn’t actually been said about the work but might hypothetically be said:

◼ It might be said that poem Y is chiefly about __________. But the problem with this reading, in my view, is __________.

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◼ Though religious readers might be tempted to analyze poem X as a parable about __________, a closer examination suggests that the poem is in fact __________.

Sometimes the “they say” that you respond to in writing about a literary work can be found in the work itself, as distinct from what some critic or other reader has said about the work. Much great literary criticism responds directly to the literary work, summarizing some aspect of the work’s form or content and then assessing it, in much the same way you can do in response to a persuasive essay:

◼ Ultimately, as I read it, The Scarlet Letter seems to say __________. I have trouble accepting this proposition, however, on the grounds that __________.

One of the more powerful ways of responding to a literary work is to address any contradictions or inconsistencies:

◼ At the beginning of the poem, we encounter the generalization, seemingly introducing the poem’s message, that “__________. ” But this statement is then contradicted by the suggestion made later in the poem that “__________. ” This opens up a significant inconsistency in the text: is it suggesting __________ or, on the contrary, __________?

◼ At several places in novel X, author Y leads us to understand that the story’s central point is that __________. Yet elsewhere the text suggests __________, indicating that Y may be ambivalent on this issue.

If you review the above templates, you’ll notice that each does what a good discussion, lecture, or essay does: it makes an argument about some aspect of a work that can be interpreted in various ways. Instead of just making a claim about the work in isolation—character X is a tragic hero; sonnet Y is about the loss of a loved one—these templates put one claim as a response to another, making clear what motivated the argument to begin with. They thus act as conversation starters that can invite or even provoke other readers to respond with their own interpretations and judgments.

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FIGURING OUT WHAT A LITERARY WORK “MEANS”

In order to enter conversations and debates about literature, you need to meet the time-honored challenge of being able to read and make sense of literary works, understanding and analyzing what the text says. On the one hand, like the types of persuasive essays we focus on throughout this book, literary works make arguments their authors want to convey, things they are for and against, ideas they want to endorse or condemn. On the other hand, discovering “the argument” of a literary work—what it’s “saying”—can be a special challenge because, unlike persuasive essays, literary works usually do not spell out their arguments explicitly. Though poets, novelists, and playwrights may have the same level of conviction as persuasive writers, rarely do they step out from behind the pages of their texts and say, “OK, folks, this is what it all means. What I’m trying to say in a nutshell is __________ . ” That is, since literary texts do not include an explicit thesis statement identifying their main point, it’s left up to us as readers to figure it out.

Because literary works tend to avoid such explicitness, their meanings often need to be teased out from the clues they provide: from the dialogue between characters, the plot, the imagery and symbolism, and the kind of language the author uses. In fact, it is this absence of overt argument that makes literature so endlessly debatable—and explains why scholars and critics argue so much about what literary works mean in ways similar to the classroom discussions that you have likely participated in as a student.

The Elusive Literary Author

Indeed, not even the use of the first-person “I” in a literary work is an indication that you have located the author’s own position or stance, as it usually is in an essay. When Kelly Coryell, for example, in her essay “All Words Matter” (pp. 689–98 ) writes, “I’ve never understood the popular saying ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will

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never hurt me,’” we can be confident that the “I” is Coryell herself and that the position she expresses is her own and informs everything else in her essay. But we cannot assume that the “I” who addresses us in a work of fiction or poetry is necessarily the author, for the person who “I” refers to is a fictional character—and one who may be unreliable and untrustworthy.

Take, for example, the first sentence of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado”:

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.

As soon becomes clear in the story, the “I” who speaks as the narrator here is not Poe himself but an insanely vengeful murderer whose words must be seen through to get at the point of Poe’s story.

Instead of a readily identifiable position, literary works often present the perspectives of a number of different characters and leave it to readers to determine which if any speaks for the author. Thus when we encounter the seemingly eloquent lines in Hamlet “To thine own self be true, . . . / And canst thou not be false to any man,” we can’t assume, as we might if we encountered this statement in an essay, that it represents the author’s own view. For these words are uttered by Polonius, a character whom Shakespeare presents as a tedious, cliché-spouting bore —not someone he leads us to trust. After all, part of Hamlet’s problem is that it’s not clear to him what being “true” to his own self would require him to do.

This elusive quality of literary texts helps explain why some of our students complain about the challenge of finding the “hidden meaning,” as they sometimes call it, let alone summarizing that meaning in the way assignments often require. Sure, some students say, they enjoy reading literature for pleasure. But analyzing literature in school for its “meaning” or “symbolism”—that’s another matter. Some even say that the requirement that they hunt for meanings and symbols robs literature of its fun.

In fact, as most students come to recognize, analyzing meanings, symbols, and other elements should enhance rather than stifle the pleasure we get from reading literature. But it can indeed be hard to

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figure out what literary works mean. How do we determine the point of a story or poem when the author, unlike an essayist like Coryell, does not tell us explicitly what they are trying to say? How do you go from a fictional event or poetic image (a woman pondering her wallpaper design, two roads that diverge in the woods) or from a dialogue between fictional characters (“You your best thing, Sethe. You are.”) to what these events, images, or lines of dialogue mean?

Look for Conflict in the Work

There is no simple recipe for figuring out what a literary work means, but one tactic that seems to help our own students is to look for the conflict or debate in the literary work itself and then ask what the text is leading us to think about that conflict. Asking these questions—what is the conflict in the work and which side, if any, should we favor?—will help you think about and formulate a position on what the work means. And since such claims are often ones that literary scholars argue about, thinking about the conflict in a literary work will often lead you to discussions and debates about the work that you can then respond to in your writing. Because literary authors don’t tell us explicitly what the text means, it’s always going to be arguable —and your task in writing about a literary work is to argue for what you think it means. Here are two templates to help get you started responding to other interpretations:

◼ It might be argued that in the clash between characters X and Y in play Z, the author wants us to favor character Y, since she is presented as the play’s heroine. I contend, however, that __________ .

◼ Several critics seem to assume that poem X endorses the values of discipline and rationality represented by the image of __________ over those of play and emotion represented by the image of __________. I agree, but with the following caveat: that the poem ultimately sees both values as equally important and even suggests that ideally they should complement one another.

This tactic of looking for the conflicts in literary works is part of a long tradition of critical thought that sees conflict as central to literature. In

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ancient Greece, Aristotle argued that conflict between characters or forces underlies the plots of tragic dramas such as Oedipus . Indeed, the ancient Greek word agon , which means antagonism, conflict, or debate, leaves its traces in the term “protagonist,” the hero or leading character of a narrative work who comes into conflict with other characters or with the fates. And Plato noted the pervasiveness of conflict in literature when he banished poets from his ideal community on the grounds that their works depict endless conflict and division.

This emphasis on the centrality of conflict in literature has been echoed by modern theorists like the New Critics of the 1940s and ’50s, who focused on such tensions and paradoxes as good and evil or innocence and experience—and more recently by poststructuralists and political theorists who see literature engaging in conflicts––both external and internal––related to gender, racial, and sexual identities. Writers today continue to recognize conflict as the engine of good storytelling. As the Hollywood screenwriter Robert McKee puts it, “Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.”

Building on this idea that conflict is central to literature, we suggest the following four questions to help you understand and formulate your own position on any literary work:

1. What is the central conflict? 2. Which side—if any—does the text seem to favor? 3. What’s your evidence? How might others interpret the evidence

differently? 4. What’s your opinion of the text?

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WHAT IS THE CENTRAL CONFLICT?

Conflicts tend to manifest themselves in different ways in different literary genres. In works that take a narrative or story form (novels, short stories, and plays), the central conflict will often be represented in an actual debate between characters. These debates between characters will often reflect larger questions and debates in the society or historical era in which they were written, over such issues as the responsibility of rulers, the consequences of capitalism and consumerism, or the struggle for gender equality. Sometimes these debates will be located within an individual character, appearing as a struggle in someone caught between conflicting or incompatible choices. Whatever form they may take, these debates can provide you with points of entry into the issues raised by the work, its historical context, and its author’s vision of the world.

One narrative work that lends itself to such an approach is Flannery O’Connor’s 1961 short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” The story presents a running debate between a mother and her son, Julian, about the civil rights movement for racial equality that had erupted in the American South at the time the story was written, with Julian defending the outlook of this movement and his mother defending the South’s traditional racial hierarchy. The story raises the debatable question of which character we should side with: Julian, his mother, both, or neither?

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WHICH SIDE—IF ANY—DOES THE TEXT SEEM TO FAVOR?

When we teach this story, most of our students first assume the story sides with Julian’s outlook, which to them as northern, urban college students in the twenty-first century seems the obviously enlightened position. Who, after all, could fail to see that the mother’s views are backward and racist? As our class discussions unfold, however, most students come to reject this view as a misreading, one based more on their own views than on what’s in the text. Sooner or later, someone points out that in several places Julian is presented in highly critical ways —and that his apparently progressive sympathy for racial integration rests on arid intellectual abstractions and a hypocritical lack of self- knowledge, in contrast with his mother’s heartfelt loyalty to her roots. Eventually another possible interpretation surfaces, that both characters suffer from a common malady: that they’re living in a mental bubble that keeps them from being able to see themselves as they really are.

The writing assignment we often give builds on this class discussion by offering students the following template for thinking about which character, if any, the text leads them to favor:

◼ Some might argue that when it comes to the conflict between Julian and his mother over __________, our sympathies should lie with __________. My own view is that __________.

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WHAT’S YOUR EVIDENCE?

In entering the types of discussions and debates modeled by the above template, how do you determine where your “sympathies should lie”? More generally, how do you arrive at and justify an interpretation of what a literary text says?

The answer lies in the evidence provided by the work: its images, dialogue, plot, historical references, tone, stylistic details, and so forth.

It is important to remember, however, that evidence is not set in stone. Students sometimes assume that there exists some fixed code that unlocks the meaning of literary works, symbols, images, and other evidence. A character dies? This must mean that he or she is being condemned. A stairway appears? A symbol for upward mobility. A garden? Must be something sexual.

But evidence itself is open to interpretation and thus to debate. The mother’s death in O’Connor’s story, for instance, could be seen as evidence that we are supposed to disapprove of her as someone whose racial views are regressive and on the way out. On the other hand, her death may instead be evidence that she is to be seen as a heroic martyr too good for this cruel, harsh world. What a character’s death means, then, depends on how that character is treated in the work, positively or negatively, which in turn may be subject to debate.

As we’ve repeatedly emphasized in this book, others will often disagree with you and may even use the same evidence you do to support interpretations that are contrary to your own. As with other objects of study, literary works are like the famous ambiguous drawing that can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit, depending how one views it.

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Depending on ones view of the illustration, the animal head may appear to be a duck facing left, with a long bill, or it may be a rabbit facing right, with long ears.

Since the same piece of evidence in a literary work will often support differing, even opposing interpretations, you need to argue for what you think the evidence shows—and to acknowledge that others may read that evidence differently.

In writing about literature, then, you need to show that the evidence you are citing supports your interpretation and to anticipate other alternative ones:

◼ Although some might read the metaphor of __________ in this poem as evidence that, for author X, modern technology undermines community traditions and values, I see it as __________.

To present evidence in such a “they say / I say” way, you need to be alert for how others may read the work differently than you—and even use this very same evidence in support of an opposing interpretation:

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◼ Some might claim that evidence X suggests __________, but I argue that, on the contrary, it suggests __________.

◼ I agree with my classmate __________ that the image of __________ in novel Y is evidence of childhood innocence that has been lost. Unlike __________, however, I think this loss of innocence is to be read not as a tragic event but as a necessary, even helpful, stage in human development.

Are Some Interpretations Simply Wrong?

No matter how flexible and open to debate evidence might be, not all interpretations we arrive at using that evidence are equally valid. And some interpretations are simply unsupported by that evidence. Let us illustrate.

As we noted earlier, some of our students first favored Julian over his mother. One student, let’s call her Jasmine, cited as evidence a passage early in the story in which Julian is compared to Saint Sebastian, a Christian martyr who is said to have exhibited exceptional faith under extreme suffering and persecution. As the mother stood preparing for Julian to take her to her weekly swimming class, Julian is described as standing “pinned to the door frame, waiting like Saint Sebastian for the arrows to begin piercing him.”

Thinking this passage proves that Julian is the more sympathetic character, Jasmine pointed to other evidence as well, including the following passage:

[Julian] was free of prejudice and unafraid to face facts. Most miraculous of all, instead of being blinded by love for [his mother] as she was for him, he had cut himself emotionally free of her and could see her with complete objectivity. He was not dominated by his mother.

Citing passages like this in her essay, Jasmine concluded: “Julian represents the future of society, a nonracist and an educated thinker.”

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After rereading the story, however, and hearing other students’ views, Jasmine came to realize that the passages she had cited—comparing Julian to a saint, suggesting that he is racially progressive, and that he is “free of” his mother and “objective” about her—were all intended ironically. Julian congratulates himself for being saint-like, free of prejudice, and objective, but the story ultimately implies that he deludes himself.

How did the supporters of the ironic reading convince Jasmine to revise her initial reading—to see it as wrong, unsupported by the evidence? First, they pointed to the glaring discrepancy between the situations and kinds of suffering endured by Julian and Saint Sebastian. Could anyone be serious, they asked, in comparing something as mundane as being forced to wait a few minutes to go to the YMCA to a martyr dying for his faith? No, they answered, and the jarring incongruity of the events being compared, they argued, suggests that Julian, far from saint-like, is presented in this passage as an impatient, ungrateful, undutiful son. In addition, students pointed out that the gap between Julian’s self-image as a progressive man of “complete objectivity” and “facts,” “free of [his mother],” and the blubbering young man crying “Mama, Mama!” with “guilt and sorrow” at the end of the story suggests that Julian’s righteous, high-minded image of himself is not to be taken at face value.

At this point you may be wondering, How can we say that some interpretations of literature must be ruled out as wrong ? Isn’t the great thing about interpreting literary works—in contrast to scientific texts— that there are no wrong answers? Are we saying that there is one “correct” way to read a literary work—the one way the work itself tells us we “should” read it?

No, we aren’t saying that there is only one way to read a literary work. If we believed there were, we would not be offering a method of literary analysis based on multiple interpretations and debate. But yes, acknowledging that literary interpretations are open to debate is not to say that a work can mean anything we want it to mean, as if all interpretations are equally good. In our view, and that of most literature teachers, some interpretations are better than others—more persuasively reasoned and better grounded in the evidence of the text.

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If we maintain that all interpretations are equally valid, we risk confusing the perspective of the work’s author with our own, as did the students who confused their own views on the civil rights movement of the 1960s with Flannery O’Connor’s. Such misreadings are reminiscent of what we call “the closest cliché syndrome,” where what’s summarized is not the view the author actually expresses but a familiar cliché—or, in O’Connor’s case, a certain social belief—that the writer believes and mistakenly assumes the author must too. The view that there are no wrong answers in literary interpretation encourages a kind of solipsism that erases the difference between us and others and transforms everything we encounter into a version of ourselves.

See p. 35 for more on the closest cliché syndrome.

As the literary theorist Robert Scholes puts it, reading, conceived “as a submission to the intentions of another is the first step” to understanding what a literary work is saying. For “if we do not postulate the existence of [an author] behind the verbal text,” we will “simply project our own subjective modes of thought and desire upon the text.” In other words, unless we do the best we can to get at what authors are saying, we will never truly recognize their ideas except as some version of our own. Scholes acknowledges that good reading often involves going beyond the author’s intention, pointing out contradictions and ideological blind spots, but he argues that we must recognize the author’s intention before we can try to see beyond it in these ways.

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WHAT’S YOUR OPINION OF THE TEXT?

In accord with the principle that we must try to understand the text on its own terms before responding to it, we have thus far in this chapter focused on how to understand and unpack what literary texts say and do. Our approach to get at what they say involves looking for the central conflict in the work and then asking yourself how the author uses various types of evidence (characters, dialogue, imagery, events, plot, etc.) to guide you in thinking about that conflict. Ultimately, your job as a reader of literature is to be open to a work as its author presents it, or else your reading will fail to see what makes that work worth reading and thinking about.

But once you have reached a good understanding of the work, it is time to allow your own opinion to come into play. Offering your own interpretation of a work and opening that interpretation to response are crucial steps in any act of literary analysis, but they are not the end of the process. The final step involves offering your own insight into or critique of the work and its vision, assessing whether, as you see it, it is morally justified or questionable, unified or contradictory, historically regressive or progressive, and so forth. For example:

Though she is one of the most respected Southern authors of the American literary canon, Flannery O’Connor continually denigrates the one character in her 1961 story who represents the civil rights movement and in so doing disparages progressive ideas that I believe deserve a far more sympathetic hearing.

Offering a critique, however, doesn’t necessarily mean finding fault:

Some criticize O’Connor’s story by suggesting that it has a politically regressive agenda. But I see the story as a laudable critique of politics as such. In my view, O’Connor’s story rightly criticizes the polarization of political conflicts—North vs. South, liberal vs. conservative, and the like—and suggests that they need to come together: to “converge,” as O’Connor’s title implies, through religious love, understanding, and forgiveness.

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We realize that the prospect of critiquing a literary work can be daunting. Indeed, simply stating what you think an author is saying can be intimidating, since it means going out on a limb, asserting something about highly respected figures—works that are often complex, contradictory, and connected to larger historical movements. Nevertheless, if you can master these challenges, you may find that figuring out what a literary work is saying, offering an opinion about it, and entering into conversation and debate with others about such questions is what makes literature matter. And if you do it well, what you say will invite its own response: your “I say” will become someone else’s “they say,” and the conversation will go on and on.

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SEVENTEEN

“THE DATA SUGGEST”

Writing in the Sciences

CHRISTOPHER GILLEN

* * *

CHRISTOPHER GILLEN is a professor of biology at Kenyon College and the faculty director of the Kenyon Institute in Biomedical and Scientific Writing. He teaches courses in animal physiology, biology of exercise, and introductory biology, all stressing the critical reading of primary research articles.

________

CHARLES DARWIN DESCRIBED On the Origin of Species as “one long argument.” In Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems , Galileo Galilei cast his argument for a sun-centered solar system as a series of conversations. As these historical examples show, scientific writing is fundamentally argumentative. Like all academic writers, scientists make and defend claims. They address disagreements and explore unanswered questions. They propose novel mechanisms and new theories. And they advance certain explanations and reject others. Though their vocabulary may be more technical and their emphasis more numerical, science writers use the same rhetorical moves as other academic writers. Consider the following example from a book about the laws of physics:

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The common refrain that is heard in elementary discussions of quantum mechanics is that a physical object is in some sense both a wave and a particle, with its wave nature apparent when you measure a wave property such as wavelength, and its particle nature apparent when you measure a particle property such as position. But this is, at best, misleading and, at worst, wrong.

V. J. STENGER , The Comprehensible Cosmos

The “they say / I say” structure of this passage is unmistakable: they say that objects have properties of both waves and particles; I say they are wrong. This example is not a lonely argumentative passage cherry- picked from an otherwise nonargumentative text. Rather, Stenger’s entire book makes the argument that is foreshadowed by its title, The Comprehensible Cosmos : that although some might see the universe as hopelessly complex, it is essentially understandable.

Here’s another argumentative passage, this one from a research article about the role of lactic acid in muscle fatigue:

In contrast to the often suggested role for acidosis as a cause of muscle fatigue, it is shown that in muscles where force was depressed by high [K1]o, acidification by lactic acid produced a pronounced recovery of force.

O. B. NIELSEN , F. DE PAOLI , and K. OVERGAARD , “Protective Effects of Lactic Acid on Force

Production in Rat Skeletal Muscle,” Journal of Physiology

In other words: many scientists think that lactic acid causes muscle fatigue, but our evidence shows that it actually promotes recovery. Notice that the authors frame their claim with a version of the “they say / I say” formula: “Although previous work suggests __________ , our data argue __________ . ” This basic move and its many variations are widespread in scientific writing. The essential argumentative moves taught in this book transcend disciplines, and the sciences are no exception. The examples in this chapter were written by professional scientists, but they show moves that are appropriate in any writing that addresses scientific issues.

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Despite the importance of argument in scientific writing, newcomers to the genre often see it solely as a means for communicating uncontroversial, objective facts. It’s easy to see how this view arises. The objective tone of scientific writing can obscure its argumentative nature, and many textbooks reinforce a nonargumentative vision of science when they focus on accepted conclusions and ignore ongoing controversies. And because science writers base their arguments on empirical data, a good portion of many scientific texts does serve the purpose of delivering uncontested facts.

However, scientific writing often does more than just report facts. Data are crucial to scientific argumentation, but they are by no means the end of the story. Given important new data, scientists assess their quality, draw conclusions from them, and ponder their implications. They synthesize the new data with existing information, propose novel theories, and design the next experiments. In short, scientific progress depends on the insight and creativity that scientists bring to their data. The thrill of doing science, and writing about it, comes from the ongoing struggle to use data to better understand our world.

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START WITH THE DATA

Data are the fundamental currency of scientific argument. Scientists develop hypotheses from existing data and then test those by comparing their predictions to new experimental data. Summarizing data is therefore a basic move in science writing. Because data can often be interpreted in different ways, describing the data opens the door to critical analysis, creating opportunities to critique previous interpretations and develop new ones.

Describing data requires more than simply reporting numbers and conclusions. Rather than jumping straight to the punch line—to what X concluded—it is important first to describe the hypotheses, methods, and results that led to the conclusion: “To test the hypothesis that __________ , X measured __________ and found that __________ . Therefore, X concluded __________ . ” In the following sections, we explore the three key rhetorical moves for describing the data that underpin a scientific argument: presenting the prevailing theories, explaining methodologies, and summarizing findings.

Present the Prevailing Theories

Readers must understand the prevailing theories that a study responds to before they can fully appreciate the details. So before diving into specifics, place the work in context by describing the prevailing theories and hypotheses. In the following passage from a journal article about insect respiration, the authors discuss an explanation for discontinuous gas exchange (DGC), a phenomenon where insects periodically close valves on their breathing tubes:

Lighton (1996, 1998; see also Lighton and Berrigan, 1995) noted the prevalence of DGC in fossorial insects, which inhabit microclimates where CO2 levels may be relatively high. Consequently, Lighton proposed the chthonic hypothesis, which suggests that DGC originated

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as a mechanism to improve gas exchange while at the same time minimizing respiratory water loss.

A. G. GIBBS AND R. A. JOHNSON , “The Role of Discontinuous Gas Exchange in Insects: The Chthonic Hypothesis Does Not Hold Water,”

Journal of Experimental Biology

Notice that Gibbs and Johnson not only describe Lighton’s hypothesis but also recap the evidence that supports it. By presenting this evidence, Gibbs and Johnson set the stage for engaging with Lighton’s ideas. For example, they might question the chthonic hypothesis by pointing out shortcomings of the data or flaws in its interpretation. Or they might suggest new approaches that could verify the hypothesis. The point is that by incorporating a discussion of experimental findings into their summary of Lighton’s hypothesis, Gibbs and Johnson open the door to a conversation with Lighton.

Here are some templates for presenting the data that underpin prevailing explanations:

◼ Experiments showing __________ and __________ have led scientists to propose __________.

◼ Although most scientists attribute __________ to __________, X’s result __________ leads to the possibility that __________.

Explain the Methods

Even as we’ve argued that scientific arguments hinge on data, it’s important to note that the quality of data varies depending on how they were collected. Data obtained with sloppy techniques or poorly designed experiments could lead to faulty conclusions. Therefore, it’s crucial to explain the methods used to collect data. In order for readers to evaluate a method, you’ll need to indicate its purpose, as the following passage from a journal article about the evolution of bird digestive systems demonstrates:

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To test the hypothesis that flowerpiercers have converged with hummingbirds in digestive traits, we compared the activity of intestinal enzymes and the gut nominal area of cinnamon-bellied flowerpiercers (Diglossa baritula ) with those of eleven hummingbird species.

J. E. SCHONDUBE AND C. MARTINEZ DEL RIO , “Sugar and Protein Digestion in Flowerpiercers and

Hummingbirds: A Comparative Test of Adaptive Convergence,” Journal of Comparative Physiology

You need to indicate purpose whether describing your own work or that of others. Here are a couple of templates for doing so:

◼ Smith and colleagues evaluated __________ to determine whether __________.

◼ Because __________ does not account for __________, we instead used __________.

Summarize the Findings

Scientific data often come in the form of numbers. Your task when presenting numerical data is to provide the context readers need to understand the numbers—by giving supporting information and making comparisons. In the following passage from a book about the interaction between organisms and their environments, Turner uses numerical data to support an argument about the role of the sun’s energy on Earth:

The potential rate of energy transfer from the Sun to Earth is prodigious—about 600 W m–2, averaged throughout the year. Of this, only a relatively small fraction, on the order of 1–2 percent, is captured by green plants. The rest, if it is not reflected back into space, is available to do other things. The excess can be considerable: although some natural surfaces reflect as much as 95% of the incoming solar beam, many natural surfaces reflect much less (Table 3.2), on average about 15–20 percent. The remaining absorbed energy is then capable of doing work, like heating up surfaces, moving water

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and air masses around to drive weather and climate, evaporating water, and so forth.

J. S. TURNER , The Extended Organism

Turner supports his point that a huge amount of the sun’s energy is directly converted to work on Earth by quoting an actual value (600) with units of measurement (W m–2, watts per square meter). Readers need the units to evaluate the value; 600 watts per square inch is very different from 600 W m–2. Turner then makes comparisons using percent values, saying that only 1 to 2 percent of the total energy that reaches Earth is trapped by plants. Finally, Turner describes the data’s variability by reporting comparisons as ranges—1 to 2 percent and 15 to 20 percent—rather than single values.

Supporting information—such as units of measurement, sample size (n ), and amount of variability—helps readers assess the data. In general, the reliability of data improves as its sample size increases and its variability decreases. Supporting information can be concisely presented as:

◼ ▶__________ ± __________ (mean ± variability ) __________ (units ), n = __________ (sample size ).

For example: before training, resting heart rate of the subjects was 56 ± 7 beats per minute, n = 12. Here’s another way to give supporting information:

◼ We measured __________ (sample size ) subjects, and the average response was __________ (mean with units ), with a range of __________ (lower value ) to __________ (upper value ).

To help readers understand the data, make comparisons with values from the same study or from other similar work. Here are some templates for making comparisons:

◼ Before training, average running speed was __________ ± __________ kilometers per hour, __________ kilometers per hour

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slower than running speed after training.

◼ We found athletes’ heart rates to be __________ ± __________ % lower than nonathletes’.

◼ The subjects in X’s study completed the maze in __________ ± __________ seconds, __________ seconds slower than those in Y’s study.

You will sometimes need to present qualitative data, such as that found in some images and photographs, which cannot be reduced to numbers. Qualitative data must be described precisely with words. In the passage below from a review article about connections between cellular protein localization and cell growth, the author describes the exact locations of three proteins, Scrib, Dlg, and Lgl:

Epithelial cells accumulate different proteins on their apical (top) and basolateral (bottom) surfaces. . . . Scrib and Dlg are localized at the septate junctions along the lateral cell surface, whereas Lgl coats vesicles that are found both in the cytoplasm and “docked” at the lateral surface of the cell.

M. PEIFER , “Travel Bulletin—Traffic Jams Cause Tumors,” Science

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EXPLAIN WHAT THE DATA MEAN

Once you summarize experiments and results, you need to say what the data mean. Consider the following passage from a study in which scientists fertilized plots of tropical rainforest with nitrogen (N) and/or phosphorus (P):

Although our data suggest that the mechanisms driving the observed respiratory responses to increased N and P may be different, the large CO2 losses stimulated by N and P fertilization suggest that knowledge of such patterns and their effects on soil CO2 efflux is critical for understanding the role of tropical forests in a rapidly changing global C [carbon] cycle.

C. C. CLEVELAND AND A. R. TOWNSEND , “Nutrient Additions to a Tropical Rain Forest Drive

Substantial Soil Carbon Dioxide Losses to the Atmosphere,” Proceedings of the National Academy

of Sciences

Notice that in discussing the implications of their data, Cleveland and Townsend use language—including the verbs “suggest” and “may be”— that denotes their level of confidence in what they say about the data.

Whether you are summarizing what others say about their data or offering your own interpretation, pay attention to the verbs that connect data to interpretations.

To signify a moderate level of confidence:

◼ The data suggest / hint / imply __________.

To express a greater degree of certainty:

◼ Our results show / demonstrate __________.

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Almost never will you use the verb “prove” in reference to a single study, because even very powerful evidence generally falls short of proof unless other studies support the same conclusion.

Scientific consensus arises when multiple studies point toward the same conclusion; conversely, contradictions among studies often signal research questions that need further work. For these reasons, you may need to compare one study’s findings to those of another study. Here, too, you’ll need to choose your verbs carefully:

◼ Our data support / confirm / verify the work of X by showing that __________.

◼ By demonstrating __________, X’s work extends the findings of Y.

◼ The results of X contradict / refute Y’s conclusion that __________.

◼ X’s findings call into question the widely accepted theory that __________.

◼ Our data are consistent with X’s hypothesis that __________.

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MAKE YOUR OWN ARGUMENTS

Now we turn toward the part of scientific writing where you express your own opinions. One challenge is that the statements of other scientists about their methods and results usually must be accepted. You probably can’t argue, for example, that “X and Y claim to have studied six elephants, but I think they actually only studied four.” However, it might be fair to say, “X and Y studied only six elephants, and this small sample size casts doubts on their conclusions.” The second statement doesn’t question what the scientists did or found but instead examines how the findings are interpreted.

When developing your own arguments—the “I say”—you will often start by assessing the interpretations of other scientists. Consider the following example from a review article about the beneficial acclimation hypothesis (BAH), the idea that organisms exposed to a particular environment become better suited to that environment than unexposed animals:

To the surprise of most physiologists, all empirical examinations of the BAH have rejected its generality. However, we suggest that these examinations are neither direct nor complete tests of the functional benefit of acclimation.

R. S. WILSON AND C. E. FRANKLIN , “Testing the Beneficial Acclimation Hypothesis,” Trends in

Ecology & Evolution

Wilson and Franklin use a version of the “twist it” move: they acknowledge the data collected by other physiologists but question how those data have been interpreted, creating an opportunity to offer their own interpretation.

For more on the “twist it” move, see p. 64 .

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You might ask whether we should question how other scientists interpret their own work. Having conducted a study, aren’t they in the best position to evaluate it? Perhaps, but as the above example demonstrates, other scientists might see the work from a different perspective or through more objective eyes. And, in fact, the culture of science depends on vigorous debate in which scientists defend their own findings and challenge those of others—a give-and-take that helps improve science’s reliability. So expressing a critical view about someone else’s work is an integral part of the scientific process. Let’s examine some of the basic moves for entering scientific conversations: agreeing, with a difference; disagreeing and explaining why; simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing; anticipating objections; and saying why it matters.

Agree, but with a Difference

Scientific research passes through several levels of critical analysis before being published. Scientists get feedback when they discuss work with colleagues, present findings at conferences, and receive reviews of their manuscripts. So the juiciest debates may have been resolved before publication, and you may find little to disagree with in the published literature of a research field. Yet even if you agree with what you’ve read, there are still ways to join the conversation—and reasons to do so.

One approach is to suggest that further work should be done:

◼ Now that __________ has been established, scientists will likely turn their attention toward __________.

◼ X’s work leads to the question of __________. Therefore, we investigated __________.

◼ To see whether these findings apply to __________, we propose to __________.

Another way to agree and at the same time jump into the conversation is to concur with a finding and then propose a mechanism

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that explains it. In the following sentence from a review article about dietary deficiencies, the author agrees with a previous finding and offers a probable explanation:

Inadequate dietary intakes of vitamins and minerals are widespread, most likely due to excessive consumption of energy-rich, micronutrient-poor, refined food.

B. AMES , “Low Micronutrient Intake May Accelerate the Degenerative Diseases of Aging through Allocation of Scarce Micronutrients by

Triage,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Here are some templates for explaining an experimental result:

◼ One explanation for X’s finding of __________ is that __________. An alternative explanation is __________.

◼ The difference between __________ and __________ is probably due to __________.

Disagree—and Explain Why

Although scientific consensus is common, healthy disagreement is not unusual. While measurements conducted by different teams of scientists under the same conditions should produce the same result, scientists often disagree about which techniques are most appropriate, how well an experimental design tests a hypothesis, and how results should be interpreted. To illustrate such disagreement, let’s return to the debate about whether or not lactic acid is beneficial during exercise. In the following passage, Lamb and Stephenson are responding to work by Kristensen and colleagues, which argues that lactic acid might be beneficial to resting muscle but not to active muscle:

The argument put forward by Kristensen and colleagues (12) . . . is not valid because it is based on observations made with isolated whole soleus muscles that were stimulated at such a high rate that .60% of

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the preparation would have rapidly become completely anoxic (4). . . . Furthermore, there is no reason to expect that adding more H+ to that already being generated by the muscle activity should in any way be advantageous. It is a bit like opening up the carburetor on a car to let in too much air or throwing gasoline over the engine and then concluding that air and gasoline are deleterious to engine performance.

G. D. LAMB AND D. G. STEPHENSON , “Point: Lactic Acid Accumulation Is an Advantage during

Muscle Activity,” Journal of Applied Physiology

Lamb and Stephenson bring experimental detail to bear on their disagreement with Kristensen and colleagues. First, they criticize methodology, arguing that the high muscle stimulation rate used by Kristensen and colleagues created very low oxygen levels (anoxia). They also criticize the logic of the experimental design, arguing that adding more acid (H+ ) to a muscle that is already producing it isn’t informative. It’s also worth noting how they drive home their point, likening Kristensen and colleagues’ methodology to flooding an engine with air or gasoline. Even in technical scientific writing, you don’t need to set aside your own voice completely.

In considering the work of others, look for instances where the experimental design and methodology fail to adequately test a hypothesis:

◼ The work of Y and Z appears to show that __________, but their experimental design does not control for __________.

Also, consider the possibility that results do not lead to the stated conclusions:

◼ While X and Y claim that __________, their finding of __________ actually shows that __________.

OK, But . . .

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Science tends to progress incrementally. New work may refine or extend previous work but doesn’t often completely overturn it. For this reason, science writers frequently agree up to a point and then express some disagreement. In the following example from a commentary about methods for assessing how proteins interact, the authors acknowledge the value of the two-hybrid studies, but they also point out their shortcomings:

The two-hybrid studies that produced the protein interaction map for D. melanogaster (12) provide a valuable genome-wide view of protein interactions but have a number of shortcomings (13). Even if the protein-protein interactions were determined with high accuracy, the resulting network would still require careful interpretation to extract its underlying biological meaning. Specifically, the map is a representation of all possible interactions, but one would only expect some fraction to be operating at any given time.

J. J. RICE , A. KERSHENBAUM , AND G. STOLOVITZKY , “Lasting Impressions: Motifs in Protein-Protein Maps May Provide Footprints of

Evolutionary Events,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Delineating the boundaries or limitations of a study is a good way to agree up to a point. Here are templates for doing so:

◼ While X’s work clearly demonstrates __________, __________ will be required before we can determine whether __________.

◼ Although Y and Z present firm evidence for __________, their data cannot be used to argue that __________.

◼ In summary, our studies show that __________, but the issue of __________ remains unresolved.

Anticipate Objections

Skepticism is a key ingredient in the scientific process. Before an explanation is accepted, scientists demand convincing evidence and

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assess whether alternative explanations have been thoroughly explored, so it’s essential that scientists consider possible objections to their ideas before presenting them. In the following example from a book about the origin of the universe, Tyson and Goldsmith first admit that some might doubt the existence of the poorly understood “dark matter” that physicists have proposed, and then they go on to respond to the skeptics:

Unrelenting skeptics might compare the dark matter of today with the hypothetical, now defunct “ether,” proposed centuries ago as the weightless, transparent medium through which light moved. . . . But dark matter ignorance differs fundamentally from ether ignorance. While ether amounted to a placeholder for our incomplete understanding, the existence of dark matter derives not from mere presumption but from the observed effects of its gravity on visible matter.

N. D. TYSON AND D. GOLDSMITH , Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

Anticipating objections in your own writing will help you clarify and address potential criticisms. Consider objections to your overall approach, as well as to specific aspects of your interpretations. Here are some templates for doing so:

◼ Scientists who take a __________ (reductionist / integrative / biochemical / computational / statistical ) approach might view our results differently.

◼ This interpretation of the data might be criticized by X, who has argued that __________ .

◼ Some may argue that this experimental design fails to account for __________ .

Say Why It Matters

Though individual studies can be narrowly focused, science ultimately seeks to answer big questions and produce useful technologies. So it’s essential when you enter a scientific conversation to say why the work—

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and your arguments about it—matter. The following passage from a commentary on a research article notes two implications of work that evaluated the shape of electron orbitals:

The classic textbook shape of electron orbitals has now been directly observed. As well as confirming the established theory, this work may be a first step to understanding high-temperature superconductivity.

C. J. HUMPHREYS , “Electrons Seen in Orbit,” Nature

Humphreys argues that the study confirms an established theory and that it may lead to better understanding in another area. When thinking about the broad significance of a study, consider both the practical applications and the impact on future scientific work:

◼ These results open the door to studies that __________ .

◼ The methodologies developed by X will be useful for __________ .

◼ Our findings are the first step toward __________ .

◼ Further work in this area may lead to the development of __________ .

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READING AS A WAY OF ENTERING SCIENTIFIC CONVERSATIONS

In science, as in other disciplines, you’ll often start with work done by others, and therefore you will need to critically evaluate their work. To that end, you’ll need to probe how well their data support their interpretations. Doing so will lead you toward your own interpretations —your ticket into an ongoing scientific conversation. Here are some questions that will help you read and respond to scientific research:

How well do the methods test the hypothesis?

Is the sample size adequate? Is the experimental design valid? Were the proper controls performed? What are the limitations of the methodology? Are other techniques available?

How fairly have the results been interpreted?

How well do the results support the stated conclusion? Has the data’s variability been adequately considered? Do other findings verify (or contradict) the conclusion? What other experiments could test the conclusion?

What are the broader implications of the work, and why does it matter?

Can the results be generalized beyond the system that was studied? What are the work’s practical implications? What questions arise from the work? Which experiments should be done next?

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The examples in this chapter show that scientists do more than simply collect facts; they also interpret those facts and make arguments about their meaning. On the frontiers of science, where we are probing questions that are just beyond our capacity to answer, the data are inevitably incomplete and controversy is to be expected. Writing about science presents the opportunity to add your own arguments to the ongoing discussion.

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EIGHTEEN

“ANALYZE THIS”

Writing in the Social Sciences

ERIN ACKERMAN

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ERIN ACKERMAN is the social sciences librarian at the College of New Jersey and formerly taught political science at John Jay College, City University of New York. Her research and teaching interests include American law and politics, women and law, and information literacy in the social sciences.

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SOCIAL SCIENCE is the study of people—how they behave and relate to one another, and the organizations and institutions that facilitate these interactions. People are complicated, so any study of human behavior is at best partial, taking into account some elements of what people do and why, but not always explaining those actions definitively. As a result, it is the subject of constant conversation and argument.

Consider some of the topics studied in the social sciences: minimum wage laws, immigration policy, health care, what causes aggressive behavior, employment discrimination. Got an opinion on any of these topics? You aren’t alone. But in the writing you do as a student of the social sciences, you need to write about more than just your opinions. Good writing in the social sciences, as in other academic disciplines,

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requires that you demonstrate that you have examined what you think and why. The best way to do that is to bring your views into conversation with those expressed by others and to test what you and others think against a review of evidence. In other words, you’ll need to start with what others say and then present what you say as a response.

Consider the following example from an op-ed in the New York Times by two psychology professors:

Is video game addiction a real thing?

It’s certainly common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games. Some researchers even claim that these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain—that they are “digital heroin” (the neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow) or “digital pharmakeia” (the neuroscientist Andrew Doan). The American Psychiatric Association has identified internet gaming disorder as a possible psychiatric illness, and the World Health Organization has proposed including “gaming disorder” in its catalog of mental diseases, along with drug and alcohol addiction.

This is all terribly misguided. Playing video games is not addictive in any meaningful sense. It is normal behavior that, while perhaps in many cases a waste of time, is not damaging or disruptive of lives in the way drug or alcohol use can be.

CHRISTOPHER J. FERGUSON AND PATRICK MARKEY , “Video Games Aren’t Addictive”

In other words, “they” (parents, other researchers, health organizations) say that the video games are addictive, whereas Ferguson and Markey disagree. In the rest of the op-ed, they argue that video game critics have misinterpreted the evidence and are not being very precise with what counts as “addiction.”

This chapter explores some of the basic moves social science writers make. Writing in the social sciences often takes the form of a research paper that generally includes several core components: a strong introduction and thesis, a literature review, and the writer’s own analysis, including presentation of evidence / data and consideration of

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implications. The introduction sets out the thesis, or point, of the paper, briefly explaining the topic or question you are investigating and previewing what you will say in your paper and how it fits into the preexisting conversation. The literature review summarizes what has already been said on your topic. Your analysis allows you to present evidence (the information, or data, about human behavior that you are measuring or testing against what other people have said), to explain the conclusions you have drawn based on your investigation, and to discuss the implications of your research. Do you agree, disagree, or some combination of both with what has been said by others? What reasons can you give for why you feel that way? And so what? Who should be interested in what you have to say, and why?

You may get other types of writing assignments in the social sciences, such as preparing a policy memo, writing a legal brief, or designing a grant or research proposal. While there may be differences from the research papers in terms of the format and audience for these assignments, the purposes of sections of the research paper and the moves discussed here will help you with those assignments as well.

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THE INTRODUCTION AND THESIS: “THIS PAPER CHALLENGES . . .”

Your introduction sets forth what you plan to say in your essay. You might evaluate the work of earlier scholars or certain widely held assumptions and find them incorrect when measured against new events or data. Alternatively, you might point out that an author’s work is largely correct but that it could use some qualifications or be extended in some way. Or you might identify a gap in our knowledge—we know a great deal about topic X but almost nothing about some other closely related topic. In each of these instances, your introduction needs to cover both “they say” and “I say” perspectives. If you stop after the “they say,” your readers won’t know what you are bringing to the conversation. Similarly, if you were to jump right to the “I say” portion of your argument, readers might wonder why you need to say anything at all.

Sometimes you join the conversation at a point where the discussion seems settled. One or more views about a topic have become so widely accepted among a group of scholars or society at large that these views are essentially the conventional way of thinking about the topic. You may wish to offer new reasons to support this interpretation, or you may wish to call these standard views into question. To do so, you must first introduce and identify these widely held beliefs and then present your own view. In fact, much of the writing in the social sciences takes the form of calling into question that which we think we already know. Consider the following example from an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives :

Fifteen years ago, Milton Friedman’s 1957 treatise A Theory of the Consumption Function seemed badly dated. Dynamic optimization theory had not been employed much in economics when Friedman wrote, and utility theory was still comparatively primitive, so his statement of the “permanent income hypothesis” never actually specified a formal mathematical model of behavior derived explicitly from utility maximization. . . . [W]hen other economists subsequently found multiperiod maximizing models that could be solved explicitly,

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the implications of those models differed sharply from Friedman’s intuitive description of his “model.” Furthermore, empirical tests in the 1970s and 1980s often rejected these rigorous versions of the permanent income hypothesis in favor of an alternative hypothesis that many households simply spent all of their current income.

Today, with the benefit of a further round of mathematical (and computational) advances, Friedman’s (1957) original analysis looks more prescient than primitive.

CHRISTOPHER D. CARROLL , “A Theory of Consumption Function, with and without Liquidity

Constraints,” Journal of Economic Perspectives

This introduction makes clear that Carroll will defend Milton Friedman against some major criticisms of his work. Carroll mentions what has been said about Friedman’s work and then goes on to say that the critiques turn out to be wrong and to suggest that Friedman’s work reemerges as persuasive. A template of Carroll’s introduction might look something like this: “Economics research in the last fifteen years suggested Friedman’s 1957 treatise was __________ because __________ . In other words, they say that Friedman’s work is not accurate because of __________ , __________ , and __________ . Recent research convinces me, however, that Friedman’s work makes sense.”

In some cases, however, there may not be a strong consensus among experts on a topic. You might enter the ongoing debate by casting your vote with one side or another or by offering an alternative view. In the following example, Sheri Berman identifies two competing accounts of how to explain world events in the twentieth century and then puts forth a third view:

Conventional wisdom about twentieth-century ideologies rests on two simple narratives. One focuses on the struggle for dominance between democracy and its alternatives. . . . The other narrative focuses on the competition between free-market capitalism and its rivals. . . . Both of these narratives obviously contain some truth. . . . Yet both only tell part of the story, which is why their common conclusion— neoliberalism as the “end of History”—is unsatisfying and misleading.

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What the two conventional narratives fail to mention is that a third struggle was also going on: between those ideologies that believed in the primacy of economics and those that believed in the primacy of politics.

SHERI BERMAN , “The Primacy of Economics versus the Primacy of Politics: Understanding the Ideological Dynamics of the Twentieth Century,”

Perspectives on Politics

After identifying the two competing narratives, Berman suggests a third view—and later goes on to argue that this third view explains current debates over globalization. A template for this type of introduction might look something like this: “In recent discussions of __________ , a controversial aspect has been __________ . On the one hand, some argue that __________ . On the other hand, others argue that __________ . Neither of these arguments, however, considers the alternative view that __________ . ”

Given the complexity of many of the issues studied in the social sciences, however, you may sometimes agree and disagree with existing views—pointing out things that you believe are correct or have merit, while disagreeing with or refining other points. In the example below, anthropologist Sally Engle Merry agrees with another scholar about something that is a key trait of modern society but argues that this trait has a different origin than the other author identifies:

For more on different ways of responding, see Chapter 4 .

Although I agree with Rose that an increasing emphasis on governing the soul is characteristic of modern society, I see the transformation not as evolutionary but as the product of social mobilization and political struggle.

SALLY ENGLE MERRY , “Rights, Religion, and Community: Approaches to Violence against

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Women in the Context of Globalization,” Law and Society Review

Here are some templates for agreeing and disagreeing:

◼ Although I agree with X up to a point, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that __________ .

◼ Although I disagree with X on __________ and __________, I agree with her conclusion that __________.

◼ Political scientists studying __________ have argued that it is caused by __________. While __________ contributes to the problem, __________ is also an important factor.

◼ While noting __________, I contend __________.

In the process of examining people from different angles, social scientists sometimes identify gaps—areas that have not been explored in previous research.

In the following example, several sociologists identify such a gap:

Family scholars have long argued that the study of dating deserves more attention (Klemer, 1971), as dating is an important part of the life course at any age and often a precursor to marriage (Levesque & Caron, 2004). . . .

The central research questions we seek to answer with this study are whether and how the significance of particular dating rituals are patterned by gender and race simultaneously. We use a racially diverse data set of traditional-aged college students from a variety of college contexts. Understanding gender and racial differences in the assessment of dating rituals helps us explore the extent to which relationship activities are given similar importance across institutional and cultural lines. Most of the studies that inform our knowledge of dating and relationships are unable to draw conclusions regarding racial differences because the sample is Caucasian (e.g., Bogle, 2008), or primarily so (e.g., Manning & Smock, 2005). Race has been recently argued to be an often-overlooked variable in studies

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examining social psychological processes because of the prevalence of sample limitations as well as habitual oversight in the literature (Hunt, Jackson, Powell, & Steelman, 2000). Additionally, a failure to examine both gender and race prevents assessment of whether gendered beliefs are shared across groups. Gauging the extent of differences in beliefs among different population subgroups is critical to advancing the study of relationship dynamics (see Weaver & Ganong, 2004).

PAMELA BRABOY JACKSON , SIBYL KLEINER , CLAUDIA GEIST , AND KARA CEBULKO ,

“Conventions of Courtship: Gender and Race Differences in the Significance of Dating Rituals,”

Journal of Family Issues

Jackson and her coauthors note that while other scholars have said that studying dating is important and have examined some aspects of dating, we have little information about whether attitudes about dating activities (such as sexual intimacy, gift exchange, and meeting the family) vary across groups by gender and race. Their study aims to fill this gap in our understanding of relationships.

Here are some templates for introducing gaps in the existing research:

◼ Studies of X have indicated __________. It is not clear, however, that this conclusion applies to __________.

◼ __________ often take for granted that __________. Few have investigated this assumption, however.

◼ X’s work tells us a great deal about __________. Can this work be generalized to __________?

◼ Our understanding of __________ remains incomplete because previous work has not examined __________.

Again, a good introduction indicates what you have to say in the larger context of what others have said. Throughout the rest of your paper, you

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will move back and forth between the “they say” and the “I say,” adding more details.

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THE LITERATURE REVIEW: “PRIOR RESEARCH INDICATES . . .”

The point of a literature review is to establish the state of knowledge on your topic. Before you (and your reader) can properly consider an issue, you need to understand the conversation about your topic that has already taken place (and is likely still in progress). In the literature review, you explain what “they say” in more detail, summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting the viewpoints to which you are responding. But you need to balance what they are saying with your own focus. You need to characterize someone else’s work fairly and accurately but set up the points you yourself want to make by selecting the details that are relevant to your own perspective and observations.

It is common in the social sciences to summarize several arguments in a single paragraph or even a single sentence, grouping several sources together by their important ideas or other attributes. The example below cites some key findings and conclusions of psychological research that should be of interest to motivated college students looking to improve their academic performance:

Some people may associate sacrificing hours of sleep with being studious, but the reality is that sleep deprivation can hurt your cognitive functioning without your being aware of it (e.g., becoming worse at paying attention and remembering things; Goel, Rao, Durmer, & Dinges, 2009; Pilcher & Walters, 1997). . . . Sleep affects learning and memory by organizing and consolidating memories from the day (Diekelmann & Born, 2010; Rasch & Born, 2013), which can lead to better problem-solving ability and creativity (Verleger, Rose, Wagner, Yordanova, & Kolev, 2013).

ADAM L. PUTNAM , VICTOR W. SUNGKHASETTEE , AND HENRY L. ROEDIGER , III, “Optimizing

Learning in College: Tips from Cognitive Psychology,” Perspectives on Psychological Science

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A template for this paragraph might look like this: “Students believe __________ , but researchers disagree because __________ . According to researchers, negative consequences of sleep deprivation include __________ . The research shows that a positive effect of sleep is __________ , which improves __________ . ”

Such summaries are brief, bringing together relevant arguments by several scholars to provide an overview of scholarly work on a particular topic. In writing such a summary, you need to ask yourself how the authors themselves might describe their positions and also consider what in their work is relevant for the point you wish to make. This kind of summary is especially appropriate when you have a large amount of research material on a topic and want to identify the major strands of a debate or to show how the work of one author builds on that of another. Here are some templates for overview summaries:

◼ In addressing the question of __________, researchers have considered several explanations for __________. X argues that __________. According to Y and Z, another plausible explanation is __________.

◼ What is the effect of __________ on __________? Previous work on __________ by X and by Y and Z supports __________.

◼ Scholars point to the role of __________ in __________.

◼ Existing research on __________ presents convincing evidence of __________.

Sometimes you may need to say more about the works you cite. On a midterm or final exam, for example, you may need to demonstrate that you have a deep familiarity with a particular work. And in some disciplines of the social sciences, longer, more detailed literature reviews are the standard. Your instructor and any assigned articles are your best guides for the length and level of detail of your literature review. Other times, the work of certain authors is especially important for your argument, and therefore you need to provide more details to explain what these authors have said. See how political scientists Hahrie Han and Lisa Argyle, in a report for the Ford Foundation, summarize an argument that is central to their investigation of improving democratic participation:

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[A]t the root of declining rates of participation is the sense that people do not feel like their participation matters. People do not feel like they have any real reason or opportunity to exercise voice in the political process. People’s sense of agency is in decline, especially given negative or incomplete experiences of government in their lives.

This lack of caring comes as no surprise when we examine research showing that most people have negative or, at best, incomplete experiences of the role of government in their lives. Suzanne Mettler, for instance, finds that many middle-class people who benefit from different government programs—ranging from education savings accounts to welfare to tax credits—believe that they “have not used a government social program.” In addition, other scholars find a trend towards increasing privatization of public goods and political processes in the twenty-first century. As a result, government is what Mettler calls a “submerged state,” since the role of government in people’s lives is effectively submerged from view.

HAHRIE HAN AND LISA ARGYLE , “A Program Review of the Promoting Electoral Reform and

Democratic Participation (PERDP) Initiative of the Ford Foundation”

Note that Han and Argyle start by identifying the broad problem of lack of participation and then explain how Mettler’s work describes how middle-class people may be unaware of the role of government in their lives, leading Mettler to argue for the idea of the “submerged state.”

You may want to include direct quotations of what others have said, as Han and Argyle do. Using exact words helps you demonstrate that you are representing the author fairly. But you cannot simply insert a quotation; you need to explain to your readers what it means for your point. Consider the following example drawn from a political science book on the debate over tort reform:

The essence of agenda setting was well enunciated by E. E. Schattschneider: “In politics as in everything else, it makes a great difference whose game we play” (1960, 47). In short, the ability to define or control the rules, terms, or perceived options in a contest over policy greatly affects the prospects for winning.

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WILLIAM HALTOM AND MICHAEL MC CANN , Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the

Litigation Crisis

Notice how Haltom and McCann first quote Schattschneider and then explain in their own words how political agenda setting can be thought of as a game, with winners and losers.

Remember that whenever you summarize, quote, or paraphrase the work of others, credit must be given in the form of a citation to the original work. The words may be your own, but if the idea comes from someone else you must give credit to the original work. There are several formats for documenting sources. Consult your instructor for help choosing which citation style to use.

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THE ANALYSIS

The literature review covers what others have said on your topic. The analysis allows you to present and support your own response. In the introduction you indicate whether you agree, disagree, or some combination of both with what others have said. You will want to expand on how you have formed your opinion and why others should care about your topic.

“The Data Indicate . . .”

The social sciences use evidence to develop and test explanations. This evidence is often referred to as data. Data can be quantitative or qualitative and can come from a number of sources. You might use statistics related to GDP growth, unemployment, voting rates, or demographics. You might report results from an experiment or simulation. Or you could use surveys, interviews, or other first-person accounts.

Regardless of the type of data used, it is important to do three things: define your data, indicate where you got the data, and then say what you have done with your data. For a chapter in their book assessing media coverage of female candidates, political scientists Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless explain how they assembled a data set:

From the perspective of campaign professionals and voters, local newspaper coverage remains the most important news source during House campaigns. . . .

We began by selecting the appropriate newspaper for each House race in 2010 and 2014. . . . [W]e identified every news story during the thirty days leading up to the election that mentioned at least one of the two major-party candidates. . . .

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Our data collection efforts produced 10,375 stories about 1,550 candidates who received at least some local news coverage in either the 2010 or 2014 midterms. . . .

Coders read the full text of each article and recorded several pieces of information. First, they tracked the number of times a candidate’s sex or gender was mentioned. . . . Second, we recorded the number of explicit references to candidate traits, both positive and negative (e.g., “capable” and “ineffective”). . . .

Third, we tracked every time an issue was mentioned in connection with a candidate. . . . We then classified issues in two ways: (1) We assigned each issue to one of the eight broad categories . . . and (2) we classified a subset of the topics as “women’s” or “men’s” issues.

DANNY HAYES AND JENNIFER L. LAWLESS , Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political

Campaigns in a Polarized Era

Hayes and Lawless explain how they collected their data—local newspaper coverage of congressional candidates—and explain how they coded and classified the coverage to allow them to perform statistical analysis of the news pieces. While you probably won’t collect 10,000- plus news items for a class project, you could collect information (such as media coverage, interview responses, or legal briefs) and analyze and sort them to identify patterns such as repeated words and ideas.

If your data are quantitative, you also need to explain them. Sociologist Jonathan Horowitz’s research concludes that job quality influences personal assessments of well-being by “improving social life, altering class identification, affecting physical health, and increasing amounts of leisure time.” See how he introduces the data he analyzes:

In this study, I use data from the General Social Survey (GSS) and structural equation modeling to test relationships between job quality and subjective well-being. The GSS is a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States that asks a large number of questions about experiences at work (Smith et al., 2010). In particular, the GSS introduced a new battery of questions titled “Quality of

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Working Life” in 2002 (and repeated in 2006 and 2010) which includes multiple questions about several job quality dimensions.

JONATHAN HOROWITZ , “Dimensions of Job Quality, Mechanisms, and Subjective Well-Being in

the United States,” Sociological Forum

Here are some templates for discussing data:

◼ In order to test the hypothesis that __________, we assessed __________. Our calculations suggest __________.

◼ I used __________ to investigate __________. The results of this investigation indicate __________.

“But Others May Object . . .”

No matter how strongly your data support your argument, there are almost surely other perspectives (and thus other data) that you need to acknowledge. By considering possible objections to your argument and taking them seriously, you demonstrate that you’ve done your work and that you’re aware of other perspectives—and most important, you present your own argument as part of an ongoing conversation.

See how law professor Michelle Alexander acknowledges that there may be objections to her argument describing trends in mass incarceration as the “New Jim Crow.”

See p. 347 for a selection from The New Jim Crow.

Some might argue that as disturbing as this system appears to be, there is nothing particularly new about mass incarceration; it is merely a continuation of past drug wars and biased law enforcement practices. Racial bias in our criminal justice system is simply an old problem that

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has gotten worse, and the social excommunication of “criminals” has a long history; it is not a recent invention. There is some merit to this argument.

MICHELLE ALEXANDER , The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Alexander imagines a conversation with people who might be skeptical about her argument, particularly her claim that this represents a “new” development. And she responds that they are correct, to a point. After acknowledging her agreement with the assessment of historical racial bias in the criminal justice system, she goes on in the rest of her chapter to explain that the expanded scope and consequences of contemporary mass incarceration have caused dramatic differences in society.

Someone may object because there are related phenomena that your analysis does not explain or because you do not have the right data to investigate a particular question. Or perhaps someone may object to assumptions underlying your argument or how you handled your data. Here are some templates for considering naysayers:

◼ __________ might object that __________.

◼ Is my claim realistic? I have argued __________, but readers may question __________.

◼ My explanation accounts for __________ but does not explain __________. This is because __________.

“Why Should We Care?”

Who should care about your research, and why? Since the social sciences attempt to explain human behavior, it is important to consider how your research affects the assumptions we make about human behavior. In addition, you might offer recommendations for how other social scientists might continue to explore an issue, or what actions policy makers should take.

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In the following example, sociologist Devah Pager identifies the implications of her study of the way having a criminal record affects a person applying for jobs:

[I]n terms of policy implications, this research has troubling conclusions. In our frenzy of locking people up, our “crime control” policies may in fact exacerbate the very conditions that lead to crime in the first place. Research consistently shows that finding quality steady employment is one of the strongest predictors of desistance from crime (Shover 1996; Sampson & Laub 1993; Uggen 2000). The fact that a criminal record severely limits employment opportunities— particularly among blacks—suggests that these individuals are left with few viable alternatives.

DEVAH PAGER , “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American Journal of Sociology

Pager’s conclusion that a criminal record negatively affects employment chances creates a vicious circle, she says: steady employment discourages recidivism, but a criminal record makes it harder to get a job.

In answering the “so what?” question, you need to explain why your readers should care. Although sometimes the implications of your work may be so broad that they would be of interest to almost anyone, it’s never a bad idea to identify explicitly any groups of people who will find your work important.

Templates for establishing why your claims matter:

◼ X is important because __________ .

◼ Ultimately, what is at stake here is __________ .

◼ The finding that __________ should be of interest to __________ because __________.

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the complexity of people allows us to look at their behavior from many different viewpoints. Much has been, and will be, said about how and why people do the

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things they do. As a result, we can look at writing in the social sciences as an ongoing conversation. When you join this conversation, the “they say / I say” framework will help you figure out what has already been said (“they say”) and what you can add (“I say”). The components of social science writing presented in this chapter are tools to help you join that conversation.

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NINETEEN

“HELP ME UNDERSTAND. . .”

When Your “They Say” Is a Bot

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A COLLEAGUE OF OURS recently asked us how generative AI tools like ChatGPT can be used with this textbook—how, that is, they can help students make the signature move of the academic world: entering into conversation or debate with what “they say.” It was a good question, and we didn’t have an immediate answer. After giving it some thought, however, and working more closely with these new technologies, we realized that an answer was needed. The result is this chapter. While these supersmart chatbots are sometimes thought of as a conversational search engine, we show how, if used responsibly, they can help you make the kinds of analytic, argumentative moves that this book addresses, and so, in this chapter, we provide model prompts or templates for moving chatbots in this “they say / I say” direction, as in:

◼ I am writing an essay in which I want to argue __________ and could use some help thinking through my argument. Can you help me identify who says or might say otherwise—what views my own argument might be seen as a response to?

But before saying more about using generative AI tools in the service of this kind of academic critical thinking, we need to address some basic points about how to use them responsibly.

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Most important, your instructor likely has a policy on the use of chatbots, so be sure to read your course syllabus carefully and check with your instructor if you’re in any doubt. And don’t be surprised if your instructor asks you not only to follow citation guidelines but also to submit a transcript or record of any interactions you had with generative AI in writing your paper so that your work with the technology can be assessed as part of the final written product. You may also be asked to do more in-class writing, in part to give your instructor a sense of your unique style and concerns as a writer but also to provide a benchmark against which any take-home writing assignments can be compared. Along similar lines, you may also be asked to draw more on personal experiences in your writing and in class discussions, which can help reassure readers that you’re the one who wrote your paper and not some distant machine technology.

See Chapter 7 , “In My Experience.”

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REVEAL, DON’T CONCEAL

It’s hard to explain the sheer excitement of using these new generative AI tools to anyone who hasn’t yet used them. These programs rely on Large Language Models (LLMs)—predictive engines—that draw on gigantic storehouses of data and are often described as having learned from these datasets how to respond to human prompts and questions in literate, grammatical (even polite!) language. When we first tried our hand at these chatbots, we kept saying things like “Wow,” and “Look at this! Did you know that these bots can __________ ? ” Not only do chatbots draw on enormous swaths of data and produce coherent, logical writing but they also do all this in a matter of mere seconds, answering the prompts you give them in real time and thus creating the illusion of real, human-to-human conversation. Furthering this illusion, these advanced technologies have the capacity to remember what you said in earlier parts of the conversation, meaning that you can develop a powerful train of thought with them over time, and keep directing and redirecting them in the direction you want.

Is it any wonder then, that worldwide debates are raging about whether and how generative AI should be regulated— including in the domain of education? After all, as you probably already know, it can be very tempting for students to turn in an AI-generated text as their own, to simply change a word or two and put their name on it. But the central message we want to offer on this topic is: don’t . It’s no more acceptable to submit the work of a bot as your own than it is to submit the work of another person as your own. Ultimately, plagiarizing is not only a way of cheating the academic system but also of cheating yourself, since it denies you the chance to develop the independent intellectual skills that you go to college to learn.

That having been said, there may be occasions when you find chatbots helpful in your writing process—if, that is, your instructor allows it, and if, as our section heading suggests, you reveal rather than conceal that you are doing so, giving credit where credit is due by following documentation guidelines, which we summarize in an appendix at the back of this book (“Citing What ‘They Say’”).

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A good rule of thumb, then, is to be transparent in your use of generative AI, citing it as you would any other source or collaborator, as in:

◼ When asked why __________, ChatGPT responded, “__________.”

In addition, to show that you played a significantly active role directing or prompting the bot, you might write:

◼ Working collaboratively with BARD over a series of twenty prompts (see this link to the transcript of these exchanges), the bot and I came up with the following interpretation: “__________.”

◼ After a series of prompts (see the chat history in my Works Cited page), BING was able to explain the concept clearly: “ __________ .”

To quote a chatbot’s answers, you may want to consult not only our appendix on citation but also Chapter 3 , “The Art of Quoting.” And though it could go without saying, you may also want to avoid sharing significant quantities of original writing with today’s chatbots, which are owned by private corporations that are free to do almost whatever they want with information they collect on us.

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FACT OR FICTION?

In addition to exercising caution uploading your original writing to any AI tool, caution is called for when using chatbots as sources you quote, because they are prone to what are commonly called “hallucinations” in which they fabricate (or “hallucinate”) facts. Anyone who has ever worked with these technologies can see pretty quickly that they not only make factual errors but also do so in such a convincingly authoritative tone that these errors can be easy to miss.

Consider what happened when a first-year student at the State University of New York was using a chatbot to investigate the role of masculinity in the Spider Man movies, and the bot she was using wrote at great length about an article by T. Sasson (2018). At one point, for instance, it wrote:

According to Sasson (2018), Parker’s journey exemplifies the exploration of masculinity within a coming-of-age narrative, showcasing the complexities of growing up amid traditional gender expectations.

Looks to us like a sound piece of writing. The chatbot even provided a Works Cited list indicating that the essay by T. Sasson was published in the edited collection Marvel Comics into Film: Essays on Adaptations Since the 1940s . So all’s well and good— right? The problem, however, is that, while this edited collection does exist—look out!—it does not include an essay by T. Sasson. Furthermore, T. Sasson, the supposed author, doesn’t exist either! Despite its reassuringly confident tone, the bot fabricated the reference out of whole cloth.

Along similar lines, consider what happened when, prompted by this student’s experience, we decided to conduct a little test by having a conversation ourselves with ChatGPT about the Spider Man movies. The conversation started out swimmingly and lasted for several days, most of it centering around an article that the bot referenced by the former New York Times film critic, A. O. Scott. But at the end of the exchange, when we asked the bot for a link to Scott’s article so that we could read it

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ourselves, the bot reported matter of factly that there was no such article, that it had merely imagined what Scott “might” have written. Shocked, and a little annoyed, we typed: “But you were the one who told us about the article; you’ve been discussing it with us for hours; and, instead of using phrases like, “Scott might have said . . .” or “might have argued . . . ,” you wrote, “Scott insists . . .” and “Scott appreciates . . .” or “. . . claims.” GPT’s response? To apologize, but simply to reiterate what it had said before: that it had been referring to “a hypothetical” article Scott could have written “based on his concerns and general outlook.”

The two of us were just experimenting, of course. But a mistake like this for a student fulfilling an assignment, or someone in the world of work, journalism, or politics, say, can have serious consequences. As our sister-in-law who works for a notfor- profit company explains, while chatbots “offer increased productivity, they have their risks—like hallucinations” (Carolyn Kahn Birkenstein, The MITRE Corporation).

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VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY

As these examples demonstrate, AI-generated writing requires critical scrutiny and investigation on your part. The lateral reading or fact- checking tips we describe in Chapter 15 can help you with this. By leaving the program momentarily and searching online, you can confirm or disconfirm the veracity of any sources—or any examples, statistics, quotations, summaries, and so forth—that a chatbot provides.

So beware. Even if a source your chatbot refers to does exist, you can’t always be sure that the bot accurately represents what that source says. Most of the time, it seems to us, chatbots do a good, even brilliant, job of summarizing what others say. You just never know in advance when they will present a summary that is just plain wrong or will cite a source that doesn’t exist. Chatbots often misrepresent and misquote sources, which explains why it’s a serious problem when we rely on what they say about an assigned text, without bothering to read it.

Imagine, for instance, what would happen if you were to rely on the following claims made by ChatGPT about Kenneth Goldsmith’s article, “Go Ahead, Waste Time on the Internet.” When asked for a summary of Goldsmith’s central argument, the bot explained that Goldsmith

posits that aimless drifting on the internet can be a creative act, drawing parallels to older forms of “wasting time” such as daydreaming or doodling, which have been recognized as sources of creativity.

See pp. 401–05 .

Sounds plausible enough, perhaps—but not if you’ve actually read Goldsmith’s article. Goldsmith does not defend “wasting time” on the internet. And he never mentions any of the examples that the bot

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identified like “drifting” online, or other overtly unproductive activities like “daydreaming or doodling.” His title, in fact, encouraging us to “Go ahead” and “waste time on the internet” is ironic, suggesting not that we should actually waste time on the internet, but that activities often deemed to be wasteful—such as reading online and making social plans —are in fact edifying and productive. The only way to avoid repeating this kind of AI-generated misrepresentation is by engaging in the hard, often timeconsuming work of reading every text you’re writing about and double-checking everything, even tracking down material, if need be, in a library database. Your instructor will hold you responsible for your writing, so it’s up to you to detect and remove any problems, which can only be done by developing a solid understanding of the sources and data you’re dealing with.

Often, your understanding of these sources needs to be more than solid. It needs to be granular. For instance, when we were working with a chatbot on a project involving Gerald’s essay, “Hidden Intellectualism” (see page 606 ), the LLM quoted Gerald as having written:

[N]o necessary connection has ever been shown between what goes on in the street and what goes on in the school. . . .

But Gerald never wrote that sentence, which, if you think about it, makes no sense. Instead, he’d written:

[N]o necessary connection has ever been established between any text or subject and the educational depth and weight of the discussion it can generate. (607)

We were able to spot this easily overlooked misquotation right away because Gerald is the author and we’re therefore on intimate terms with his text. ChatGPT was quick once again to apologize for its mistake, but the experience made us even more vigilant than ever to double-check everything chatbots say, no matter how authoritatively they say it.

The experience also led us to rethink the claim one sometimes hears today that, were internet access to become universal, chatbots will have the capacity to democratize education by serving as a personal “tutor” or “mentor” to virtually every student.

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Given how error-prone these technologies can be (and of course they may improve drastically in the near future), ceding full control to them is always a big mistake. Students themselves need to take the lead, mentoring, directing, and often even correcting the chatbots themselves, engaging with the technology in a complex collaboration in which the mentee becomes the final authority or mentor.

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AI FOR ACADEMIC ARGUMENT

But problems with chatbots are only part of the story. There’s also the vast potential of these technologies to help us improve as writers and thinkers. Despite having access to gigantic swaths of information (no matter how faulty that information can sometimes be), these sophisticated bots can also help you overcome that dreaded feeling of writer’s block, and keep you company during a long slog of writing, breaking through the isolation of the writing process and offering stimulating feedback that can sharpen your focus—even at 2 o’clock, if it suits you, in the morning. Furthermore, as we’d now like to show, and as we suggested earlier, these technologies can also help you make what this book presents as the most important move of academic critical thinking: summarizing and responding to what “they say.”

How to get chatbots to do this, however, is not immediately apparent. While there’s a wealth of advice out there on how to prompt or direct such programs (a practice often referred to as “prompt engineering”), there isn’t much advice on how to use them to summarize and respond to other perspectives. And part of this has to do with the nature of chatbots themselves. After all, these bots “do not,” as ChatGPT tells us, “have opinions,” and are instead “designed to be neutral tools.” As BING explains, “I am not allowed to express subjective opinions on controversial or sensitive topics.” As a result, you cannot engage with a bot in the same way you would with a noted scholar such as Michelle Alexander or a newspaper opinion writer. As they describe themselves, at least, these programs are “neutral” and, as BING puts it, “objective” tools that remain above the fray of controversies and debates (though as you may discover, because bots draw from what’s readily available online, they often reproduce the biases of mainstream media).

But there are ways to prompt or guide these technologies in a dialogical, “they say / I say” direction. For one thing, despite their claims of neutrality and objectivity, chatbots do sometimes misinterpret texts, as we saw earlier, so you can argue with them within limits:

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◼ Although ChatGPT claimed that Kenneth Goldsmith argues __________, what he actually argues, on the contrary, is that __________.

For another thing, to the extent that chatbots don’t take positions themselves, they can help you understand positions others take, your own position, and the relationship between them.

For instance, to get help understanding someone else’s position—a particularly challenging reading or “they say” you’ve been assigned— you might write:

◼ What does X mean when she writes, “__________”? In making this claim, is X being sincere or sarcastic?

◼ Author X often refers approvingly to the theory __________. Can you explain in simple terms what that theory is?

◼ X often uses the term __________. What does it mean?

Along similar lines, to understand how an author’s position fits into a larger debate or conversation, you might write something like the following:

◼ X’s argument is that __________. Please identify another writer who names X and either critiques or builds on X’s perspective .

◼ X’s argument is that __________. Please identify another writer who doesn’t name X but nevertheless offers a contrary perspective.

And a template like the following can help with answering the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions:

◼ A classmate who read a draft of my essay in which I argue __________said, “Your argument is clear enough to me, but I guess I don’t see why I should care one way or the other about

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it.” Can you suggest how I might answer this comment in my essay?

In yet other instances, you may be writing a research paper and could use some help coming up with a specific issue or debate to focus on. In such a case, you might prompt your chatbot as follows:

◼ Please identify two or three controversies over the topic of __________.

In still other instances, you may have a clear idea of a debate you want to address but need help seeing how two authors fit into it:

◼ Please help me put X and Y into dialogue about __________, clarifying exactly where they agree and disagree.

Templates like this that put authors into dialogue are extremely useful in the academic world, which values the art of synthesizing and comparing perspectives.

In prompting chatbots in this way, you may find that, despite their impressive dexterity, they do not always get things right on the first try. When we used a version of the last template above with ChatGPT, for instance, we had to prompt and re-prompt the bot multiple times before it produced a response that actually put the two authors into dialogue. In its initial responses, what the bot said about the one author seemed unrelated to what it said about the other—like two ships passing in the night. Only with persistent redirecting was the program able to pinpoint clearly and exactly where the two authors parted ways.

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THE NAYSAYER ROLE

There are, of course, other ways to move chatbots in a “they say / I say” direction, but one merits special attention. It involves exploiting what these technologies seem especially good at: role playing, taking on the role of a naysayer in particular.

For example, you might ask a chatbot to play the role of a naysayer who challenges an argument you’re making, as in:

◼ I am writing a paper on the topic of X, and I would like to take the position that __________ . My view, in other words, is not __________, but __________. Before I begin writing, however, I’d like you to help me refine my argument by playing the role of a skeptic. You might point out where, for instance, someone could challenge my position, from what standpoint (feminist, conservative, pro-market capitalist, and so forth) they might mount such challenges, and how they might use my evidence against me.

Or, in revising something you’ve written, you might write:

◼ When I asserted that __________in a recent essay, my instructor wrote in the margin, “Surely, many would disagree,” and I’ve been struggling to figure out how to respond. Can you help me identify how others might disagree with my claim?

You can also enlist a chatbot’s help in answering a naysayer, reversing the roles outlined above so that, instead of critiquing the position you’re taking, the chatbot defends it:

◼ I just thought of a counterargument to my position. I’ve been making the case that __________, but realized that a skeptic

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could always point out __________. Should I radically revise my argument, or even start over, or is there some way I can rescue it?

◼ In my essay, I take the position that __________, and at one point I address the counterargument that __________. In my heart of hearts, I completely disagree with this counterargument. And yet, there must be some concession that I can make to it while still standing my ground. Can you help me identify such a concession by listing three or four?

Again, prompting a chatbot in ways like these isn’t always a one-and- done activity, but very often a matter of prompting it again and again. You may need to remind your chatbot what you want from it, as in:

◼ Again, please remember that I’m asking you to __________, not to __________.

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QUESTIONS OF STYLE

Chatbots can also be prompted to help you with your writing itself, as in:

◼ Please read this paragraph I’ve written and identify the biggest problems you see in my writing. Where, for instance, might my ideas be disconnected, my transitions weak, a quotation mishandled, or the connection unclear between the position I take and the one I’m challenging?

You can also enlist a chatbot’s help with tricky questions about voice— as in:

◼ The following sentences I’ve written sound a little too informal for the kind of academic essay I’m trying to write: __________. Can you please suggest how I might translate these sentences into the kind of academic professional language that scholars might appreciate?

Conversely, chatbots can also be prompted in the opposite direction to help you include some of the non-academic language we discuss in Chapter 10 , “Academic Writing Doesn’t Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice”:

◼ The following sentences I wrote contain too much jargon and sound a little stiff to me: __________.” Please suggest how I could translate my point into more everyday colloquial language.

Animating this chapter has been the question of how to use today’s revolutionary AI writing technologies without overrelying on them as a shortcut that does the work for you but rather as tools that, when used responsibly, can help you make the moves that matter in academic writing. We can’t put this point any better than a first-year student at Georgetown University did after reading a draft of this chapter:

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Whenever our generation talks about AI, there is a lingering notion that it’s more powerful than humans, that AI overtakes what we humans can do. I believe changing the narrative to give us control over AI is exactly how we can use it to our advantage.

The ultimate goal, then, is to work collaboratively with this technology in a way in which you lead it instead of letting it lead you.

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Exercises

1. Treat the privacy policy (and/or the terms and conditions) of a chatbot as a “they say” that you read and respond to.

a. Consider the risks that users should be aware of when using this program. Which risks are stated? Are any risks left out? Does the policy say anything about data being collected on users? What about matters of copyright?

b. Identify any passages that may be especially hard to understand. Enlist the help of the chatbot itself to parse out what such passages are saying.

c. Use one of the “they say / I say” templates in Chapter 2 to compose a summary and response to the policy.

2. Ask a chatbot to write a few paragraphs summarizing a controversial topic that you’ve recently heard or written about. Does the chatbot live up to the “objectivity” and “neutrality” that most chatbots aspire to?

a. Examine the output for signs of obvious bias or stereotypes. What do you see in the language and examples used in the argument?

b. Does the summary leave out any important perspectives? What evidence exists beyond the internet-based dataset that the bot draws from?

c. Describe one of these unrepresented perspectives: a personal experience, a possible interview or survey, a physical artifact. How could you revise this argument to account for this missing perspective?

3. With a partner or on your own, review a chatbot-generated text that uses sources or quotations, and, using the lateral reading techniques discussed in Chapter 15 , track down any sources or facts referenced by the bot. Do the sources actually exist? If so, are they quoted or summarized accurately? Grade the chatbot

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based on how well it answered the prompt and incorporated the words of others. Explain why you chose that particular grade.

4. Ask a chatbot to help you revise your writing.

a. First, experiment with style. Ask the bot to help you make a passage more concise or revise it to include more transitional words and phrases. Were the bot’s suggestions helpful?

b. Next, ask the bot to adopt the voice of a certain perspective (a dynamic salesperson, a pompous politician, a nosy neighbor). Analyze the chatbot’s answers: Did it use any language or make any moves that you could borrow to make your writing stronger?

c. Finally, experiment with audience and different kinds of writing. Ask the chatbot to turn an argument into a slide presentation outline, a country and western song, a clickbait headline. Some of these kinds of writing may be more useful to you than others, but you may find something unexpected that helps you strengthen what you say.

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TWENTY

“WHO DECIDES WHAT FREEDOM IS?”

* * *

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There is perhaps no symbol of freedom more immediately recognizable than the Statue of Liberty, her torch held high, a beacon of democracy and independence. This image—a model of its construction, on display at the Paris Museum of Technology in 1909—invites a revised reading of the icon: removed from her familiar setting, surrounded by scaffolding

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and construction workers, we can consider how democracy is a work in progress.

1. Look at the scaffolding encasing the model of the Statue of Liberty. Think about what props up and guarantees democratic freedoms in our society. What systems, laws, and beliefs define how we understand and practice freedom?

2. Look at the workers in this image. Think about who is involved in defining what freedom is. Who gets to have a say? Who is left out? How is freedom defined collectively with others in an ongoing conversation?

________

FREEDOM, BROADLY DEFINED as the right to act, speak, and think as we please within reasonable limits, is one of America’s foundational values. To cite one famous example of a reasonable limit, no one may falsely shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, according to a memorable United States Supreme Court opinion from 1920. The US Constitution, America’s founding document, provides its residents with five basic freedoms: freedom of speech, press, petition, assembly, and religion. Many of us who live in the US pride ourselves on living in a free society, and we contrast living in a modern liberal democracy with residing in a totalitarian state that polices and restricts its citizens’ words and actions. We defend our freedoms as laid out in the Constitution when they are under threat from enemies foreign or domestic. Indeed, “freedom” is a term that Americans enthusiastically and, as surveys regularly show, almost unanimously embrace, at least in a general sense. Who could possibly be against freedom?

Yet, while Americans of all political stripes embrace the concept of freedom, freedom is invoked in differing and sometimes opposing ways, depending on individual perspectives. Some stress the importance of equality, collective opportunity, and the lifting up of others in achieving true freedom for all. In this vein, acclaimed South African political leader and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela asserted: “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” Organizations have sprung up to

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support this view of freedom. For example, Freedom House is a nonprofit organization in Washington, DC, that defends human rights and civil liberties while promoting democracy in the United States and around the world. In contrast, others frequently emphasize the freedom of the individual from intrusive governmental restrictions. Accordingly, libertarian novelist Ayn Rand, in the long American tradition of rugged individualism, defined freedom in the following way: “To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” Representing this conservative viewpoint, Freedom Keepers, with both national and international chapters, is an organization devoted to protecting Americans from government attempts to impose restrictions that limit citizens’ autonomy, medical and otherwise.

Though we all value freedom in a general sense, Americans have long disagreed about its precise meaning and about how it should be encouraged and defended. As you will see in this chapter’s readings, the wide range of interpretations regarding freedom reveal much about the issues that most concern us as a society today. One set of readings examines issues of freedom in relation to individuals’ rights and actions. Progressive writer Katha Pollitt espouses an expansive view of free speech in defending the rights of individuals to express their ideas even if those ideas may be abhorrent to others. Conversely, journalist and author Nesrine Malik probes the limits of free expression through analysis of recent political and social controversies and asks whether, “by fixating on free speech, we put sanctity of expression over sanctity of life?” Retired US Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin E. Dempsey highlights one such controversy, the requirement that people stand for the national anthem. He argues in favor of the requirement, pointing to the importance of shared rituals in uniting a society made up of diverse individuals. Finally, in a more philosophical essay, yet one with real world implications, professor and author Carissa Véliz considers the increasing ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to predict future outcomes. She expresses concern that this development may undermine free will, as results are more and more known in advance, and may limit people’s efforts to defy the odds, which efforts she describes as “one of the greatest gifts of humanity.”

A second set of readings in this chapter focuses on government policies and their real and potential effects on freedom. Former United States attorney general Eric Holder argues for measures that would make

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it easier for people to vote, while still maintaining voter security. College student Arthi Sivendra points to Holder’s solutions as she maintains in her essay that democracy in the United States is severely compromised due to inequities built into the Electoral College, the disproportionate influence of wealthy Americans, and restrictions on voter access. Legal scholar Michelle Alexander takes us to prisons across America to describe the discrimination and lack of freedom faced by incarcerated members of society (often even after returning to society). Pointing out that the incarcerated are disproportionately Black, Alexander argues that the prison system is at the core of what she calls “the new Jim Crow.” John Pfaff, a professor of American law, responds to Alexander’s framing by complicating the “Standard Story” around mass incarceration. Finally, disability justice advocate, disabled person, and consultant Luticha Doucette depicts the many areas in which wheelchair users and other physically limited individuals enjoy far less freedom than others and suggests possible improvements.

As you read, discuss, and think about the essays in this chapter along with those in the accompanying “They Say / I Blog” (theysayiblog.com ), you will have the opportunity to learn more about competing interpretations of freedom and to clarify your views on this important subject. We hope you will sharpen your understanding of the issues under discussion, then make your own written contribution to this ongoing conversation. And in doing so, we hope you keep in mind the words of author and teacher Paolo Freire: “Education is freedom.”

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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Glossary

abhorrent generating strong dislike

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The Myth of the Free Speech Crisis

NESRINE MALIK

* * *

NESRINE MALIK is a British Sudanese journalist and a columnist for the Guardian. She writes about US and British politics and culture with a particular focus on Islam, race, and gender. Malik was awarded the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism in 2021; her writing has been recognized by the Orwell Foundation and the British Journalism Awards. This selection is from her 2019 book, We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent.

________

OVER THE PAST ten years, many platforms in the press and social media have had to grapple with the challenges of managing users with increasingly sharp and offensive tones while maintaining enough space for maximum expression, feedback, and interaction. Speech has never been more free, or less mediated. Anyone with internet access can create a profile and write, tweet, blog, or comment, with little vetting and no hurdle of technological skill. But the primary losers in this growth of expression have been women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people. A 2017 Pew survey revealed that a “wide cross section” of Americans experience online abuse, but that the majority of it was directed toward minorities, with a quarter of black Americans saying they have been attacked online due to race or ethnicity. Ten percent of Hispanics and 3 percent of whites reported the same. Abuse of women on Twitter was at the epicenter of this new storm of online violence. Hostility toward women online is so intense that it has amounted to a human rights crisis, according to Amnesty International. But the nature of the abuse women face online, particularly on Twitter, is qualitatively different from the abuse received by minorities, in that it comes with the tangible threat of

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violence and stalking by both familiar and anonymous users. The US organization National Network to End Domestic Violence found that “97 percent of domestic violence programs reported that abusers use technology to stalk, harass, and control victims.” In the UK, Women’s Aid reported that 85 percent of abuse victims said the abuse they received online from partners or former partners mirrored the abuse pattern offline. Half of the women polled said that online abuse came with explicit threats of violence.

Being black, Muslim, and a woman with a minor public profile online meant I had a front-row seat to the genesis and development of this epidemic of virtual harassment which often spilled out into real life.

The vast majority of this assault not only goes unpunished, it is positively encouraged by the very business models of the tech platforms that host abusive users. Still, it is somehow conventional wisdom that free speech is under assault in a new “cancel culture” that hunts people accused of not toeing politically correct orthodoxies, that college campuses have succumbed to an epidemic of no-platforming , that social media mobs are ready to raise their pitchforks at the most innocent slip of the tongue or joke, and that Enlightenment values that protected the right to free expression and individual liberty are under threat. The cause of this, it is claimed, is a liberal totalitarianism that is the result of intolerance and thin skin. This tyranny is allegedly fascist in its brutal inclinations to silence the individual while acting as a refuge for the weak, the easily wounded, and the coddled. Instead of reckoning with the rise in online abuse, hate speech, and hate crime against minorities and women, we spend much of our time panicking about a fictional cancel culture that in many cases is just “consequence culture.”

See Chapter 2 for tips on summarizing.

This is the myth of the free speech crisis. It is an extension of the political correctness myth but is a recent mutation more specifically linked to efforts or impulses to normalize hate speech or shut down legitimate responses to it. The purpose of the myth is not to secure

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freedom of speech, that is, the right to express one’s opinions without censorship, restraint, or legal penalty. The purpose is to secure the license to speak with impunity; not freedom of expression, but rather freedom from the consequences of that expression.

The myth has two components: the first is that all speech should be free; the second is that freedom of speech means freedom from objection. On the first, I’ll cut to the chase. Not all speech should be free. It’s hard to argue that. I always feel slightly sheepish or apologetic when I have to be blunt and just say there are, and should be, severe restrictions on speech. Instinctively it feels wrong to ask that we have less freedom of speech—to be unmoved when people with views you disagree with are silenced or banned smacks of illiberalism. And it’s hard to argue for less freedom in the society in which I live, because is it not the logical conclusion that limiting rights of expression will catch up with me at some point? Will it not be me one day, on the wrong side of free speech?

For advice on metacommentary, see Chapter 11 .

A kernel of something makes all myths stick, something that speaks to a sense of justice and liberty, and to due process. It gives them an openness that appeals to the good and well-intentioned while making them vulnerable to cynical manipulation. But challenging the myth of a free speech crisis does not mean enabling the state to police and censor even further. Moreover, there is no need to challenge the crisis because no such crisis exists. The freedom of speech crisis myth’s purpose is to guilt people into conceding their right of response to attack and to destigmatize racism and prejudice. It aims to blackmail good people into ceding space to bad ideas, even though they have a legitimate right to refuse. And it is a myth that demands, in turn, its own silencing and an undermining of individual freedom. To accept the freedom of speech crisis myth is to give up your own right to turn off the comments when they become toxic.

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The myth and its promoters thrive on cognitive dissonances and good intentions, feeding them with free speech absolutism , invoking a nonexistent marketplace of ideas, fabrication of free speech scandals, and slippery slope fallacies.

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Speech Is Free but Not Absolute

There are many things that people do and can say in public, with little fear of legal intervention from the state. But there are always limits and always should be. This applies to almost all human behavior in secular, democratic societies. The most straightforward example is how we dress. Broadly we can wear what we want, but most people will stay within the confines of social custom because otherwise a judgment may be made about their character or they may offend others. Men will generally wear a tie to a funeral; women will limit more revealing clothes to their social, rather than professional lives. Where social custom fails, the state intervenes. There are legal limits in even the most permissive societies on public nudity, while legislation against the wearing of the burqa and the niqab is gathering momentum in Europe. In France, both the burqa and revealing one’s private parts are banned. And in countries where there are few explicit laws on dress, people still tend to fall back on customary behavior even when there is no legal threat of punishment. In Germany, nudity is legal, as is the burqa, but there is no preponderance of either.

Free speech, like public dress codes, is not an abstract notion, it has a purpose; it is a regulator of interaction, rather than an end in itself. It sets specific parameters.

In its most pure form freedom of speech serves two purposes: protection from state prosecution when challenging authority or orthodoxy; and the protection of fellow citizens from the damaging consequences of absolute—completely, legally unregulated—speech such as slander. According to Francis Canavan in Freedom of Expression: Purpose as Limit , his analysis of the most permissive free speech law, the First Amendment to the US Constitution, free speech must have a rational end, which is to facilitate communication between citizens. Where it does not serve that end, it is limited. Like all freedoms, it ends when it infringes upon the freedoms of others. The US Supreme Court itself “has never accepted an absolutist interpretation of freedom of speech. It has not protected, for example, libel, slander, perjury, false

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advertising, obscenity and profanity, solicitation of a crime, or ‘fighting’ words. The reason for their exclusion from First Amendment protection is that they have minimal or no values as ideas, communication of information, appeal to reason, step toward truth, etc.; in short, no value in regard to the ends of the Amendment.”

Those who believe in the free speech crisis myth fail to make the distinction between “fighting” words and speech that facilitates communication, between free speech and absolute speech.

Using this litmus test , the first hint the free speech crisis is actually an absolute speech crisis arises from the issues it focuses on. On college campuses, the “crisis” is overwhelmingly around race and gender. On social media, the free speech ax is wielded by trolls, Islamophobes, and misogynists , leading to an abuse epidemic that platforms have failed to curb. This free speech crisis movement has managed to stigmatize reasonable protest, which has existed for years without being branded “silencing” or being deemed an assault on free expression.

What is considered speech that is worthy of protection is broadly subjective and depends on the limits a society has agreed to draw. Western societies like to think of their version of freedom of speech as exceptionally pristine, but it is also tainted (or tempered, depending on where you’re coming from) by convention.

. . .

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Freedom to Respond

Freedom of speech is not a neutral, fixed concept, uncolored by societal prejudice. The belief that it is some absolute untainted hallmark of civilization is linked to self-serving exceptionalism, a delusion that there is a basic template around which there is a consensus uninformed by biases. The recent history of fighting for freedom of speech has gone from noble, striving for the right to publish works that offend people’s sexual or religious prudery and speaking up against the values leveraged by the powerful to maintain control, to attacking the weak and persecuted. The effort has evolved from challenging upward to punching downward.

The myth of the free speech crisis has been pushed by right-wing funding and activism, but it has also been indulged by liberals who are prone to commitment to abstract ideals that are virtuous in essence but sometimes unfit for application without modulation. Enlightenment prophets and their aphorisms are rolled out, but with little accounting for nuance or adjustment for a modern context—it is no wonder that the US Constitution, extended from Enlightenment values, is often critiqued as fossilized. The quote often misattributed to Voltaire —“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”—is thrown like a single blanket over a house fire.

The truth is that freedom of speech, even to some of its most passionate founding philosophers, always comes with brake mechanisms, and those mechanisms usually reflect cultural bias. John Milton advocated the destruction of works that are blasphemous or libelous: “Those which otherwise come forth, if they be found mischievous and libelous, the fire and the executioner will be the timeliest and the most effectual remedy, that mans [sic ] prevention can use.” Today, our brake mechanisms include laws against libel, slander, and prejudicing of ongoing legal cases. But these mechanisms do not curb the promotion of hate toward those at the bottom end of the social hierarchy because their protection is not truly a valued and integral part of our popular culture.

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Judith Butler, a cultural theorist and Berkeley professor, speaking at a 2017 forum sponsored by the Berkeley Academic Senate, said: “If free speech does take precedence over every other constitutional principle and every other community principle, then perhaps we should no longer claim to be weighing or balancing competing principles or values. We should perhaps frankly admit that we have agreed in advance to have our community sundered, racial and sexual minorities demeaned, the dignity of trans people denied, that we are, in effect, willing to be wrecked by this principle of free speech.”

A moral right to express unpopular opinions is not a moral right to express those opinions in a way that silences the voices of others or puts them in danger of violence. What is at stake in challenging free speech crisis mythology is not the resolution of some esoteric argument. Speech has real-life effects. It corrodes community relations, picks on the vulnerable, and threatens the safety of our fellow citizens. By fixating on the free speech element, we have put sanctity of expression over sanctity of life.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Nesrine Malik rejects the idea that “free speech is under assault” (paragraph 3). Early in her essay, she names several “they say” views her argument responds to. What are these widely accepted beliefs about free speech Malik challenges in her essay? Which of these if any, are you familiar with?

2. Malik states, “Speech is free but not absolute” (paragraph 8). What does this mean? Paraphrase this statement in your own words. According to Malik, “freedom of speech serves two purposes” (paragraph 10). What are those two purposes?

3. Malik brings in many different arguments about free speech and its limits. How does she make sure a reader can distinguish between her claims and what others say, including naysayers? Point to three places where she uses clear voice markers to signal to her reader who is saying what.

4. In paragraph 17, Malik includes a quote from cultural theorist Judith Butler. Does Butler’s argument, represented in this quotation, support or counter Malik’s views? How so? This quotation is not yet fully sandwiched in Malik’s text. Use the strategies explained in Chapter 3 to compose a better framing for Butler’s quotation that Malik could insert in her argument. Be sure to introduce the quote, explain what it means, and connect it clearly to Malik’s main claim.

5. Imagine you are working with a social media company whose goal is to reduce the amount of hate speech and violent language posted on their site. Write a short proposal, citing Malik’s argument, in which you argue what the limits, if any, should be for speech on this social media platform. What factors should be considered in deciding what those limits should be?

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Glossary

no-platforming boycotting a speaker by refusing to give them a venue, or “platform”

Enlightenment values The Enlightenment was a philisophical and intellectual movement in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its five core values were happiness, reason, nature, progress, and liberty.

totalitarianism a form of govermnent that relies on people’s subservience to a dictator

litmus test a decisive test

misogynists haters of women

aphorism a pithy statement that contains a general truth

Voltaire French writer (1694–1778) who advocated free speech

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The Left Needs Free Speech

KATHA POLLITT

* * *

KATHA POLLITT is an essayist, poet, and cultural critic who writes the award-winning “Subject to Debate” column for the Nation . Her pieces have appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, Harper’s , the New York Times , and the Atlantic , and her poetry and essays are widely anthologized. Pollitt is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow and the recipient of several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has taught at Princeton University, Barnard College, and the New School University. This essay was published in the Nation in 2021.

________

WHEN W. W. NORTON decided to cease distributing Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth after several women accused Bailey of rape and other outrages, I called up my local bookstore and reserved a copy. When Amazon stopped selling When Harry Became Sally , which argues from a conservative point of view that it is not possible to change your sex, I went to Alibris.com and bought a used one. I would have bought the Dr. Seuss books withdrawn from distribution by their publisher, too, but I was too late: the few copies for sale online are going for hundreds of dollars. That these books had become “controversial” made me more curious about them than I otherwise would have been. I’m a grown-up, I thought to myself; I can make up my own mind about them.

These books were taken out of circulation for different reasons. Bailey’s book was discontinued by the publisher because of its author’s alleged wrongdoing. The Dr. Seuss case involves the business group that owns all his rights. When Harry Became Sally is just about one bookseller’s right to choose its wares, but it’s a bigger deal because of

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Amazon’s size: its sales account for more than half of all books sold in the United States. What these cases share—along with the successful drives to get Hachette to de-accept Woody Allen’s memoir and Simon & Schuster to cancel plans to publish Josh Hawley’s The Power of Big Tech —is that the challenges come from the left, broadly defined: trans activists, feminists, anti-racists, anti-Trumpers.

The left’s new enthusiasm for getting bad books taken off the shelves is a mistake. It’s in everyone’s interest, but especially the left’s, to have as broad a discourse as possible.

On elite campuses, or in the pages of the Nation , where I write, the left may look powerful and entitled to flex its muscles. But in the nation at large the left is weak. Republicans control all branches of twenty-three state governments; the Democratic Socialists of America, by contrast have around 90,000 members. In media, nothing on the left end of the spectrum is as popular as Fox News or right-wing radio shock jocks. And polls show Republicans are far keener than Democrats to ban from school libraries books they don’t like: ones about LGBTQ characters, witchcraft, vampires, evolution, and atheism, or that use “explicit language,” for example.

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Some left-wing positions, such as universal health insurance and a much higher minimum wage, have a lot of support. But many do not: few Americans want to abolish the police, prisons, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or think looting and arson are great ways to stick it to the Man ; according to a recent Gallup poll, only one-third of voters support trans athletes in women’s sports. What gives leftists the space to promote these unpopular positions in unfriendly places is the respect most Americans give to free speech.

People who want to deplatform a speaker or deep six a book love to point out that the First Amendment only applies to government. But socially and culturally, the notion that people have a right to say what they think and read what they want is much broader than that. That is why common dismissals—you can still get the book online, the speaker has plenty of other ways to express herself, books go out of print all the time—sound flip.

Deplatforming a speaker who has been chosen through the accepted university channels, or attacking Powell’s Books for selling Andy Ngô’s Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy , means you lose the high ground. Now you look just like your enemies. And what have you won, really? Powell’s doesn’t put Ngô’s books on the shelves, but it sells it online. Charles Murray gets to look like the victim of a mob at Middlebury. Josh Hawley, like Woody Allen, takes his book to another publisher.

When you ban a book or shut down a speaker, what you’re really saying is that you need to protect people from ideas you disagree with. You don’t trust people to contextualize, to historicize, to weigh evidence, or even just, like me, satisfy a curiosity, without falling down the rabbit hole of error. And if they do fall down, you don’t trust yourself to haul them out. They will stay there forever, nibbling reactionary carrots. You can argue forever that there is no such thing as “cancel culture,” but people know when their intelligence is being disrespected.

The libertarian streak in American culture is rightly blamed for many of our problems. But it has a positive side. It is what allows people who think abortion is morally wrong to believe women should still be able to make their own decision, and what allows people who despise atheists

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(or anyone with a different religion) to resist the religious coercion and even warfare that is common in other parts of the world. It is what allows American socialists to imagine a socialism that preserves personal freedoms, including freedom of speech.

The question, as always, is who decides what is permissible and what is beyond the pale. And who, as the Latin saying goes, will guard the guards? It’s easy to imagine that the people in charge would be like oneself, but the history of book banning in Western democracies suggests otherwise. The same kinds of people always get power when ideas are up for suppression: fanatics, obsessives, careerists, apparatchiks. And ideas get out anyway: Mein Kampf was banned in Germany until a few years ago, but there have been plenty of neo-Nazis and real Nazis there for decades.

For tips on saying why it matters, see Chapter 8 .

“You’re basically a classical liberal ,” my husband said when I read him a draft of this essay. Maybe so. Leftists spend a lot of time attacking liberalism and a lot of time relying on it to protect them, like children who assume they can say awful things to their parents and their parents will still be there for them. That’s true of (most) parents, but politics doesn’t work that way. If you call for a bookstore not to stock your enemy’s book or rejoice when a problematic classic is taken out of print, your enemy will do the same. Then it just comes down to who has more power. You won’t have a universal principle to appeal to. During the McCarthy era , American communists like my father understood this. Stalinists were more liberal than the liberals, if only out of self- preservation.

I would support free speech even if it wasn’t a tactical necessity right now, because I don’t think I have a lock on all the truth in the world. But the fact is, given American realities, where almost half the electorate voted for Donald Trump and large numbers don’t even believe in

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evolution, no one needs it more than the left. It’s messy, it’s contradictory, it means living with insults and stupidity and even, sometimes, evil and pain. Fortunately, your enemy is in the same position. That may be as good as it gets.

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Joining the Conversation

1. What is motivating Katha Pollitt’s argument? Identify two sentences in the essay where Pollitt introduces a “they say”: one sentence early in her essay, and another in a later “return sentence.”

2. Why, in Pollitt’s view, is it “in everyone’s interest, especially the left’s, to have as broad a discourse as possible?” (paragraph 3) Why does she specify that free speech is “especially” important for those whose political views are left of center? What evidence does she give to support this claim?

3. In paragraph 6, Pollitt plants a naysayer in her text: “People who want to deplatform a speaker or deep-six a book love to point out that the First Amendment only applies to government.” Paraphrase this naysayer argument in your own words. Do you think Pollitt answers this counterview persuasively? Why or why not?

4. The author mostly uses formal language in making her argument, but occasionally she uses a more informal voice, as discussed in Chapter 10 . For example, in paragraph 5, Pollitt writes, “But many do not: few Americans want to abolish the police, prisons, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or think looting and arson are great ways to stick it to the Man.” How does the occasional use of informal language, including using “I” and “you,” help Pollitt develop her argument? How did Pollitt’s more informal voice affect how you responded to her argument?

5. In paragraph 12, Pollitt describes free speech in this way: “It’s messy, it’s contradictory, it means living with insults and stupidity and even, sometimes, evil and pain.” How might Pollitt respond to Nesrine Malik’s claim that “not all speech should be free” (p. 315 , paragraph 5). On what points might Pollitt and Malik agree? On what points might they disagree?

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6. Is there a place for censorship in a democracy? Why or why not? In your response, draw on the arguments made by Katha Pollitt, Nesrine Malik (pp. 315–19 ), and Jacob Mchangama, whose essay is posted on theysayiblog.com.

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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Glossary

When Harry Became Sally references the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally (1989), which focuses on a disagreement over whether women and men can be platonic friends

stick it to the Man take action to challenge authority, such as law enforcement or government

deplatform boycott a speaker by refusing to give them a venue, or “platform”

deep six to discard; to cancel (from nautical terminology)

reactionary strongly conservative

libertarian political philosophy that emphasizes freedom, particularly from governmental intervention

classical liberal individual who embraces a political tradition emphasizing freedom of speech

McCarthy era an anti-communism campaign from the late 1940s through the 1950s initiated by Senator Joseph McCarthy; many left-wing people— entertainers, academics, activists—were falsely accused

Stalinists supporters of Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), general secretary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, and his one-party practice of communism

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Our Unfinished March

ERIC HOLDER

* * *

ERIC HOLDER is a lawyer and civil rights leader. He served as the US Attorney General from 2009 to 2015, the first African American to lead the US Department of Justice. Holder is the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and a graduate of Columbia Law School. This selection is from his 2022 book with Sam Koppelman, Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote—a History, a Crisis, a Plan .

________

WHAT DOES IT look like to make America a democracy? I believe the answer has two parts.

The first is fixing our elections. Because if the United States is going to be a representative democracy, then all our citizens need to be able to vote—and they shouldn’t be stopped from doing so based on where they live, what they look like, how much money they have, who they’re likely to vote for, or whether they can afford to wait in line.

The second is fixing our institutions. Because right now—with an unrepresentative Senate, an unnecessary and antidemocratic Electoral College, a gerrymandered House of Representatives and panoply of state legislatures, and a stolen Supreme Court—the ideal of every person having an equal say in our democracy, the idea of “one person, one vote,” is far from a reality. And that would still hold true, even if we fixed the problems with our elections, even if we had 100 percent voter turnout. Because the reason our institutions are broken, the reason they overrepresent the interests of one segment of our population, is that this

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is how those who enslaved people who looked like me—and who guided the writing of the Constitution—designed them to work.

But here’s the thing: The principal way to reform those institutions is by passing legislation, and the way to pass legislation is by winning elections, and the way those in favor of democracy are going to win elections is if those contests are a fair fight. So that’s where I’m going to start, with the solutions to the problems plaguing our elections, which boil down to one key principle, the same principle that guided Chris Hollins : making it easier to vote.

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Make It Easier to Register

In Germany, weeks before you turn eighteen years old, you receive a letter in the mail informing you that you will be registered to vote. In Argentina, they don’t even need to notify you, because everyone already knows they’re on the rolls. That’s how it works in most functioning democracies: When you’re old enough to cast a ballot, you can show up to the polls on Election Day and vote—without having to fill out any paperwork beforehand.

America, meanwhile, the birthplace of modern democracy, makes the process much more complicated. Instead of the government registering citizens, in the United States, you have to register yourself. In some states, you have to do it with pen and paper, by snail mail, regardless of whether you even have an address. In others, you aren’t allowed to have family or friends help you, even if you have a disability. And for all these reasons, about one in four eligible voters has slipped through the cracks —left off the rolls and out of the democratic process. One in four.

This has real consequences: Even in 2020, a year with record turnout, more than eighty million eligible citizens didn’t cast a ballot, and the number one reason they cited for their lack of participation was the fact that they had never registered in the first place.

There is a better way—and it starts with automatic voter registration (AVR).

Here’s how it should work: Every American would be registered to vote as soon as they turn eighteen years old. Whenever they interact with the government—whenever they file their taxes or go to the DMV, apply for benefits or contact a government agency—their information would be updated, which would have the benefit of increasing the accuracy of our voter rolls. And only if they did something to lose their eligibility (say, commit a murder) would their registration be revoked.

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To be clear: AVR would not force citizens to vote. If you want to stay home on Election Day watching reruns of The Bachelor or college football games, nothing is stopping you—except your dignity and common sense. All AVR does is make sure that if you do want to vote, and you’re eligible, you will be able to do so.

It’s also worth noting that AVR doesn’t require you to provide the government with any new information. Just the opposite: It allows the government to use the information you’ve already shared with them to get you on the voter rolls—not unlike how they sign you up for jury duty —so you don’t need to fill out yet another form.

Now, AVR is only a first step. Sometimes, you’re going to change addresses, without, for instance, updating your information on the rolls. For this reason, we also need to implement same-day registration (SDR) —so if you show up to the polls with proof that you live in the district, you can sign up right then and there. The states where SDR is already in place are the ones with the highest voter turnout in the country, and they’ve seen especially high turnout in communities of color. If the rest of the United States fallowed suit, according to a study from the Center for American Progress, we could see more than five million new voters at the polls, which is an astonishing number when you think about the fact that the last two presidential elections have come down to a few thousand votes in the decisive swing states.

Finally, as we continue building support for AVR and SDR, there are even simpler steps we can take right away to make it easier to register. One of these is allowing sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to preregister —so on their eighteenth birthdays, they will immediately show up on the rolls—as is already the case in some form in twenty-five states. Another is bringing the system online. In Georgia, one of the states that has already done this, more than 350,000 voters have registered over the internet; and a study showed that they were 20 percent more likely to vote than those who had registered in other ways. That may not sound like all that many voters—but in 2020, Joe Biden edged out Donald Trump in Georgia by fewer than fifteen thousand votes. So online registration might very well have made the difference.

That’s a demonstration of how even the minor steps we take to expand access to the ballot can have major consequences. And it’s a

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reminder of why it’s so important to fight for all policies that will make it easier to vote, no matter how incremental they may seem.

In 2018, millions of Floridians showed up to the polls and sent Ron DeSantis, one of the most conservative politicians in the country, to the governor’s mansion. Like the presidential election in 2000, it was a close race, decided by less than 1 percent. But that same year, on the same ballot, the same electorate resoundingly voted in favor of a ballot initiative many had thought would only appeal to Democrats.

In a 65 percent to 35 percent landslide, Floridians decided to restore voting rights to the 1.7 million residents of the state who had formerly been incarcerated. The ACLU and Freedom Partners, an organization funded by the Koch brothers , both came out in support of the outcome. And Americans across the country, from all political persuasions, celebrated what seemed like the most widespread enfranchisement of voters in a generation.

But when Governor DeSantis took power, he refused to let this change go into effect. Instead of just allowing formerly incarcerated Floridians to register, he and the Republican legislature defied the people and implemented a policy mandating that they had to prove that they had paid off any fines or other court obligations they owed. But the state never built a database with information on who still owed money. So, as The New York Times reported, sixteen months after the referendum passed, Florida “had failed to process any of the more than 85,000 voting registration applications submitted by former felons,” since there was no way for them to prove they were no longer in debt to the state.

That includes people like Jamall Williams, who told The Washington Post that “they kept sending me from office to office to office to office.” He had been excited to become a voter, he said, because his wife volunteered to register people in her free time. “That’s how I met her,” he explained. “She tried to register me to vote, and I wasn’t able.” At this point, he said, he wants to give up, because he has no idea if he has court debts and doesn’t “want to go to jail” for registering if he does.

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Florida isn’t the only state where this is a problem. Across the country, 5.2 million citizens remain disenfranchised as a result of having committed a felony, even though they are no longer behind bars. And these Americans are more than four times more likely to be Black than they are to be white. It’s an injustice folks from across the political spectrum know is wrong—and the federal government has it in its power to make it right by passing a law stating that if you have served your time and exit the criminal justice system, you are automatically registered to vote.

Enfranchising the formerly incarcerated is the right thing to do. The American people support it. And we’ve waited long enough to act.

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Make It Easier to Cast Your Ballot

Of course, registering is only half the battle—because even if you’re registered, you still have to figure out how to vote, which isn’t always easy.

In five states, you can only cast a ballot on one day, which happens to be the first Tuesday of November, a day that was convenient for farm owners back when America was founded (because they could travel to their polling place after church on Sunday and be back in time to sell their produce at the market on Wednesday), but is, uh, less convenient for the tens of millions of Americans who have to work during the week, particularly those who also have kids at home. There is also the problem of lines at the polls, which are especially long in underfunded communities of color, and have been known to keep people waiting for hours in major elections.

This has left millions of Americans with a choice no one should have to face—between fulfilling their duties as citizens and fulfilling their duties as employees, between missing an election and missing a paycheck. But there is no reason this has to be the case. In fact, in forty- five states and the District of Columbia, it isn’t. From Texas to Alaska, early voting has brought millions of Americans into our elections who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to participate—and studies estimate that if it were implemented nationally, early voting would increase participation by as much as 4 percent in areas that offer it.

And think about who, exactly, that 4 percent would be. The mother working double shifts to provide for her family who couldn’t find the time to vote on a Tuesday but could head to the polls after church on Sunday. The college student holding down two jobs to minimize student loans who can’t squeeze waiting on the hours-long line but could find time between classes a few weeks before Election Day when the crowds tend to be smaller. The truck driver who knows he’s going to have to make deliveries out of state on Election Day but could vote on his day off the week before. These Americans deserve a voice in our democracy.

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Thankfully, most states in America have some form of early voting, but it’s a patchwork system, starting as early as September in Minnesota and as late as seven days before polls close in Oklahoma. This should be standardized at the national level, with all voters having at least two weeks to vote, including weekends, so they have time to clear out a window in their calendar.

Some voting rights advocates have argued that there should be twenty days of early voting, which makes good enough sense. But honestly, I’m not sure I have a better guess at the optimal length than anyone else. We should run studies to figure out when there start to be diminishing returns. Here’s what I do know: The right number of days during which citizens should be able to vote isn’t “one,” and making sure every American at the very least has two weeks to cast a ballot should be a no-brainer.

And here’s something else I know: You shouldn’t have to travel a long distance to get to the polls. The good news is that the days of people having to ride hundreds of miles on horseback to cast their ballots are over, but too many Americans still live too far from their polling locations. In fact, since Shelby , more than 1,688 voting sites have been shut down in former preclearance states alone—increasing wait times across the country, especially in Black and brown neighborhoods. In Georgia, for instance, where one in ten polling locations have closed since Shelby , during the 2020 election, if you went to vote after seven P.M. in a predominantly white Atlanta neighborhood, the average wait time was six minutes. In predominantly non-white neighborhoods? It was fifty-one, more than eight times longer. That’s an utter disgrace. And the federal government should pass a law preventing this from happening, offering to fill funding gaps if local boards of elections demonstrate a legitimate need for capital to expand the capacity and number of their polling places.

Now, we should also make it easier to vote without having to travel at all—by establishing a universal option to vote at home. Historically, mail-in and absentee ballots have been disproportionately used by seniors, who tend to be more conservative, which means expanding these programs could benefit Republicans. But this Democrat says we should do it anyway, because doing so would make our elections better representative of the interests of the people.

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What would that look like?

Rather than require voters to request a mail-in ballot, we would automatically send ballots to all voters. This would provide citizens with more time to research the candidates and issues on their ballots. It would make it easier to vote, too, since they wouldn’t need to travel to a polling place and could instead leave their ballots in drop boxes or mailboxes. And if voters did want to show up in person, they would still have that choice—in fact, they would benefit from shorter lines, since so many people who ordinarily would have been waiting at polling locations would have already cast their ballots from home.

Colorado does this, and it’s proven highly successful. By expanding access to voting by mail—and investing in 24/7 drop boxes like the ones Chris Hollins put up across Harris County—the Centennial State has significantly boosted participation in elections.

Of course, even if we did all this around the country, most voters would probably still want to cast their ballots on Election Day—whether because of tradition, camaraderie, or procrastination. So the last step we need to take to make it easy to vote is to enshrine Election Day as a national holiday so Americans can have time off from work to perform their civic duty. This would have the added benefit of bringing America back to the excitement of Election Days past when, as Jill Lepore writes, elections were treated as a “holiday, involving plenty of stumping, debating, and parading.” Not only would making Election Day a celebration be more fun, studies have shown that creating a “more festive and social voting environment” would actually lead to greater turnout. So it wouldn’t just be a good time. It would also be good policy.

I know all these proposals sound technical—and “More drop boxes!” isn’t exactly a catchy slogan. But that’s precisely the reason the system is so broken. For a long time, the only people paying attention to these issues were the ones trying to make it harder to vote. That needs to change. After all, while AVR, SDR, early voting, and mail-in ballots aren’t sexy and don’t make for a fun bumper sticker or a fierce water cooler debate, I promise that everything you care about—whether that’s expanding access to healthcare, beating back climate change, reforming

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the criminal justice system, or stopping future attempts at suppression— comes down to us getting this right.

See Chapter 6 on answering objections.

That’s why Chris Hollins ignored his mentors to become a county clerk—he knew there was nothing more important he could be doing with his time than making our democracy, well, a democracy. And the same is true for the rest of us.

So let’s get to work.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Eric Holder argues that the “key principle” for transforming the United States into a more representative democracy is “making it easier to vote” (paragraph 4). Why is expanding access to voting so important, according to Holder? How will broader participation in voting help fix what Holder calls “broken” institutions, like the Electoral College and gerrymandered legislatures?

2. One proposal Holder offers for making it easier to vote is instituting automatic voter registration (paragraph 8). How might automatic voter registration work, according to Holder? Where do you see Holder using metacommentary in this section to clear up any misconceptions?

3. Holder does not include a clear naysayer in the section “Make It Easier to Cast Your Ballot” (paragraphs 21–32). Use the templates from Chapter 6 to compose a brief naysayer paragraph Holder could insert in this section and use to strengthen his argument. Be sure to introduce and respond to this naysayer fairly.

4. What groups of people, according to Holder, face the most barriers to registering to vote and casting their ballots? What evidence does he give to support his position? Both Arthi Sivendra (pp. 340–45 ) and Michelle Alexander (pp. 347–60 ) also address how some people have limited access to voting in the US. How might Sivendra or Alexander respond to Holder’s claims?

5. Do a little research on the voting rules in your state. Then, write a short response to Holder’s argument. Which of Holder’s proposals would have the most impact on expanding access to voting and making it easier to vote in your state? Why? What could be other ways of expanding access to voting in your local community or on your college campus?

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Glossary

panopoly a collection of items

Koch brothers Conservative brothers from a wealthy New York family who sponsored political causes. Their Freedom Partners organization dissolved in 2019.

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Endnotes

Shelby : The Supreme Court decision Shelby v. Holder (2013) held that the preclearance clause of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional. This clause had required that states and counties with a history of discriminatory voting laws have federal oversight over their voting laws and election practices. Without the preclearance clause, states and counties are more able to implement laws that restrict voter participation. The author of this piece, Eric Holder, was the defendant in this Supreme Court case, which was decided while he was serving as the US Attorney General.Return to reference Shelby Chris Hollins: In 2020, Chris Hollins served as the interim county clerk in Harris County, Texas. He led several successful initiatives to increase voter turnout in Texas’s largest county during the COVID-19 pandemic, including extending the voting period to 24 hours, adding more ballot drop-off locations, and approving drive- through voting. Collins was the first African American to serve as Harris County clerk.Return to reference Chris Hollins

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American Democracy: One Person, One Vote?

ARTHI SIVENDRA

* * *

ARTHI SIVENDRA is a student at Drexel University majoring in philosophy, politics, and economics. She wrote this essay as a first-year student, and it was published in the 33rd , Drexel University’s anthology of interdisciplinary student and faculty writing. It is documented in MLA style.

________

TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR years ago, the United States was founded on the values of freedom and equality, but the freedom and equality of whom? The Founding Fathers, a group of white male landowners, convened and decided representation of their race, gender, and class was of the utmost importance in civil society. Thus, the wealthy American’s version of democracy was born. This system— largely unchanged since the time of the Founding Fathers—is often described as a democratic republic, but in reality, as some scholars and pundits have suggested, the United States functions as an oligarchy: a system where power is in the hands of an elite few. The former Attorney General of the US, Eric Holder, writing about the history of the vote in America, sums up the problem: “the idea of ‘one person, one vote’ is far from a reality” (Holder). Instead of all voices being held equal, systems such as the Electoral College, privately funded campaigns, and restrictive voting practices limit the will of the people in favor of the rich.

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Every election season, we hear the slogan ‘every vote counts.’ Although there have been local, state, and national elections that have hinged on a handful of votes, the Electoral College system takes the power away from individual voters. In his book Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America , George Edwards notes: The reality of the situation is that “the electoral vote regularly deviates from the popular will as expressed in the popular vote . . . at times in such a way as to deny the presidency to the popular preference” (Edwards). The Electoral College essentially nullifies the votes of anyone whose political affiliation does not line up with their state. In addition, this system tends to ensure that the voices of some are worth more than others through the creation of battleground states, destroying the notion of political equality. Under this system, “large states enjoy a theoretical advantage in being more likely than small states to cast the pivotal bloc of electoral votes in the electoral college . . . a large state is hypothetically more likely to be able to cast the vote that will determine the election” (Edwards). The way electoral votes are broken up causes candidates to focus more attention on large states instead of smaller states in hopes of pulling more votes. Therefore, there is a power discrepancy both on the level of the individual voter and from state to state.

See Chapter 3 on introducing quotations.

When the Electoral College was established, the electors were meant “to be men of ‘superior discernment , virtue and information’ who would select the president ‘according to their own will’ and without reference to the immediate wishes of the people” (Edwards). And just as it was then, today, these electors are often rich, led by their own biases, and not bound to vote in a way that aligns with their state’s wishes. While faithless electors (those who place a vote for another candidate than the one their state selected) are rare, and many states have laws binding their electors to vote for the candidate the state selected, the Electoral College still demonstrates how safeguards were built into the American government to protect the elite from unchecked democracy. From its conception, the Electoral College put the presidential election in the hands of a few electors in a handful of states as opposed to the people.

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While the Electoral College was part of the Founding Fathers’ vision for the American government, the influence of money on elections is a relatively new problem. A substantial part of the path to election for any candidate is the monetary support they receive from the wealthy. Some politicians, like Bernie Sanders and Marjorie Taylor Greene, choose to prioritize small donations from constituents and individuals who support their political aims, but safe incumbents and lower-profile candidates often “rely more on individuals giving large contributions and PACs” (Open Secrets).

Due to candidates’ dependence on funding, some make the argument that “campaign contributions from interest groups may not represent quid pro quo bribery attempts by groups, but instead result from extortion by politicians who threaten to harm the groups’ interests” (Gilens and Page). In other words, in exchange for money, candidates agree to not harm the interests of the wealthy. Moreover, research shows that these interests are not linked to the wants of the average Americans: “Overall, net interest-group alignments are not significantly related to the preferences of average citizens. The net alignments of the most influential, business-oriented groups are negatively related to the average citizen’s wishes” (Gilens and Page). Ultimately, what this means is that money’s prevalence in politics creates a cycle of electing politicians who cater to the interests of the wealthy even if they stand against the will of the people.

The main method Americans have for making their voices heard is voting, but even then, the United States has several systems in place to suppress the opinions of the people in favor of the rich. Gerrymandering , purging voter rolls, and closing polling locations are three notorious and active methods of voter suppression, usually enacted in lower- income neighborhoods and counties. An overlooked aspect of passive voter suppression is how political parties approach, or avoid, potential voters, which contributes to what Bertrall Ross and Douglas Spencer call “the persistent rich–poor turnout gap” (Ross and Spencer 680). Tactics like microtargeting, which supposedly allow candidates and campaigns to reach already engaged voters, “led to increasing disparities in contact between higher and lower propensity voters” (Ross and Spencer 682). In other words, a campaign will usually focus on reaching regular voters

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rather than encouraging nonvoters to turn out—and regular voters are already more likely to be wealthy. In addition, Election Day is not a federal holiday. Many Americans when forced to choose between working or voting on a Tuesday will choose the one that feels more directly linked to their livelihood. As Eric Holder argues in his essay, “Our Unfinished March,” making Election Day a federal holiday would lead to greater overall turnout. In every step of the equation, the voices of those who are not wealthy are seen as less important even by the people who are meant to represent them. This reaffirms the cycle of power of the rich in politics and government.

To the flaws in American democracy, there are plenty of people who would say, “So what? We’re a republic, not a democracy.” They might say that the intention of the Founding Fathers, while grounded in the beliefs of their time, still works to elect the best leaders for our country, and prevents large cities from overruling smaller states. However, voters across the political spectrum are disenfranchised by this system that allows some votes to count more than others. Granted, when compared to dictatorships, monarchies, or military-led governments, America’s version of democracy may not look that bad, but elections and national policies are still weighted in favor of a small wealthy percentage of the population, as opposed to allowing every voice to be heard—and changing the systems in our country to do so would go far in restoring citizens’ faith in the country.

See Chapter 6 on naysayers.

From its origins, as much as the United States has prided itself on democracy, it has always fallen short. From campaigns to voting to enacting legislation, the voice of the people is always second to the rich. Fundamentally, though some will disagree, America has never been a country of representative democracy, but an oligarchy committed to advancing the wants of the economic elite. However, our history and our present don’t have to determine the country’s fate forever. Malcolm Kenyatta, a 2020 elector in favor of changing the Electoral College, said,

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“We don’t always think about the fact that this thing that we’re doing, it’s an experiment. There’s nothing written on some tablet somewhere that says America has to succeed. It happens because every generation recognizes the role we play in ensuring there’s something to pass on” (Sherman).

The American people should not be content with the way things are just because they could be worse. They must reflect on the power imbalances within the government and work to rectify them to create a more equal institution. The first steps to doing so are increasing the power of the popular vote and taking money out of politics. Both measures take away the influence of the rich and equally distribute it among the people.

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WORKS CITED

Edwards, George C. Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America , 2nd ed., Yale UP, 2011.

Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin I. Page. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics , vol. 12, no. 03, 14 Sept. 2014, pp. 564–581, scholar.pri nceton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-t esting_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf , 10.1017/s1537592714001595. Accessed 29 Oct. 2022.

Holder, Eric. Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote—A History, a Crisis, a Plan . One World, 2022.

Open Secrets. “Large Versus Small Individual Donations.” Open Secrets: Following the Money in Politics, 2022, https://www.opense crets.org/elections-overview/large-vs-small-donations#:~:text=Cand idates%20that%20campaign%20on%20attracting%20small%20don ors%20and,Sanders%20%28I-Vt.%29%2C%20typically%20do%20 well%20in%20this%20metric .

Ross, Bertrall L., and Douglas M. Spencer. “Passive Voter Suppression: Campaign Mobilization and the Effective Disfranchisement of the Poor.” Northwestern University Law Review , vol. 114, no. 03, 20 Nov. 2019, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3501739 . Accessed 29 Oct. 2022.

Sherman, Justin. “Why Does America Have the Electoral College—and Should We Keep It?” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 8 Mar. 2021, http s://www.cbsnews.com/news/electoral-college-system-founders-unite d-states/ .

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Joining the Conversation

1. Arthi Sivendra asserts that American democratic structures and systems “limit the will of the people in favor of the rich.” What examples does she give in support of this claim? Which example do you think best supports her argument? Why?

2. The author is in conversation with Eric Holder, whose piece “Our Unfinished March” is included in this chapter (pp. 328–37 ). Read Holder’s essay. Does Sivendra agree, disagree, or agree and disagree with Holder’s argument? What is one important difference between their arguments?

3. In her essay, Sivendra brings in several sources to support her claims. Find one place in her essay where you think she integrated a quotation well. What strategies does she use to introduce the quotation, explain what it means, and blend the source’s words with her own? You can refer to Chapter 3 for a discussion on how to insert quotes in academic writing.

4. Sivendra’s essay is organized as a conventional three-part argument. The main body paragraphs detail the evidence in support of her central argument, and she presents the naysayer arguments at the end of her essay. What are the strengths of this kind of structure? What might be a drawback of this organization?

5. Sivendra argues that “the wealthy” have more political power than “the average Americans” (paragraph 5). What other factors besides wealth might limit a person’s ability to participate in the political processes central to democracy, such as voting? You may consider Michelle Alexander’s argument in the “The New Jim Crow” (pp. 347–61 ) in your response.

6. Talk with a classmate or friend about one of the proposals Sivendra includes in her essay: making Election Day a national holiday, abolishing the Electoral College, or limiting campaign

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contributions from special interest groups. What are the benefits of this proposal? What objections might there be to this proposal?

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Glossary

discernment the ability to make good judgments

virtue displaying moral standards

incumbents people holding an elected position or office

quid pro quo granting or expecting a favor in return for something

extortion obtaining money through threats or force

gerrymandering drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in such a way to provide an advantage for one political party over another.

propensity a natural tendency to act in a certain way

disenfranchised deprived of the right to vote

oligarchy a government in which a small number of people hold the power

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The New Jim Crow

MICHELLE ALEXANDER

* * *

MICHELLE ALEXANDER is a lawyer and a scholar known for her work to protect civil rights. She has taught at Stanford Law School, Ohio State University’s law school, and Union Theological Seminary. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and has written opinion pieces for the Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , Huffington Post , and the Nation , among other publications. She is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010); this selection is from the book’s introduction and is documented using Chicago style.

________

JARVIOUS COTTON CANNOT VOTE . Like his father, grandfather, great- grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. Cotton’s family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises— the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole. 1

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Cotton’s story illustrates, in many respects, the old adage “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” In each generation, new tactics have been used for achieving the same goals—goals shared by the Founding Fathers. Denying African Americans citizenship was deemed essential to the formation of the original union. Hundreds of years later, America is still not an egalitarian democracy. The arguments and rationalizations that have been trotted out in support of racial exclusion and discrimination in its various forms have changed and evolved, but the outcome has remained largely the same. An extraordinary percentage of black men in the United States are legally barred from voting today, just as they have been throughout most of American history. They are also subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service, just as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents once were.

What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

I have reached [these conclusions] reluctantly. Ten years ago, I would have argued strenuously against the central claim made here—namely, that something akin to a racial caste system currently exists in the United States. Indeed, if Barack Obama had been elected president back then, I would have argued that his election marked the nation’s triumph over racial caste—the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow. My elation would have been tempered by the distance yet to be traveled to reach the promised land of racial justice in America, but my conviction that

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nothing remotely similar to Jim Crow exists in this country would have been steadfast.

See Chapter 1 for tips on making what “they say” something you say.

Today my elation over Obama’s election is tempered by a far more sobering awareness. As an African American woman, with three young children who will never know a world in which a black man could not be president of the United States, I was beyond thrilled on election night. Yet when I walked out of the election night party, full of hope and enthusiasm, I was immediately reminded of the harsh realities of the New Jim Crow. A black man was on his knees in the gutter, hands cuffed behind his back, as several police officers stood around him talking, joking, and ignoring his human existence. People poured out of the building; many stared for a moment at the black man cowering in the street, and then averted their gaze. What did the election of Barack Obama mean for him?

Like many civil rights lawyers, I was inspired to attend law school by the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s. Even in the face of growing social and political opposition to remedial policies such as affirmative action, I clung to the notion that the evils of Jim Crow are behind us and that, while we have a long way to go to fulfill the dream of an egalitarian, multiracial democracy, we have made real progress and are now struggling to hold on to the gains of the past. I thought my job as a civil rights lawyer was to join with the allies of racial progress to resist attacks on affirmative action and to eliminate the vestiges of Jim Crow segregation, including our still separate and unequal system of education. I understood the problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality education—the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Never did I seriously consider the possibility that a new racial caste system was operating in

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this country. The new system had been developed and implemented swiftly, and it was largely invisible, even to people, like me, who spent most of their waking hours fighting for justice.

I first encountered the idea of a new racial caste system more than a decade ago, when a bright orange poster caught my eye. I was rushing to catch the bus, and I noticed a sign stapled to a telephone pole that screamed in large bold print: THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW . I paused for a moment and skimmed the text of the flyer. Some radical group was holding a community meeting about police brutality, the new three-strikes law in California, and the expansion of America’s prison system. The meeting was being held at a small community church a few blocks away; it had seating capacity for no more than fifty people. I sighed, and muttered to myself something like, “Yeah, the criminal justice system is racist in many ways, but it really doesn’t help to make such an absurd comparison. People will just think you’re crazy.” I then crossed the street and hopped on the bus. I was headed to my new job, director of the Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Northern California.

See Chapter 7 for more on using personal stories to energize your argument.

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Michelle Alexander speaks about her book, The New Jim Crow .

When I began my work at the ACLU, I assumed that the criminal justice system had problems of racial bias, much in the same way that all major institutions in our society are plagued with problems associated with conscious and unconscious bias. As a lawyer who had litigated numerous class-action employment-discrimination cases, I understood well the many ways in which racial stereotyping can permeate subjective decision-making processes at all levels of an organization, with devastating consequences. I was familiar with the challenges associated with reforming institutions in which racial stratification is thought to be normal—the natural consequence of differences in education, culture, motivation, and, some still believe, innate ability. While at the ACLU, I shifted my focus from employment discrimination to criminal justice reform and dedicated myself to the task of working with others to identify and eliminate racial bias whenever and wherever it reared its ugly head.

By the time I left the ACLU, I had come to suspect that I was wrong about the criminal justice system. It was not just another institution infected with racial bias but rather a different beast entirely. The activists

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who posted the sign on the telephone pole were not crazy; nor were the smattering of lawyers and advocates around the country who were beginning to connect the dots between our current system of mass incarceration and earlier forms of social control. Quite belatedly, I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.

In my experience, people who have been incarcerated rarely have difficulty identifying the parallels between these systems of social control. Once they are released, they are often denied the right to vote, excluded from juries, and relegated to a racially segregated and subordinated existence. Through a web of laws, regulations, and informal rules, all of which are powerfully reinforced by social stigma, they are confined to the margins of mainstream society and denied access to the mainstream economy. They are legally denied the ability to obtain employment, housing, and public benefits—much as African Americans were once forced into a segregated, second-class citizenship in the Jim Crow era.

Those of us who have viewed that world from a comfortable distance —yet sympathize with the plight of the so-called underclass—tend to interpret the experience of those caught up in the criminal justice system primarily through the lens of popularized social science, attributing the staggering increase in incarceration rates in communities of color to the predictable, though unfortunate, consequences of poverty, racial segregation, unequal educational opportunities, and the presumed realities of the drug market, including the mistaken belief that most drug dealers are black or brown. Occasionally, in the course of my work, someone would make a remark suggesting that perhaps the War on Drugs is a racist conspiracy to put blacks back in their place. This type of remark was invariably accompanied by nervous laughter, intended to convey the impression that although the idea had crossed their minds, it was not an idea a reasonable person would take seriously.

Most people assume the War on Drugs was launched in response to the crisis caused by crack cocaine in inner-city neighborhoods. This view holds that the racial disparities in drug convictions and sentences, as well

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as the rapid explosion of the prison population, reflect nothing more than the government’s zealous —but benign —efforts to address rampant drug crime in poor, minority neighborhoods. This view, while understandable, given the sensational media coverage of crack in the 1980s and 1990s, is simply wrong.

See p. 31 for more ways to introduce something implied or assumed.

While it is true that the publicity surrounding crack cocaine led to a dramatic increase in funding for the drug war (as well as to sentencing policies that greatly exacerbated racial disparities in incarceration rates), there is no truth to the notion that the War on Drugs was launched in response to crack cocaine. President Ronald Reagan officially announced the current drug war in 1982, before crack became an issue in the media or a crisis in poor black neighborhoods. A few years after the drug war was declared, crack began to spread rapidly in the poor black neighborhoods of Los Angeles and later emerged in cities across the country. 2 The Reagan administration hired staff to publicize the emergence of crack cocaine in 1985 as part of a strategic effort to build public and legislative support for the war. The media campaign was an extraordinary success. Almost overnight, the media was saturated with images of black “crack whores,” “crack dealers,” and “crack babies”— images that seemed to confirm the worst negative racial stereotypes about impoverished inner-city residents. The media bonanza surrounding the “new demon drug” helped to catapult the War on Drugs from an ambitious federal policy to an actual war.

The timing of the crack crisis helped to fuel conspiracy theories and general speculation in poor black communities that the War on Drugs was part of a genocidal plan by the government to destroy black people in the United States. From the outset, stories circulated on the street that crack and other drugs were being brought into black neighborhoods by the CIA. Eventually, even the Urban League came to take the claims of genocide seriously. In its 1990 report “The State of Black America,” it stated: “There is at least one concept that must be recognized if one is to see the pervasive and insidious nature of the drug problem for the

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African American community. Though difficult to accept, that is the concept of genocide.” 3 While the conspiracy theories were initially dismissed as far-fetched, if not downright loony, the word on the street turned out to be right, at least to a point. The CIA admitted in 1998 that guerrilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United States—drugs that were making their way onto the streets of inner-city black neighborhoods in the form of crack cocaine. The CIA also admitted that, in the midst of the War on Drugs, it blocked law enforcement efforts to investigate illegal drug networks that were helping to fund its covert war in Nicaragua . 4

It bears emphasis that the CIA never admitted (nor has any evidence been revealed to support the claim) that it intentionally sought the destruction of the black community by allowing illegal drugs to be smuggled into the United States. Nonetheless, conspiracy theorists surely must be forgiven for their bold accusation of genocide, in light of the devastation wrought by crack cocaine and the drug war, and the odd coincidence that an illegal drug crisis suddenly appeared in the black community after—not before—a drug war had been declared. In fact, the War on Drugs began at a time when illegal drug use was on the decline. 5 During this same time period, however, a war was declared, causing arrests and convictions for drug offenses to skyrocket, especially among people of color.

The impact of the drug war has been astounding. In less than thirty years, the US penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase. 6 The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the United States, the rate is roughly eight times that, or 750 per 100,000. 7

The racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its

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black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison. 8 Similar rates of incarceration can be found in black communities across America.

These stark racial disparities cannot be explained by rates of drug crime. Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. 9 If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color. 10 That is not what one would guess, however, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, which are overflowing with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men. 11 And in major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. 12

These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society.

. . .

The language of caste may well seem foreign or unfamiliar to some. Public discussions about racial caste in America are relatively rare. We avoid talking about caste in our society because we are ashamed of our racial history. We also avoid talking about race. We even avoid talking about class. Conversations about class are resisted in part because there is a tendency to imagine that one’s class reflects upon one’s character. What is key to America’s understanding of class is the persistent belief— despite all evidence to the contrary—that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive, can move from a lower class to a higher class. We recognize that mobility may be difficult, but the key to our collective self-image is the assumption that mobility is always possible, so failure to move up reflects on one’s character. By extension, the failure of a race or ethnic group to move up reflects very poorly on the group as a whole.

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What is completely missed in the rare public debates today about the plight of African Americans is that a huge percentage of them are not free to move up at all. It is not just that they lack opportunity, attend poor schools, or are plagued by poverty. They are barred by law from doing so. And the major institutions with which they come into contact are designed to prevent their mobility. To put the matter starkly: The current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy. The system operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control. Viewed from this perspective, the so-called underclass is better understood as an undercaste —a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains racial hierarchy much as earlier systems of control did. Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.

. . .

Skepticism about the claims made here is warranted. There are important differences, to be sure, amon mass incarceration, Jim Crow, and slavery —the three major racialized systems of control adopted in the United States to date. Failure to acknowledge the relevant differences, as well as their implications, would be a disservice to racial justice discourse. Many of the differences are not as dramatic as they initially appear, however; others serve to illustrate the ways in which systems of racialized social control have managed to morph, evolve, and adapt to changes in the political, social, and legal context over time. Ultimately, I believe that the similarities between these systems of control overwhelm the differences and that mass incarceration, like its predecessors, has been largely immunized from legal challenge. If this claim is substantially correct, the implications for racial justice advocacy are profound.

For more on ways to address a skeptical reader, see Chapter 6 .

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With the benefit of hindsight, surely we can see that piecemeal policy reform or litigation alone would have been a futile approach to dismantling Jim Crow segregation. While those strategies certainly had their place, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the concomitant cultural shift would never have occurred without the cultivation of a critical political consciousness in the African American community and the widespread, strategic activism that flowed from it. Likewise, the notion that the New Jim Crow can ever be dismantled through traditional litigation and policy-reform strategies that are wholly disconnected from a major social movement seems fundamentally misguided.

Such a movement is impossible, though, if those most committed to abolishing racial hierarchy continue to talk and behave as if a state- sponsored racial caste system no longer exists. If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.

A new social consensus must be forged about race and the role of race in defining the basic structure of our society, if we hope ever to abolish the New Jim Crow. This new consensus must begin with dialogue, a conversation that fosters a critical consciousness, a key prerequisite to effective social action. My writing is an attempt to ensure that the conversation does not end with nervous laughter.

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NOTES

1. Jarvious Cotton was a plaintiff in Cotton v. Fordice , 157 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 1998), which held that Mississippi’s felon disenfranchisement provision had lost its racially discriminatory taint. The information regarding Cotton’s family tree was obtained by Emily Bolton on March 29, 1999, when she interviewed Cotton at Mississippi State Prison. Jarvious Cotton was released on parole in Mississippi, a state that denies voting rights to parolees.

2. The New York Times made the national media’s first specific reference to crack in a story published in late 1985. Crack became known in a few impoverished neighborhoods in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami in early 1986. See Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine, “The Crack Attack: America’s Latest Drug Scare, 1986–1992,” in Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995), 152.

3. Clarence Page, “ ‘The Plan’: A Paranoid View of Black Problems,” Dover (Delaware) Herald , Feb. 23, 1990. See also Manning Marable, Race , Reform , and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 212–13.

4. See Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press (New York: Verso, 1999). See also Nick Shou, “The Truth in ‘Dark Alliance,’” Los Angeles Times , Aug. 18, 2006; Peter Kornbluh, “CIA’s Challenge in South Central,” Los Angeles Times (Washington edition), Nov. 15, 1996; and Alexander Cockburn, “Why They Hated Gary Webb,’’ The Nation , Dec. 16, 2004.

5. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson, The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004), 163.

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6. Marc Mauer, Race to Incarcerate , rev. ed. (New York: The New Press, 2006), 33.

7. PEW Center on the States, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (Washington, DC: PEW Charitable Trusts, 2008), 5.

8. Donald Braman, Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 3, citing D.C. Department of Corrections data for 2000.

9. See, e.g., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Summary of Findings from the 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, NHSDA series H-13, DHHS pub. no. SMA 01-3549 (Rockville, MD: 2001), reporting that 6.4 percent of whites, 6.4 percent of blacks, and 5.3 percent of Hispanics were current users of illegal drugs in 2000; Results from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings , NHSDA series H-22, DHHS pub. no. SMA 03-3836 (2003), revealing nearly identical rates of illegal drug use among whites and blacks, only a single percentage point between them; and Results from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings , NSDUH series H-34, DHHS pub. no. SMA 08-4343 (2007), showing essentially the same finding. See also Marc Mauer and Ryan S. King, A 25-Year Quagmire: The “War on Drugs” and Its Impact on American Society (Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, 2007), 19, citing a study suggesting that African Americans have slightly higher rates of illegal drug use than whites.

10. See, e.g., Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickman, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report , U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2006), reporting that white youth are more likely than black youth to engage in illegal drug sales. See also Lloyd D. Johnson, Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulunberg, Monitoring the Future, National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975–2006, vol. 1, Secondary School Students , U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH pub. no. 07-6205 (Bethesda, MD: 2007), 32, “African American 12th graders have

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consistently shown lower usage rates than White 12th graders for most drugs, both licit and illicit”; and Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O’Malley, and Jerald G. Bachman, Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use: Overview of Key Findings 2002 , U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH pub. no. 03-5374 (Bethesda, MD: 2003), presenting data showing that African American adolescents have slightly lower rates of illicit drug use than their white counterparts.

11. Human Rights Watch, Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs, HRW Reports, vol. 12, no. 2 (New York, 2000).

12. See, e.g., Paul Street, The Vicious Circle: Race , Prison, Jobs, and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago: Chicago Urban League, Department of Research and Planning, 2002).

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Joining the Conversation

1. Michelle Alexander argues that in the United States mass incarceration is a “well-disguised system of racialized social control” (paragraph 9). Why, as she acknowledges in paragraph 4, did it take her so long to reach this conclusion?

2. Throughout the essay, Alexander presents and then responds to the views of others. Find two examples where Alexander introduces the views of others. In each case, how does she make clear to readers that the view in question is not hers?

3. The author states that “the racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature” (paragraph 17). What does she mean, and what evidence does she provide to support her claim?

4. According to Alexander, “America is still not an egalitarian democracy” (paragraph 2). What do you think Eric Holder (pp. 328–37 ) or Luticha Doucette (pp. 373–77 ) would say to that?

5. Write a response to the reading in which you agree, disagree, or both with the author’s argument that mass incarceration allows for continued discrimination against African Americans.

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Glossary

adage pithy statement or proverb expressing a general truth

racial caste division of society based on race

racial stratification classification of individuals based on race

zealous energetic; enthusiastic

benign gentle; ineffective

genocide the intentional killing of a large number of people from a particular ethnic group

concomitant naturally accompanying

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Endnotes

Note 1:Jarvious Cotton was a plaintiff in Cotton v. Fordice , 157 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 1998), which held that Mississippi’s felon disenfranchisement provision had lost its racially discriminatory taint. The information regarding Cotton’s family tree was obtained by Emily Bolton on March 29, 1999, when she interviewed Cotton at Mississippi State Prison. Jarvious Cotton was released on parole in Mississippi, a state that denies voting rights to parolees.Return to reference 1; Note 2:The New York Times made the national media’s first specific reference to crack in a story published in late 1985. Crack became known in a few impoverished neighborhoods in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami in early 1986. See Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine, “The Crack Attack: America’s Latest Drug Scare, 1986– 1992,” in Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995), 152.Return to reference 2; Note 3:Clarence Page, “ ‘The Plan’: A Paranoid View of Black Problems,” Dover (Delaware) Herald , Feb. 23, 1990. See also Manning Marable, Race , Reform , and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 212–13.Return to reference 3; Note 4:See Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press (New York: Verso, 1999). See also Nick Shou, “The Truth in ‘Dark Alliance,’” Los Angeles Times , Aug. 18, 2006; Peter Kornbluh, “CIA’s Challenge in South Central,” Los Angeles Times (Washington edition), Nov. 15, 1996; and Alexander Cockburn, “Why They Hated Gary Webb,’’ The Nation , Dec. 16, 2004.Return to reference 4; Note 5:Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson, The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004), 163.Return to reference 5; Note 6:Marc Mauer, Race to Incarcerate , rev. ed. (New York: The New Press, 2006), 33.Return to reference 6;

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Note 7:PEW Center on the States, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (Washington, DC: PEW Charitable Trusts, 2008), 5.Return to reference 7; Note 8:Donald Braman, Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 3, citing D.C. Department of Corrections data for 2000.Return to reference 8; Note 9:See, e.g., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Summary of Findings from the 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, NHSDA series H-13, DHHS pub. no. SMA 01-3549 (Rockville, MD: 2001), reporting that 6.4 percent of whites, 6.4 percent of blacks, and 5.3 percent of Hispanics were current users of illegal drugs in 2000; Results from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings , NHSDA series H-22, DHHS pub. no. SMA 03-3836 (2003), revealing nearly identical rates of illegal drug use among whites and blacks, only a single percentage point between them; and Results from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings , NSDUH series H-34, DHHS pub. no. SMA 08-4343 (2007), showing essentially the same finding. See also Marc Mauer and Ryan S. King, A 25-Year Quagmire: The “War on Drugs” and Its Impact on American Society (Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, 2007), 19, citing a study suggesting that African Americans have slightly higher rates of illegal drug use than whites.Return to reference 9; Note 10:See, e.g., Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickman, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report , U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2006), reporting that white youth are more likely than black youth to engage in illegal drug sales. See also Lloyd D. Johnson, Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulunberg, Monitoring the Future, National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975–2006, vol. 1, Secondary School Students , U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH pub. no. 07-6205 (Bethesda, MD: 2007), 32, “African American 12th graders have consistently shown lower usage rates than White 12th graders for most drugs, both licit

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and illicit”; and Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O’Malley, and Jerald G. Bachman, Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use: Overview of Key Findings 2002 , U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH pub. no. 03-5374 (Bethesda, MD: 2003), presenting data showing that African American adolescents have slightly lower rates of illicit drug use than their white counterparts.Return to reference 10; Note 11:Human Rights Watch, Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs, HRW Reports, vol. 12, no. 2 (New York, 2000).Return to reference 11; Note 12:See, e.g., Paul Street, The Vicious Circle: Race , Prison, Jobs, and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago: Chicago Urban League, Department of Research and Planning, 2002).Return to reference 12; covert war in Nicaragua:: In December 1981, the then president Ronald Reagan authorized the CIA to support the Contras, an opposition group that fought the Sandanistas, a revolutionary socialist group that the United States opposed in its fight against communism during the Cold War.Return to reference covert war in Nicaragua

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A Response to the “Standard Story” about US Incarceration Rates

JOHN PFAFF

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JOHN PFAFF is a professor of law at Fordham University. He researches criminal law, criminal sentencing, and US incarceration rates. He earned his PhD in economics and his JD from the University of Chicago. This selection is from the introduction of his 2017 book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform.

________

THE STATISTICS ARE AS SIMPLE as they are shocking: the United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. We have more total prisoners than any other country in the world, and we have the world’s highest incarceration rate, one that is four to eight times higher than those in other liberal democracies, including Canada, England, and Germany. Even repressive regimes like Russia and Cuba have fewer people behind bars and lower incarceration rates.

It wasn’t always like this. Just forty years ago, in the 1970s, our incarceration rate was one-fifth what it is today. It was comparable to that of most European countries, and it had been relatively stable all the way back to the mid- to late 1800s. It was, in short, nothing out of the ordinary.

In fact, the prison boom started so suddenly that it caught most observers by surprise. In 1979, a leading academic wrote that the incarceration rate would always remain fairly constant, because if it

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climbed too high, state governments would adjust policies to push it back down. 1 As Figure 1 makes clear, however, the timing of that paper could not have been worse. The number of people in state or federal prisons rose from just under 200,000 in 1972 to over 1.56 million in 2014; the incarceration rate grew from 93 per 100,000 to 498 per 100,000 (peaking at 536 per 100,000 in 2008). Another 700,000 people are in county jails on any given day, more than two-thirds of whom have not been convicted of any crime and are simply awaiting trial.

The title of the graph is A Response to the Standard Story about US Incarceration Rates. The x-axis is titled Year and is labeled from 1920 to 2020 in increments of 20 years. The y-axis is titled US Incarceration Rate and is labeled from 100 to 500 in increments of 100. With a slight peak in 1940, the data line hovers around 100 until the 1970s, at which point it increases sharply and peaks above 500 in the mid-2000s, ending at 500 in the 2014.

Figure 1 US Incarceration Rates, 1925–2014

Source: Patrick A. Langan, John V. Fundis, Lawrence A. Greenfield, and Victoria W. Schneider, “Historical Statistics on Prisoners in State and Federal Institutions, Year-End 1925–1986,” US Department of Justice, December 1986, accessed October 11, 2016, www.bjs.gov/index.ctm?ty=dcdetail&iid=269 .

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Remarkably, these numbers understate how many people are locked in prisons and jails each year. In 2014, approximately 2.2 million people were in state or federal prisons at some point, and perhaps as many as 12 million passed through county jails. Although the data are patchy, it’s clear that tens of millions of Americans have spent time in prison or jail since the 1970s. Historians, sociologists, criminologists, and economists disagree over exactly what changed in the 1970s that caused the surge, but clearly something—or a lot of things—changed, and our prison populations took an unprecedented turn.

For tips on using data, see Chapter 18 .

One clear cause was rising crime. Starting around 1960, crime rates started to climb steadily. By 1980, violent crime rates had risen by over 250 percent, and property crime rates by over 200 percent; after a brief lull in the early 1980s, violent crime spiked again in 1984, peaking in 1991 at almost 400 percent of its 1960 level (more or less). By the start of the 1990s, violent crime in America had never been worse, and property crime remained as bad as it had been in 1980. (See Figure 2.)

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The x-axis is titled Year and is labeled from 1960 to 2020 in increments of 20 years. On the left side of the graph, the y-axis is titled Violent Crime Rate and is labelled from 200 to 800 in increments of 200. On the right side of the graph, the y-axis is labeled Property Crime Rate and is labelled from 2,000 to 6,000 in incrememnts of 1,000. Below the graph, there is a key indicating that the solid line represents Violent Crime Rate and the dotted line represents Property Crime Rate. The graph shows that both violent and property crime rates began increasing in 1960, with property crime peaking in 1980 and violent crime peaking in the 1990s. After these peaks both crime rates decrease overall until the data lines end in 2014.

Figure 2 Crime Trends, 1960–2014

Source: US Department of Justice, FBI, “Uniform Crime Reports,” www.bjs.gov/ .

It’s not surprising, then, that prison populations also increased sharply during these decades. Surely this was in part just a mechanistic response, since more crime leads to more arrests, and thus to more convictions and more prisoners. But a mechanistic response cannot fully

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explain what happened with incarceration. The impact of rising crime on prison populations is difficult to measure empirically, and it can only be done with a fair amount of uncertainty, but the best estimate of that impact suggests that rising crime over the 1970s and 1980s can explain, at most, just half the increase in prison populations over those two decades. And that relationship likely weakened during the 1990s, as prison populations continued to rise even as crime declined.

Few, however, pushed back against this relentlessly rising incarceration rate. During the 1980s and 1990s, support for increased incarceration was strong. Crime was rising throughout the 1980s, making tough-on-crime policies popular, and although crime began a slow and steady decline in the 1990s, many viewed incarceration as a primary cause of that decline and thus continued to support it. There were some brief calls for reform at the start of the 2000s, as crime continued to decline and state budgets contracted in the wake of the dot-com crash, but they were fleeting. Economic recovery came quickly, and any nascent reform efforts quickly foundered. 2 With the fiscal crisis of 2008, reformers revived their efforts, and the movement finally started to pick up steam. With prison populations at all-time highs and crime dropping to forty-year lows during a fiscal collapse far deeper and more sustained than the 2000 contraction, the opportunity to push for real reform seemed to be at hand.

In fact, the confluence of low crime and tight budgets has led to a surprisingly bipartisan push for reform during a time when those on the Left and the Right can barely agree on whether it is raining outside. Coalitions have brought together not just left-leaning reformers who have long opposed the social costs and the disparate racial impacts of our prison system, but also a complicated assortment of conservatives, including both budget hawks, who now prioritize cutting corrections budgets over their traditional tough-on-crime perspectives, and conservatives who are more ideologically committed to reform, such as redemption-focused evangelicals. 3

In 2010, for the first time since 1972, the US prison population edged downward. And then it continued to fall for three of the next four years. By the end of 2014, the last year for which we have national data, it was about 4 percent smaller than it had been in 2010. 4 That’s not a large drop, and certainly not one that challenges our position at the top of the

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international incarceration tables, but—perhaps!—it’s a sign of things to come.

For reformers hoping to make deep cuts to our prison populations, these may seem like exciting times. State and federal prison populations are dropping, and every month or so it seems like someone is introducing a new bill in a state legislature or in Congress to change the system even more. The issue is also becoming popular among members of the general public. In a survey of registered US voters by the Pew Research Center in early 2016, 44 percent of all respondents said they believed that “reforming the criminal justice system should be a top priority”; the percentage rose to 73 percent for black respondents and 48 percent for Hispanics. 5 By the start of 2016, the nascent Black Lives Matter movement had forced Democratic presidential candidates to address criminal justice issues more candidly and more often, especially as they pertained to race. Because of all this, many think the reform movement is making great strides.

I am not so optimistic.

At the heart of my pessimism is the fact that the current reform efforts rely on a conventional wisdom about prison (population) growth —what I will call the “Standard Story”—that either substantially oversimplifies or simply gets wrong the factors driving the incarceration epidemic. Reforms built on misconceptions will disappoint at best and fail at worst. My motivation for writing is to highlight the mistakes and shortcomings of the Standard Story; to point out the more important, but generally underappreciated, causes of prison growth; and to suggest a set of reforms that are more likely to yield durable change, but that so far seem to be all too absent from reform conversations.

The core failing of the Standard Story is that it consistently puts the spotlight on statistics and events that are shocking but, in the grand scheme of things, not truly important for solving the problems we face. As a result, it gives too little attention to the more mundane-sounding yet far more influential causes of prison growth. For example, a core claim of the Story, made perhaps most forcefully by Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color-

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Blindness , is that our decision to lock up innumerable low-level drug offenders through the “war on drugs” is primarily responsible for driving up our prison populations. In reality, only about 16 percent of state prisoners are serving time on drug charges—and very few of them, perhaps only around 5 or 6 percent of that group, are both low level and nonviolent. 6 At the same time, more than half of all people in state prisons have been convicted of a violent crime. A strategy based on decriminalizing drugs will thus disappoint—and disappoint significantly. Yet we see little to no efforts to reform the treatment of people convicted of violent crimes.

The Standard Story also argues that increasingly long prison sentences have driven growth, and thus that cutting back sentences would effectively cut prison populations. President Barack Obama made this claim in a major 2015 speech, and it has been made repeatedly before and after by innumerable academics, journalists, and policymakers. The claim isn’t exactly wrong : by international standards our sentences are long, and if people spent less time in prison, obviously prison populations would decline. In practice, however, most people serve short stints in prison, on the order of one to three years, and there’s not a lot of evidence that the amount of time spent in prison has changed that much—not just over the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, but quite possibly over almost the entire prison boom.

See Chapter 4 on agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously.

The far more significant change . . . is the increased rate at which people get sent to prison in the first place. The primary driver of incarceration is increased prosecutorial toughness when it comes to charging people, not longer sentences. Stopping prosecutors from sending people to prison to start with would be far more effective in cutting incarceration rates than reducing the amount of time prisoners

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spend in prison once they get there—and this fact points to a very different set of reforms than those generally proposed.

The Standard Story also talks extensively about the “prison industrial complex”—a term made famous by journalist Eric Schlosser—and the power of the companies that run private prisons. 7 Tellingly, when 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders decided to show his concern for criminal justice reform, his first step was to submit a law that attempted to ban private prisons altogether. For her part, Hillary Clinton publicly returned the relatively meager campaign donations she had received from private-prison executives once it became public that the donations had been made.

Private spending and private lobbying, however, are not the real financial and political engines behind prison growth. Public revenue and public-sector union lobbying are far more important. As states and counties have become wealthier, they have spent more on corrections (and everything else), and reining in that spending is much harder to do than limiting private firms’ access to corrections contracts. Similarly, the real political powers behind prison growth are the public officials who benefit from large prisons: the politicians in districts with prisons, along with the prison guards who staff them and the public-sector unions who represent the guards.

There is one central aspect of the Standard Story, however, with which I agree: the critical role that race has played in driving up prison populations. . . . Showing that recent prison growth has been driven primarily by increased felony filings by prosecutors does not require an extensive analysis of race and punishment.

When turning to solutions, however, race becomes much more important. To figure out what we must do to responsibly reduce the prison population, we must understand why we have seen the results that we have—and that implicates race (along with class and other factors). 8 To address why prosecutors have become more aggressive in filing charges, for example, we must think about the impact of racial segregation. Urban prosecutors are elected at the county level, where political power is concentrated in the wealthier, whiter suburbs, while crimes disproportionately occur in the poorer urban cores with higher populations of people of color. This segregation of costs and benefits is a

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racial story more than anything else. Identifying prosecutorial aggressiveness as a driver of growth does not necessarily require much consideration of race and punishment—but correcting it does.

Despite my criticisms of the Standard Story, I believe that sizable cuts in the US incarceration rate are possible. But I believe that they will be harder to achieve than many hope, and that they will be far more tentative and vulnerable to reversal than many expect. There will be no moment when legislators sign a bill that will definitively end mass incarceration, allowing reformers to declare victory. The Standard Story explanation suggests that this may be possible. It is not.

To really change prison populations, we need a better model of what caused prison growth and what can reverse it.

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NOTES

1. Alfred Blumstein and Suomyo Moitra, “An Analysis of the Time Series of the Imprisonment Rate in the States of the United States: A Further Test of the Stability of the Punishment Hypothesis,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 70 (1979): 376.

2. Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

3. See, for example, Joycelyn Pollock, Steven Glassner, and Andrea Krajewski, “Examining the Conservative Shift from Harsh Justice,” Laws 4 (2015): 107–24.

4. Unless I say otherwise, all data on prison populations and crime rates come from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Data Analysis Tools,” available at www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty =data .

5. “Budget Deficit Slips as Public Priority,” Pew Research Center, accessed July 6, 2016, www.people-press.org/2016/01/22/budget-deficit- slips-as-public-priority .

6. Eric L. Sevigny and Jonathan P. Caulkins, “Kingpins or Mules: An Analysis of Drug Offenders Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons,” Criminology & Public Policy 3 (2004): 401–34.

7. Eric Schlosser, “The Prison-Industrial Complex,” The Atlantic , December 1999, accessed July 6, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a rchive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/304669 .

8. Max Ehrenfreund, “Poor White Kids Are Less Likely to Go to Prison Than Rich Black Kids,” Washington Post , March 23, 2016, accessed July 6, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/ 2016/03/23/poor-white-kids-are-less-likely-to-go-to-prison-than-rich-bla ck-kids .

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Joining the Conversation

1. In his essay, John Pfaff takes time to thoroughly explain the larger conversation his argument responds to. Review the first ten paragraphs of this essay. What evidence is he presenting here? Why do you think he chose to use charts to present some of this evidence? What effect do these charts have on you as a reader?

2. Pfaff critiques the “Standard Story” about US incarceration rates and models how a writer can both agree and disagree to a “they say.” Pfaff’s argument is in direct conversation with Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (a selection from its introduction is included in this chapter). Alexander claims that US prisons “are overflowing with black and brown drug offenders” (p. 356 ). Which aspect of Alexander’s claim would Pfaff agree with? Which part would he disagree with? Paraphrase what Pfaff’s response would be to Alexander’s claim, using a “yes and no” statement like the ones explained in Chapter 4 .

3. What does Pfaff claim is the primary cause of rising incarceration rates? Why, according to Pfaff, is it important to understand what is driving US prison growth? Where in his essay do you see him answering the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions?

4. Toward the end of this selection, Pfaff entertains objections to the idea that the United States has a “mass incarceration” problem. Pick one of these naysayer arguments. Explain how Pfaff introduces and responds to this counterargument. How would you describe Pfaff’s tone as he discusses this naysayer argument?

5. Consider the stakeholders in the conversation about prison populations and criminal justice reform: prisoners and their families, community members, taxpayers, police, prosecutors, policymakers. Pick one of these stakeholders. With a classmate, compose a response to Pfaff’s argument that addresses how this group is affected by the United States’ high incarceration rates.

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Glossary

bipartisan relating to two parties; here, the Left (Democratic) and the Right (Republican)

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Endnotes

Note 1:Alfred Blumstein and Suomyo Moitra, “An Analysis of the Time Series of the Imprisonment Rate in the States of the United States: A Further Test of the Stability of the Punishment Hypothesis,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 70 (1979): 376.Return to reference 1 Note 2:Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).Return to reference 2 Note 3:See, for example, Joycelyn Pollock, Steven Glassner, and Andrea Krajewski, “Examining the Conservative Shift from Harsh Justice,” Laws 4 (2015): 107–24.Return to reference 3 Note 4:Unless I say otherwise, all data on prison populations and crime rates come from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Data Analysis Tools,” available at www.bjs.gov/i ndex.cfm?ty=data Return to reference 4 Note 5:“Budget Deficit Slips as Public Priority,” Pew Research Center, accessed July 6, 2016, www.people-press.org/2016/01/22/bu dget-deficit-slips-as-public-priority .Return to reference 5 Note 6:Eric L. Sevigny and Jonathan P. Caulkins, “Kingpins or Mules: An Analysis of Drug Offenders Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons,” Criminology & Public Policy 3 (2004): 401– 34.Return to reference 6 Note 7:Eric Schlosser, “The Prison-Industrial Complex,” The Atlantic , December 1999, accessed July 6, 2016, www.theatlantic.c om/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/30466 9 .Return to reference 7 Note 8:Max Ehrenfreund, “Poor White Kids Are Less Likely to Go to Prison Than Rich Black Kids,” Washington Post , March 23, 2016, accessed July 6, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/new s/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-white-kids-are-less-likely-to-go-to-pris on-than-rich-black-kids .Return to reference 8

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If You’re in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives

LUTICHA DOUCETTE

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LUTICHA DOUCETTE is a Black queer activist whose work focuses on disability justice. She is the CEO of Catalyst Consulting, and partners with nonprofits, businesses, and government organizations on projects to promote greater equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Doucette is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and she is the recipient of a Leadership and Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Fellowship. Doucette lives in Rochester, New York. This essay was first published in the New York Times in 2017.

________

LAST YEAR, THE FORMER CHIEF of the Santa Fe, N.M., police department, Donald Grady II, said something that stuck with me. “There’s a thing that we call freedom of movement,” he said in an interview with The Atlantic, “which is really revered in this country— that we should have the right to move freely without impingement from the police simply because.” He was speaking as both a black man and a police officer about the ways racial discrimination can limit a basic right. But I related to this on more than one level.

As a black woman with incomplete quadriplegia and chronic pain, and as a full-time manual wheelchair user, my own ability to move freely is frequently restricted. Too often, both the lack of accessibility in public spaces and the ingrained ableism of many nondisabled people bars my way.

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Let’s say I want to go out to dinner downtown. Even if I can enter an establishment—which I often can’t—very rarely is the accessible seating in a visible place, if it is there at all. Once inside, I am often relegated to a corner, the aisle, a back room. In brew pubs with high tables and high chairs, trying to have conversations at eye-level with other people’s crotches while nursing my beer leads me to feel less like an adult and more like Oliver Twist . No one wants to try the new hot spot in town and then be seated at the kids’ table.

If I arrive somewhere by myself, I am often greeted with shock when I make clear that I have no caregiver with me. If I am with a companion —a nondisabled friend or a date—it is assumed that this person is my caregiver. Sometimes it seems that people believe accessibility is having your own chaperone who goes and asks for the accessible entrance.

See Chapter 7 on how to use personal experience to energize your argument.

These are just a few variations on the sort of ableism that people with physical conditions like mine face every day. Ableism is at work when disability is not an inclusive part of the design process, where the space flows and is welcoming to all bodies. Instead, accommodations are tacked on haphazardly, leading to hostile and hard-to-navigate spaces. With the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990—which sets standards of compliance for buildings in public spaces—progress has been made, but inclusive thinking and design are still the exception, not the norm.

Today, segregation and limiting the movement of disabled persons in public spaces is commonplace and accepted. Even in our nation’s capital, I have to use the back entrance at the National Gallery of Art. As a black woman I am keenly aware of the irony of being ushered through back ways, sketchy hallways, side entrances and kitchens to enter restaurants, bars and other establishments. My favorite bar up the street has its accessible entrance down an alley, with a steep ramp that leads to a door

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in the bowels of the building. There’s no signage, no security cameras, and I once saw a bloody towel covering the fire alarm. At another local restaurant, I have to enter from a side door, through the kitchen and then to the dining room. It is a running joke with my friends that if the accessible entrance is not up front, you’re going to end up needing a map to find your way through.

Some aspects of this situation, though, are too painful to joke about. Much of what people with disabilities like mine must suffer conjures the historically painful specter of racial segregation. Even at my job, where I work for the city as a researcher in a government building, there is an entrance with a double doorway for those walking in, then next to it, hidden around a pillar, a sliding door for wheelchair users. The other exterior doors have stairs leading up to them. My employer did a wonderful job in doing a walk-through with me to identify ways to solve the problem, but this raises a key point: The building was built in a time when people with disabilities were almost entirely hidden from society, and architects did not consider how such a person would use the building. This makes retrofitting an even bigger challenge. All this eerily mirrors the segregation of blacks in the workplace, where separate doors were not unusual. We need to be just as vigilant about disability inclusion as we are about racial inclusion.

In the social justice space, ableism would be categorized as a macroaggression. Disability comes with its own unique challenges and trials, but the inability to engage with, and move freely through, our communities, or not being able to easily visit friends’ and relatives’ homes—and the social isolation that follows—because inclusive design is so uncommon, is a gross violation of our rights and is detrimental to our health.

Our freedom of movement is hindered in other ways. How we move as disabled people often leads to poor encounters with the police. We are often taken for drunks, our caregivers are harmed, or even shot; we are perceived as threats and beaten when trying to communicate in sign language, or worse, killed. In March, a report published by the Ruderman Family Foundation highlighted that half of police shootings have involved a disabled person. They were also people of color. Yet these deaths are rarely spoken of in the context of the person’s disability.

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To make things worse, the intersection of race, poverty and disability is often ignored. Black Lives Matter has come under much deserved criticism by black and Latinx disability rights activists for lack of inclusion in their “woke” spaces. We cannot be fully woke if we refuse to acknowledge our disabled brothers and sisters. My city has some of the highest poverty rates for minorities and for the disabled. A recent study ranked Rochester 147th out of 150 American cities in a list of best and worst places to live if you are disabled. Yet, those in poverty who are disabled live in the highest-poverty census tracts, have very low education levels, no access to jobs and a shortage of affordable, accessible housing, and lack the resources to move within their communities, which have poor transportation options. They very rarely have the opportunity to live somewhere else, nor can they fully engage with the myriad initiatives designed to lift people out of poverty.

For me, freedom of movement also encompasses the ability to move in environments without people coming up to me and touching me or invading my personal space. Black women know the violating feeling when someone decides to touch our hair without permission as we go about our daily lives. Disability adds another layer to it. A poignant moment was during prep for an M.R.I. My hair was ripped out by a white female technician because she was “curious about its softness.” My blackness was singled out and my disability used against me. She took a moment where I was vulnerable and exploited that.

But these body-autonomy violations are a regular occurrence. People push my chair without asking, and often in the wrong direction, and shove me in the back as a way of “helping” me propel my chair—my movement and autonomy are constantly being challenged. And just as black men experience people moving to the other side of the street or white women clutching their purses on the assumption that they are a threat, I too experience people jumping out of the way or pulling their children to them in fear as they loudly proclaim that they don’t want to be hit by a wheelchair, even when I’m several feet from them. To be treated as something to avoid but also something to be touched at will creates an odd juxtaposition that is unique to the black disabled experience.

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Navigating the world as a black woman is difficult, but I refuse to give up the fight to dismantle structural racism and structural ableism. At the core of the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter and the disability-rights movement is the idea of autonomy and agency over one’s life. We are fighting for the right to not be judged based on external sets of unrealistic expectations. The rights afforded to us in the Constitution are not fully granted to us if we are constantly obstructed by structural biases. To that end, I would paraphrase Chief Grady’s definition to be even more inclusive: We should have the right to move freely without impingement from anyone or anything . Simply because.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Luticha Doucette’s essay centers on the concept of “freedom of movement” (paragraph 1). In your own words, describe what “freedom of movement” means. How is Doucette’s freedom of movement limited? What does she say are the consequences of these limitations?

2. Doucette argues, “Today, segregation and limiting the movement of disabled persons in public spaces is commonplace and accepted” (paragraph 6). What evidence does she give to support this claim? Why do you think she chooses the word “segregation” to describe the inaccessibility she and other people with disabilities experience daily?

3. Doucette explains that the issues of access she addresses in her essay are intersectional: the discrimination that people with disabilities experience is often connected to and compounded by the prejudices faced by minorities and those living in poverty. What evidence does Doucette give to show this “intersection of race, poverty and disability” (paragraph 10)?

4. Where in her essay does Doucette state why her argument matters? What is her response to the “so what?” question?

5. Think about how you exercise your freedom of movement. Write a short response to Doucette’s argument, drawing on your reflection of your own freedom of movement (or lack of). How is your freedom of movement limited (or not) by your identity, including your race, gender, ethnicity, or sexuality? How might your freedom of movement be restricted by other factors, such as infrastructure, language, geographic space, cost, or cultural assumptions?

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Glossary

bowels the deepest areas of the building

Latinx refers to people of Latin American origin or descent; gender neutral or nonbinary alternative to Latino or Latina

Oliver Twist Orphan character in the novel of the same name by Charles Dickens.

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If AI Is Predicting Your Future, Are You Still Free?

CARISSA VÉLIZ

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CARISSA VÉLIZ is an associate professor of philosophy in the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Her scholarship addresses the intersection of ethics and technology, including artificial intelligence, digital ethics, privacy, and public policy. Her book, Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Control of Your Data , was published in 2021. Her research, which she writes in both Spanish and English, has appeared in Aeon , Boston Review , and El País , as well as numerous academic journals. Véliz was born in Mexico and completed her undergraduate education in Spain. This essay originally appeared in Wired in 2021.

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AS YOU READ these words, there are likely dozens of algorithms making predictions about you. It was probably an algorithm that determined that you would be exposed to this article because it predicted you would read it. Algorithmic predictions can determine whether you get a loan or a job or an apartment or insurance, and much more.

These predictive analytics are conquering more and more spheres of life. And yet no one has asked your permission to make such forecasts. No governmental agency is supervising them. No one is informing you about the prophecies that determine your fate. Even worse, a search through academic literature for the ethics of prediction shows it is an underexplored field of knowledge. As a society, we haven’t thought

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through the ethical implications of making predictions about people— beings who are supposed to be infused with agency and free will.

Defying the odds is at the heart of what it means to be human. Our greatest heroes are those who defied their odds: Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Marie Curie, Helen Keller, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, and beyond. They all succeeded wildly beyond expectations. Every school teacher knows kids who have achieved more than was dealt in their cards. In addition to improving everyone’s baseline, we want a society that allows and stimulates actions that defy the odds. Yet the more we use AI to categorize people, predict their future, and treat them accordingly, the more we narrow human agency, which will in turn expose us to uncharted risks.

Human beings have been using prediction since before the Oracle of Delphi. Wars were waged on the basis of those predictions. In more recent decades, prediction has been used to inform practices such as setting insurance premiums. Those forecasts tended to be about large groups of people—for example, how many people out of 100,000 will crash their cars. Some of those individuals would be more careful and lucky than others, but premiums were roughly homogenous (except for broad categories like age groups) under the assumption that pooling risks allows the higher costs of the less careful and lucky to be offset by the relatively lower costs of the careful and lucky. The larger the pool, the more predictable and stable premiums were.

Today, prediction is mostly done through machine learning algorithms that use statistics to fill in the blanks of the unknown. Text algorithms use enormous language databases to predict the most plausible ending to a string of words. Game algorithms use data from past games to predict the best possible next move. And algorithms that are applied to human behavior use historical data to infer our future: what we are going to buy, whether we are planning to change jobs, whether we are going to get sick, whether we are going to commit a crime or crash our car. Under such a model, insurance is no longer about pooling risk from large sets of people. Rather, predictions have become individualized, and you are increasingly paying your own way, according to your personal risk scores—which raises a new set of ethical concerns.

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An important characteristic of predictions is that they do not describe reality. Forecasting is about the future, not the present, and the future is something that has yet to become real. A prediction is a guess, and all sorts of subjective assessments and biases regarding risk and values are built into it. There can be forecasts that are more or less accurate, to be sure, but the relationship between probability and actuality is much more tenuous and ethically problematic than some assume.

Institutions today, however, often try to pass off predictions as if they were a model of objective reality. And even when AI’s forecasts are merely probabilistic, they are often interpreted as deterministic in practice—partly because human beings are bad at understanding probability and partly because the incentives around avoiding risk end up reinforcing the prediction. (For example, if someone is predicted to be 75 percent likely to be a bad employee, companies will not want to take the risk of hiring them when they have candidates with a lower risk score).

The ways we are using predictions raise ethical issues that lead back to one of the oldest debates in philosophy: If there is an omniscient God, can we be said to be truly free? If God already knows all that is going to happen, that means whatever is going to happen has been predetermined —otherwise it would be unknowable. The implication is that our feeling of free will is nothing but that: a feeling. This view is called theological fatalism.

What is worrying about this argument, above and beyond questions about God, is the idea that, if accurate forecasts are possible (regardless of who makes them), then that which has been forecasted has already been determined. In the age of AI, this worry becomes all the more salient , since predictive analytics are constantly targeting people.

One major ethical problem is that by making forecasts about human behavior just like we make forecasts about the weather, we are treating people like things. Part of what it means to treat a person with respect is to acknowledge their agency and ability to change themselves and their circumstances. If we decide that we know what someone’s future will be before it arrives, and treat them accordingly, we are not giving them the opportunity to act freely and defy the odds of that prediction.

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See Chapter 8 for more on saying why it matters.

A second, related ethical problem with predicting human behavior is that by treating people like things, we are creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Predictions are rarely neutral. More often than not, the act of prediction intervenes in the reality it purports to merely observe. For example, when Facebook predicts that a post will go viral, it maximizes exposure to that post, and lo and behold, the post goes viral. Or, let’s return to the example of the algorithm that determines you are unlikely to be a good employee. Your inability to get a job might be explained not by the algorithm’s accuracy, but because the algorithm itself is recommending against companies hiring you and companies take its advice. Getting blacklisted by an algorithm can severely restrict your options in life.

The philosophers who were concerned with theological fatalism in the past worried that if God is omniscient and omnipotent, then it’s hard not to blame God for evil. As David Hume wrote, “To reconcile the [. . .] contingency of human actions with prescience [. . .] and yet free the Deity from being the author of sin, has been found hitherto to exceed all the power of philosophy.” In the case of AI, if predictive analytics are partly creating the reality they purport to predict, then they are partly responsible for the negative trends we are experiencing in the digital age, from increasing inequality to polarization, misinformation, and harm to children and teenagers.

Ultimately, the extensive use of predictive analytics robs us of the opportunity to have an open future in which we can make a difference, and this can have a destructive impact on society at large.

Throughout history, we have come up with ways of living that challenge fatalism. We go to great lengths to educate our children, hoping that everything we invest will lead them to have better lives than they otherwise would. We make an effort to improve our habits in the hopes of enjoying better health. We praise good behavior to encourage more of it, and to acknowledge that people could have made worse choices. We punish wrongdoers, at least partly to disincentivize them and

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others from transgressing social norms, and partly to blame people who we think should’ve acted better. We strive to structure our societies on the basis of merit.

None of those social practices that are so fundamental to our way of life would make any sense if we thought or behaved as if people’s destinies were sealed. Praise and blame would be entirely inappropriate. Imagine a world without grades, fines, incentives, or punishments of any kind; a world without any attempts to change the future; a world in which people live in absolute resignation to a prophecy. It’s almost unthinkable. If the future of every company could be forecast with precision, the financial markets as we know them would instantly collapse, and with them, our economy. Though this extreme possibility is unlikely to happen, we don’t want to go down a road that gets us closer to it.

There is an irresolvable tension between the practice of predicting human behavior and the belief in free will as part of our everyday life. A healthy degree of uncertainty about what is to come motivates us to want to do better, and it keeps possibilities open. The desire to leave no potential data point uncollected with the objective of mapping out our future is incompatible with treating individuals as masters of their own lives.

We have to choose between treating human beings as mechanistic machines whose future can and should be predicted (in which case it would be nonsensical to believe in meritocracy ), or treating each other as agents (in which case making people the target of individual predictions is inappropriate). It would never occur to us to put a tractor or other machine in jail. If human beings are like tractors, then we shouldn’t jail them either. If, on the other hand, human beings are different from machines, and we want to continue to impart praise and blame, then we shouldn’t treat people as things by predicting what they are going to do next as if they had no say in the matter.

Predictions are not innocuous . The extensive use of predictive analytics can even change the way human beings think about themselves. There is value in believing in free will. Research in psychology has

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shown that undermining people’s confidence in free will increases cheating, aggression, and conformity and decreases helpful behavior and positive feelings like gratitude and authenticity. The more we use predictive analytics on people, the more we conceptualize human beings as nothing more than the result of their circumstances, and the more people are likely to experience themselves as devoid of agency and powerless in the face of hardship. The less we allow people opportunities to defy the odds, the more we will be guilty of condemning them, and society, to the status quo.

By deciding the fate of human beings on the basis of predictive algorithms, we are turning people into robots. People’s creativity in challenging probabilities has helped save entire nations. Think of Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II. They overcame unspeakable difficulties in their personal and professional lives and helped save the world from totalitarianism in the process. The ability to defy the odds is one of the greatest gifts of humanity, and we undermine it at our peril.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Carissa Véliz argues that basing decisions too much on predictive forecasts is “ethically problematic” (paragraph 6). What are two major ethical problems with relying on artificial intelligence predictions, according to Véliz?

2. What industries rely on predictive AI? Reflect on your own experience with predictive AI—where have you encountered it? What uses of predictive AI do you think are more problematic than others? Why?

3. Véliz uses metacommentary at strategic points in her essay to clarify her ideas. Identify three places in her essay where she uses metacommentary effectively. Refer to Chapter 11 for examples of how writers use metacommentary in their texts.

4. What piece of evidence do you think provides the strongest support for Véliz’s argument? Why?

5. In their arguments, both Véliz and Luticha Doucette (pp. 373–77 ) focus on how a person’s freedom can be constrained. How does predictive AI limit a person’s freedom, according to Véliz? What does Doucette say limits the extent to which a person has “autonomy and agency over one’s life” (p. 377 , paragraph 13)? What similarities do you see between their arguments? What is a significant distinction between their arguments?

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Glossary

algorithms mathematical instructions used to solve a problem or perform a calculation

salient of utmost importance

blacklisted being placed on a list of unacceptable or untrustworthy people or things

fatalism the belief that events are predetermined, or inevitable

contingency a possible future circumstance that cannot be predicted with certainty

prescience the ability to know in advance that something will occur.

meritocracy holding power based on ability

innocuous not offensive or harmful

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90 Seconds Together

MARTIN E. DEMPSEY

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MARTIN E. DEMPSEY is a retired four-star general in the United States Army and served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2011 to 2015. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy. During his military career, he served in the Gulf War and the Iraq War, and was awarded the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, and the Army Distinguished Service Medal. After he retired from the US Army, Dempsey served as the chairman of USA Basketball from 2017 to 2020. This essay appeared in the Atlantic in 2021.

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DURING OPERATION DESERT STORM , after Iraq’s Republican Guard had been forced out of Kuwait, my brigade set up a checkpoint on the only highway from Kuwait to Baghdad. We established a medical treatment facility and raised the American flag. It was a signal to the oppressed population of southern Iraq.

Dozens of Iraqis came to the facility each day, assured by the flag that they would be safe. I kept that flag, and today it hangs in my office, framed with a photograph of the checkpoint.

The memories of my military career are dotted with other flags. A tiny flag placed on the pile of what remained of the World Trade Center in 2001. The 215,000 flags placed in front of simple white headstones in Arlington National Cemetery each Memorial Day. The flag-draped transfer cases arriving home from Iraq or Afghanistan at Dover Air Force Base with the remains of the fallen. The folded flags, far too many, reverently handed to survivors at the graveside of their loved ones.

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I’ve seen the flag carried ebulliently around an ice-hockey rink in Lake Placid in 1980 and carried menacingly in an assault on the Capitol in 2021.

In this nation, which values individual freedoms and choices, patriotism ebbs and flows as it is subjected to the shifting winds of domestic politics and our relative sense of security from threats abroad. Its symbols and rituals—the flag, the national anthem—can be honored or desecrated, saluted or scorned, used to draw attention to what unites us or to what divides us.

In recent months, some influential voices have suggested that we should not play the national anthem before sporting events. They argue that routinely playing it cheapens the anthem and promotes a shallow brand of patriotism. They believe that protests during the anthem are another painful reminder of our political polarization.

For more on summarizing, see Chapter 2 .

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Meanwhile, athletes who will compete at the U.S. Olympic Trials have been given a menu of acceptable demonstrations and protests by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Among the protests on that list are kneeling on the medal podium and during the national anthem.

But I’m not ready to give up on the anthem and the ritual of standing while it is played. Rituals have a place in our public life. They reinforce our sense of belonging. They allow us to feel as though we have some control over the chaos of everyday life. They give us comfort in their predictability.

Respecting the flag and standing for the national anthem seem to me modest and reasonable gestures of unity in a nation of 330 million people trying to figure out how to live together.

The flag appeared at the innumerable parades of my childhood. In those days, people took almost any excuse to get out, march, and celebrate. New York City had the Thanksgiving Day parade, the Saint Patrick’s Day parade, and the Easter parade. Closer to home were local parades on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Opening Day of Little League baseball. The flag was always at the head of the line, prominently displayed, and most everyone stood as it approached. My four grandparents were Irish immigrants, and they stood a little taller when the flag of their adopted country passed by.

The first time I can remember paying serious attention to the flag, though, was on a crystal-clear spring day at Yankee Stadium in the 1950s. As the flag was presented and the anthem began to play, the crowd rose as one. The World War II veterans in the crowd, like my grandparents, seemed to stand a little taller and take the ceremony a little more seriously than others in the audience.

The routine playing of the anthem at sporting events was then a fairly new ritual, but it was quick to take root. The anthem now serves as the prelude to contests of all kinds, a few moments of unity before we loudly

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and enthusiastically begin to disagree about who should prevail on the field.

But right now, it’s not serving its intended purpose. And it won’t, unless we can better understand that purpose, and agree that it matters.

To me, the national anthem is an expression of our shared belief in this country, one of our very few patriotic rituals. The anthem lasts 90 seconds and offers us the opportunity to pause, and focus on who and what we are together. We can take that minute and a half and think about what’s possible, feel for a moment a sense of belonging with our fellow citizens, put aside our differences, and celebrate with not only those with whom we agree but also those with whom we disagree.

At a deeper level, I consider the anthem an acknowledgment that our democracy is a work in progress. Its words may proclaim this nation “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but we all know that our aspirations have not always matched our behaviors. The anthem reminds us of what we can be and what we should be, challenging us to consider whether we even understand what it means to be the land of the free .

In an address to the nation in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt listed four fundamental American freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

These four freedoms are positive and aspirational. Even in our country’s most divisive moments since Roosevelt delivered that speech —and there have been more than a few of them—we have valued these four fundamental freedoms. They have stood the test of time.

But other definitions of freedom exist that are less about what we wish to accomplish and more about what we wish to abandon. The debate about whether we should adhere to the rituals of patriotism— including standing for the anthem—feels like that. We seem poised to declare our freedom from patriotism . Ironically, we are actually free to do that; the question we must ask ourselves is whether we should. For if we decide to free ourselves from our most recognizable American ritual of patriotism, unintended consequences may result.

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Patriotism, because it is sensitive to the shifting winds of politics, can be manipulated. If some citizens choose to dismiss or ignore patriotism because others aggressively embrace it and claim it as their own, then instead of holding us together, patriotism will become just another thing driving us apart. If patriotism becomes less important to moderate voices, it will become more vulnerable to manipulation by extreme voices.

Mark Twain probably had it about right when he said, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it.”

We are polarized. In the recent election, half of the people in this country cast their vote because they were afraid everything would change, and the other half cast their vote because they were afraid nothing would change. But despite our differences, patriotic rituals retain the potential to unite us—and we can’t afford to lose that.

I understand why, in certain moments, athletes have chosen to kneel during the national anthem. When some among us suffer heinous disrespect and grievous injustice, it’s no wonder that they may begin to lose their sense of belonging and question whether they really are part of America’s future. And peaceful protest has long played an important role in raising awareness about the crucial issues of social justice and racial equality.

See Chapter 6 for advice on anticipating objections.

But today, we do not lack for times, places, or platforms to express our dissatisfaction with our government, our laws, or one another. If today we pause long enough to listen to the national anthem, that leaves 23 hours, 58 minutes, and 30 seconds in the day. We have plenty of opportunities to highlight our differences. Opportunities to express our hope for one another, though, have grown scarce. That’s one reason I

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treasure those 90 seconds just before the first pitch, the kickoff, or the tip-off in our ballparks, stadiums, and arenas.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that.

Like all rituals, the national anthem comes with expectations. When we meet those expectations, the focus stays on the ritual. Conversely, violating the expectations of a ritual serves to shift attention from the ritual to us. That can generate empathy and understanding, but also hard feelings and heightened emotions.

As some have suggested, the easiest solution might be to avoid playing the national anthem at sporting events altogether. That, however, would mean giving up on the anthem—and on one another.

The anthem can be used as an occasion for protest, but as that protest becomes routine, it places something vital at risk. To be effective, rituals must be shared; they can’t long be bent to separate purposes, or they will break. And right now, we need things that can bind us to one another more than ever.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Martin E. Dempsey uses examples from his own military career in support of his argument. Which personal example did you find most persuasive? Why? What value do you think personal narrative has in making an argument?

2. Which sentence in the essay do you believe best captures Dempsey’s central argument? Compose a quotation sandwich for this quote using the strategies explained in Chapter 3 . Be sure to introduce the quote and explain what it means in your own words.

3. Where does Dempsey plant a naysayer in his argument? Do you think this naysayer strengthens his argument? Why or why not? How would you describe Dempsey’s tone when he introduces and responds to objections?

4. Dempsey argues that protesting the national anthem is indictive of a deeper problem, a desire to declare our “freedom from patriotism ” (paragraph 18). What does Dempsey say are the “unintended consequences” of rejecting shared patriotic rituals like standing for the national anthem? What do you think Katha Pollitt (pp. 322–26 ) might say in response to Dempsey’s argument?

5. Imagine you had a chance to speak with Dempsey about his argument. Write out what you would say, remembering to frame your statement as a response to what he has said. See Chapter 13 for advice on entering class discussions.

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Glossary

Operation Desert Storm An air force campaign by US and allied forces against Iraq, January 17–February 28, 1991, following Saddam Hussein’s refusal to withdraw from Kuwait.

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TWENTY-ONE

“HOW IS TECHNOLOGY CHANGING US?”

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Over fifty years after its release, the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, feels remarkably prescient, provoking questions about privacy, power, and technology still hotly contested today.

In this still, astronauts Frank Poole (played by Gary Lockwood) and Dave Bowman (played by Keir Dullea) retreat into an escape pod on their spacecraft to shield their conversation from HAL, the powerful AI computer that controls the ship while tracking everything they say and do.

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1. Look at this image and focus on the two astronauts. What do you notice about them and their immediate surroundings? How do the technologies you interact with daily impede—or foster—the connections you have with others?

2. Look again and notice HAL, staring out from the background. Think about how AI and surveillance technologies are present in the background of your own life. What amount of privacy are you willing to give up for the conveniences offered by AI?

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TECHNOLOGY, IN ITS BROADEST APPLICATION , is ubiquitous and inescapable, almost like the air we breathe. Employing a slightly different comparison, digital media expert Shira Ovide wrote in a 2021 New York Times column that “it’s hard to define what technology even is. Tech is more like a coat of new paint on everything than a definable set of products or industries. Health care is tech. Entertainment is tech. Schools are tech. Money is tech. Transportation is tech. We live through tech.”

We welcome—and eagerly adopt—new products and design improvements that enhance our lives in myriad ways: by promising (and sometimes delivering) easier access to information, speedier results, enjoyment of all kinds, better teaching and learning approaches, exercise enhancements, and more. Yet not everyone is fully comfortable with our shifting relationship to technology, both as individuals and as a society; nor are we in agreement about the effects of this reliance. Policymakers, engineers, educators, and everyday people disagree on answers to the most basic questions, such as: Are we becoming too dependent on digital media? Do the benefits of technology outweigh the costs? Is there a coherent long-term vision guiding the development and use of new applications?

People might offer very different answers to such questions depending on their own preferences and experiences, perhaps influenced by such factors as age, level of education, income, gender, and ethnicity. However, despite such differences, we can agree that the lightning speed of tech development has profound implications for all of us. This chapter explores some of the most important of those implications.

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A number of readings in this chapter focus on social and digital media, highlighting potentially negative effects of this technology on how we think, feel, and interact with each other. Nicholas Carr, who writes about technology and culture, argues that extensive use of smartphones, which receive their owners’ attention every waking hour, is hurting our capacity as humans for deep thinking and contemplation. Taking this argument as her starting point, a writer on the social impacts of technology, Christine Rosen, asserts that young people up to the age of sixteen, at the very earliest, should not be allowed to use the internet for any purposes, and she offers suggestions for enforcing such a ban. Along somewhat similar lines, college student Justin Vinh argues that use of social media can cause feelings of envy, loneliness, depression, even addiction. Conversely, many authors express a more positive view about engagement with digital media, countering such “doomsday scenarios” described above with the argument that new technologies make us smarter, happier, and more productive. One such author, poet and essayist Kenneth Goldsmith, writes that, far from wasting time, much of what we do on the internet helps us develop new skills, learn about the world, and interact constructively with others.

Other commentators focus less on technology’s effects on individuals’ cognitive and social development, instead examining the impacts of technology on society as a whole, or on particular segments of society. From his perspective as an imprisoned person, Joe Garcia argues that internet access is not only of great value but is also necessary in today’s world. He laments that people incarcerated in the United States are, with very few exceptions, denied all use of the internet, which, paired with other inequities, can compound to make life after release untenable. Turning our attention to economic matters, media studies professor Lana Swartz argues that the move to a cashless society will exacerbate inequality. She advocates for the continued use of and need for paper currency even as digital payments and credit cards become more prevalent. Global studies professor and human rights activist Anna Romina Guevarra considers the rise of robots and other technologies in health care fields; while conceding the potential value of such innovations for patient care, she cautions that robots will not substitute adequately for the insight and sensitivity provided by human caregivers. Finally, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr shows how the algorithms that Google and Facebook employ make it all too easy to spread fake news and discriminatory speech.

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These readings introduce complicated questions regarding present roles and future possibilities for technology, questions which allow for a variety of reasonable answers. In a 2022 New York Times column, Shira Ovide, the writer quoted at the beginning of this chapter, stated the following: “Technology empowers us, but technology alone is not enough. We—not technology products or the companies and executives behind them—hold the power to shape the world we want.” Keep these words in mind as you think through these issues and prepare to enter this crucial conversation.

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Glossary

ubiquitous found everywhere

myriad a great many

exacerbate make a problem even worse

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Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet

KENNETH GOLDSMITH

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KENNETH GOLDSMITH is a poet and author of ten books, including Seven American Deaths and Disasters (2013) and Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age (2013). He is the founding editor of UbuWeb, an online archive, and senior editor of PennSound , a website for digital poetry recordings based at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches writing. This essay, first published on August 12, 2016, for the Los Angeles Times , is from his book Wasting Time on the Internet (2016).

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IS THE INTERNET A WASTE OF TIME ? It’s not so easy to say. When I click around news sites, am I wasting time because I should be working instead? What if I’ve spent hours working, and I need a break? Am I wasting time if I watch cat videos, but not if I read a magazine story about the Iran nuclear deal? Am I wasting time if I look up the latest presidential polling numbers, but not if I’m communicating with an old friend on Facebook?

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TV. But most of us don’t do any one thing on the Internet. Instead, we do many things, some of it frivolous, some of it heavy. Our time spent in front of the computer is a mixed time, a time that reflects our desires—as opposed to the time spent sitting in front of the television where we were fed shows we didn’t necessarily enjoy. TV gave us few choices. Many of us truly did feel like we wasted our time—as our parents so often chided us—“rotting away” in front of the TV.

And I keep reading—on the Internet—that the Internet has made us antisocial, that we’ve lost the ability to have a conversation. But when I see people with their devices, what I see is people communicating with one another: texting, chatting, IM’ing. And I have to wonder, in what way is this not social? A conversation broken up into short bursts and quick emoticons is still a conversation. Watch someone’s face while they’re in the midst of a rapid-fire text message exchange: it’s full of emotion—anticipation, laughter, affect.

The Internet has been accused of making us shallow. We’re skimming, not reading. We lack the ability to engage deeply with a subject anymore. That’s both true and not true: we skim and browse certain types of content, and read others carefully. We’re not all using our devices the same way. Looking over the shoulders of people absorbed in their devices on the subway, I see many people reading newspapers and books and many others playing Candy Crush. Sometimes someone will be glancing at a newspaper one moment and playing a game the next.

The other night, I walked into the living room and my wife was glued to her iPad, reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass . Hours later, when I headed to bed, she hadn’t moved an inch, still transfixed by this 171-year-old narrative on her 21st-century device. When I said good night, she didn’t even look up.

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Internet critics tell us time and again that our brains are being rewired; I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. Every new media requires new ways of thinking. Wouldn’t it be strange if in the midst of this digital revolution we were still expected to use our brains in the same way we read books or watched TV?

See Chapter 1 for ways to introduce an ongoing debate.

The resistance to the Internet shouldn’t surprise us: Cultural reactionaries defending the status quo have been around as long as media has. Marshall McLuhan tells us that television was written off by people invested in literature as merely “mass entertainment” just as the printed book was met with the same skepticism in the 16th century by scholastic philosophers. McLuhan says that “the vested interests of acquired knowledge and conventional wisdom have always been by-passed and engulfed by new media . . . The student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period whatever to be classed as pseudo by those who have acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they may happen to be.”

I’m told that our children are most at risk, that the excessive use of computers has led our kids to view the real world as fake. But I’m not so sure that even I can distinguish “real” from “fake.” How is my life on Facebook any less “real” than what happens in my day-to-day life? In fact, much of what does happen in my day-to-day life comes through Facebook—work opportunities, invitations to dinner parties, and even the topics I discuss at those dinner parties.

After reading one of those hysterical “devices are ruining your child” articles, my sister-in-law decided to take action. She imposed a system whereby, after dinner, the children were to “turn in” their devices— computers, smartphones, and tablets. They could “check them out” over the course of the evening, but only if they could prove they needed them for “educational purposes.” Upon confiscating my nephew’s cell phone

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one Friday night, she asked him on Saturday morning, “What plans do you have with your friends today?” “None,” he responded. “You took away my phone.”

On a vacation, after a full day of outdoor activities that included seeing the Grand Canyon and hiking, my friend and her family settled into the hotel for the evening. Her 12-year-old daughter is a fan of preteen goth girl crafting videos on YouTube, where she learns how to bedazzle black skull T-shirts and make perfectly ripped punk leggings. That evening, the girl selected some of her favorite videos to share with her mother. After agreeing to watch a few, her mother grew impatient. “This is nice, but I don’t want to spend the whole night clicking around.” The daughter responded indignantly that she wasn’t just “clicking around.” She was connecting with a community of girls her own age who shared similar interests.

Her mother was forced to reconsider her premise that her daughter was just wasting time on the Internet; instead, she was fully engaged, fostering an aesthetic, feeding her imagination, indulging in her creative proclivities , and hanging out with her friends, all from the comfort of a remote hotel room perched on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Many Internet critics yearn for a return to solitude and introspection, quiet places far removed from the noises of our devices. But those places, away from the rabble , are starting to remind me of gated communities.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Kenneth Goldsmith introduces a series of standard views followed by a series of “I say” statements. List each pair, noting the specific language the author uses in each instance.

2. So what? Who cares? Where does Goldsmith explain why his argument matters—and for whom?

3. In paragraph 9, Goldsmith quotes Marshall McLuhan, a scholar who wrote about the effects of technology on people. Why do you think Goldsmith is citing McLuhan here? How does the use of this quotation contribute to the author’s argument?

4. Read Andreas Elpidorou’s article “The Quiet Alarm” on theysayiblog.com . What do you think Goldsmith would say to Elpidorou’s claim that the “next time boredom overcomes you . . . [i]t might be best not to cover it up with your smartphone”?

5. How do your friends, family, and/or coworkers spend time on the internet? How do they feel about it? Incorporating their views as evidence, write a short response responding to Goldsmith in which you agree, disagree, or both with his argument.

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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Glossary

riveted to focusing all one’s attention on something

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass The first slave narrative published by a freed Black man, in 1845

Marshall McLuhan an influential, early media theorist (1911–1980)

proclivities tendencies

rabble a disorderly crowd

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Keep Them Offline

CHRISTINE ROSEN

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CHRISTINE ROSEN is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society. She is the author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (2004) and My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of Divine Girlhood (2005). Her writing on US politics, technology and culture, and American history has been published in Commentary magazine, the Wall Street Journal , the Weekly Standard and National Review. She earned her PhD in history from Emory University. This essay was published in National Review in 2022.

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WHY DON’T WE HAVE A LEGALLY enforceable age requirement for the use of social media? As a society, we long ago agreed upon age- restriction laws governing a range of behaviors (driving, voting, enlisting in the military, smoking, drinking alcohol, getting a tattoo). Why do we treat social-media use differently?

A recent survey by Common Sense Media of social-media use found a significant increase in the number of children ages 8 to 12 (so-called tweens) using social-media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram. “The huge number of kids using social when they’re so young —it makes me want to cry,” Diana Graber of Cyberwise told the New York Times . “These social-media apps are not designed for children.”

And yet for far too long we’ve effectively acted as if they were, because we’ve done little to prevent children from having access to them. The age limit of 13 that currently governs social-media platforms

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was arbitrarily chosen as part of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which came into effect in 2000 (four years before Facebook was created). It was meant to restrict how companies could use children’s data as well as requiring “verifiable parental consent” for those younger than age 13.

As anyone who has ever stumbled across an 11-year-old’s Instagram account will tell you, however, the system never worked. The request to verify one’s age is merely a suggestion, with no real effort at verification. There are no financial or legal repercussions for the companies that fail to confirm the ages of their users and every incentive financially for them to look the other way as underage kids create accounts. You could call it an honor system, but there is little that is honorable about the goals these social-media companies have set for drawing ever-younger users to their platforms.

Other countries have stricter rules. In Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland, for example, the age of digital consent is set at 16, with more legal requirements in place for age verification. Massachusetts senator Ed Markey, one of the original sponsors of COPPA, wanted to set the U.S. age at 16 but was thwarted by lobbying both from technology companies concerned about profits and from civil-liberties groups that, according to a Wall Street Journal story about COPPA, feared that “requiring teens to obtain parental permission might curtail their ability to access information about birth control and abortion.” Of the age-13 compromise, Markey said, “It was too young and I knew it was too young then. It was the best I could do.”

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The top of the screen says Whens your birthday? To use Tiktok, you need to enter your birthdate. Your birthdate wont be shown publicly. At the bottom of the screen there is a dial with different dates, months, and years the user can scroll through to select their correct birthdate.

TikTok’s birthdate verification screen.

Since the earliest days of social networks such as Facebook, people concerned about these platforms’ impact on children have heard a consistent message: It’s up to you, as parents, to control your children’s use of these tools. Teach them media literacy! Monitor screen time! Delay getting them a smartphone!

All of this is good advice (I know; I’m one of many people who made such arguments in the past), and it rests comfortably within a conservative worldview that is rightfully skeptical of turning to federal- government mandates or heavy-handed legal solutions to solve family problems.

Perhaps it is the retreat into digital spaces that happened during pandemic lockdowns and the difficulty many children are having now as they try to emerge from that forced cocoon; or perhaps it is the constant stream of stories about the harms that social media inflict on younger children (e.g., “Snapchat dysmorphia,” by which people become unhappy with their bodies and seek to alter them so as to appear more like the heavily filtered images on social-media platforms). But whatever the precise causes, in recent years, something has shifted, and the attempts of individual adults to set limits for their kids have come to seem less like responsible parenting than like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic .

For many parents, even those who place limits on their children’s use of platforms and devices, the problem of social media is no longer a private one. Social media drive political and cultural and educational conversations to such a degree that a collective solution to the problem they pose for children is long overdue. We have enough evidence of the harms and dangers of social-media use by children, as well as plenty of examples of the lack of concern demonstrated by the companies profiting

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from children’s use of the platforms, to acknowledge that the “best we could do” 20 years ago at the dawn of the social-media era is no longer good enough.

The law is a blunt instrument for solving complicated social problems, and yet sometimes it is the only one at hand.

Social-media use should be limited by law to adults, or at the very least to people 16 years old and older.

The original age limit for social-media-platform use was created to protect children from targeted advertisements and the collection of their data. Today, the harm of social media isn’t the ads; it’s the use of the platforms themselves. It’s the daily opportunity cost placed on children who spend an increasing amount of their time on social media instead of engaged in other social activities.

Social-media use by children has spawned bizarre social-contagion effects, far beyond whatever this week’s viral TikTok challenge might be (e.g., the “devious licks” challenge that encouraged kids to damage school property). A study published last year in Archives of Disease in Childhood examined the increase in the number of teenagers suffering from tic disorders; it located one possible cause in the popularity of TikTok videos of “influencers with symptoms.” “Some teenage girls report increased consumption of such videos prior to symptom onset, while others have posted videos and information about their movements and sounds on social media sites,” the study found. “They report that they gain peer support, recognition and a sense of belonging from this exposure.”

The technology companies know that the platforms they are selling can be harmful for many users. Internal research by Instagram (which is owned by Facebook’s parent corporation, Meta) found that even though one-third of teenage girls who use Instagram report that it “made them feel worse,” they found themselves “unable to stop” using it. A large, multi-year study by researchers at Cambridge University published this year found that social-media use negatively affected life satisfaction and mental health for children, particularly around puberty (ages 11–13 for

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girls and 14–15 for boys). Coverage of these findings always strains to point out the many positive effects of social-media platforms. “It carries risks—peer influence, contagion, substance use,” one researcher told the New York Times . “But it can also carry lots of positive things. . . . I think a lot of times that does get overlooked because we’re so focused on risks.”

But researchers don’t like to acknowledge that they are working with limited information. To thoroughly weigh the benefits and risks that these platforms pose to children requires data that scholars can subject to granular analysis . Those data—your data and your children’s data—are owned by the social-media companies. And they won’t share them.

The risks we do know of are significant and growing. Children have gotten used to being harassed and threatened online in a way that would have been alarming to previous generations. As the Washington Post reported, the shooter in the recent Uvalde, Texas, school massacre regularly used social media to threaten and harass people, albeit anonymously, on livestream social-networking platforms such as Yubo (slogan: “Get friends. Get real”). No one thought to tip off authorities because the threats were “seen by strangers, many of whom had never met him and had found him only through the social messaging and video apps that form the bedrock of modern teen life.” Yubo, which the Post calls “Tinder for teens,” has been downloaded 18 million times in the U.S. “I witnessed him harass girls and threaten them with sexual assault, like rape and kidnapping,” said one teenager who spoke to the paper. Another said this was just “how online is.”

The list of social-media platforms grows every year: The grand dame, Facebook, is now just for old people; but Instagram and WhatsApp (both owned by Meta) remain popular among the young. Then there’s Snapchat, Discord, YouTube, and Twitter. And of course the Chinese-owned Tik-Tok. All of these platforms measure success by the amount of user engagement, regardless of whether that engagement is angry, violent, conspiratorial—or from underage children.

Indeed, technology companies are betting the future on social platforms that are even more immersive. Meta hopes to create a form of

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“social virtual reality (VR)” in the Metaverse that would use VR technology (goggles, eventually sensors) to allow social-media users to interact with one another, raising a host of issues about the impact of such technology use on children. (VR headsets currently aren’t considered safe for use by children, but no doubt that concern will fade as the profit-making possibilities of VR kids’ games and platforms increase.)

Which is why we should take the opportunity now to impose some limits on children’s use of these platfonns. This is not a new proposal. I first heard it floated by the American Enterprise Institute’s Yuval Levin, who mentioned it as a potential solution during a group conversation about technology. Last year, Ben Pring argued in TechCrunch that social media should be limited to adults. “We don’t let young people drive, drink, smoke, get married, join the Army, get a tattoo or vote until we feel they’re old enough to handle it,” he noted. And in a recent issue of National Affairs , Chris Griswold offered an extensive analysis of regulatory efforts, including age restrictions, that could be adopted to protect children from the harms of social media.

There is a contradictory impulse at play in the culture right now: The cult of safetyism regarding children (wherein everything must contain a warning label, playgrounds must come equipped with cushioned ground cover and no sharp angles, and helicopter parents are expected to hover nearby with helmets and healthy snacks available at all times) dominates the offline world. By contrast, there is little more than resignation and hand-wringing when it comes to children’s online activities.

At the same time, high-risk behaviors in which children engaged in greater numbers in previous eras (drunk driving, smoking, sex) are declining, while rates of mental-health disorders are climbing precipitously. As a report on adolescent mental health in the New York Times noted:

In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Emergency room visits by children and adolescents in that period also rose sharply for anxiety, mood disorders and self-harm. And for people ages 10 to 24, suicide

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rates, stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even for children not suffering from mental-health challenges, the time every day spent on social media (an average of five hours, according to Common Sense Media) has clearly replaced other, healthier social activities for children. Data from surveys such as the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and the Monitoring the Future Survey from the National Institute on Drug Abuse show that tweens and teens today get less sleep and less exercise and less in-person time with their peers than did previous generations.

Yet instead of imposing some serious limits on who can use these platforms, parents are told to “ask your kids how they feel” about social media and “ask them what they’re looking at and doing online.” This shifts the burden of proof of harm to parents, who must assess the risk with only limited information from the companies that create and manage these platforms. An across-the-board, enforceable age limit would place the burden where it belongs: on the companies that have allowed children free rein on platforms designed for use by adults.

For more on anticipating objections, see Chapter 6 .

The objections to raising the age limit for social media are easy to predict:

It would be impossible to enforce.

In fact, age-verification systems of many types are already available and could easily be used for this purpose. No, liquor laws did not automatically end underage drinking, and there will always be people who subvert the law to their own ends. But just because some people evade a law doesn’t make it wholly ineffectual or unworthy of having on the books.

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Fears about social media are just this generation’s version of a moral panic.

No one wants to be labeled their generation’s Mrs. Grundy. In the 1980s, former second lady Tipper Gore and her Parents Music Resource Center were pilloried as priggish censors for arguing that warning labels should be placed on albums with explicit lyrics. Today, we live in a world where those warning labels are still there, but groups such as Migos perform “Bad and Boujee” (sample lyrics: “F*** in’ on your b****

, she’s a thot, thot. Cookin’ up dope in the crockpot”) on daytime talk shows such as Ellen while the middle-aged ladies in the audience dance along, albeit to a song with every other word bleeped out for viewers at home.

The lesson here isn’t that moral panics quash free expression; it’s that cultures change, but not always for the better. It’s important to recognize when the change is going in the wrong direction and to do something about it.

Enforceable age limits for social-media use would not require censorship. Instead, it would treat social media as technology companies have long claimed they want us to treat their technologies: as tools. Like an automobile, social media have both benefits and serious potential risks if used irresponsibly. Age limits would treat social-media platforms as tools that require some maturity and training to operate. Such forms of regulation are apolitical but would help parents in their efforts to keep kids safe, as driver’s licensing and seatbelt and liquor laws do.

Age-limit laws unfairly restrict kids from using something that is useful for them in connecting with others.

Can a 16-year-old use social media responsibly and beneficially? Perhaps, depending on the platform and depending on the child.

But the evidence continues to roll in that even adults are often unable and unwilling to use such platforms in a responsible manner, and the ill effects of those decisions have been felt in our politics and culture for some time now.

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Raising the age limit for social-media use to 16 (or 18) would seem draconian to a generation of adolescents already habituated to spending hours on Discord and Snapchat. But as we embrace new technologies, we need to assess their benefits and harms honestly, and not continue to act as if everyone will use them the way they were ideally intended to be used. When automobiles became more common in the 1920s, states began setting age limits and licensing requirements for their operation (after witnessing the damage that could be caused by someone untrained behind the wheel). By the mid 20th century, most states had adopted 16 as the minimum age, with license requirements that varied by state.

We have had almost 20 years of social-media experience, and Americans are just now beginning to express a desire for greater oversight of these platforms, often on issues related to censorship and content removal. Shouldn’t we also reassess the protections in place for children?

We cannot turn back the clock and force a generation of children not to grow up online, but neither should we ignore our unease about the world our teenagers and younger children inhabit. That unease reveals a larger fear about the habits of mind that social-media platforms encourage and the sense of self they inculcate in children. They strip away layers of the private self, incentivizing people to perform their lives online and rewarding them for behavior that doesn’t support the formation of good character and judgment. And as we have seen, despite the promises of connection made by social-media companies, these platforms have not obviously created greater unity; on the contrary, they seem to have contributed to greater polarization and tribalism.

Large social-media companies can afford to lose the revenue they now generate from child influencers and tween TikTok users. The more important question is: Can we afford to lose another generation of children to the whims of social-media platforms that were made for adults, built to keep you engaged (and enraged) as much as possible, and designed without concern for their impact on our most vulnerable citizens? Perhaps one day someone will create a perfectly designed social-media platform that brings only happiness and joy to children’s lives, or parents will hit upon the perfect formula for monitoring their

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kids’ screen time. But that day is a long way off. For now, we should put social media legally off limits to children.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Why does Christine Rosen believe that it is the government’s job —not the responsibility of individual parents—to impose age limits for social media use?

2. Choose the sentence in Rosen’s essay that you think best captures her central argument. Which piece of evidence in her essay do you think is most persuasive? Why?

3. Toward the end of her essay, Rosen states and responds to three objections to her argument. What are these three naysayer arguments? Which of these three naysayer arguments do you think Rosen uses most effectively to strengthen her own argument? Explain how her response to this naysayer argument allows her to clarify her claims.

4. In paragraph 20, Rosen argues that there is “a contradictory impulse at play in the culture right now: The cult of safetyism.” What does Rosen do in her text to explain the concept of “the cult of safetyism” to her readers? What’s your take? How much should adults monitor and control the online and offline lives of kids? Give specific examples to support your response.

5. Rosen’s proposals are directed to an audience of adults, yet the group of people who are most affected by her argument are children under 16 years old. Imagine that Rosen was asked to present her argument to an audience of middle schoolers. Use the templates in Chapter 8 to craft responses to the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions that would resonate with the concerns of 11- to 14-year-olds.

6. In his essay, “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet,” Kenneth Goldsmith makes a case that social media and online activities are beneficial for teenagers. Read his essay. Do you find yourself agreeing more with Goldsmith’s argument or Rosen’s argument? Why? Write an “I say” response to both of their arguments, using

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the templates in Chapters 1 and 4. Be sure to draw on your own experiences with social media in your response.

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Glossary

granular analysis particularly detailed (resembling small grains)

free rein freedom of action (from horseback-riding terminology: holding the reins loosely while riding)

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How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds

NICHOLAS CARR

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NICHOLAS CARR writes books and essays about technology and culture. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic , the New York Times, Nature , and Wired , and his essay “How Google Is Making Us Stupid” has been included in numerous anthologies. Carr’s 2010 best-selling book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains , has been translated into more than two dozen languages. This essay was published in the Wall Street Journal in 2017.

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SO YOU BOUGHT THAT NEW I PHONE . If you are like the typical owner, you’ll be pulling your phone out and using it some 80 times a day, according to data Apple collects. That means you’ll be consulting the glossy little rectangle nearly 30,000 times over the coming year. Your new phone, like your old one, will become your constant companion and trusty factotum —your teacher, secretary, confessor, guru . The two of you will be inseparable.

The smartphone is unique in the annals of personal technology. We keep the gadget within reach more or less around the clock, and we use it in countless ways, consulting its apps and checking its messages and heeding its alerts scores of times a day. The smartphone has become a repository of the self, recording and dispensing the words, sounds and images that define what we think, what we experience and who we are. In a 2015 Gallup survey, more than half of iPhone owners said that they couldn’t imagine life without the device.

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We love our phones for good reasons. It’s hard to imagine another product that has provided so many useful functions in such a handy form. But while our phones offer convenience and diversion, they also breed anxiety. Their extraordinary usefulness gives them an unprecedented hold on our attention and vast influence over our thinking and behavior. So what happens to our minds when we allow a single tool such dominion over our perception and cognition?

Scientists have begun exploring that question—and what they’re discovering is both fascinating and troubling. Not only do our phones shape our thoughts in deep and complicated ways, but the effects persist even when we aren’t using the devices. As the brain grows dependent on the technology, the research suggests, the intellect weakens.

Adrian Ward, a cognitive psychologist and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has been studying the way smartphones and the internet affect our thoughts and judgments for a decade. In his own work, as well as that of others, he has seen mounting evidence that using a smartphone, or even hearing one ring or vibrate, produces a welter of distractions that makes it harder to concentrate on a difficult problem or job. The division of attention impedes reasoning and performance.

A 2015 Journal of Experimental Psychology study, involving 166 subjects, found that when people’s phones beep or buzz while they’re in the middle of a challenging task, their focus wavers, and their work gets sloppier—whether they check the phone or not. Another 2015 study, which involved 41 iPhone users and appeared in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , showed that when people hear their phone ring but are unable to answer it, their blood pressure spikes, their pulse quickens, and their problem-solving skills decline.

The earlier research didn’t explain whether and how smartphones differ from the many other sources of distraction that crowd our lives. Dr. Ward suspected that our attachment to our phones has grown so intense that their mere presence might diminish our intelligence. Two years ago, he and three colleagues—Kristen Duke and Ayelet Gneezy from the University of California, San Diego, and Disney Research

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behavioral scientist Maarten Bos—began an ingenious experiment to test his hunch.

The researchers recruited 520 undergraduate students at UCSD and gave them two standard tests of intellectual acuity. One test gauged “available cognitive capacity,” a measure of how fully a person’s mind can focus on a particular task. The second assessed “fluid intelligence,” a person’s ability to interpret and solve an unfamiliar problem. The only variable in the experiment was the location of the subjects’ smartphones. Some of the students were asked to place their phones in front of them on their desks; others were told to stow their phones in their pockets or handbags; still others were required to leave their phones in a different room.

The results were striking. In both tests, the subjects whose phones were in view posted the worst scores, while those who left their phones in a different room did the best. The students who kept their phones in their pockets or bags came out in the middle. As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased.

In subsequent interviews, nearly all the participants said that their phones hadn’t been a distraction—that they hadn’t even thought about the devices during the experiment. They remained oblivious even as the phones disrupted their focus and thinking.

A second experiment conducted by the researchers produced similar results, while also revealing that the more heavily students relied on their phones in their everyday lives, the greater the cognitive penalty they suffered.

In an April article in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research , Dr. Ward and his colleagues wrote that the “integration of smartphones into daily life” appears to cause a “brain drain” that can diminish such vital mental skills as “learning, logical reasoning, abstract thought, problem solving, and creativity.” Smartphones have become so entangled with our existence that, even when we’re not peering or pawing at them, they tug at our attention, diverting precious cognitive resources. Just suppressing the desire to check our phone, which we do

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routinely and subconsciously throughout the day, can debilitate our thinking. The fact that most of us now habitually keep our phones “nearby and in sight,” the researchers noted, only magnifies the mental toll.

Dr. Ward’s findings are consistent with other recently published research. In a similar but smaller 2014 study (involving 47 subjects) in the journal Social Psychology , psychologists at the University of Southern Maine found that people who had their phones in view, albeit turned off, during two demanding tests of attention and cognition made significantly more errors than did a control group whose phones remained out of sight. (The two groups performed about the same on a set of easier tests.)

See Chapter 9 on how to use transitions to connect the parts of your argument.

In another study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology in April, researchers examined how smartphones affected learning in a lecture class with 160 students at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. They found that students who didn’t bring their phones to the classroom scored a full letter-grade higher on a test of the material presented than those who brought their phones. It didn’t matter whether the students who had their phones used them or not: All of them scored equally poorly. A study of 91 secondary schools in the U.K., published last year in the journal Labour Economics , found that when schools ban smartphones, students’ examination scores go up substantially, with the weakest students benefiting the most.

It isn’t just our reasoning that takes a hit when phones are around. Social skills and relationships seem to suffer as well. Because smartphones serve as constant reminders of all the friends we could be chatting with electronically, they pull at our minds when we’re talking

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with people in person, leaving our conversations shallower and less satisfying.

In a study conducted at the University of Essex in the U.K., 142 participants were divided into pairs and asked to converse in private for 10 minutes. Half talked with a phone in the room, while half had no phone present. The subjects were then given tests of affinity, trust and empathy. “The mere presence of mobile phones,” the researchers reported in 2013 in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships , “inhibited the development of interpersonal closeness and trust” and diminished “the extent to which individuals felt empathy and understanding from their partners.” The downsides were strongest when “a personally meaningful topic” was being discussed. The experiment’s results were validated in a subsequent study by Virginia Tech researchers, published in 2016 in the journal Environment and Behavior .

The evidence that our phones can get inside our heads so forcefully is unsettling. It suggests that our thoughts and feelings, far from being sequestered in our skulls, can be skewed by external forces we’re not even aware of.

Scientists have long known that the brain is a monitoring system as well as a thinking system. Its attention is drawn toward any object that is new, intriguing or otherwise striking—that has, in the psychological jargon, “ salience .” Media and communications devices, from telephones to TV sets, have always tapped into this instinct. Whether turned on or switched off, they promise an unending supply of information and experiences. By design, they grab and hold our attention in ways natural objects never could.

But even in the history of captivating media, the smartphone stands out. It is an attention magnet unlike any our minds have had to grapple with before. Because the phone is packed with so many forms of information and so many useful and entertaining functions, it acts as what Dr. Ward calls a “supernormal stimulus,” one that can “hijack” attention whenever it is part of our surroundings—which it always is. Imagine combining a mailbox, a newspaper, a TV, a radio, a photo album, a public library and a boisterous party attended by everyone you know, and then compressing them all into a single, small, radiant object.

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That is what a smartphone represents to us. No wonder we can’t take our minds off it.

The irony of the smartphone is that the qualities we find most appealing—its constant connection to the net, its multiplicity of apps, its responsiveness, its portability—are the very ones that give it such sway over our minds. Phone makers like Apple and Samsung and app writers like Facebook and Google design their products to consume as much of our attention as possible during every one of our waking hours, and we thank them by buying millions of the gadgets and downloading billions of the apps every year.

A quarter-century ago, when we first started going online, we took it on faith that the web would make us smarter: More information would breed sharper thinking. We now know it isn’t that simple. The way a media device is designed and used exerts at least as much influence over our minds as does the information that the device unlocks.

As strange as it might seem, people’s knowledge and understanding may actually dwindle as gadgets grant them easier access to online data stores. In a seminal 2011 study published in Science , a team of researchers—led by the Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow and including the late Harvard memory expert Daniel Wegner— had a group of volunteers read 40 brief, factual statements (such as “The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas in Feb. 2003”) and then type the statements into a computer. Half the people were told that the machine would save what they typed; half were told that the statements would be immediately erased.

Afterward, the researchers asked the subjects to write down as many of the statements as they could remember. Those who believed that the facts had been recorded in the computer demonstrated much weaker recall than those who assumed the facts wouldn’t be stored. Anticipating that information would be readily available in digital form seemed to reduce the mental effort that people made to remember it. The researchers dubbed this phenomenon the “Google effect” and noted its broad implications: “Because search engines are continually available to

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us, we may often be in a state of not feeling we need to encode the information internally. When we need it, we will look it up.”

Now that our phones have made it so easy to gather information online, our brains are likely offloading even more of the work of remembering to technology. If the only thing at stake were memories of trivial facts, that might not matter. But, as the pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James said in an 1892 lecture, “the art of remembering is the art of thinking.” Only by encoding information in our biological memory can we weave the rich intellectual associations that form the essence of personal knowledge and give rise to critical and conceptual thinking. No matter how much information swirls around us, the less well-stocked our memory, the less we have to think with.

This story has a twist. It turns out that we aren’t very good at distinguishing the knowledge we keep in our heads from the information we find on our phones or computers. As Dr. Wegner and Dr. Ward explained in a 2013 Scientific American article, when people call up information through their devices, they often end up suffering from delusions of intelligence. They feel as though “their own mental capacities” had generated the information, not their devices. “The advent of the ‘information age’ seems to have created a generation of people who feel they know more than ever before,” the scholars concluded, even though “they may know ever less about the world around them.”

That insight sheds light on our society’s current gullibility crisis, in which people are all too quick to credit lies and half-truths spread through social media by Russian agents and other bad actors. If your phone has sapped your powers of discernment, you’ll believe anything it tells you.

Data, the novelist and critic Cynthia Ozick once wrote, is “memory without history.” Her observation points to the problem with allowing smartphones to commandeer our brains. When we constrict our capacity for reasoning and recall or transfer those skills to a gadget, we sacrifice our ability to turn information into knowledge. We get the data but lose the meaning. Upgrading our gadgets won’t solve the problem. We need

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to give our minds more room to think. And that means putting some distance between ourselves and our phones.

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Joining the Conversation

1. What is Nicholas Carr saying about the effects of smartphone use on the human mind? What evidence does he provide to support his view?

2. What possible objections to his own position does Carr introduce —and why do you think he does so? How effectively does he address these naysayers?

3. How does Carr use transition phrases and sentences to connect the parts of his text and to help readers follow his train of thought? (See Chapter 9 to help you think about how transitions help writers develop an argument and readers to process it.)

4. In “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet” (pp. 401–05 ), Kenneth Goldsmith writes positively about internet activity: “When I look around me and see people riveted to their devices, I notice a great wealth of concentration, focus, and engagement.” He adds, after observing his twelve-year-old niece’s online behavior, that “she was fully engaged, fostering an aesthetic, feeding her imagination, indulging in her creative proclivities, and hanging out with her friends.” Write a paragraph discussing how Carr might respond. What would he agree with, and what would he disagree with?

5. Keep track of your own smartphone activity for one day, noting the times and reasons for use. Then, keeping Nicholas Carr’s argument in mind, write an essay on the benefits and dangers of smartphone use.

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Glossary

factotum a person with multiple responsibilities

guru a spiritual guide or teacher

annals historical records

repository a container where something is stored

salience a quality of being important

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Social Media: The Screen, the Brain, and Human Nature

JUSTIN VINH

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JUSTIN VINH wrote this essay in his first-year writing class at Northern Virginia Community College. He later transferred to the University of Virginia where he majored in biomedical engineering and minored in data science and biology. Nominated for the Norton Writer’s Prize, this essay is documented in APA style.

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AS TECHNOLOGY ENABLES people to be increasingly connected, the following situation is a common morning routine: as dawn breaks, a teenager wakes up. But instead of jumping (or more likely rolling) out of bed, he pulls out his phone and opens the Facebook app. Twenty minutes of wasted time later, he closes the app and gets up. DING! He sees a notification of a new post on Twitter, goes back to bed, and checks out the notification. About an hour later, he finally gets out of bed and goes to make some coffee. Although this example may be slightly extreme, it is not a far cry from the actual routine of technology-reliant people. As more and more people become glued to their smartphone (and computer) screens, much of their time spent online will be dedicated to social media. These online hours beg the question: as social media becomes increasingly prevalent in modern society, how will it impact its users? Recent research indicates that despite social media’s usefulness, its negative qualities—including how it contributes to depression and loneliness because of our tendencies toward comparisons to others and its addictive nature—outweigh any positive consequences.

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See Chapter 7 for advice on connecting personal experience to a broader conversation.

A quick browse through any Facebook profile will show thousands of pictures of thrilling adventures, cute moments, happy mishaps, and perfectly framed photos. But no one really has such a perfect life. So why do most of the profiles on Facebook and other social platforms give the perception of a happy and adventurous life? The answer may lie in the core purpose of social media: sharing information about one’s experiences and events with online friends. However, few people want to publish negative or dull experiences online, and teenagers in particular see social media as a way to gain popularity. Thus, in a world where their online status is often measured by their number of followers, teenagers who use social media feel like they should show only the bright and exciting moments of their lives. The result is that their followers will only ever see the sunny side of people’s profiles and form the idea that they are without a care in the world.

This mentality might have negative mental consequences for users. As Copeland (2011) explored in a Slate article, to find out if this supposition is true, Alex Jordan, a psychology student studying for his PhD at Stanford, and other researchers conducted an experiment to try to gauge how participants judged their peers’ emotions. The experiment revealed that the participants, all college students, consistently believed that their peers had more fun and fewer negative experiences than the peers actually did (Jordan et al., 2010, as cited in Copeland, 2011). In other words, the researchers’ participants overestimated their peers’ happiness. In another experiment, the researchers found that their participants were unhappier when they overestimated another person’s happiness. Although a clear correlation exists between the two results, that fact does not necessarily mean the overestimation of happiness causes unhappiness.

Still, the relationship and possible causation makes sense: if happiness is a result of contentment, then comparisons, which sometimes end in dissatisfaction, would naturally lead to unhappiness. Social media welcomes its users to compare themselves to their peers, and it compels

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them to try to outdo their “opponents” to gain more followers and likes. This constant quest to create a better online image, along with the endless stream of photos and videos of people who seemingly have a better life, could lead to feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. Instead, everyone needs to be reminded occasionally that we all share troubles and difficulties (e.g., we all need to pay the bills).

Of course, another emotion may also lead to unhappiness: loneliness. The need to spend so much time on social media must come from somewhere, and one activity that usually suffers from heightened screen time is face-to-face time with friends and family. Brown (2018) echoed these thoughts when describing the results of a recent study that was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine . The study, which involved young adults, found that those who spent a great deal of time on social media reported being lonelier. The researchers said that social media users might feel like social outcasts because social media took over the time once spent interacting with people face-to-face (Primack et al., 2017, as cited in Brown, 2018). The results intuitively make sense. On social media, people cannot really interact because the forms of communication used are fairly shallow. Comments, short videos, and selfies—these are all abbreviated forms of communication that do not occur in real time. Also, one cannot usually see another person’s face or emotions while conversing on social media. If people cannot engage in real interactions on social media, then they cannot form deep relationships there. Without really knowing who their “friends” are, many users may feel like they do not have any friends at all, and this feeling often leads to loneliness. To worsen the effects, the reduction in face-to-face interactions makes users feel even more lonely. They may be connected to thousands of people online yet feel like they are alone.

Others, especially those who enjoy social media, argue that using it in moderation surely would not cause a big impact. Some people do log on to platforms like Twitter and Snapchat only in moderation and display no signs of addiction. However, those rare users are massively outnumbered by those who do not. Teens, for example, are notorious for spending countless hours a day on their phones and, by extension, on social media; adults are not exempt from the allure of the social platforms either. Fuller (2017), who holds a medical degree, posited that

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two factors cause users to become addicted to social media: positive reinforcement and instant gratification. Positive reinforcement is the forming of a habit based on a reward, and it goes a long way toward making the use of social media habitual. One can always expect to see something new online when using social media. For example, a young teenager might fall into a habit of checking Facebook as soon as she comes home from school because she can expect to be entertained by her classmates’ inevitable posts about their school day. According to Fuller (2017), “Positive reinforcement is difficult to resist and can lead people to become addicted to Facebook or other social media sites” (para. 5). Instant gratification also plays a role in making social media addictive. Everyone wants an instant reward, and social media provides it. If users do not like what they see on Facebook, they can instantly move on to something else. Social media provides users what they want when they want it, whether it be cat videos, pictures of exotic locales, or viral hits. In summary, instant entertainment can be a dangerous bait, luring many users toward the vice of addiction. As people use social media, they may become lonely or unhappy, but they will also find that despite those feelings, they keep coming back.

See Chapter 8 for more on how to address who cares about your argument.

I acknowledge that there are some positive effects of social media. Obviously, the first benefit is the very reason why social media even exists: it helps connect friends and family who are separated by vast distances. However, a phone call, letter, or even an email could convey the same information while establishing a deeper relationship. Surely, if the goal of a relationship is to get to know each other and strengthen a bond, a two-sentence comment in text speak will not suffice. For most people, social media provides a way to be passively social. However, deep relationships can only be maintained by actively engaging in meaningful interactions. In addition to using social media to contact existing friends, many people, especially shy people, can also use social media to find new “friends” online. However, the anonymity that social media provides for its users allows them to curate their online personalities, thus tempting people to project distorted representations of

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themselves or even pose as different people. This same anonymity nearly guarantees that no one will ever truly know a user’s true feelings, habits, or interests. Therefore, users may not know their “friends” as well as they think they do.

For more on making concessions, see Chapter 6 .

In conclusion, based on recent research, social media may not be as good an idea as it first seems. Loneliness, unhappiness, stress, anxiety— these emotions are all very real, and they greatly affect people. Studies show that a strong relationship exists between these emotions and social media. The consequences that these social networks will bestow on society—whether good or bad—will come down to one choice: whether users can realize how much is too much. Social media promises the ability to connect with people, but instead it provides a disconnect from reality. In searching for happiness and fun, users find loneliness and sadness. In trying to make new friends, they lose their close friends. In seeking encouragement, they find stress and addiction instead. In this new age of social media, the social platforms’ users are the only ones who stand to lose.

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REFERENCES

Brown, J. (2018, January 4). Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns . BBC Future. https://www.bbc.com/future/articl e/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unkn owns

Copeland, L. (2011, January 11). The anti-social network . Slate. https:// slate.com/human-interest/2011/01/is-facebook-making-us-sad-stanfo rd-university-research-and-sherry-turkle-s-new-book-alone-together -suggest-that-social-networking-may-foster-loneliness.html

Fuller, K. (2017, December 7). Are we allowing social media to dictate our happiness? Psychology Today . https://www.psychologytoday.co m/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201712/are-we-allowing-social- media-dictate-our-happiness

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Joining the Conversation

1. Justin Vinh makes an argument about the effects of social media on the human mind and emotions. What is his “they say” statement, and what is his “I say”? Does he agree, disagree, or both?

2. Make an outline listing the essay’s thesis or overall argument, supporting points, and evidence provided.

3. List the naysayers Vinh inserts into the essay and how he responds to each of them in developing his argument. Are his responses persuasive—and if not, why not?

4. Vinh states that social media use can lead to, among other problems, loneliness. For example, in paragraph 5, he says that, when using social media, “people cannot really interact because the forms of communication used are fairly shallow.” How might Christine Rosen, author of “Keep Them Offline,” respond to Vinh’s comment?

5. Write a response about the positive and negative aspects of social media in your life. Instead of writing it as a formal piece of academic writing, compose your response as an Instagram story or a TikTok video. Think about how you can use text, image, sound, and video together to make your points.

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Left Behind: Internet Access for People behind Bars

JOE GARCIA

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JOE GARCIA is a journalist at San Quentin State Prison and is a lead writer and editor for the prisoner-run newspaper San Quentin News. His writing has also been published in the Washington Post, the Sacramento Bee, and the Prison Journalism Project. Garcia is originally from San Francisco. This essay was published in the MIT Technology Review in 2021.

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CALIFORNIA RECENTLY PROMISED to provide free computer tablets to all state prisoners by the end of 2021, allowing prisoners like me to email our loved ones through a highly restricted prison messaging service and download content like movies and books. It’s a great first step, but without more open and frequent internet access, there’s no way we’ll ever truly keep pace with the changing world outside our prison walls.

I’ve been locked up since 2003. Back then Apple had barely launched iTunes, and I was still in awe of the so-called high-speed connection I’d paid Time Warner to install in my apartment. In all the years since then, I haven’t logged a single second of internet activity. My frames of reference for what it means to be online now come from network television and print media.

When my first parole opportunity arrives, in 2023, I’ll be 53 years old. As a convicted murderer, I will need to convince the parole board not only that I have been rehabilitated, but also that I am able to be a

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productive and employable citizen. It can be hard to keep up with changes in technology even when you’re experiencing them firsthand. When you’re locked away, it’s virtually impossible.

For advice on connecting personal experience to a larger conversation, see Chapter 7 .

I’m hoping to pursue a career path in journalism when I get out of prison, and I worry every day about reentering a global economy with my grossly outdated tech skill set. I know the job market will expect internet fluency more than ever in the post-pandemic world, since much of America’s media workforce has gone remote.

Roughly 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the US. Even though the internet is a given in the rest of society, access in prison is so restricted it’s almost nonexistent. Prisoners are only allowed to use a tiny number of programs that might offer Zoom classes with outside teachers, or to browse an extremely limited set of whitelisted sites through intranets that are carefully cordoned off from the public internet.

At San Quentin State Prison, where I reside, the computers that prisoners can access feature preloaded interactive programs that offer the same basic experience as reading from a textbook. My only experience using a search engine has been through LexisNexis, which the prison library licenses to allow us to study case law.

In San Quentin’s vaunted coding program, Code 7370, offered through the prison education organization The Last Mile, hand-selected prisoners build and sell actual websites for commercial use. But even they do not have internet access.

As a working journalist in prison, I know I have First Amendment rights, but I’m deprived of a key technology that the United Nations

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identified a decade ago as a means of exercising one’s freedom of expression.

I understand why government officials, prison administrators, and the public might fear that giving convicted felons real-time internet access would open a Pandora’s box of suspicious activity. Yet if elementary school kids can surf the web safely with parental locks and controls, how hard would it be for someone to design a system that provides incarcerated people with more meaningful access?

In Belgium, for example, an innovative platform called PrisonCloud has offered limited and controlled internet access to prisoners for years. In Finland and Denmark, open prisons, which have minimal security and some of the lowest recidivism rates, also allow limited internet access.

Almost all incarcerated people in US prisons today will be released back into their communities in the future. That includes many of my peers who have been incarcerated since before the advent of the internet.

President Joe Biden has said that the majority of incarcerated Americans deserve a bona fide second chance at life—but we need some form of internet access in order to have a genuine chance of successfully reentering today’s tech-driven society.

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Joining the Conversation

1. According to Joe Garcia, how does the lack of internet access affect people who are currently incarcerated? What challenges do former inmates face once they leave prison because of the current limitations on internet access in prisons?

2. Throughout his essay, Garcia references his own lived experience as a prisoner. Point to one place in his essay where Garcia makes this move. How does Garcia’s choice to center his experiences in prison affect the persuasiveness of his claims? What do you think would be the impact on his argument if Garcia made a different choice, such as to write his essay with a more distant and objective tone? Why?

3. What naysayer argument does Garcia include in his argument? What is his response to this naysayer? Do you find his response convincing? Why or why not?

4. Garcia’s essay does not include direct quotations. Do a little research on the United Nations’ resolution, “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet,” which was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2021. Choose one sentence or phrase from this resolution that Garcia could use as a quotation in support of his argument. Sandwich this quotation using the strategies discussed in Chapter 3 and explain where you would insert this quotation in Garcia’s essay.

5. Imagine that you represent Garcia in Congress. Draft a short policy argument in response to Garcia’s essay. What kind of internet access should be provided to people who are incarcerated? Why? How might internet access affect inmates, their families, and their communities? In your response, explain what policymakers need to consider as they create a new internet access policy.

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Glossary

vaunted highly praised

Pandora’s box a source of numerous troubles; in Greek mythology Zeus gave Pandora a box as a gift but commanded her never to open it. When, overcome by curiosity, she lifted the lid, every trouble known to humanity was released and could not be contained.

recidivism tendency to reoffend

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Here Come the Robot Nurses

ANNA ROMINA GUEVARRA

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ANNA ROMINA GUEVARRA is an associate professor and founding director of the Global Asian Studies program at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project and the author of Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers (2009). Her interdisciplinary scholarship investigates transnational labor, care work, global and local foodways, robotics, and the Philippine diaspora. Guevarra earned her PhD in sociology from the University of California San Francisco. This essay appeared in Boston Review in 2021.

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AT THE HEIGHT OF THE COVID-19 pandemic, Awakening Health Ltd. (AHL), a joint venture between two robotics companies, SingularityNET (SNET) and Hanson Robotics, introduced Grace, the first medical robot to have a lifelike human appearance. Grace provides acute medical and elder care by engaging patients in therapeutic interactions, cognitive stimulation, and gathering and managing patient data. By the end of 2021, Hanson Robotics hopes to be able to mass produce a robot named Sophia into one of its newest units—Grace—for the global market.

Though Grace is the first to look so much like a person, she is hardly the first medical robot: like Tommy, Yumi, Stevie, Ava, and Moxi, she is part of a growing cohort of robot caregivers working in hospitals and elder care facilities around the world. They do everything from bedside care and monitoring to stocking medical supplies, welcoming guests, and even cohosting karaoke nights for isolated residents. Together, they have been heralded as a solution to our pandemic woes.

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Grace, the lifelike medical robot.

In the last couple of years, the sale of professional service robots has increased by 32 percent ($11.2 billion) worldwide; the sale of assistance robots for the elderly increased by 17 percent ($91 million) between 2018 and 2019 alone. The unique challenges of safely delivering care and services during the COVID-19 pandemic have only increased their appeal. This is evidenced by the increased global reliance on robotic systems to disinfect surfaces, enforce mask-wearing and social distancing protocol, monitor patients’ vital signs, deliver supplies and groceries, conduct virtual tours, and even facilitate commencement ceremonies.

But what does this ramping up of interest and investment in robotics mean for human workers?

In the short term, there is no question that while robots may provide some support to human workers and help minimize their exposure to unsafe conditions, they cannot replace their human counterparts. At the current level of robotics, total replacement would require an impossible

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degree of predictability of work environments. As one of the pioneers in the field of social robotics, Lucy Suchman, noted, “Robots work best when the world has been arranged in the way that they need it to be arranged.” Robots can function very well in factories and warehouses because assembly-line work provides a uniform environment; in homes and health care facilities, such uniformity is more difficult to achieve.

In the long run, though, robots may not always be so limited. Thus, it is critical that we consider not only whether robots can replace human workers—since someday the answer will surely be “yes”—but also whether they should. Indeed, the very attempt at automation represented by Grace and her cohort not only raises questions about the nature of work in general, but specifically about what it means to do care work. What does it mean to take care of another human being? And, in turn, what does it mean for an algorithm to care?

These questions of whether to employ phenomenally expensive robotic systems are especially poignant given that the field of care work relies heavily on the labor of poor women of color, often immigrants, who have long been told both that civilization depends upon their work and that it is of little monetary value. In this sense, any discussion of the transformative potential of care robots must be tempered by the reality that, as Ai-jen Poo and Palak Shah point out, the foreseeable “future of work” is not automation. The future of work continues to be an “essential,” low-wage workforce that is disproportionately comprised of women of color who often lack a living wage, workplace safety, paid sick and family leave, and adequate health care. In fact, health care workers have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic. The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control report that, to date, 450,517 health care personnel have been infected by COVID-19, and more than 1,497 have died, mainly people of color. Since there is significant underreporting and not all data are available, these figures are likely higher.

Against the expectations of many futurists, automation will not automatically generate a more just labor market. That will only happen if labor justice becomes a condition of automation’s adoption. Otherwise, it will merely compound the problem, adding another layer to the inequities experienced by those most socially and economically vulnerable.

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This is because algorithms tend to replicate biases that already exist in our world. In recent years this has been documented by critics of artificial intelligence, such as Joy Buolamwini, Safiya Umoja Noble, and Ruha Benjamin who have noted how algorithmic biases are reflected in everything from facial recognition systems’ failure to identify people of color to the technological redlining in search engines of results related to Black subjects. Taken together these amount to being a New Jim Crow of systemic racial bias encoded in new technologies. While our knowledge of the inner workings of these systems is often occluded because their algorithms are proprietary, the output is clear: the work of Buolamwini, Noble, Benjamin, and others leaves little doubt that racialized regimes undergird computational systems and machine learning. That these new technologies do all this while being perceived to be neutral—because machines are thought incapable of bias—only exacerbates the problem.

To return to the example of Grace—who will be the newer version of the robot Sophia with functionality adjusted to serve the health care sector—her makers claim that these robots promise to provide not only safety but also “human warmth, human connection,” and will serve as an “autonomous extension of human expertise.” By choosing to have Grace look like a white woman, however, the designers broadcast a particular understanding of human expertise that is both racialized and gendered. A similar bias can be seen in the case of a telepresence robot called EngKey, designed to help teachers in Philippine call centers remotely offer English language instruction to elementary school children in South Korea. The EngKey robot wheels around the South Korean classroom with a white avatar face, even though it is a Filipina teacher who is delivering the lessons. Developers of EngKey remark that the rationale for the white avatar is twofold: one, to minimize the confusion of users in terms of who they are interacting with, the human or the robot; and two, to reinforce the perceived global “authority” for teaching English. However, in so doing, roboticists intervene in the geopolitics of labor, reinforcing a global fantasy of the ideal of what a qualified worker looks like while effacing the actual laborer, who does not fit this ideal. And the “robot teachers,” as they call themselves, are forced by this arrangement to operate via a vocabulary of innovation that reinforces whiteness as powerful even as this script exploits their own “Third World” labor.

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Robot teachers I spoke with articulated a profound sense of dissociation that arose from embodying a blond, white robot face while performing a kind of affective labor that was simultaneously disembodied and embodied, immobile and mobile. Notably, this was done not to guarantee successful language instruction—which certainly did not depend on such a cleaving —but rather in the name of creating a seamless integration between human and machine as demanded by the roboticists.

The android Erica, created by Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, is another example of how, in the pursuit of humanness, roboticists can reproduce gendered norms. Ishiguro hopes that Erica, currently still an early prototype, helps lead the way toward a world in which machines and humans coexist, with robots enhancing the lives of humans by doing the most tedious and undesirable kinds of work, including caring for the sick and elderly. But by programming Erica to simulate a “warm, gentle, and caring” affect, Ishiguro’s team has doubled down on the ways in which this kind of care work is gendered. Thus, Erica’s design is premised on the perception that the labor of caring for the world rests primarily on the backs of women who will provide warmth and gentleness, while easing the burden and relieving the suffering of humanity. Erica is also designed to adhere to conventional standards of gendered beauty. As Ishiguro notes, he designed Erica to be the “most beautiful” android, drawing on the amalgamated images of (his perception of) “thirty beautiful women.” Apparently it isn’t enough to be a female caretaking robot; you have to be a “beautiful” one as well.

Concerns about race in robotics extend not only to how robots look but also how they will interact with others. How will robots such as Grace and Erica recognize and interpret a diversity of faces? Will the racist assumptions that are likely baked into Grace’s algorithms define the type of therapeutic interventions that patients will receive? AI facial recognition systems are notoriously bad, for example, at interpreting the emotional responses of people with darker skin tones. Some can’t perceive the faces of people with darker skin at all, let alone understand their expressions. It gets worse from there. Sociologist Ruha Benjamin found that one of the most popular tools used by health insurers to assess health risks defined a theoretical Black patient as having less risk than a white patient with the same health markers because of racial bias in the tool’s algorithms. In other words, what we are seeing is the emergence of yet another oppressive system that structures social relations by

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advancing a mediated understanding and delivery of care work. Borrowing from Joy Buolamwini’s idea of a “coded gaze” in algorithms, I refer to this racist imbalance in health care AI as coded care.

The idea of coded care gives us a vocabulary for thinking about the potential harm of automating care work. Increasingly, using robots to automate care work is pitched as necessary to assist an aging population, minimize occupational hazards, relieve the burden on caregivers, and address the high turnover and burnout rate among caregivers. One study suggests that by 2030, there will be a shortage of 151,000 paid direct care workers and 3.8 million unpaid family caregivers. But given these concerns about coded care, whether robotic automation is the best way to address this shortage is debatable. Even assuming that empathy, emotional labor, and creativity can be mechanized anytime in the near future—which many roboticists doubt—outsourcing these kinds of care may have grave consequences for those receiving that care if racist and gendered biases in the code are not addressed.

Moreover, we must take seriously the question with which we began —what this will mean for human workers—and the insistence that labor justice must be a precondition for the adoption of automation. Because these decisions will disproportionately impact women and communities of color, they are likely to take a back seat to moneyed interests and the well-being of affluent white people. But caring is a unique kind of labor, and when care workers are mistreated, we all lose out. Recall EngKey’s robot teachers, whose sense of disconnectedness from their students translated into affective labor that is mechanized, racialized, and gendered in ways that harm both teachers and students. The work that EngKey performs teaches its Korean students as much about the enviable power of white femininity as it does about English. Likewise will Grace, whose creators promise a technology that will “engage patients naturally and emotionally,” actually deliver comfort, empathy, and kindness to those isolated during the pandemic, or only a simulacra of how its creators imagine femininity?

More than ever, as the pandemic provides justification for expanding the use of care robots such as Grace, we should be mindful of how these interventions are coded. We need to push for more equitable and

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accountable artificial intelligence, working with collectives such as the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) to achieve this goal. The work of AJL and others remind us that “who codes matters, how we code matters, and that we can code a better future.” If we are serious about pursuing robot labor, then labor justice must be a precondition for automation. Otherwise the robots will only provide another excuse to ignore the inequities faced by human workers by simply replacing them and automating their labor.

We need to continue to explore the ethics of developing care robots, informed by critiques about current models of automation by researchers such as Pramod P. Khargonekar and Meera Sampath and what they propose as “socially responsible automation.” This model of automation suggests that there are ways that businesses can pursue automation while simultaneously investing in training and building the skills of human workers to adapt to this technology-driven workplace. Thus, the idea is not to simply replace human workers with a more efficient technology but to develop a workplace where robots and human workers can truly coexist.

But more importantly, I propose that the ethics of developing care robots must be based on a framework of labor justice that continues to develop remedies to the structural inequities that govern the lives and labor of essential workers. This can be done by supporting and adopting Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna’s proposal for an Essential Workers Bill of Rights. The provisions of this bill would ensure that care workers are not only receiving a living wage and health care security, but that they also have access to child care and paid sick and medical leave.

I do not think that we can imagine a society without both human workers and robots. So, as roboticists work on developing care technologies, we need to attend to how the racialized and gendered perceptions get coded into the design. The guiding principle cannot solely address how best to simulate humanity, but instead concern how to center principles of justice and equity in designs for coding care. Only then will it be possible to produce algorithms that truly care.

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Joining the Conversation

1. One of Anna Romina Guevarra’s central claims is that artificial intelligence technologies, like care robots, perpetuate bias (paragraph 9). In paragraphs 10 and 11, she describes the encoded biases present in specific care robots, like Grace, Erica, and EngKey. Choose one of these examples and explain in your own words the assumptions and biases built into the design of this robot. Then, think about another AI technology you interact with, like Siri or Alexa. What biases or assumptions are encoded in this AI technology?

2. According to Guevarra, what is “especially poignant” about using robots to perform care work (paragraph 7)? Summarize the point Guevarra is making in this paragraph using the strategies described in Chapter 2 . Why is care work undervalued? What groups of people are predominately employed in the care industry?

3. What is the problem with automating care work, according to Guevarra (paragraph 13)? What do you think programmers and designers could do to remedy this issue?

4. Throughout her essay, Guevarra weaves in several small kernel quotations to support her argument. Find one place where you think she uses a short quotation effectively. Explain how she uses the strategies described in Chapter 3 to introduce and explain this quotation. Do you think her argument would benefit from using longer quotations? Why or why not?

5. So what? Who cares? Where does Guevarra answer the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions in her essay? How does she use metacommentary to guide your attention to these moments in her text?

6. One of the experts Guevarra cites is Joy Buolamwini, the co- founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. Look up and watch

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Buolamwini’s spoken word visual talk, “AI, Ain’t I a Woman?” Paraphrase the argument Buolamwini makes in this video about algorithmic bias. Why do you think she chose this title for her video? Then, consider how Guevarra might respond to Buolamwini’s video. Compose a short script of what they might say to each other in a face-to-face conversation.

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Glossary

occluded obstructed; hidden from view

exacerbates makes worse

affective relating to moods or feelings

cleaving splitting or severing

amalgamated united to form one structure

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In Praise of the Dollar Bill

LANA SWARTZ

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LANA SWARTZ is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of New Money: How Payment Became Social Media (2020) and co-editor of Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff (2017). In 2021, she was named a Berggruen Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Swartz earned her PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. This piece was published in MIT Technology Review in 2022.

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“WE ARE CASHLESS ,” proclaims a sign on the gleaming glass door of the cafe I frequent. The sign predates the glossy list of Covid-19 measures taped beside it, but together they present a united declaration of touchless efficiency—the promise of experiencing public space, social interaction, and consumer exchange with utmost convenience and cleanliness. Yet for all the friction that the cashless coffee shop aims to eliminate, it reproduces far weightier social barriers and inequalities.

For individuals and communities, transactional technologies—digital wallets, mobile payments, and the like—can increase their autonomy in decision-making, their flexibility and resilience in times of crisis, and their ability to fight victimization, exploitation, and indignity. Trust in these technologies builds the capacity for long-term planning and building—of wealth, of infrastructure, of the foundations of prosperity for future generations—as well as for experimentation and risk. Of course, the corollary is also true: malign versions of these tools can rob communities and individuals of their agency.

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Cash is the best transactional tool for increasing community and individual autonomy that we have invented so far. It offers many affordances that prove hard to replicate. Cash does not need someone else’s signature to spend. It does not specify where you can spend it, or on what. It is anonymous: no one needs to know who you are for you to spend it. It generates no data about your transaction for third parties. It transacts without fees for the payer or the payee. You know how much you have on hand: it cannot be frozen in your account by an opaque third-party payment processor on a whim, or reversed by a scammer, or eaten away by fees until you tip into overdraft without realizing it. It does not rely on many layers of brittle infrastructure of both hardware and software in order to operate at the point of sale.

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What Happens If Cash Goes Away?

There are some lessons from history that are worth paying attention to. Cash—defined as a universal, public, printed monetary medium—is a relatively new technological and political achievement. Historically, money has been, more often than not, private and plural. In the United States, state-issued currency was not fully consolidated until after the Civil War. Previously, foreign currencies, private bank notes, and scrip produced by railroads, insurance, companies, and other private businesses circulated alongside currency issued by the US Treasury.

This monetary cacophony meant that everyday spending required considerable street smarts. Bills might have come from a failed or fictitious bank or might have been a counterfeit copy of a note from a functioning, real bank. Bills that were accepted at face value in one city might have been accepted only at a lower value in others. Daily life involved navigating a messy, complex monetary media environment.

The chaotic situation also created highly stratified transactional communities. While the wealthy used notes issued by stable banks and redeemable for letters of credit and bullion, the poor were more likely to use low-value bronze or copper “petty coin” or depreciated bank notes.

The future of transactional media might look something like its past. An industry consultant once told me that “in the future cash will be the ‘c word,’ not something nice people use.” Indeed, the future is likely to be cash-light rather than fully cashless. Those relegated to cash-only status will transact on unequal terms.

Today, cash is a universal, print technology—a mass media form. But it does have major flaws. Cash can be lost, destroyed, stolen. Most important, perhaps, it can’t be spent online, and therefore it does not move at the speed of the rest of our communicative lives.

We don’t yet know the shape of tomorrow’s transactional media or the terrain of its transactional communities. We might work to prevent

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money that acts like today’s social media platforms: privatized and rooted in data-driven business models.

In the cryptocurrency community, I often hear variations on the phrase “If cash were invented today, it would be illegal.” The point here is that cash is low cost, difficult to censor, and difficult to surveil. At a time when nearly all of our communication, transactional or otherwise, is channeled through monopolistic and controlling platforms that collect rent in the form of fees, data, or both, it’s hard to argue with this line of thinking.

At the same time, we need to ensure that new forms of money are reliable and stable in value, something that has proven difficult for cryptocurrency to achieve. For all its unique affordances as a transactional medium, cash—and whatever its digital inheritors are— must be stable in value in order to work well.

So as I pay for my cortado , I look at that “We are cashless” sign with a researcher’s eye. The stakes are high. We are empowered or disempowered by the transactional tools to which we have access. As we imagine money for the internet era, the big question is how to design payment media in the public interest. We need something that does all the things cash does well—as well as the things cash doesn’t.

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Joining the Conversation

1. What is motivating Lana Swartz’s argument? Compose a new “they say” for Swartz using the templates in Chapter 1 .

2. Swartz states, “Cash is the best transactional tool for increasing community and individual autonomy that we have invented so far” (paragraph 3). Explain her claim in your own words. How, according to Swartz, does cash increase community? How does it increase individual autonomy?

3. What groups of people are predominately harmed by “cashless” systems? What are the barriers these people face to using or accessing digital currency or mobile transactions?

4. Swartz acknowledges that cash isn’t perfect. What do you think is the most significant downside to using cash instead of mobile currency or digital transactions? Why? Compose a more extended response to this naysayer argument using the strategies explained in Chapter 6 .

5. What evidence and sources does Swartz use to support her claims? Imagine you are editing Swartz’s essay. What other sources or perspectives do you think she could include to strengthen her argument?

6. Reflect on how you use money in your everyday life. Do you choose to use cash? Or do you rely on digital payments? What affects your choices? Then, interview a classmate, colleague, or family member about how they use cash and digital money. How are their experiences different than or similar to yours? What do you think accounts for these differences and similarities? Compose a paragraph in which you make an argument about what influences a person’s decisions to use cash or digital payments, using the interviews and your own experiences as examples supporting your claims.

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Glossary

malign evil in nature or effect

cacophony harsh, clashing sounds

cortado a drink consisting of equal amounts of espresso and warm milk

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Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search

CAROLE CADWALLADR

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CAROLE CADWALLADR is an award-winning journalist who writes features articles for the Guardian and the Observer , two British newspapers. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize her investigative reporting that led to the downfall of Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm involved with Trump’s 2016 campaign. She won the British Journalism Awards’ Technology Journalism Award and the Orwell Prize for political journalism. She is also the author of the novel The Family Tree (2006). This piece was first published in the Guardian in 2016.

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Tech-savvy right-wingers have been able to “game” the algorithms of internet giants and create a new reality where Hitler is a good guy, Jews are evil and . . . Donald Trump becomes president.

HERE’S WHAT YOU DON’T WANT TO DO late on a Sunday night. You do not want to type seven letters into Google. That’s all I did. I typed: “a-r- e.” And then “j-e-w-s.” Since 2008, Google has attempted to predict what question you might be asking and offers you a choice. And this is what it did. It offered me a choice of potential questions it thought I might want to ask: “are jews a race?,” “are jews white?,” “are jews christians?,” and finally, “are jews evil?”

Are Jews evil? It’s not a question I’ve ever thought of asking. I hadn’t gone looking for it. But there it was. I press enter. A page of

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results appears. This was Google’s question. And this was Google’s answer: Jews are evil. Because there, on my screen, was the proof: an entire page of results, nine out of 10 of which “confirm” this. The top result, from a site called Listovative, has the headline: “Top 10 Major Reasons Why People Hate Jews.” I click on it: “Jews today have taken over marketing, militia, medicinal, technological, media, industrial, cinema challenges etc and continue to face the worlds [sic] envy through unexplained success stories given their inglorious past and vermin like repression all over Europe.”

Google is search. It’s the verb, to Google. It’s what we all do, all the time, whenever we want to know anything. We Google it. The site handles at least 63,000 searches a second, 5.5 billion a day. Its mission as a company, the one-line overview that has informed the company since its foundation and is still the banner headline on its corporate website today, is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It strives to give you the best, most relevant results. And in this instance the third-best, most relevant result to the search query “are Jews . . .” is a link to an article from stormfront.org, a neo-Nazi website. The fifth is a YouTube video: “Why the Jews are Evil. Why we are against them.”

The sixth is from Yahoo Answers: “Why are Jews so evil?” The seventh result is: “Jews are demonic souls from a different world.” And the 10th is from jesus-is-saviour.com: “Judaism is Satanic!”

There’s one result in the 10 that offers a different point of view. It’s a link to a rather dense, scholarly book review from thetabletmag.com, a Jewish magazine, with the unfortunately misleading headline: “Why Literally Everybody In the World Hates Jews.”

I feel like I’ve fallen down a wormhole , entered some parallel universe where black is white, and good is bad. Though later, I think that perhaps what I’ve actually done is scraped the topsoil off the surface of 2016 and found one of the underground springs that has been quietly nurturing it. It’s been there all the time, of course. Just a few keystrokes away . . . on our laptops, our tablets, our phones. This isn’t a secret Nazi cell lurking in the shadows. It’s hiding in plain sight.

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Stories about fake news on Facebook have dominated certain sections of the press for weeks following the American presidential election, but arguably this is even more powerful, more insidious. Frank Pasquale, professor of law at the University of Maryland, and one of the leading academic figures calling for tech companies to be more open and transparent, calls the results “very profound, very troubling.”

He came across a similar instance in 2006 when, “If you typed ‘Jew’ in Google, the first result was jewwatch.org. It was ‘look out for these awful Jews who are ruining your life.’ And the Anti-Defamation League went after them and so they put an asterisk next to it which said: ‘These search results may be disturbing but this is an automated process.’ But what you’re showing—and I’m very glad you are documenting it and screenshotting it—is that despite the fact they have vastly researched this problem, it has gotten vastly worse.”

And ordering of search results does influence people, says Martin Moore, director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power at King’s College, London, who has written at length on the impact of the big tech companies on our civic and political spheres. “There’s large-scale, statistically significant research into the impact of search results on political views. And the way in which you see the results and the types of results you see on the page necessarily has an impact on your perspective.” Fake news, he says, has simply “revealed a much bigger problem. These companies are so powerful and so committed to disruption. They thought they were disrupting politics but in a positive way. They hadn’t thought about the downsides. These tools offer remarkable empowerment, but there’s a dark side to it. It enables people to do very cynical, damaging things.”

Google is knowledge. It’s where you go to find things out. And evil Jews are just the start of it. There are also evil women. I didn’t go looking for them either. This is what I type: “a-r-e w-o-m-e-n.” And Google offers me just two choices, the first of which is: “Are women evil?” I press return. Yes, they are. Every one of the 10 results “confirms” that they are, including the top one, from a site called sheddingoftheego.com, which is boxed out and highlighted: “Every woman has some degree of prostitute in her. Every woman has a little

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evil in her . . . Women don’t love men, they love what they can do for them. It is within reason to say women feel attraction, but they cannot love men.”

At the top search bar, the phrase are women is typed. An autofill menu and search results include phrases like are women evil, are women stronger than men, and are women equal to men. An excerpt from the top search result states, Every woman has some degree of prostitute in her. Every women has a little evil in her. ... Women dont love men, they love what they can do for them. It is within reason to say women feel attraction, but they cannot love men.

Next I type: “a-r-e m-u-s-l-i-m-s.” And Google suggests I should ask: “Are Muslims bad?” And here’s what I find out: yes, they are. That’s what the top result says and six of the others. Without typing anything else, simply putting the cursor in the search box, Google offers me two

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new searches and I go for the first, “Islam is bad for society.” In the next list of suggestions, I’m offered: “Islam must be destroyed.”

Jews are evil. Muslims need to be eradicated. And Hitler? Do you want to know about Hitler? Let’s Google it. “Was Hitler bad?” I type. And here’s Google’s top result: “10 Reasons Why Hitler Was One Of The Good Guys.” I click on the link: “He never wanted to kill any Jews”; “he cared about conditions for Jews in the work camps”; “he implemented social and cultural reform.” Eight out of the other 10 search results agree: Hitler really wasn’t that bad.

A few days later, I talk to Danny Sullivan, the founding editor of SearchEngineLand.com. He’s been recommended to me by several academics as one of the most knowledgeable experts on search. Am I just being naive, I ask him? Should I have known this was out there? “No, you’re not being naive,” he says. “This is awful. It’s horrible. It’s the equivalent of going into a library and asking a librarian about Judaism and being handed 10 books of hate. Google is doing a horrible, horrible job of delivering answers here. It can and should do better.”

He’s surprised too. “I thought they stopped offering autocomplete suggestions for religions in 2011.” And then he types “are women” into his own computer. “Good lord! That answer at the top. It’s a featured result. It’s called a ‘direct answer.’ This is supposed to be indisputable. It’s Google’s highest endorsement.” That every woman has some degree of prostitute in her? “Yes. This is Google’s algorithm going terribly wrong.”

I contacted Google about its seemingly malfunctioning autocomplete suggestions and received the following response: “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs—as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.”

Google isn’t just a search engine, of course. Search was the foundation of the company but that was just the beginning. Alphabet,

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Google’s parent company, now has the greatest concentration of artificial intelligence experts in the world. It is expanding into healthcare, transportation, energy. It’s able to attract the world’s top computer scientists, physicists and engineers. It’s bought hundreds of start-ups, including Calico, whose stated mission is to “cure death” and DeepMind, which aims to “solve intelligence.”

To elaborate on a previous idea, see Chapter 11 .

And 20 years ago it didn’t even exist. When Tony Blair became prime minister, it wasn’t possible to Google him: the search engine had yet to be invented. The company was only founded in 1998 and Facebook didn’t appear until 2004. Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are still only 43. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is 32. Everything they’ve done, the world they’ve remade, has been done in the blink of an eye.

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

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But it seems the implications about the power and reach of these companies are only now seeping into the public consciousness. I ask Rebecca MacKinnon, director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation, whether it was the recent furor over fake news that woke people up to the danger of ceding our rights as citizens to corporations. “It’s kind of weird right now,” she says, “because people are finally saying, ‘Gee, Facebook and Google really have a lot of power’ like it’s this big revelation. And it’s like, ‘D’oh.’”

MacKinnon has a particular expertise in how authoritarian governments adapt to the internet and bend it to their purposes. “China and Russia are a cautionary tale for us. I think what happens is that it goes back and forth. So during the Arab spring, it seemed like the good guys were further ahead. And now it seems like the bad guys are. Pro- democracy activists are using the internet more than ever but at the same time, the adversary has gotten so much more skilled.”

Last week Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina, published the first detailed research on how right-wing websites had spread their message. “I took a list of these fake news sites that was circulating, I had an initial list of 306 of them and I used a tool—like the one Google uses—to scrape them for links and then I mapped them. So I looked at where the links went—into YouTube and Facebook, and between each other, millions of them . . . and I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“They have created a web that is bleeding through onto our web. This isn’t a conspiracy. There isn’t one person who’s created this. It’s a vast system of hundreds of different sites that are using all the same tricks that all websites use. They’re sending out thousands of links to other sites and together this has created a vast satellite system of right- wing news and propaganda that has completely surrounded the mainstream media system.”

He found 23,000 pages and 1.3 million hyperlinks. “And Facebook is just the amplification device. When you look at it in 3D, it actually looks like a virus. And Facebook was just one of the hosts for the virus that

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helps it spread faster. You can see the New York Times in there and the Washington Post and then you can see how there’s a vast, vast network surrounding them. The best way of describing it is as an ecosystem. This really goes way beyond individual sites or individual stories. What this map shows is the distribution network and you can see that it’s surrounding and actually choking the mainstream news ecosystem.”

Like a cancer? “Like an organism that is growing and getting stronger all the time.”

Charlie Beckett, a professor in the school of media and communications at [the London School of Economics], tells me: “We’ve been arguing for some time now that plurality of news media is good. Diversity is good. Critiquing the mainstream media is good. But now . . . it’s gone wildly out of control. What Jonathan Albright’s research has shown is that this isn’t a byproduct of the internet. And it’s not even being done for commercial reasons. It’s motivated by ideology, by people who are quite deliberately trying to destabilize the internet.”

A diagram of media outlets, the size and influence of which are indicated by circles of different sizes. Larger circles indicate sites

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where these links appear most often, including Washingtonpost.com, Google.com; Amazon.com, Youtube.com, and Nytimes.com. The circles are in different proximities to each other, and some are connected by lines.

Jonathan Albright’s map of the fake-news ecosystem.

Albright’s map also provides a clue to understanding the Google search results I found. What these right-wing news sites have done, he explains, is what most commercial websites try to do. They try to find the tricks that will move them up Google’s PageRank system. They try and “game” the algorithm. And what his map shows is how well they’re doing that.

That’s what my searches are showing too. That the right has colonized the digital space around these subjects—Muslims, women, Jews, the Holocaust, black people—far more effectively than the liberal left.

“It’s an information war,” says Albright. “That’s what I keep coming back to.”

But it’s where it goes from here that’s truly frightening. I ask him how it can be stopped. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it can be. It’s a network. It’s far more powerful than any one actor.”

So, it’s almost got a life of its own? “Yes, and it’s learning. Every day, it’s getting stronger.”

The more people who search for information about Jews, the more people will see links to hate sites, and the more they click on those links (very few people click on to the second page of results) the more traffic the sites will get, the more links they will accrue and the more authoritative they will appear. This is an entirely circular knowledge economy that has only one outcome: an amplification of the message.

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Jews are evil. Women are evil. Islam must be destroyed. Hitler was one of the good guys.

And the constellation of websites that Albright found—a sort of shadow internet—has another function. More than just spreading right- wing ideology, they are being used to track and monitor and influence anyone who comes across their content. “I scraped the trackers on these sites and I was absolutely dumbfounded. Every time someone likes one of these posts on Facebook or visits one of these websites, the scripts are then following you around the web. And this enables data-mining and influencing companies like Cambridge Analytica to precisely target individuals, to follow them around the web, and to send them highly personalized political messages. This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go.”

Cambridge Analytica, an American-owned company based in London, was employed by both the Vote Leave campaign and the Trump campaign. Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave, has made few public announcements since the Brexit referendum but he did say this: “If you want to make big improvements in communication, my advice is—hire physicists.”

Steve Bannon, founder of Breitbart News and the newly appointed chief strategist to Trump, is on Cambridge Analytica’s board and it has emerged that the company is in talks to undertake political messaging work for the Trump administration. It claims to have built psychological profiles using 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters. It knows their quirks and nuances and daily habits and can target them individually.

“They were using 40–50,000 different variants of ad every day that were continuously measuring responses and then adapting and evolving based on that response,” says Martin Moore of Kings College. Because they have so much data on individuals and they use such phenomenally powerful distribution networks, they allow campaigns to bypass a lot of existing laws.

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“It’s all done completely opaquely and they can spend as much money as they like on particular locations because you can focus on a five-mile radius or even a single demographic. Fake news is important but it’s only one part of it. These companies have found a way of transgressing 150 years of legislation that we’ve developed to make elections fair and open.”

Did such micro-targeted propaganda—currently legal—swing the Brexit vote? We have no way of knowing. Did the same methods used by Cambridge Analytica help Trump to victory? Again, we have no way of knowing. This is all happening in complete darkness. We have no way of knowing how our personal data is being mined and used to influence us. We don’t realize that the Facebook page we are looking at, the Google page, the ads that we are seeing, the search results we are using, are all being personalized to us. We don’t see it because we have nothing to compare it to. And it is not being monitored or recorded. It is not being regulated. We are inside a machine and we simply have no way of seeing the controls. Most of the time, we don’t even realize that there are controls.

Rebecca MacKinnon says that most of us consider the internet to be like “the air that we breathe and the water that we drink.” It surrounds us. We use it. And we don’t question it. “But this is not a natural landscape. Programmers and executives and editors and designers, they make this landscape. They are human beings and they all make choices.”

But we don’t know what choices they are making. Neither Google or Facebook make their algorithms public. Why did my Google search return nine out of 10 search results that claim Jews are evil? We don’t know and we have no way of knowing. Their systems are what Frank Pasquale describes as “black boxes.” He calls Google and Facebook “a terrifying duopoly of power” and has been leading a growing movement of academics who are calling for “algorithmic accountability.” “We need to have regular audits of these systems,” he says. “We need people in these companies to be accountable. In the US, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, every company has to have a spokesman you can reach. And this is what needs to happen. They need to respond to complaints about hate speech, about bias.”

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Is bias built into the system? Does it affect the kind of results that I was seeing? “There’s all sorts of bias about what counts as a legitimate source of information and how that’s weighted. There’s enormous commercial bias. And when you look at the personnel, they are young, white and perhaps Asian, but not black or Hispanic and they are overwhelmingly men. The worldview of young wealthy white men informs all these judgments.”

Later, I speak to Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, and the author of the study that Martin Moore told me about (and that Google has publicly criticized), showing how search-rank results affect voting patterns. On the other end of the phone, he repeats one of the searches I did. He types “do blacks . . .” into Google.

“Look at that. I haven’t even hit a button and it’s automatically populated the page with answers to the query: ‘Do blacks commit more crimes?’ And look, I could have been going to ask all sorts of questions. ‘Do blacks excel at sports,’ or anything. And it’s only given me two choices and these aren’t simply search-based or the most searched terms right now. Google used to use that but now they use an algorithm that looks at other things. Now, let me look at Bing and Yahoo. I’m on Yahoo and I have 10 suggestions, not one of which is ‘Do black people commit more crime?’

“And people don’t question this. Google isn’t just offering a suggestion. This is a negative suggestion and we know that negative suggestions depending on lots of things can draw between five and 15 more clicks. And this is all programmed. And it could be programmed differently.”

What Epstein’s work has shown is that the contents of a page of search results can influence people’s views and opinions. The type and order of search rankings was shown to influence voters in India in double-blind trials . There were similar results relating to the search suggestions you are offered.

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“The general public are completely in the dark about very fundamental issues regarding online search and influence. We are talking about the most powerful mind-control machine ever invented in the history of the human race. And people don’t even notice it.”

Damien Tambini, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, who focuses on media regulation, says that we lack any sort of framework to deal with the potential impact of these companies on the democratic process. “We have structures that deal with powerful media corporations. We have competition laws. But these companies are not being held responsible. There are no powers to get Google or Facebook to disclose anything. There’s an editorial function to Google and Facebook but it’s being done by sophisticated algorithms. They say it’s machines not editors. But that’s simply a mechanized editorial function.”

And the companies, says John Naughton, the Observer columnist and a senior research fellow at Cambridge University, are terrified of acquiring editorial responsibilities they don’t want. “Though they can and regularly do tweak the results in all sorts of ways.”

Certainly the results about Google on Google don’t seem entirely neutral. Google “Is Google racist?” and the featured result—the Google answer boxed out at the top of the page—is quite clear: no. It is not.

But the enormity and complexity of having two global companies of a kind we have never seen before influencing so many areas of our lives is such, says Naughton, that “we don’t even have the mental apparatus to even know what the problems are.”

And this is especially true of the future. Google and Facebook are at the forefront of AI. They are going to own the future. And the rest of us can barely start to frame the sorts of questions we ought to be asking. “Politicians don’t think long term. And corporations don’t think long term because they’re focused on the next quarterly results and that’s what makes Google and Facebook interesting and different. They are absolutely thinking long term. They have the resources, the money, and the ambition to do whatever they want.

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“They want to digitize every book in the world: they do it. They want to build a self-driving car: they do it. The fact that people are reading about these fake news stories and realizing that this could have an effect on politics and elections, it’s like, ‘Which planet have you been living on?’ For Christ’s sake, this is obvious.”

“The internet is among the few things that humans have built that they don’t understand.” It is “the largest experiment involving anarchy in history. Hundreds of millions of people are, each minute, creating and consuming an untold amount of digital content in an online world that is not truly bound by terrestrial laws.” The internet as a lawless anarchic state? A massive human experiment with no checks and balances and untold potential consequences? What kind of digital doom-mongerer would say such a thing? Step forward, Eric Schmidt—Google’s chairman. They are the first lines of the book, The New Digital Age , that he wrote with Jared Cohen .

We don’t understand it. It is not bound by terrestrial laws. And it’s in the hands of two massive, all-powerful corporations. It’s their experiment, not ours. The technology that was supposed to set us free may well have helped Trump to power, or covertly helped swing votes for Brexit. It has created a vast network of propaganda that has encroached like a cancer across the entire internet. This is a technology that has enabled the likes of Cambridge Analytica to create political messages uniquely tailored to you. They understand your emotional responses and how to trigger them. They know your likes, dislikes, where you live, what you eat, what makes you laugh, what makes you cry.

And what next? Rebecca MacKinnon’s research has shown how authoritarian regimes reshape the internet for their own purposes. Is that what’s going to happen with Silicon Valley and Trump? As Martin Moore points out, the president-elect claimed that Apple chief executive Tim Cook called to congratulate him soon after his election victory. “And there will undoubtedly be pressure on them to collaborate,” says Moore.

Journalism is failing in the face of such change and is only going to fail further. New platforms have put a bomb under the financial model—

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advertising—resources are shrinking, traffic is increasingly dependent on them, and publishers have no access, no insight at all, into what these platforms are doing in their headquarters, their labs. And now they are moving beyond the digital world into the physical. The next frontiers are healthcare, transportation, energy. And just as Google is a near- monopoly for search, its ambition to own and control the physical infrastructure of our lives is what’s coming next. It already owns our data and with it our identity. What will it mean when it moves into all the other areas of our lives?

“At the moment, there’s a distance when you Google ‘Jews are’ and get ‘Jews are evil,’” says Julia Powles, a researcher at Cambridge on technology and law. “But when you move into the physical realm, and these concepts become part of the tools being deployed when you navigate around your city or influence how people are employed, I think that has really pernicious consequences.”

Powles is shortly to publish a paper looking at DeepMind’s relationship with the NHS . “A year ago, 2 million Londoners’ NHS health records were handed over to DeepMind. And there was complete silence from politicians, from regulators, from anyone in a position of power. This is a company without any healthcare experience being given unprecedented access into the NHS and it took seven months to even know that they had the data. And that took investigative journalism to find it out.”

The headline was that DeepMind was going to work with the NHS to develop an app that would provide early warning for sufferers of kidney disease. And it is, but DeepMind’s ambitions—“to solve intelligence”— goes way beyond that. The entire history of 2 million NHS patients is, for artificial intelligence researchers, a treasure trove. And their entry into the NHS—providing useful services in exchange for our personal data—is another massive step in their power and influence in every part of our lives.

Because the stage beyond search is prediction. Google wants to know what you want before you know yourself. “That’s the next stage,” says Martin Moore. “We talk about the omniscience of these tech giants, but

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that omniscience takes a huge step forward again if they are able to predict. And that’s where they want to go. To predict diseases in health. It’s really, really problematic.”

For the nearly 20 years that Google has been in existence, our view of the company has been inflected by the youth and liberal outlook of its founders. Ditto Facebook, whose mission, Zuckerberg said, was not to be “a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission to make the world more open and connected.”

It would be interesting to know how he thinks that’s working out. Donald Trump is connecting through exactly the same technology. . . . And Facebook and Google are amplifying and spreading that message. And us too—the mainstream media. Our outrage is just another node on Jonathan Albright’s data map.

“The more we argue with them, the more they know about us,” he says. “It all feeds into a circular system. What we’re seeing here is a new era of network propaganda.”

We are all points on that map. And our complicity, our credulity, being consumers not concerned citizens, is an essential part of that process. And what happens next is down to us. “I would say that everybody has been really naive and we need to reset ourselves to a much more cynical place and proceed on that basis,” is Rebecca MacKinnon’s advice. “There is no doubt that where we are now is a very bad place. But it’s we as a society who have jointly created this problem. And if we want to get to a better place, when it comes to having an information ecosystem that serves human rights and democracy instead of destroying it, we have to share responsibility for that.”

Are Jews evil? How do you want that question answered? This is our internet. Not Google’s. Not Facebook’s. Not right-wing propagandists’. And we’re the only ones who can reclaim it.

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Joining the Conversation

1. In what ways does Carole Cadwalladr believe that Google is jeopardizing democracy throughout the world? What supporting arguments and evidence does she provide?

2. Cadwalladr makes clear what her own views are, but she does not say much about other viewpoints. What objections could be raised to her argument, and where would you introduce them in her essay?

3. Cadwalladr frequently quotes others on the prominent representation of right-wing views in Google searches, but she doesn’t always set up these quotations or follow them with explanations. Find two examples—in each case, how might she add a sentence or two to explain their meaning and significance? (See pp. 49–51 for ways to frame quotations.)

4. In paragraph 39, Cadwalladr asks, “Is bias built into the system?” Compare her view of search engine algorithms with the view expressed by Anna Romina Guevarra in her essay, “Here Come the Robot Nurses” (pp. 439–47 ). Who does Cadwalladr hold responsible for algorithmic bias? How is that similar to and different from Guevarra’s argument?

5. Cadwalladr makes a number of debatable claims: “The right has colonized the digital space . . . far more effectively than the liberal left” (paragraph 26) and “Google and Facebook . . . are going to own the future” (paragraph 49). Write a paragraph responding to one of these claims or another claim that interests you, drawing your own experiences to support your argument.

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Glossary

to “game” to manipulate, usually unfairly, or without moral principles

wormhole a tunnel with its entrance and exit at separate points in space and time

constellation a group of stars forming a visible pattern or shape

Brexit the name given to the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, a combination of “Britain” and “exit”

double-blind trials trials where information is withheld that might influence the participants or the researcher

Tony Blair/prime minister prime minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007)

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Endnotes

Vote Leave: an organization that campaigned for the United Kingdom to leave the European UnionReturn to reference Vote Leave Jared Cohen: director of Jigsaw, formerly Google Ideas, a technology think tankReturn to reference Jared Cohen NHS: National Health Service, the name of the United Kingdom’s public health care systemReturn to reference NHS

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TWENTY-TWO

“WHY CARE ABOUT THE PLANET?”

* * *

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Three of the posters the protesters are holding are readily visible. The poster in the forefront reads, youll die of old age, Ill die of climate change. The poster in the back right corner reads all the money in the

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world cant buy a new earth. While the poster on the back left corner says create solutions not pollution.

All around the globe, youth have taken to the streets, calling on policymakers to act on the climate crisis. These demonstrations and strikes—such as this march in New York City—represent a new urgency to address the visible signs of the escalating climate crisis: extreme weather, rising ocean temperatures, and mass animal migrations and extinctions.

1. Read the protest signs in this photo. Who is the audience for these signs? How can you tell? Which sign do you think is the most effective, and why?

2. Look at the city buildings in the background of the photo. Why do you think this march was held here, in New York City? Reflect on where the effects of the climate crisis are most strongly felt. Which communities and regions are most vulnerable to these effects? Who has the resources to address the climate crisis?

***

A BETTER QUESTION MIGHT BE : How could we not care about the planet? We know that climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for years. The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the leading nonpartisan organization of technical experts, offers overwhelming evidence in their most recent report that Earth, and therefore we, its residents, face serious problems. Greenhouse gases— carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—have risen to record levels in the atmosphere. Increases in emissions of these gases trap heat in the atmosphere, raise sea levels, and make the planet warmer. These increases are almost entirely the result of human activity, particularly the widespread use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas, for heat, electricity, and transportation. Scientists have been very clear on this point. These rising temperatures across the planet lead to more frequent and extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and droughts. The rising sea levels pose an existential threat to low-lying nations and coastal communities. Climate scientists, policymakers, and

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activists make clear that the effects of climate change are already upon us and the situation is getting worse. But they also emphasize that humanity still has time to stem the tide of climate change if we act quickly and decisively.

While almost all climate experts interpret their research findings as conclusive that the threat to our planet is urgent and that our worsening situation is due primarily to human action (and inaction), the proposed solutions to this crisis vary. A declining number of critics argue that concerns about the planet are exaggerated, that the situation is less dire than activists believe, even that changes in climate are a natural phenomenon not proven to be affected by industry, mining, car and truck use, and other human factors. Some critics acknowledge the reality of climate change and its human causes, but express concern that policies to combat the problem would damage the economy, lead to massive job losses, and reduce our standard of living.

For people wishing to learn more about the climate crisis and to figure out what constructive actions we might take, this chapter offers a variety of perspectives on how best to understand the enormous challenge we face and how societies as well as individuals might take action.

The essays in this chapter deal with the effects of common consumer items on the environment. College student Emma Barnes calls for the end of “fast fashion”—the wasteful production and delivery of clothing, which involves the exploitation of workers in sweatshops, including many children, and which increases carbon emissions with the resulting damage to the environment. And reporter Ben Adler cites the dangers of plastic trash containers polluting our oceans, while arguing that the solution of eliminating plastic grocery bags will have minimal (if any) effect when considering the scale of this crisis.

Journalist and environmental specialist David Wallace-Wells offers an in-depth look at the growing threats to Earth’s climate and points to specific examples of human responsibility for the crisis, while still finding glimmers of hope for a way forward. From a policy perspective, Alice Chen and Vivek Murthy, distinguished physicians and leaders of major medical organizations, acknowledge the dangers of climate change but offer a more optimistic view of potential remedies, some of which

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are already underway. Biologist and member of England’s House of Lords Matt Ridley proposes a radical solution to the problems posed by overuse of fossil fuels, which damage the environment. He argues that nuclear power could supply a great deal of our energy needs throughout the planet, with innovations that make it safer, more convenient, and less risky than most people believe. Environmental policy expert and Indigenous activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker makes an impassioned, data- driven argument that returning lands to Indigenous stewardship and divesting from capitalist land-use ideas is the only path forward to preventing the destruction of climate change.

Several other readings examine ways in which impoverished populations with little political clout, particularly people of color, suffer disproportionately from the impact of environmental problems. Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson coins the term “ocean justice” in asserting that our oceans are critical to food security, economic well- being, cultural stability, and physical health. She cautions that these crucial bodies of water are increasingly endangered by pollution, overfishing, loss of coastal ecosystems, storms, and sea level rise, with communities of color most seriously impacted. Echoing calls from Indigenous peoples throughout the United States and around the world, Hawaiian college student Sandis Edward Waialae Wightman writes about opposing the construction of a large, extremely powerful telescope station atop the Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano long considered a sacred place by Hawaiians.

The essays in this chapter and those in the accompanying “They Say / I Blog ” (theysayiblog.com ) will help you better understand the significant environmental issues now facing the planet along with potential paths forward—and will provide the opportunity for you to make your own contribution to this critically important discussion.

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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The Fast and the Fashionable: How Your Closet Contributes to a Global Crisis

EMMA BARNES

* * *

EMMA BARNES wrote this essay as a first year student at Drexel University, where she is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. Barnes received the Zelda Provenzano Endowed STEM Writing Award for this essay, which was published in the 33rd , Drexel University’s annual anthology of student writing. It is documented in MLA style.

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A WORLD IN RUIN . Millions of crumbling, steaming sweatshop factories. In them: children and mothers aching to achieve impossible production targets. Plastic the length of continents individually wrapping conveyors of identical t-shirts. Carbon emissions seeping—no, flooding —into a fragile atmosphere under a boiling sun. All of this for what? For the teens of today to snap one Instagram picture in their new, trendy outfit, then never wear it again. The horrors of capitalism are stitched into the fabric on our backs, and it goes by the name “fast fashion.” This concept is characterized by rapid prototyping of in-season styles, leading to large-scale, cheap production. To the (typically younger) consumer base, fast fashion seems like a dream: high end on a low budget. Contrarily, the too-good-to-be-true prices have created global and inhumane enterprises like Forever 21, UNIQLO, ASOS, Primark, H&M, and Gap. It is no surprise that these highly profitable markets have taken off this decade considering humans purchase 400% more clothing than they did twenty years ago (Hart et al. 9). This rise in unethical consumerism must be tackled head-on with more sustainable

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alternatives, as the path we are on will leave us helpless within much of the current population’s lifetime. Our maladaptive notion of fast fashion is debilitating to both workers’ rights and environmental safety, after which these clothes occupy landfills with as little as one wear. The prescribed solution of thrifting, while it has conversely robbed low- income solutions for a quality wardrobe, is one of many paths we must turn to before it is too late.

The most inhumane aspect of this phenomenon is the outsourced labor which suffers underpaid, demanding, and hazardous work environments to meet the commands of privileged buyers. According to the 2019 Ethical Fashion Report , worker empowerment was the “lowest scoring section, with a median grade of D” on a scale of A–F (9). As our tags typically imply, an enormous amount of clothing is produced overseas from where it is typically bought; even the better brands like Zara “outsource at least 13 percent of their manufacturing to China and Turkey” (Joy et al. 275). The obvious reason fast fashion moguls seek foreign production is the same reason any business makes any decision: it’s cheaper. In Bangladesh—home of the cheapest labor force—the living wage is “2.8 times its current minimum wage,” which most workers still fail to receive (Hart et al. 19). Only 5% of 130 analyzed brands could claim to provide a living wage for all employees as of 2019, a disgusting figure for the modern day (Hart et al. 11). Because of this poor compensation, employees must often work “12 to 16 hours a day, and regularly 80 hours a week,” in addition to forced overtime based on demanding targets for the high-demand industry (Alam and Hearson 4). These targets also support the use of short-term contracts with factory laborers that may be easily hired or fired to “adjust to fluctuations in production needs” (Stafford). There exists a gross hypocrisy of privileged consumers who can afford higher-priced, sustainable items that instead buy from corporations that prop up labor-wage abuse to increase their own profits. If someone had to suffer to produce the shirt on your back, would it give a new perspective to the impressive deals you see on the market? Are the couple of dollars you save on a shirt worth another human’s safety? If that astonishingly low price seems too good to be true, it likely is.

Beyond crises of humanity, a climate crisis has arisen as a result of the fashion industry’s wasteful production, delivery methods, and carbon emissions, proving it to be highly unsustainable for the future. As more

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buyers become aware of their impact, 86% of the general population believes that social and environmental issues should be addressed by the fashion industry—with 94% of Gen Z agreeing to the same proposition (Hart et al. 22). However, a paradox presents itself in that “only 31 percent of Gen-Z and just 12 percent of baby boomers” are willing to pay more for sustainably produced fashion (Amed et al. 52). Again, privilege takes hold of consumer preferences. When the fashion industry “accounts for 20 to 35 percent of microplastic” in our oceans, privilege should not prevail (Amed et al. 52). In addition to polluting the world’s water, these brands also consume our fresh water in vast, unsustainable quantities. To make a single cotton t-shirt, 2,700 liters of fresh water is required, contributing to the 79 billion cubic meters used every year on fashion alone (Hart et al. 9). Additionally, considering the apparel industry is responsible for 10% of carbon emissions globally, action must be taken now to reduce this consumer bingeing, or it will not support us much longer (Hart et al. 9). Some companies even cheat these net emission statistics through carbon offsetting—funding third parties to reduce carbon emissions elsewhere—without actually changing their production methods (Amed et al. 54). As all these figures continue to rise, it is important to consider that the more we waste our resources now, the shorter we will have access to them, and the more desperate the human situation will become over time. There will come a day when our current way of life will no longer be sustainable, but until then, we must alter our consumer behavior to prolong and strengthen our natural resources. A new outfit for every occasion should not trump the fate of your children on a warming planet with little to drink.

For help on saying what’s at stake, see Chapter 8 .

The environment also suffers due to landfill contribution and poor recycling, propagated by the concept of micro-seasons and impulsive consumer behavior. Of the “53 million tons of fiber [produced] every year . . . more than 70 percent of that ends up in landfills or on bonfires” instead of being put to reuse or recycling initiatives—mainly because few exist (Amed et al. 56). Australia as a country discards “6,000 kg of fashion and textile waste every ten minutes” according to the 2019

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Ethical Fashion Report , with most of that also ending up in landfills (9). We must identify the factors that label the fast fashion industry “a fast- response system that encourages disposability” (Joy et al. 275). The root of this issue stems in part from the short-term gratification that trendy and seasonal clothing offers. UC Berkeley’s premier undergraduate economics journal claims that there existed “11 to 52 [fashion] seasons a year by 2014,” rather than the winter, spring, summer, fall cycles many believe we still follow (Nair). To keep up with the rapid fashion tastes changing, “H&M and Forever 21 receive new garment shipments every day . . . Topshop features 400 new styles every week, while Zara releases 20,000 designs annually,” dubbing the fast fashion giants “heralds of mass consumerism” (Stafford). The turnover for these clothes is so dramatic that it is no wonder the people who crave modernity of style would also be those to discard more quickly at the end of the trend—that is, if it survives that long. The other factor that propagates mass disposal of fast fashion is the poor quality, reflected by the pricing and mass production. As stated in peer-reviewed journal Fashion Theory , a consumer “may keep an item after ten washes, but the item may lose its luster by then,” giving rise to the “ten-washes” colloquialism common to fast fashion (283). This rapid distaste and degradation of the fast fashion industry is not sustainable so long as we continue to pile landfills with fabric that may be used to provide more than ten wears (if that).

The most common solution to mass disposal of clothing also presents itself as an alternative to fast fashion shopping: thrift stores. While second-hand buying may seem like a guilt-free, sustainable practice it’s not without its problems: An influx of eager consumers does not bode well for the low-income communities that rely on these stores for simple necessities. Prior to a large-scale awareness of sustainability issues, thrift stores carried “strong taboos of uncleanliness and poverty,” making it difficult for people to shop for less money without being stigmatized by people with a more comfortable income (Nair). Now their critics are coming to find “deals” at local thrift stores, stealing the opportunity from those who need the better price points. The sale-hungry consumers also tend to possess the “time-flexibility of being able to visit these stores soon after they are restocked, which working individuals simply do not have,” further infringing on the opportunity of low-income shoppers (Nair). What all this adds up to is that the low price tags spur affluent

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consumers to purchase more clothing items. Consequently, consumers acquire more items of clothing for the same cost they would have spent on a more sustainable choice. The irony and privilege prevalent in thrifting culture makes it seem like picking between two evils: infringe on the rights of workers abroad or the low-income consumers in our communities.

However, the reality is that supporting local thrift stores has many positive points as well, making it the best modern alternative. For prices similar to the appeal of fast fashion and for the sustainability beyond all first-hand buying, second-hand buying continues to be most effective. The more visible and successful secondhand stores become, the more consumers will think to donate—not dispose of—unwanted clothing, reducing the amount of clothing that ends up in landfills. Many nonprofits like Goodwill and Housing Works also “reinvest into the development of poor communities,” meaning supporting these stores has the potential to bring up the communities that need them to the point where cheap clothing is not a last resort for the lower ends of society (Nair). Given the shortcomings of second-hand buying, the greater good is being served against fast fashion toward a more sustainable future while also protecting foreign exploitation and the environment through thrift stores.

The timeline for a change of our buying habits is rapidly becoming shorter as we dig ourselves into the hole of irreparable damage. The world won’t unmelt the ice caps or reverse the depletion of the ozone layer. Overseas factory workers won’t forget the violence and labor abuse they suffer. Their starving families will not be suddenly fed. Sustainability of buying habits is something we must practice immediately—not just claim to uphold. This is the year we research brands and their policies before prioritizing our wardrobes over a long- term, sustainable market; choose clothes from firms known for being environmentally responsible, such as Adidas, Hanes, and Patagonia over Nike, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Ralph Lauren. Shop from small businesses instead of unethical corporate schemes. We cannot continue to value our bank accounts and fashion trends more than our future. Before impulse-buying your next wardrobe piece, ask yourself: is our privilege now worth our humanity later?

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WORKS CITED

Alam, Khorshed, and Martin Hearson. “Fashion Victims: The True Cost of Cheap Clothes at Primark, Asda, and Tesco.” War on Want , Dec. 2006.

Amed, Imran, et al. The State of Fashion 2020 . McKinsey & Company, 20 Nov. 2019.

Hart, Clair, et al. The 2019 Ethical Fashion Report: The Truth Behind the Barcode . Baptist World Aid Australia, Apr. 2019.

Joy, Annamma, et al. “Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands.” Fashion Theory, vol. 16, no. 3, 2012, pp. 273–95.

Nair, Nanditha. “Rise of Thrifting: Solution to Fast Fashion or Stealing from the Poor?” Berkeley Economic Review , 19 Nov. 2019, econreview.berkeley.edu/rise-of-thrifting-solution-to-fast-fashion- or-stealing-from-the-poor/.

Stafford, Victoria. “Factory Exploitation and the Fast Fashion Machine.” Green America , 8 Aug. 2018, greenamerica.org/blog/factory- exploitation-and-fast-fashion-machine.

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Joining the Conversation

1. In paragraph 1, Emma Barnes claims that the fast fashion industry “is debilitating to both workers’ rights and environmental safety.” Explain this claim in your own words. How does fast fashion contribute to inhumane labor practices? How does the fast fashion industry adversely impact the climate?

2. Barnes explains that disposability lies at the core of the fast fashion industry: clothing is manufactured to be quickly discarded. In paragraph 4, she describes the factors that drive the idea that people should frequently purchase and then toss out the clothes they buy. What decisions by the fast fashion industry create this throw-away culture? Do you agree, disagree, or agree and disagree with Barnes’s analysis? Why or why not?

3. Who is Barnes’s primary audience? How can you tell? Point to the places in her text where you see her referencing her audience. What assumptions does she make about her primary audience? Are these assumptions accurate? Why or why not?

4. Barnes offers thrifting as “an alternative to fast fashion shopping” (paragraph 5). What are the benefits of thrifting, according to Barnes? What are the problems with encouraging more people, especially those with more disposable income, to frequent the thrift shops in lower-income communities?

5. Imagine that you are reviewing Barnes’s essay in an in-class revision workshop. What advice would you give her to help her strengthen her argument? Check out the suggestions offered in Chapter 12 for making revisions. In your revision comments to Barnes, resist making microlevel edits. Instead, make sure that you think globally, tackling the big questions her argument opens for you.

6. Check the tags on a few pieces of clothing that you own. Where were they made? Reflect on your own consumer choices. What

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factors impact what clothes you buy? What influences when you buy clothing and where you purchase your clothes? Write a short response to Barnes based on your reflection.

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Glossary

maladaptive not adjusting appropriately to the situation

colloquialism a word or phrase used in ordinary, informal conversation

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Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast

BEN ADLER

* * *

BEN ADLER , a journalist and senior climate editor for Yahoo News , writes widely about policy and the environment, including city planning, climate change, energy, and transportation. His writing has been published in Politico , the Nation , the New York Times , Newsweek , and, the Atlantic . He is originally from Brooklyn, NY, and is a graduate of Wesleyan University. This piece first appeared in Wired in 2016.

________

LIKE CIGARETTES , plastic bags have recently gone from a tolerated nuisance to a widely despised and discouraged vice.

Last month, the New York City Council passed a 5-cent-per-bag fee on single-use bags handed out by most retailers. Two weeks ago, the Massachusetts State Senate passed a measure that would ban plastic bags from being dispensed by many retail businesses and require a charge of 10 cents or more for a recycled paper or reusable bag. The Massachusetts proposal may not become law this year, but it’s the latest sign that the plastic bag industry is losing this war. Already in Massachusetts, 32 towns and cities have passed bag bans or fees. So have at least 88 localities in California, including the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, plus cities and towns in more than a dozen other states and more than a dozen other countries.

The adverse impacts of plastic bags are undeniable: When they’re not piling up in landfills, they’re blocking storm drains, littering streets,

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getting stuck in trees, and contaminating oceans, where fish, seabirds, and other marine animals eat them or get tangled up in them. As longtime plastic bag adversary Ian Frazier recently reported in The New Yorker , “In 2014, plastic grocery bags were the seventh most common item collected during the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, behind smaller debris such as cigarette butts, plastic straws, and bottle caps.” The New York City Sanitation Department collects more than 1,700 tons of single-use carry-out bags every week, and has to spend $12.5 million a year to dispose of them.

Bag bans cut this litter off at the source: In San Jose, California, a plastic bag ban led to an 89 percent reduction in the number of plastic bags winding up in the city’s storm drains. Fees have a smaller, but still significant, effect. Washington, DC’s government estimates that its 5- cent bag tax has led to a 60 percent reduction in the number of these bags being used, although that figure is contested by other sources.

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Is Plastic Really Worse Than Paper?

But advocates of these laws and journalists who cover the issue often neglect to ask what will replace plastic bags and what the environmental impact of that replacement will be. People still need bags to bring home their groceries. And the most common substitute, paper bags, may be just as bad or worse, depending on the environmental problem you’re most concerned about.

That’s leading to a split in the anti-bag movement. Some bills, like in Massachusetts, try to reduce the use of paper bags as well as plastic, but still favor paper. Others, like in New York City, treat all single-use bags equally. Even then, the question remains as to whether single-use bags are necessarily always worse than reusable ones.

Studies of bags’ environmental impacts over their life cycle have reached widely varying conclusions. Some are funded by plastic industry groups, like the ironically named American Progressive Bag Alliance. Even studies conducted with the purest of intentions depend on any number of assumptions. How many plastic bags are replaced by one cotton tote bag? If a plastic bag is reused in the home as the garbage bag in a bathroom waste bin, does that reduce its footprint by eliminating the need for another small plastic garbage bag?

If your chief concern is climate change, things get even muddier. One of the most comprehensive research papers on the environmental impact of bags, published in 2007 by an Australian state government agency, found that paper bags have a higher carbon footprint than plastic. That’s primarily because more energy is required to produce and transport paper bags.

“People look at [paper] and say it’s degradable, therefore it’s much better for the environment, but it’s not in terms of climate change impact,” says David Tyler, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon who has examined the research on the environmental impact of bag use. The reasons for paper’s higher carbon footprint are complex,

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but can mostly be understood as stemming from the fact that paper bags are much thicker than plastic bags. “Very broadly, carbon footprints are proportional to mass of an object,” says Tyler. For example, because paper bags take up so much more space, more trucks are needed to ship paper bags to a store than to ship plastic bags.

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Looking beyond Climate Change

Still, many environmentalists argue that plastic is worse than paper. Climate change, they say, isn’t the only form of environmental degradation to worry about. “Paper does have its own environmental consequences in terms of how much energy it takes to generate,” acknowledges Emily Norton, director of the Massachusetts Sierra Club. “The big difference is that paper does biodegrade eventually. Plastic is a toxin that stays in the environment, marine animals ingest it, and it enters their bodies and then ours.”

Some social justice activists who work in low-income urban neighborhoods or communities of color also argue that plastic bags are a particular scourge. “A lot of the waste ends up in our communities,” says Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, an environmental and social justice–oriented community organization in Brooklyn. “Plastic bags not only destroy the physical infrastructure,” she says, referring to the way they clog up storm drains and other systems, “they contribute to emissions.” And she points out that marine plastic pollution is a threat to low-income people who fish for their dinner: “So many frontline communities depend on food coming from the ocean.” That’s why her group supported New York City’s bag fee even though it’s more of a burden on lower-income citizens. A single mom, or someone working two jobs, is more likely to have to do her shopping in a rush on the way home from work than to go out specifically with a tote bag in hand. But for UPROSE, that concern is outweighed by the negative impacts of plastic bags on disadvantaged communities.

See Chapter 3 for more on framing quotations.

Increasingly, environmentalists are pushing for laws that include fees for all single-use bags, and that require paper bags to be made with

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recycled content, which could lower their carbon footprint. The measure now under consideration in Massachusetts, for example, would mandate that single-use paper bags contain at least 40 percent recycled fiber. That’s the percentage the Massachusetts Sierra Club has advocated for at the state level and when lobbying for municipal bag rules.

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It’s Complicated

But what if reusable bags aren’t good either? As the Australian study noted, a cotton bag has major environmental impacts of its own. Only 2.4 percent of the world’s cropland is planted with cotton, yet it accounts for 24 percent of the global market for insecticides and 11 percent for pesticides, the World Wildlife Fund reports. A pound of cotton requires more than 5,000 gallons of water on average, a thirst far greater than that of any vegetable and even most meats. And cotton, unlike paper, is not currently recycled in most places.

The Australian study concluded that the best option appears to be a reusable bag, but one made from recycled plastic, not cotton. “A substantial shift to more durable bags would deliver environmental gains through reductions in greenhouse gases, energy and water use, resource depletion and litter,” the study concluded. “The shift from one single-use bag to another single-use bag may improve one environmental outcome, but be offset by another environmental impact.”

But studies conducted in Australia or Europe have limited applicability in the US, particularly when you’re considering climate impact, because every country has a different energy mix. In fact, every region of the US has a different energy mix.

“There’s no easy answer,” says Eric Goldstein, New York City environment director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which backed NYC’s bag fee. “There are so very many variables. Here’s just one tiny example: Does the paper for paper bags come from a recycled paper mill on Staten Island or a virgin forest in northern Canada? As far as I know, nobody has done the definitive analysis, which would necessarily need to have a large number of caveats and qualifications. Also, this question is something like asking, ‘Would you prefer to get a parking ticket or a tax assessment?’ It depends on the specifics, but it’s better to avoid both wherever possible.” Goldstein is confident that if people switch to reusable bags, even cotton ones, and use them consistently, that will ultimately be better for the environment.

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The ideal city bag policy would probably involve charging for paper and plastic single-use bags, as New York City has decided to do, while giving out reusable recycled-plastic bags to those who need them, especially to low-income communities and seniors. (The crunchy rich should already have more than enough tote bags from PBS and Whole Foods.)

The larger takeaway is that no bag is free of environmental impact, whether that’s contributing to climate change, ocean pollution, water scarcity, or pesticide use. The instinct to favor reusable bags springs from an understandable urge to reduce our chronic overconsumption, but the bags we use are not the big problem.

For more templates that guide your reader to your major point, see Chapter 9 .

“Eat one less meat dish a week—that’s what will have a real impact on the environment,” says Tyler. “It’s what we put in the bag at the grocery store that really matters.”

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Joining the Conversation

1. This essay is divided into four sections: a four-paragraph introduction, a section titled “Is Plastic Really Worse Than Paper?,” a section titled “Looking beyond Climate Change,” and a conclusion titled “It’s Complicated.” Write down the primary point of each section. What does each contribute to the essay as a whole?

2. At the beginning of paragraph 3, Ben Adler states: “The adverse impacts of plastic bags are undeniable.” He goes on to list some of the most serious impacts and in the following paragraph cites the apparent success of several cities’ laws banning plastic bags. Why, then, in your view, does he later in the essay seem to question the value of such measures?

3. This essay makes extensive use of direct quotations from other authors, including writer Ian Frazier, chemistry professor David Tyler, environmentalist Emily Norton, community organizer Elizabeth Yeampierre, and activist Eric Goldstein. Analyze the way Ben Adler first introduces and then discusses a quotation from one of these authors, and explain why you think Adler included that particular quotation in his essay. In other words, what did the quotation and his discussion of it contribute to Adler’s essay?

4. Read Emma Barnes’s essay, “The Fast and the Fashionable: How Your Closet Contributes to a Global Crisis” (pp. 479–85 ). In it, she discusses the environmental impact of the fast fashion industry, and she advocates that people can address this ongoing problem by making more informed decisions about where and how they purchase clothes. Given what you have just read in Ben Adler’s essay on the banning of plastic bags, how do you think Adler might respond to Barnes’s argument? What do you see in Adler’s text that leads you to believe he would agree, disagree, or both agree and disagree with Barnes’s argument?

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5. Look up the regulations for single-use plastic bags in your community. Then, discuss these regulations with a classmate. What rules, if any, govern the types of bags that businesses in your community can distribute? What do you think the climate and community impact of these regulations are? Compose a short op-ed responding to your local bag regulations that could be published in your campus or community newspaper. In your op- ed, put forth your own argument about what plastic bag regulations would be helpful for your local community. Be sure to reference Adler’s argument and your conversations with your classmate in your op-ed.

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Glossary

carbon footprint The amount of greenhouse gases (which trap heat in the atmosphere) that are generated by human actions. These greenhouse gases then create an effect that leads to global warming.

municipal relating to the governing offices of a city or town

virgin forest a forest that has not been explored or altered by humans

caveats cautions or conditions

crunchy rich environmentally conscious wealthy people

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What I Know about the Ocean

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON

* * *

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON is a marine biologist and environmental policy expert whose work demonstrates her commitment to coastal communities and her conviction that the ocean is key to solving the climate crisis. She is the co-editor of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (2020), co-founder of the environmental advocacy organization All We Can Save, and co-creator of the popular How to Save a Planet podcast. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Johnson earned her PhD in marine biology from Scripps Institute of Oceanography. This piece is from Black Futures, the 2020 anthology edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham.

________

HERE IS WHAT I KNOW . The ocean is not separate from us or our daily concerns. It is our nourishment, protection, livelihood, and the air we breathe. It is culture, joy, and freedom. All this is at risk, and we need ocean justice.

Ocean conservation is about people—more specifically, it’s about marginalized people. Sometimes it seems we’ve been duped into thinking ocean conservation is just about fish, dolphins, whales, corals, and remote tropical islands. The well-being of communities of color and of poor and working-class folks is deeply affected as the ocean’s health degrades. No different than on land, we are either excluded from accessing ocean resources or relegated to the most denuded and polluted places. Although we bear the greatest brunt of the impacts, we often had the least hand in causing them.

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A healthy ocean is critical to food security, economies, cultures, and our own health. Right now, overfishing , pollution, coastal development, and climate change are jeopardizing all of that. In addressing these threats to ocean health, we must consider who benefits from ocean exploitation and from conservation, and who does not.

We need ocean justice. While the concept of environmental justice— defined by the US Environmental Protection Agency as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies”—may have finally permeated the zeitgeist, the concept seems to end at the shore.

Communities of color and poor communities remain most disastrously affected by pollution, overfishing, human rights abuses, loss of coastal ecosystems, storms strengthened by climate change, and sea- level rise. Tackling these challenges will require working at all levels, from micro-local to global, and building political power. We cannot afford to wait for governments and international bodies to lead. We— coastal communities who have the most at stake—must chart a path out of this mess mostly not our making.

There are not, in fact, many fish in the sea. Nearly 94 percent of fish populations are over. Biggie rapped about “remember when we had to eat sardines for dinner” as a sign of poverty. But that’s actually what we should be eating: small, fecund fish rich in omega-3s, not top predators like tuna, whose numbers have plummeted by more than 50 percent (bluefin by 97 percent) since we got a taste for them. Technologies developed for war—radar, sonar, helicopters, spotter planes—are used to seek and destroy the remaining fish. While some places are fished sustainably, wild fish simply can’t make babies fast enough to keep up with our plunder. Yet, around 3 billion people rely on seafood as a significant source of protein. The adage about teaching a man to fish doesn’t work if there are no fish to catch.

We must kill fewer fish. We must go from the 2 percent of the ocean that is currently protected to the 30 to 50 percent that scientists

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recommend. Closing the high seas to fishing—the poorly managed two- thirds of the ocean that no one “owns,” and where fishing is often profitable only with massive subsidies—is a key step.

Unsustainable, unregulated fishing is a human rights disaster. Working conditions for fish workers are often perilous, and labor law violations and wage theft abound. In Africa and Asia, fish scarcity has spurred women traders to barter sex to get priority to purchase fish—not sex for fish, but sex to get to the front of the line to buy fish. This has contributed to the spread of HIV. Meanwhile, large seafood companies are enslaving fishermen on Pacific tuna vessels, and if your shrimp was imported, it may have been peeled by slaves in Thailand.

Then there are the pirates. Overfishing by Asian corporations in the Gulf of Aden caused some Somali fishers to turn to piracy since they could no longer make a living fishing, which in turn makes it dangerous for the remaining fishermen to go out and fish. We must think beyond the science of sustainability and economics of the supply chain and consider the people upon whose work this industry is built.

Emptied and polluted oceans hollow out cultures. Overfishing happens in shallow areas first, and governments often sell off fishing rights to the highest, often foreign, bidder. This means coastal communities that have relied on seafood for centuries can no longer put fish on the table. Artisanal fishermen can’t afford the gas and the bigger boats required to go farther from shore and don’t have access to capital to join this race for fish. Degraded coastal ecosystems destroy not just economies but cultures. Water too dirty to swim in. Sand riddled with plastic. No teaching kids and grandkids to fish. No fish fry on the beach. No jambalaya, no crawfish boils.

We must acknowledge that some traditions don’t scale, that some of the old ways can’t be sustained with this many people and with such depleted ecosystems. We must also find ways to preserve invaluable cultural connections to the sea.

We need to farm the ocean. No, not industrial salmon farms that pollute the water and require tons of feed. For our food security and for

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sustainability, the future must include seaweed and shellfish farms dotting our coastlines. With “regenerative ocean farming,” mussels grow on hanging ropes while oysters and clams grow in cages on the seafloor, and kelp grows on lines between it all. No fertilizer, freshwater, or feed required. Through photosynthesis and the formation of shells, ocean farms absorb tons of carbon, so can be a significant climate solution while also creating a habitat for a cornucopia of wild marine life. A single acre of ocean can produce 25 tons of seaweed and 250,000 shellfish in five months. We must farm the ocean to health, not hunt it to death.

The ocean stabilizes the climate, but that’s ruining the ocean. The ocean has absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat created by burning fossil fuels. This comes at a cost. Warmer seawater evaporates more easily, leading to more devastatingly torrential rains with hurricanes. Fish and other species are making a one-way migration toward the poles to stay cool. Corals can’t move, so they are frying in place.

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A mussel farm in the Mediterranean.

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The ocean has also absorbed around 30 percent of the excess carbon from the atmosphere. This has changed the very chemistry of seawater, a phenomenon called ocean acidification. Humans have changed the pH of the entire ocean. It boggles the mind. This makes it harder for corals to form their skeletons and harder for shellfish to make shells. Lost with coral reefs will be food and income for around 500 million people, many in the Caribbean and Africa. We must break our addiction to fossil fuels , turning instead to offshore wind farms and harnessing wave energy.

The sea level is rising and will continue to rise. As the ice melts, the ocean swells. As the seawater warms, it expands. Global mean sea level has already risen about 20 centimeters and could rise another meter by the end of the century. This will force mass exodus from the Marshall Islands, the Maldives, Kiribati, and other low-lying countries, creating many millions of “climate refugees.” Bangladesh produces only 0.3 percent of global carbon emissions, yet 18 million residents are expected to lose their homes by 2050.

New York’s Rikers Island prison, already prone to flooding, has no evacuation plan, putting those incarcerated at great risk. Entire communities in coastal Louisiana and Staten Island, New York, have already had to relocate. Likely next are Native Alaskan villages, Miami and the Carolinas (including Princeville, the first town chartered by African Americans).

Conservatively, 190 million people globally live in places below the projected high tide line for 2100, and 630 million live in places that will soon flood annually. We must find just ways to move communities out of harm’s way, ways to say goodbye to some of the coastal places we treasure, ways to mourn that loss, ways to adapt. It is pure hubris to think we can hold back the ocean.

Coastal ecosystems protect us. Literally. There are deadly repercussions of destroying coastal ecosystems for development. In Southeast Asia, extensive swathes of coastal mangroves have been bulldozed for shrimp aquaculture. Then, in the 2004 tsunami, locations without mangroves were the most severely impacted, because residents were left without natural protection from the deadly waves. Likewise in

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the Mississippi Delta. By the time Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, southern Louisiana had already lost more than 4,900 square kilometers of wetlands , so there wasn’t enough left to buffer the power of the storm. Likewise, the archipelagic New York City, once surrounded by more than 40 square kilometers of wetlands and by oysters so abundant they were a navigational hazard, is now unprotected. Poor and working- class folks are still reeling from Hurricane Sandy, seven years later, which wasn’t even hurricane-strength when it smashed into my hometown.

This story plays out again and again. These massive storms are becoming regular occurrences, becoming stronger and wetter, fueled by warmer waters, fueled by global warming. They are devastating Black, brown, poor, and working-class communities. Storms are also a chance to consider how we rebuild. The answer is not simply to construct walls to try to keep the ocean out—our barriers will never be as effective as nature. We must restore and replant.

We have polluted the entire ocean. Drilling for oil exacerbates the climate crisis, plus inevitably and incessantly leads to spills. Across the Mississippi River Delta, pollution from industrial plants triggers high rates of cancers in nearby communities of color. Chemicals from this “Cancer Alley” end up in the ocean. Rivers run to the sea. Those rivers take pesticides, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizer, and other toxins with them, harming wildlife, making seafood unsafe to eat, disrupting the balance of nutrients, and causing dead zones and blooms of toxic algae. Our poisonous, chemical-based industrial agriculture is ruining our health and the ocean. Hurricane Florence caused massive lagoons of excrement from factory-farmed pigs to overflow, with the putrid waste hitting poor and brown communities particularly hard before it wound its way to the sea. There are pesticides even in seawater and krill in Antarctica. We must transition to regenerative agriculture, which goes beyond organic and actually restores soil by planting cover crops and perennials, and by eliminating monocultures , tilling , and pesticides.

Every year around 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean. That’s the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped into the ocean every single minute, every day of the year. There are 500 times

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more pieces of plastic in the ocean than there are stars in our galaxy. Once plastic is in the ocean, it is broken down into smaller pieces by the sun and salt. It becomes microplastic and gets incorporated into the food chain. There is plastic in the seafood we eat, the sea salt on our tables, our drinking water, and even beer. Even animals in the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in the ocean, have plastic in their guts. By 2050, there may be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

We created a material that lasts forever, and then we throw it away, all day, every day. That doesn’t make any sense. And of course, there is no “away.” Almost all the plastic that has ever been created is still with us. We must break our addiction to plastic, to a culture built around disposability. We must sit down and break bread together, look each other in the eye—and then wash the dishes.

The ocean produces over half of the oxygen we breathe. Perhaps you somehow find none of the above compelling. You hate seafood, and care neither for your fellow humans nor for nature’s splendor. Perhaps, however, you would like to keep breathing. Phytoplankton, the base of the marine food web, produces over half the oxygen in the air. Prochlorococcus is both the smallest and most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth. Humans have managed to even mess with this— phytoplankton is declining by about 1 percent a year due to warming waters with fewer nutrients. To continue respiring, we must address the climate crisis and protect the ocean.

For more on anticipating objections, see Chapter 6 .

We need a healthy ocean for our own health. And it’s ocean, singular. It’s all one thing, this 71 percent of the planet connected by currents and migrating animals. While people often discuss ocean health as all or nothing, as a dead ocean or a healthy one, there is a whole spectrum in between, from zero to one hundred. We must be honest with ourselves that with almost 8 billion people on the planet, one hundred is now out of our reach. But whether we land at 20 or at eight is within our control. So many lives, livelihoods, and cultures hang in that balance. So many

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Black lives, livelihoods, and cultures hang in that balance. Plus, the ocean is valuable for our mental health—being near it can literally keep us sane. The ocean will be fine without us; in fact, it would be much better off. However, the opposite is unequivocally untrue. We need the ocean.

It’s time to radically re-envision our relationship with the ocean. The way forward will be imagined and created as we build community around solutions. We must shift public opinion, corporate practices, and political will toward sustainability. Our future could be less plastic, with less toxic pollution coming from land, and less extractive. Our future could be more oysters on the half shell, more seaweed salads, more mangrove forests, more wind turbines , more vibrant coastal cultures, more joy, more justice. That’s what we should all be fighting for.

Now you know what I know. Perhaps now you will see this is your fight too.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Often, when people think about the ocean, they first picture the plants and animals who live in the ocean. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson responds to this standard view by asserting that “ocean conservation is about people” (paragraph 2) and advocating for “ocean justice” (paragraph 4). What communities, according to Johnson, are most impacted by “threats to ocean health” (paragraph 3)? Why do you think these people are most vulnerable to the effects of ocean pollution, overfishing, and warming ocean waters?

2. In the first half of her essay, Johnson explains how the current commercial fishing industry degrades the ocean’s health. What are three ways the commercial fishing industry adversely affects the ocean and coastal communities? What evidence does Johnson use to support her points?

3. In paragraph 13, Johnson presents a paradox: “The ocean stabilizes the climate, but that’s ruining the ocean.” How has the ocean responded to the excess heat and carbon produced by using fossil fuels for energy?

4. Johnson’s writing has a sense of momentum and direction because she carefully weaves together the parts of her essay with transitions, pointing words, and repetitions of key terms and phrases. Locate a paragraph in her article where she uses these connecting devices well. Describe the strategies you see her using in this paragraph. Refer to Chapter 9 for a thorough discussion of how writers use connecting devices to help guide their reader through their argument.

5. Johnson offers several solutions to preserving the health of the ocean and coastal communities: “We need to farm the ocean” (paragraph 12); “We must find just ways to move communities out of harm’s way” (paragraph 17); and “We must break our addiction to plastic” (paragraph 22). Pick one of these solutions to

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discuss with a classmate. What problem(s) will this solution solve? What is a challenge to adopting or implementing this solution? With your classmate, compose a counterargument to this solution that Johnson could include in her article. Use the strategies discussed in Chapter 6 to introduce and respond to this naysayer.

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Glossary

denuded to be stripped of its assets; made bare

overfishing catching so many fish that the supply is depleted and cannot recover

Gulf of Aden a deepwater basin forming a natural link between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea; located between the Arabian coast and the Horn of Africa, on the coast of eastern Africa

Artisanal fishermen a practitioner of traditional, small-scale, low-technology fishing

cornucopia a symbol of plenty, represented by a horn full of fruits, vegetables, and flowers

pH abbreviation for “potential hydrogen”; a scale that identifies whether a solution is acidic, neutral, or base

fossil fuels non-renewable energy sources, including oil, coal, and natural gas, formed naturally from the remains of dead plants and animals

wind farms consisting of a group of wind turbines, tall devices with turning rotor blades that harness the kinetic energy of air; used to produce electricity

hubris excessive self-confidence

mangroves trees or shrubs that grow in coastal swamps

wetlands areas where water is close to or at the surface of the land permanently or seasonally

archipelagic having one or more archipelagos, or groups of islands

putrid

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rotting or decaying, with a foul odor monocultures

farming systems that grow just one crop at a time tilling

preparing land to grow crops wind turbines

tall devices with turning rotor blades that harness the kinetic energy of air, used to produce electricity

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The Uninhabitable Earth

DAVID WALLACE-WELLS

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DAVID WALLACE -WELLS is a science journalist and a columnist for the New York Times. His writing on the climate crisis, technology, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been published in New York magazine, Paris Review , London Review of Books, and the Guardian. This piece is an excerpt from his 2019 book, The Uninhabitable Earth , an expansion of his 2017 essay of the same name, which holds the distinction of being the most-read story ever published in New York magazine. Wallace-Wells earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Brown University. He lives in New York City.

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FOR CENTURIES WE HAVE LOOKED to nature as a mirror onto which to first project, then observe, ourselves. But what is the moral? There is nothing to learn from global warming, because we do not have the time, or the distance, to contemplate its lessons; we are after all not merely telling the story but living it. That is, trying to; the threat is immense. How immense? One 2018 paper sketches the math in horrifying detail. In the journal Nature Climate Change , a team led by Drew Shindell tried to quantify the suffering that would be avoided if warming was kept to 1.5 degrees, rather than 2 degrees—in other words, how much additional suffering would result from just that additional half-degree of warming. Their answer: 150 million more people would die from air pollution alone in a 2-degree warmer world than in a 1.5-degree warmer one. Later that year, the IPCC raised the stakes further: in the gap between 1.5 degrees and 2, it said, hundreds of millions of lives were at stake.

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Numbers that large can be hard to grasp, but 150 million is the equivalent of twenty-five Holocausts. It is three times the size of the death toll of the Great Leap Forward —the largest nonmilitary death toll humanity has ever produced. It is more than twice the greatest death toll of any kind, World War II. The numbers don’t begin to climb only when we hit 1.5 degrees, of course. As should not surprise you, they are already accumulating, at a rate of at least seven million deaths, from air pollution alone, each year—an annual Holocaust, pursued and prosecuted by what brand of nihilism ?

This is what is meant when climate change is called an “existential crisis”—a drama we are now haphazardly improvising between two hellish poles, in which our best-case outcome is death and suffering at the scale of twenty-five Holocausts, and the worst-case outcome makes extinction a plausible, if unlikely, future. Rhetoric often fails us on climate because the only factually appropriate language is of a kind we’ve been trained, by a buoyant culture of sunny-side-up optimism, to dismiss, categorically, as hyperbole .

Here, the facts are hysterical , and the dimensions of the drama that will play out between those poles incomprehensibly large—large enough to enclose not just all of present-day humanity but all of our possible futures, as well. Global warming has improbably compressed into two generations the entire story of human civilization. First, the project of remaking the planet so that it is undeniably ours, a project whose exhaust, the poison of emissions, now casually works its way through millennia of ice so quickly you can see the melt with a naked eye, destroying the environmental conditions that have held stable and steadily governed for literally all of human history. That has been the work of a single generation. The second generation faces a very different task: the project of preserving our collective future, forestalling that devastation and engineering an alternate path. There is simply no analogy to draw on, outside of mythology and theology—and perhaps the Cold War prospect of mutually assured destruction.

Few feel like gods in the face of warming, but that the totality of climate change should make us feel so passive—that is another of its delusions. In folklore and comic books and church pews and movie

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theaters, stories about the fate of the earth often perversely counsel passivity in their audiences, and perhaps it should not surprise us that the threat of climate change is no different. By the end of the Cold War, the prospect of nuclear winter had clouded every corner of our pop culture and psychology, a pervasive nightmare that the human experiment might be brought to an end by two jousting sets of proud, rivalrous tacticians, just a few sets of twitchy hands hovering over the planet’s self-destruct buttons. The threat of climate change is more dramatic still, and ultimately more democratic, with responsibility shared by each of us even as we shiver in fear of it; and yet we have processed that threat only in parts, typically not concretely or explicitly, displacing certain anxieties and inventing others, choosing to ignore the bleakest features of our possible future and letting our political fatalism and technological faith blur, as though we’d gone cross-eyed, into a remarkably familiar consumer fantasy: that someone else will fix the problem for us, at no cost. Those more panicked are often hardly less complacent, living instead through climate fatalism as though it were climate optimism.

Over the last few years, as the planet’s own environmental rhythms have seemed to grow more fatalistic, skeptics have found themselves arguing not that climate change isn’t happening, since extreme weather has made that undeniable, but that its causes are unclear—suggesting that the changes we are seeing are the result of natural cycles rather than human activities and interventions. It is a very strange argument; if the planet is warming at a terrifying pace and on a horrifying scale, it should transparently concern us more, rather than less, that the warming is beyond our control, possibly even our comprehension.

That we know global warming is our doing should be a comfort, not a cause for despair, however incomprehensively large and complicated we find the processes that have brought it into being; that we know we are, ourselves, responsible for all of its punishing effects should be empowering, and not just perversely. Global warming is, after all, a human invention. And the flip side of our real-time guilt is that we remain in command. No matter how out-of-control the climate system seems—with its roiling typhoons, unprecedented famines and heat waves, refugee crises and climate conflicts—we are all its authors. And still writing.

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Some, like our oil companies and their political patrons, are more prolific authors than others. But the burden of responsibility is too great to be shouldered by a few, however comforting it is to think all that is needed is for a few villains to fall. Each of us imposes some suffering on our future selves every time we flip on a light switch, buy a plane ticket, or fail to vote. Now we all share the responsibility to write the next act. We found a way to engineer devastation, and we can find a way to engineer our way out of it—or, rather, engineer our way toward a degraded muddle, but one that nevertheless extends forward the promise of new generations finding their own way forward, perhaps toward some brighter environmental future.

Since I first began writing about warming, I’ve often been asked whether I see any reason for optimism. The thing is, I am optimistic. Given the prospect that humans could engineer a climate that is 4 or 5 degrees warmer over the course of the next several centuries—large swaths of the planet unlivable by any definition we use today—that degraded muddle counts, for me, as an encouraging future. Warming of 2 or 2.5 degrees would probably unleash suffering beyond anything that humans have ever experienced through many millennia of strain and strife and all-out war. But it is not a fatalistic scenario; in fact, it’s a whole lot better than where we are headed. And in the form of carbon capture technology, which would extract CO2 from the air, or geoengineering, which would cool the planet by suspending gas in the atmosphere, or other now-unfathomable innovations, we may conjure new solutions, which could bring the planet closer to a state we would today regard as merely grim, rather than apocalyptic.

I’ve also often been asked whether it’s moral to reproduce in this climate, whether it’s responsible to have children, whether it is fair to the planet or, perhaps more important, to the children. As it happens, in the course of writing this book, I did have a child, Rocca. Part of that choice was climate delusion, that same willful blindness: I know there are horrors to come, some of which will inevitably be visited on my children —that is what it means for warming to be an all-encompassing, all- touching threat. Part of it was climate privilege: knowing the horrors will be less intense for some parts of the world than others. But those horrors are also not yet scripted. We are staging them by inaction, and by action

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can stop them. Climate change means some bleak prospects for the decades ahead, but I don’t believe the appropriate response to that challenge is withdrawal, is surrender. I think you have to do everything you can to make the world accommodate dignified and flourishing life, rather than giving up early, before the fight has been lost or won, and acclimating yourself to a dreary future brought into being by others less concerned about climate pain. The fight is, definitively, not yet lost—in fact will never be lost, so long as we avoid extinction, because however warm the planet gets, it will always be the case that the decade that follows could contain more suffering or less. And I have to admit, I am also excited, for everything that Rocca and her sisters and brothers will see, will witness, will do. She will hit her child-rearing years around 2050, when we could have climate refugees in the many tens of millions; she will be entering old age at the close of the century, the end-stage bookmark on all of our projections for warming. In between, she will watch the world doing battle with a genuinely existential threat, and the people of her generation making a future for themselves, and the generations they bring into being, on this planet. And she won’t just be watching it, she will be living it—quite literally the greatest story ever told. It may well bring a happy ending.

What cause is there for hope? Carbon hangs in the air for decades, with some of the most terrifying feedbacks unspooling over even longer time horizons—which gives warming the eerie shimmer of an unending menace. But climate change is not an ancient crime we are tasked with solving now; we are destroying our planet every day, often with one hand as we conspire to restore it with the other. Which means, as Paul Hawken has perhaps illustrated most coolheadedly, we can also stop destroying it, in the same style—collectively, haphazardly, in all the most quotidian ways in addition to the spectacular-seeming ones. The project of unplugging the entire industrial world from fossil fuels is intimidating, and must be done in fairly short order—by 2040, many scientists say. But in the meantime many avenues are open—wide open, if we are not too lazy and too blinkered and too selfish to embark upon them.

Fully half of British emissions, it was recently calculated, come from inefficiencies in construction, discarded and unused food, electronics, and clothing; two-thirds of American energy is wasted; globally, according to the IMF , we are subsidizing the fossil fuel business more than $5 trillion each year. None of that has to continue. Slow-walking

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action on climate, another optimistic paper found, could cost the world $26 trillion by just 2030. That does not have to continue. Americans waste a quarter of their food, which means that the carbon footprint of the average meal is a third larger than it has to be. That need not continue, either.

These are just a few of the reasons to believe that what the Canadian activist Stuart Parker has called “climate nihilism” is, in fact, another of our delusions. What happens, from here, will be entirely our own doing. The planet’s future will be determined in large part by the arc of growth in the developing world—that’s where most of the people are, in China and India and, increasingly, sub-Saharan Africa. But this is no absolution for the West, where the average citizen produces many times more emissions than almost anyone in Asia, just out of habit. I toss out tons of wasted food and hardly ever recycle; I leave my air-conditioning on; I bought into Bitcoin at the peak of the market. None of that is necessary, either.

But it also isn’t necessary for Westerners to adopt the lifestyle of the global poor. Seventy percent of the energy produced by the planet, it’s estimated, is lost as waste heat. If the average American were confined by the carbon footprint of her European counterpart, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by more than half. If the world’s richest 10 percent were limited to that same footprint, global emissions would fall by a third. And why shouldn’t they be? Almost as a prophylactic against climate guilt, as the news from science has grown bleaker, Western liberals have comforted themselves by contorting their own consumption patterns into performances of moral or environmental purity—less beef, more Teslas, fewer transatlantic flights. But the climate calculus is such that individual lifestyle choices do not add up to much, unless they are scaled by politics. America’s rump climate party aside, that scaling should not be impossible, once we understand the stakes. In fact, the stakes mean, it must not be.

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Joining the Conversation

1. What is motivating David Wallace-Wells’s argument? What arguments and beliefs about the climate crisis is he responding to? Locate where in his argument he includes these views, and summarize his “they say” in your own words.

2. Wallace-Wells projects a dogged optimism throughout his essay, even in the face of the dire statistics he presents about the effects of the climate crisis. In paragraph 7, he writes, “that we know global warming is our doing should be a comfort, not a cause for despair.” What is his reasoning for this argument? Why is this knowledge “empowering,” according to Wallace-Wells? Do you agree with Wallace-Wells? Why or why not?

3. One of the reasons Wallace-Wells’s argument is so effective is the specificity and clarity of his prose. Pick one sentence in his piece that you find particularly impactful. What choices do you notice him making as a writer to sway your opinion? How does his language and evidence persuade you?

4. Toward the end of this excerpt, Wallace-Wells offers his response to the question of “whether it is moral to reproduce in this climate” (paragraph 10). What is his answer? What justification does he give for his response? Do you find this response satisfying? Why or why not?

5. In their essay, “Should We Be More Optimistic about Fighting Climate Change?” (pp. 514–23 ), Alice Chen and Vivek Murthy also argue for the importance of optimism in responding to the climate crisis. Chen and Murthy name how industries in the public and private sectors have innovated to respond to the climate crisis. How do you think Wallace-Wells would respond to their argument? On what points would they agree? What arguments forwarded by Chen and Murthy do you think Wallace- Wells would disagree with? Why?

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Glossary

Great Leap Forward campaign (1958–62) led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to develop China from an agrarian society into an industrialized one, following a commune system that turned private property into commonly owned property

nihilism a lack of religious or moral principles; a belief that life is meaningless

hyperbole an exaggerated statement

hysterical showing extreme, uncontrollable emotion

jousting adjective derived from the medieval and Renaissance sport where two knights on horseback, bearing wooden lances, would compete to knock each other off their mount

Paul Hawken American environmentalist (b. 1946)

IMF International Monetary Fund, a global financial institution under the umbrella of the United Nations, with a mission to foster international trade, growth, and economic stability

carbon footprint The amount of greenhouse gases (which trap heat in the atmosphere) that are generated by human actions. These greenhouse gases then create an effect that leads to global warming.

prophylactic a preventative measure

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Should We Be More Optimistic about Fighting Climate Change?

ALICE CHEN AND VIVEK MURTHY

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ALICE CHEN , an internal medicine physician, served as executive director and a founding board member of Doctors for America. She is an assistant clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She cowrote this essay, which appeared in Harvard Business Review on September 16, 2019, with her husband, VIVEK MURTHY , also a physician and the nineteenth and twenty-first surgeon general of the United States. He is the author of the book Together: The Healing Power of Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World (2020).

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THERE ARE TWO STORIES ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE . The first is the one you hear the most: that if we don’t dramatically curb greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade, there will be dire consequences to our health and way of life. The second story is about optimism. It’s about how innovations large and small are helping us to mitigate these dangers and transform our economy and our lives.

Both stories are true. But the second one is rarely told. It’s also the reason why we believe that reining in climate change is possible. As doctors and entrepreneurs, we have witnessed the extraordinary capacity that people have to surmount challenges and maintain hope in the most difficult circumstances. Alice is the former Executive Director of Doctors for America, and has practiced medicine in California and Washington, DC. Vivek, before serving as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States, co-founded a clinical trial optimization company and

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two organizations focused on improving health in India. From health care’s frontlines we’ve witnessed the catastrophic costs of climate change, and have seen the public and private sectors—to varying degrees —respond. It is why we are both increasingly worried, and increasingly optimistic. And why we want you to be, too.

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Diagnosis: Climate Change

When we think about the major health challenges facing the world, we tend to think about mental illness, violence, malnutrition, and chronic illnesses like heart and lung diseases. It surprises many to learn that climate change is the greatest public health challenge facing communities around the world. But where there is risk, there is also opportunity; Nielsen estimates that by 2021, one quarter of total store sales in the U.S. ($150 billion) will be sustainable products. What’s more, those products are expected to outperform traditional products. We are heartened by this, but not altogether surprised. As physicians, we know that patients we have cared for throughout the years stand to be increasingly affected by climate change. We also know that these people are not just our patients, but they are also your employees, colleagues, and customers, maybe even yourself and your family. The choices you make today—big ones about carbon neutrality and small ones like the kind of light bulb in your desk lamp—are going to influence their lives tomorrow.

See Chapter 8 for more on establishing why your claims matter.

The impact of climate change hits close to home for us. Our families still live in California and Miami where we each grew up—in neighborhoods at risk from increasing wildfires, drought, hurricanes, and sea level rise. Our young son and daughter are too young to understand, but they will live with the consequences of what we do today to protect their world. This became exceedingly evident to us in November 2018, when Northern California was bathed in a deep and noxious smoke.

Two hundred miles north of San Francisco the largest wildfire in California’s history—named the Camp Fire—was burning. In the Bay Area, home to over 7 million people, the smoke hovered overhead.

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Children couldn’t go outside during recess, and many schools closed entirely. People wore masks whenever they stepped outside. Emergency rooms and doctors offices filled as people struggled to breathe. Many people with particularly sensitive family members—babies, the elderly, asthmatics, and others with chronic illnesses—temporarily fled from the area. By the time it was contained, it had consumed more land than the city of Chicago and destroyed 500 businesses. In nearby Chico, 10% of their workforce lost their homes. Many were unable to find new housing they could afford, so they moved away, straining an already tight labor market.

A report by the global insurance group Munich RE found that the Camp Fire was the costliest natural disaster in the world in 2018 at $16.5 billion. PG&E, California’s largest electric utility, cited wildfire liabilities of $30 billion from 2017 and 2018 fires when they filed for bankruptcy in early 2019. It was the sixth largest corporate bankruptcy filing ever. Their 16 million customers will see rate increases to pay for costly court-ordered wildfire prevention work, including clearing power lines from the branches of an estimated 120 million trees. Increasingly homes and businesses at the interface between city and natural spaces— some of the most sought after communities—are becoming uninsurable.

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It’s not just wildfires, and it’s not just California. According to a survey released December 2018, nearly half of Americans (46%) said they have personally felt the effects of climate change. The number who actually have is almost certainly higher. Warmer oceans mean more frequent and severe hurricanes that are flooding cities, causing extended power outages, shuttering businesses including hospitals and clinics, and creating short- and long-term stress for all those in the potential path of the storm. When Florida residents went online to buy supplies ahead of Hurricane Irma, they found 2-day shipping that had extended to 13 days —after the storm would have passed. E-commerce increased to 14.3% of total retail sales in the U.S. in 2018, making extreme weather a threat to a growing segment of businesses and the economy.

Beyond the immediate economic impact, extreme weather increases the risks and costs of employees who work outdoors, in construction, delivering mail and packages, utility maintenance, farming, or policing, for example. These workers have the greatest exposure to not only catastrophic extremes, but also extended pollen seasons that are worsening people’s allergies and asthma and, as the territories for tick- and mosquito-borne illnesses expand, are also increasingly at risk of getting sick from Lyme disease , dengue, and Zika .

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A Dose of Optimism

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the climate change crisis. But not only can this be dangerous, it ignores the progress we have made in the five decades since scientists first sounded the alarm on climate change. Now, for the first time, new renewable energy has become cheaper than existing coal in the U.S. Consumers are choosing sustainable products at a higher rate each year. Even Royal Dutch Shell, the largest oil company in the world, is responding to shareholder pressure by looking to renewables and energy efficiency in transportation. Sweden is committed to eliminating fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2040 and is challenging every other country to race them to 100%. Germany’s renewables have outstripped coal, and on one windy, sunny day this past Easter Monday, they generated 77% of the nation’s electricity needs with renewables. This is climate change’s second story. And it is one that should both give us hope and spur us to further action.

For more on how to disagree and explain why, see Chapter 4 .

In 2017, Walmart launched Project Gigaton, an initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the global value chain. More than 200 suppliers of products that are a part of our everyday lives have joined that effort, bringing sustainability—whether we know it or not—to our laundry piles, refrigerators, and showers. For example, because up to 90% of a washing machine’s energy use goes toward heating water, Tide had reformulated their laundry detergent to clean well in cold water and launched a new campaign to challenge consumers to make the switch to cold. Similarly, Anheuser-Busch built a massive wind farm in Oklahoma that supplies enough electricity to cover all of the Budweiser beer brewed in the U.S. Kellogg has established a goal of training half a million U.S. farmers in techniques that lower greenhouse gas emissions,

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and Unilever has reached nearly 50% post-consumer recycled materials for plastic packaging.

For more evidence of progress, we look to Boston-based Indigo Ag and their Terraton Initiative, a private carbon market that will pay farmers to capture carbon in the soil by switching to regenerative farming practices—including no tilling , crop rotations, cover crops, and livestock grazing. Indigo Ag estimates that transitioning all of the world’s agricultural lands to these more sustainable practices has the potential to take 1 terraton (1 trillion tons) of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, nearly as much as we have put into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Commitments in the private sector go hand in hand with what is happening in the public sector. In the U.S., more than 100 cities and 8 states plus the District of Columbia have committed to 100% renewable energy. China is outstripping the rest of the world in installation of solar power. Scotland harnessed so much wind energy in the first half of 2019 that it could power all Scottish homes twice for the year. Kenya gets half its power from geothermal sources, capturing heat coming from deep within the East African Rift. Morocco is building the world’s largest concentrated solar plant.

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In California, business and political leaders are not waiting for the wildfires and droughts of climate change to take apart the fifth largest economy in the world. In 2018, the state made a commitment to 100% zero-carbon energy sources by 2045. In that same year, the all-electric Tesla Model 3 became the top-selling passenger vehicle in the state. And this past July, four of the world’s largest automakers—Ford, BMW, Honda, and Volkswagen—sided with California in a surprise deal to produce more fuel-efficient cars, rejecting Trump administration efforts to roll back Obama-era standards.

Each of these examples takes us one step closer to ensuring climate stability. Closer to managing the stress and destruction and loss that comes to increasingly frequent natural disasters. Closer to protecting ourselves and our most vulnerable—the elderly, children, and those with chronic disease like congestive heart failure—from increasingly common extreme heat.

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Where We Need to Go Together

The Paris Agreement in 2015 has been adopted by every nation on earth, even war-torn Syria, which was the last to join the global climate effort. And while the Trump administration has announced an intention to withdraw the United States from the Agreement, it cannot legally do so until November 2020. We should demand that governments play the bold leadership role that is needed in this moment. In the meantime, a groundswell of people in the private sector and state and local governments are rising to the challenge with the “We Are Still In” campaign. They recognize that every one of us must build on the successes to date and rapidly transform how we live and do business because the window of opportunity is small, and there is a job for all of us to do.

Consider how even changing a light bulb can make a difference. Thomas Edison changed the world when he invented the incandescent bulb in 1895 by dramatically expanding the hours during which it was possible to work, read, and socialize. But the incandescent bulb has one major drawback: it only turns 10% of the energy it uses into light. The rest is lost as heat. Following the 1973 oil crisis, General Electric tried to popularize fluorescent lights, which were more energy efficient. But the blueish, flickering light felt jarring and most families opted to stick with Edison. Finally, in 2011, the first LED light bulbs to replace standard bulbs were introduced. They had the warmth and constant light of incandescents but used up to 90% less energy and lasted up to 25 times longer.

At first many of us were shocked that a light bulb could cost $50. But enough of us chose to try them—millions of us in fact—that the prices dropped rapidly. By 2017, the cost dropped to less than $2 per bulb, and for the first time, LED bulbs topped sales of household replacement light bulbs in the U.S. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now estimates that if every household in America switched to EnergyStar®

LEDs in their top 5 most used light fixtures, we would save enough energy to light 33 million homes for a year, and save nearly $5 billion a

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year in energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from nearly 6 million cars. This is a boon for businesses and cities, which are increasingly installing LEDs into offices, factories, street lights, and traffic lights. The wins here pile up; they are saving on the cost of energy, and also on productivity, as they spend less time switching out broken light bulbs and worn out fluorescent tubes.

This sounds like a good story on its own, but there’s still another frontier when it comes to lighting. Solar powered LED lanterns are promising an even more dramatic reduction in traditional energy needs while expanding access to light for the more than 1 billion people who are not on the electricity grid. Here, again, we see the intersection of public health, climate change, and innovation. Before LEDs, kerosene lamps were a major contributor in many parts of the world to indoor air pollution that caused respiratory and eye problems, not to mention the risk of burns and fire. Solar powered LED lanterns—and other solar and local renewable energy sources—mean that people around the world can extend their lives by living in healthier conditions, but they are also a shining example of the possibilities ahead as we innovate and open new markets as solar panels, batteries, and LEDs converge.

Next week, the UN Climate Change Summit in New York is bringing together nations to share progress and commitments and to challenge one another to be bolder and faster in a global race to outpace climate change. One year ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report that showed that we have to cut our carbon emissions in half in 11 years—by 2030—on our way to net zero emissions by 2050 and negative emissions after that in order to avoid the most catastrophic and irreparable changes. This is about the bottom line and productivity, yes. It is also about our health. None of us can wait for the biggest, most powerful players to take action.

Our research and experience tell us that now is the moment to turn the tide. Ultimately, success in combating climate change will mean all of us working together with as much speed and thoughtfulness as we can. Each of us must find ways to have impact, whether that’s launching bold initiatives to reduce carbon emissions in your company, connecting with your trade association to build strength in numbers, or even just

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changing the light bulb in your desk lamp. It is time to rapidly adopt solutions that are working and improve upon them. We do not have time to dwell too long on why we cannot win and must focus on why we can, and must, win.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Alice Chen and Vivek Murthy use a classic “they say / I say” format in this article. Restate it in your own words, and summarize how the authors support their argument.

2. The authors are physicians and experienced leaders of major medical organizations. They published this article in the Harvard Business Review , a general management magazine read by managers in business, industry, government, and the nonprofit world. In what ways can you tell that the article is intended for an audience of executives as opposed to activists or general readers?

3. The article describes a number of climate-related disasters that would seem to offer strong reasons for pessimism. Why do you think the authors are so adamant about the importance of staying optimistic that the problems they discuss can be solved?

4. The authors bring in examples from their own and other people’s experiences as well as statistical findings from research. What, in your view, is the power of this personal way of arguing? What, if any, are its limitations?

5. Write a paragraph responding to Chen and Murthy with your own view of optimism versus pessimism in fighting climate change. In developing your response, feel free to draw on and enter into conversation with other readings from this chapter.

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Glossary

carbon neutrality striking a balance between emitting and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, accomplished by reducing emissions that primarily come from the burning of fossil fuels, non-renewable energy sources, including oil, coal, and natural gas, formed naturally from the remains of dead plants and animals

Lyme disease a bacterial disease transferred to humans via bites from infected ticks. Symptons include headache, fever, fatigue, and a circular “bull’s eye” rash.

dengue, and Zika viral infections transmitted to humans from mosquitoes, primarily in tropical and sub-tropical climates

fossil fuels non-renewable energy sources, including oil, coal, and natural gas, formed naturally from the remains of dead plants and animals

tilling preparing land to grow crops

geothermal produced by the Earth’s internal heat

LED light bulbs acronym for Light-Emitting Diode (a two-terminal electric component that conducts or sends a current in one direction). LED light bulbs are particularly energy efficient.

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Going Nuclear

MATT RIDLEY

* * *

MATT RIDLEY is a British science journalist and author of several books, including How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom (2020), The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge (2015), and The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010). His writing has been published in the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times (London). As the 5th Viscount Ridley, he is a British hereditary peer and served as an elected conservative member of the House of Lords from 2013 to 2021. A graduate of Oxford University, Ridley is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Academy of Medical Sciences. This article was published in National Review in 2020.

________

IF YOU JUDGE BY THE IMAGES used to illustrate reports about energy, the world now runs mainly on wind and solar power. It comes as a shock to look up the numbers. In 2019 wind and solar between them supplied just 1.5 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Hydro supplied 2.6 percent, nuclear 1.7 percent, and all the rest—94 percent—came from burning things: coal, oil, gas, wood, and biofuels .

As Mark Twain might say , reports of an energy transition away from combustion as a source of energy are greatly exaggerated. True, carbon- dioxide emissions are rising more slowly than energy consumption, but that is mainly because gas is displacing coal. The rise of renewables has so far not even compensated for the recent decline of nuclear—a decline renewables have contributed to causing because intermittent renewable energy hits the profitability of nuclear power hardest. Nuclear cannot be easily switched on and off.

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So the thermodynamic explanation of the world economy remains the same as it has since the industrial revolution liberated us from reliance mainly on the (renewable) muscles of people, horses, and oxen or the vagaries of (renewable) trade winds. We use the heat of flames to do useful things, such as move stuff around, light and heat our homes, manufacture goods, grow crops with tractors, power the Internet.

The main change in recent years has been that energy is increasingly centrally planned. Instead of a market deciding between fuels, the government picks favorites to subsidize, and then subsidizes the old ones, too, when it finds it has poisoned the market against them. Throughout the Western world energy markets are coerced. The development pipeline, corporate rhetoric, and fuel-market shares are all determined by policy.

This has some perverse consequences. Lobbied by firms such as General Electric, Sylvania, and Philips, governments all over the world forced consumers to give up incandescent light bulbs in favor of expensive compact fluorescent bulbs, ostensibly to save energy. All this achieved was a delay in the voluntary replacement of both by a much more efficient, safe, and reliable form of lighting: LEDs.

The world needs energy innovation if it is to reduce the use of fossil fuels, as almost every politician now demands. But things such as electric cars merely displace the flame from engine to power station. Whether that reduces emissions at all depends on how much of the electricity comes from coal, gas or other sources, on how much energy is used to make the battery, and how long the battery lasts. Under even the most optimistic assumptions, the emissions reductions are small. And although the efficiency of energy consumption is improving, it cannot solve the problem. First, many people in developing countries are still without electricity or transport fuel. Energy demand will increase as their incomes grow. Second, as the economist William Stanley Jevons pointed out in 1865, if you make coal (or light or flight) cheaper, people use more of it. Efficiency gains increase demand.

It is in the generation, not the consumption, of energy that innovation is needed. Here there is another obstacle. History shows that you cannot

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demand a particular innovation and expect it to turn up, however generous the incentives you offer. If you could, then the supersonic planes, routine space travel, and personal jetpacks we were promised in the 1950s would have long since arrived. Instead we have been using 747s for 50 years: We ran out of big innovations in transport.

For almost as long we have been asking inventors to find a way of generating cheap, reliable, and safe energy without producing carbon- dioxide. Frankly, it is now clear that renewables cannot do it. They tap low-density energy sources, so they need a lot of space. No amount of innovation will alter that constraint. There are not enough rivers to dam, tidal basins to barrage, or hills to festoon with wind turbines , at least not without destroying too much nature. It takes 150 tons of coal to make a wind turbine, and two tons of rare-earth metals. (Governments and market hucksters insist that wind energy is now cheap. Audited accounts of the firms that build wind farms reveal that this is untrue.)

There is enough desert space for the solar panels we would need—in the Sahara mainly—but the cost of getting it to where the energy is used, and storing it for use during the night or turning it into jet fuel, remains astronomical, however fast the cost of solar panels themselves falls. As for waves, or ground-source heat pumps, or geo thermal energy, they remain niche opportunities with little prospect of denting demand for oil and gas.

Nuclear power could supply all our needs from a comparatively tiny footprint of land and steel, but we have made innovation in nuclear all but impossible by massively increasing the cost and time required to license a new design. So we stick with an old and inefficient design that uses water coolant and solid fuel, while distorted energy markets leave the nuclear industry begging for subsidies equivalent to those received by the renewables industry. Molten-salt reactors will one day be more efficient, safer, and cheaper, but only if there is a revolution in regulation as much as one in technology. Keep your eye on Canada, which is trying to achieve this.

Fusion energy is another innovation we promised but failed to deliver. In theory a small quantity of heavy water (containing deuterium )

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and lithium (to make tritium) could power a town, if the atoms could be induced to fuse. It works in H-bombs. But doing this in a controlled way has proved elusive for half a century. There is renewed hope, however, that low-temperature superconductors and “ spherical tokamak ” designs may yet crack the problem of controlled fusion and that by 2040 we will have abundant, cheap, reliable energy on tap.

If that were to happen, through molten-salt fission or through fusion, imagine what we could do. We could synthesize fuel for transport, dismantle wind turbines and oil pipelines, stop burning trees in power stations, desalinate enough water to supply the human race without touching wild rivers, and suck carbon-dioxide out of the air. Above all, we could raise the standard of living of the poorest on the planet. It is surely worth a try.

Meanwhile, here is a worrying trend. Energy consumption in the West is stalling and in some sectors, such as electricity, falling sharply. No one really believes that efficiency accounts for all of that. What is going on?

In effect, the West has outsourced its energy consumption to China. Xi Jinping’s announcement in September that China will be carbon- neutral by 2060 was merely a cheap headline-grabber. In the same speech he announced that China’s emissions will rise until 2030 and, implicitly, remain high for quite some time thereafter. It’s 30 years from 2030 to 2060. That was news.

China will hoover up and employ as much of the world’s fossil fuels as possible in the next few decades. Naïve divestment campaigns will simply play into Chinese hands. If Harvard sells its fossil investments, someone will buy them. Who?

With the wealth created from cheap coal, oil, and gas, China will then head for nuclear. Along with Russia, China has been involved in two-thirds of global nuclear development in the last 20 years. The future of energy thus depends on whether the West wakes up to the need to do the same or persists in its renewables folly until it is too late to change course.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Matt Ridley challenges what he says is the popular misconception that “the world now runs mainly on wind and solar power” (paragraph 1). Summarize his “I say” response to this “they say” argument. What evidence does he cite to back up his claims?

2. One of Ridley’s main claims is that renewable energy sources— wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric dams, and geothermal pumps—will never be able to produce adequate amounts of energy to meet the world’s energy needs. Why won’t these forms of energy production work on a large scale? What resources do these forms of energy require? What are some of the logistical challenges in collecting and distributing the energy created through renewable sources?

3. Ridley promotes nuclear energy as the solution to producing massive amounts of clean, emission-free energy, yet he points out that innovation in nuclear energy is stalled because government subsidies are directed to the renewable energy industries, not nuclear energy. Why do you think policymakers might be hesitant to invest in new forms of nuclear energy production? Do a little research on molten-salt nuclear reactors, one of the nuclear energy innovations Ridley mentions in his article. What did you learn that may assuage some of the concerns policymakers have about nuclear energy production?

4. So what? Ridley names several reasons his argument matters. Find one place in his essay where he responds to the “so what?” question. What does he say are the consequences of not investing in new forms of nuclear energy production?

5. Ridley is a self-described libertarian, and in this essay, he warns of the “perverse consequences” of having government policy dictate the direction of the energy industry (paragraph 5). In their essay in this chapter, Alice Chen and Vivek Murthy take an opposite approach. In the section “A Dose of Optimism” (pp.

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514–23 ), Chen and Murthy describe how policymakers and business leaders have successfully collaborated on clean energy initiatives. Imagine Ridley is having a conversation with Chen and Murthy. What would he argue? What might they say in response? Compose this conversation as a back-and-forth chat that might be posted on a class discussion board.

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Glossary

biofuel fuel derived from plant material or animal waste, called “biomass.”

Mark Twain might say Allusion to American humorist known as Mark Twain (1835–1910), who, when asked in 1837 by the New York Journal whether he was seriously ill, replied, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Twain was misquoted in 1912, by his biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, as responding, “Just say the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.”

incandescent emits light when heated

fluorescent produces light when an electric discharge runs through a bulb filled with mercury vapor.

747s The first wide-body commercial airplanes in the United States, manufactured by Boeing. Also known as “jumbo jets,” their first flight was in 1969.

wind turbines tall devices with turning rotor blades that harness the kinetic energy of air, used to produce electricity

Sahara located on the African continent; the largest hot desert in the world

nuclear power uses nuclear reactions such as fission (dividing a nucleus into smaller parts), decay, or fusion (drawing two nuclei together), to generate energy. These reactions come with a risk of accidents and radioactive waste. “Nuclear” refers to “nucleus,” or the core of an atom.

water coolant a fluid that prevents engines from overheating

Molten-salt reactors a nuclear fission reactor fueled by a mixture of molten salt (a salt that liquifies under hot temperatures) and a fissionable material (that will

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divide into smaller parts) Fusion energy

energy generated by using heat from nuclear fusion deuterium

a stable isotope of hydrogen, used in nuclear fusion reactors lithium (to make tritium)

exposing the element lithium to activated, or energetic, neurons can generate trithium

spherical tokamak a spherical device that uses a magnetic field to produce thermonuclear fusion power

desalinate remove salt from seawater

Xi Jinping president of the People’s Republic of China (2013–present)

divestment the process of selling off secondary business interests or investments

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Mauna Kea: The Fight to Preserve Culture

SANDIS EDWARD WAIALAE WIGHTMAN

* * *

SANDIS EDWARD WAIALAE WIGHTMAN wrote this essay in a first-year writing class at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where he pursued a double major in behavioral sciences and English. Born and raised on the US mainland, Wightman is Hawaiian and has danced hula for ten years. He states that this piece allowed him to both reconnect with his culture and raise awareness about an important debate about culture and politics on the island of Hawaii. This essay was nominated for the Norton Writer’s Prize. It is documented using MLA style.

________

U A MAU KE EA O KA ‘AINA I KA PONO . This Hawaiian motto translates to “The life of the land is preserved in righteousness.” Hawaiians have always felt the need to protect their land, but the threat they face today is the Thirty Meter Telescope, also known as the TMT, which is scheduled for construction atop Mauna Kea, a revered mountain on Hawaii’s Big Island. Those building the telescope say that location is ideal and that the telescope will be an innovation in astronomical imagery. However, Mauna Kea, considered the birthplace of Hawaii, has maintained its cultural significance since King Kamehameha united the islands in 1810. The deep respect Hawaiians have for their land has resulted in a long- standing cultural practice of stewardship, especially of Mauna Kea. Construction of the TMT would restrict Hawaiians’ access to Mauna Kea, leading to stewardship by outsiders, and it would separate Hawaiians from a significant source of their culture and a sacred space. While some might argue that those protesting the telescope are just

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resistant to science, the history of Hawaiian discoveries and their use of technology contradicts that, demonstrating that their resistance is not to science itself but to the takeover of an important part of their landscape.

Astronomers argue that mountaintops are desirable for telescope installation due to their remote locations and high vantage points; however, many mountains are also revered by Indigenous peoples. For example, Shannon Hall writes in Scientific American that the San Carlos Apache tribe battled astronomers over Mount Graham in Arizona during the 1980s. The mountain was a place of worship for the tribe, and astronomers wanted to build three telescopes on it. Eventually, all three telescopes were built (Hall).

Like the Apaches, Hawaiians are not strangers to having outsiders decide what gets done with their land. A history of the islands put together by the Hawaii Tourism Authority explains that in the 1700s, Captain Cook arrived and promptly attempted to rename Hawaii “the Sandwich Islands.” Then, in the 1800s, Queen Liliuokalani was imprisoned in Iolani Palace during an American-led coup; this resulted in the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii, turning it into a US territory (“Brief History”). But even though Hawaii is no longer a sovereign nation, land disputes between Hawaiians and others continue to this day.

In fact, the dispute over Mauna Kea has been going on for decades: attempts to build on the mountain have been met with protests since the 1990s. As in Arizona, courts said that the construction should move forward, including the Supreme Court of Hawaii in 2018. However, protests continued after that decision. Since July 2019, a permanent camp of protesters has kept the construction from starting. In addition, according to an article from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Hawaiian scientists recently asked that an important industry report “ensure that no federal money is used to build on state land without the consent of local Indigenous people” (Clery). Though the two sides declared a truce in late 2019—the protesters wouldn’t block the roads, and construction wouldn’t start on the telescope—the project remains delayed (Clery).

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Protesters continue to fight because Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island, is considered a source of life and is revered by the Hawaiian people. Joseph E. Ciotti explains in The Hawaiian Journal of History that its name is Hawaiian for “White Mountain,” referring to the snow that can often be found on the summit in the wintertime. When measured from its base at the ocean floor to its peak, it is the largest mountain on the planet. It is considered a source of life because the island of Hawaii was formed by the lava that erupted from Mauna Kea; the mountain birthed the island. Some parents even travel 750 feet below the summit to Lake Wai’au to offer the umbilical cord of their newborn children (Ciotti 148). Hawaiians respect Mauna Kea because just as it gave life to Hawaii, the people know that its eruptions can also destroy them. Mauna Kea didn’t just create Hawaii; it provided for the Hawaiian people in other ways. Because Mauna Kea is the tallest point on the island, it was used as a lookout point to watch for invaders, and when the snow at the summit melted, it trickled down and watered the plant life and served as a water source for the people. Ancient Hawaiians, who were skilled astronomers, would even go to Mauna Kea to look at the stars and create maps, without the aid of telescopes.

For more on summarizing, see Chapter 2 .

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Mauna Kea volcano.

The Hawaiian people’s history with astronomy proves that the issue they have with the TMT does not stem from a lack of interest in astronomy or in scientific discovery. In fact, astronomy has been a part of Hawaiian culture for centuries. According to the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, many stories told by ancient Hawaiians included the stars, and their navigators had a great appreciation for and understanding of the skies above them, as well as how wind, waves, cloud formations, birds, and fish could guide them. These travelers ventured on expeditions to places like Easter Island and New Zealand in their canoes. Captain Cook’s arrival on Kauai in the late 1700s brought tools such as spyglasses , clocks, and charts. The Hawaiians easily adapted to this new technology, but the vast and ancient knowledge of the sky was quickly forgotten, as was the lore (“Astronomy”). Historically, Hawaiians have been very innovative and welcoming of new technologies. The Hawaiian people have simply weighed the importance of the telescope against the importance of the birthplace of their homeland. To many Hawaiians, any benefits this telescope brings are not worth the effects it will have on their culture.

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Mauna Kea telescopes.

However, astronomers argue that the telescope is necessary for scientific innovation. According to the project’s website, the TMT, or Thirty Meter Telescope, is currently being built by TMT International Observatory, a nonprofit organization established in May 2014. Members of this group include Caltech, the National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, the Department of Science and Technology of India, and others (“The Process”). The website also explains that “the Thirty Meter Telescope is a new class of extremely large telescopes that will allow us to see deeper into space and observe cosmic objects with unprecedented sensitivity” (“About”). The site claims that images from the TMT are more than twelve times sharper than images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

See Chapter 6 for tips on how to name your naysayers.

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Scientists interested in seeing these images hope there can be compromise, and many Hawaiians agree. A 2015 article in Nature detailed the points of view of several people involved with the dispute, including Doug Simons, a thirty-year resident of Hawaii. “There is no way to make everybody happy on the mountain,” he says. “Historically, these things have been worked through some sort of give-and-take process—I don’t see why that can’t happen here” (qtd. in Witze 28). The Nature article also profiles Alexis Acohido, part Native Hawaiian, who heard about the telescope construction during a summer astronomy internship: “‘What they had planned sounded really awesome,’ she says. ‘I thought it would be cool to have for Hawaii’” (26).

But despite the willingness of some Hawaiians to compromise, others are worried about allowing outsiders to take control of the mountain. Respect for the ‘aina , or land, is a major part of Hawaiian culture. For centuries, Hawaiians have acted as stewards of the islands. They see it as their cultural responsibility, because of everything the land provides for them. This is especially true of Mauna Kea. Hawaiians often travel up the mountain to gather plants to use for medicine or to pick flowers for leis. When they do take from the mountain, they are sure not to damage the land or overharvest . Hawaiians have a familiarity with Mauna Kea and are able to observe any abnormalities that might require intervention. The TMT’s construction will restrict the access Hawaiians have to the mountain, leaving outsiders who are not familiar with the landscape in charge of its well-being.

Hawaii’s history with colonization is a long and tragic one. From the Kingdom of Hawaii’s annexation by the United States, to the current commercialization and gentrification of the islands, Hawaii has lost so much to outsiders who believe that the land is theirs to take, simply because they want it. The Hawaiians’ fight to preserve their culture and their land has been going on for centuries. How much longer will it continue? In Ka Wai Ola , a free monthly newspaper, Sterling Wong quotes from a statement by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which argues that “OHA believes that the current proposed rules fall short of meaningfully ensuring the appropriate stewardship of Mauna Kea, including through the protections of Native Hawaiian traditional and customary rights” (7). They hope instead for more recommendations that

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“ mitigate the impacts of public and commercial activities on Mauna Kea” (7). We can only hope that the historical trend of Indigenous people’s losing access to their land stops here.

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WORKS CITED

“About.” TMT International Observatory , 2017, www.tmt.org/page/abo ut#what-is-tmt . Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

“Astronomy to the Early Hawaiians.” University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy , www.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/steiger/early_hawaiians.html . Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

“A Brief History of the Hawaiian Islands.” The Hawaiian Islands, 2020 Hawaiian Tourism Authority, 2020, www.gohawaii.com/hawaiian-c ulture/history . Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

Ciotti, Joseph E. “Historical Views on Mauna Kea: From the Vantage Points of Hawaiian Culture and Astronomical Research.” The Hawaiian Journal of History , vol. 45, 2011, pp. 147–66, evols.libra ry.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10524/33785/1/HJH45_147-166.pdf. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

Clery, Daniel. “New Front Emerges in Battle to Build Giant Telescope in Hawaii.” American Association for the Advancement of Science , 14 Jan. 2020, www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/new-front-emerges-b attle-build-giant-telescope-hawaii . Accessed 23 Jan. 2020.

Hall, Shannon. “Hawaii’s Telescope Controversy Is the Latest in a Long History of Land-Ownership Battles.” Scientific American , 11 Dec. 2015, www.scientificamerican.com/article/hawaii-s-telescope-contro versy-is-the-latest-in-a-long-history-of-land-ownership-battles . Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

“The Process.” TMT Thirty Meter Telescope , 2020, www.maunakeaandt mt.org/tmt-process/#selecting-maunakea . Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

Witze, Alexandra. “The Mountain-Top Battle over the Thirty Meter Telescope.” Nature , vol. 526, no. 7571, 1 Oct. 2015, pp. 24–28, doi:10.1038/526024a. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

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Wong, Sterling. “UH’s Proposed Rules Fall Short of Ensuring Appropriate Stewardship of Mauna Kea.” Ka Wai Ola, 1 Nov. 2018, kawaiola.news/aina/uhs-proposed-rules-fall-short-of-ensuring- appropriate-stewardship-of-mauna-kea/. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Coming from a composition class in which he learned to use “they say / I say” essay structure, student writer Sandis Edward Waialae Wightman employs the format in his essay. Paraphrase his “they say” and “I say” statements and the arguments he uses to support his views. Why, in his opinion, is this issue an important one?

2. In presenting his “they say,” Wightman expresses the views of those in favor of building a huge telescope on top of a mountain that is special to the Hawaiian people for religious, cultural, and historical reasons. What words and phrases does he use to differentiate his own views from those with which he disagrees?

3. Find three examples in which Wightman anticipates naysayers and responds to possible objections to his argument. How effective is his strategy of including and discussing positions that would appear to work against his own views? What does the writer gain and/or lose through use of this strategy, and why?

4. So what? Who cares? Where does Wightman explain why his argument matters—and for whom?

5. Find out through news reports about a controversy over proposed construction on campus or in your local community. After reading about the various positions taken by supporters and opponents of the project, write an essay responding to those arguments and presenting your own position.

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Glossary

motto a short sentence or phrase expressing a belief

dormant temporarily inactive

spyglasses hand-held telescopes

overharvest harvesting plants or animals more quickly than they can be renewed

mitigate make less severe

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Environmental Justice Is Only the Beginning

DINA GILIO-WHITAKER

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DINA GILIO- WHITAKER , a widely published researcher, environmental policy expert, and Indigenous activist, is a lecturer of American Indian studies at California State University San Marcos and the policy director at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. A surfer herself, Gilio- Whitaker is an advisor at Native Like Water, an organization that provides opportunities for Indigenous youth to participate in surf culture. She is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes and lives in San Clemente, California. This article was published in 2022 in High Country News .

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WE ARE NOT IN A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP with the natural world. Perhaps that much has finally become clear to the settler cultures in the West. Record-setting wildfires and a drought with little end in sight are physical warning signs of how toxic our relationship with our nonhuman relatives has become. These symptoms demand immediate evaluation and treatment. But in order to come up with the necessary solutions, the people and elected leaders of the West, and of the United States, and of the world, must accept a simple truth: None of this was inevitable. These conditions are the product of a series of choices rooted in the genocide, displacement and political marginalization of the land’s original peoples.

Manifest destiny and technology-intensive modernity, amplified by the incentive of capital, have resulted in gross mismanagement and, in many cases, total destruction of forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes,

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wetlands, watersheds, ocean and desert biomes and countless other ecosystems—all within a few short centuries of European arrival. It is the direct result of the wars that settlers have waged against not only Indigenous people but the lands those people long inhabited. Countries like the U.S., founded on a value system that historically saw (some) humans as separate from and superior to other humans and to nature itself, now find themselves in an existential crisis. Under present conditions, it is difficult to envision a future beyond catastrophic change. The only steady truth is that our relationship with the land and the waters, like our relationships with each other, will remain completely out of balance until we move beyond platitudes and half-measures and meaningfully center the political, human and spiritual rights of Indigenous people. And this must apply not only to those who remain dead set on squeezing every penny out of these critical years, during which a different future might still be possible, but also to those who ostensibly stand with us. Until then, we will all have to watch the consequences play out in real time.

Because Indigenous communities have been marginalized and outnumbered by the settler culture that displaced us, killed us and degraded our homelands, some might think that the righting of these wrongs is a matter of environmental justice: a concept that teaches us that environmental degradation and toxic development disproportionately impacts marginalized populations, and that environmental racism explains these disparities.

This kind of race-based analysis, while useful when applied correctly, compels us to think in terms of racial justice among human populations relative to environmental issues. For American Indians, however, the legal concept of environmental racism is not broad enough. To understand the ways that Indigenous communities historically have been and continue to be exposed to the environmental harms that come with centuries of colonial violence, one must first acknowledge the fact that Native nations maintain political relationships to the state. That is, they are not solely ethnic or racial minority groups; they are also sovereign nations. The relationship between the United States and Indigenous communities is defined by treaty rights and trust responsibilities, not race.

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Despite the legal principle of tribal sovereignty, which, in theory, is supposed to protect tribal lands, the U.S. continually violates the environmental integrity of those treaty territories by actively encouraging toxic developments like oil pipelines and mining operations. The nation’s legal and political systems routinely fail to protect sacred places and other cultural sites because American law refuses to recognize and cede power to the different worldviews of Indigenous spiritual traditions, which are based on entirely different sets of philosophical and value systems.

It is these different value systems and world-views, ultimately, that set Indigenous people apart from Eurocentric mainstream society—not race. These differences are rooted in religion. Europeans imagined and declared themselves superior to Indigenous peoples based on the fact that they were Christians and Native people were not. This religious and cultural superiority became cemented as the foundation of a legal structure that maintains a U.S. relationship of domination over Indigenous people today.

This worldview was used to create a society that saw nature as a force to be dominated, conquered, or overcome. European and then American politicians, industrialists and farmers did not develop food systems constructed around the existing flow of nature, like the ones that Indigenous people had honed over millennia. Instead, they sought to graft Eurocentric agricultural and energy practices onto lands, waters and natural relatives drastically different from the ones they knew.

The colonial impulse to “civilize” Indians was an extension of the impulse to “tame” the land. It was reflected in every structure and policy erected to expand the country’s control over both, from damming rivers and eradicating the buffalo, to the continued subsidization of today’s factory farm and fossil fuel industries. It only took a few hundred years of these ill-fitting Eurocentric approaches to bring us to where we find ourselves today: standing on the brink of human extinction, yet refusing to accept certain basic scientific truths of survival. The core truth is that we must learn to live within the constraints of the ecosystems we find ourselves in.

There is still time, and more importantly, a way, for us to back away from the brink. But it will require the U.S. and its partner states to loosen

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their collective grip over the earth.

Within the academic and scientific realms, there is a growing recognition that Indigenous people all over the world hold important keys to healthy environments. Studies increasingly show that cultural diversity is intimately linked to biological diversity when traditional ecological knowledge guides land use. Protecting Indigenous peoples and their territories is necessary for shielding vulnerable ecosystems from ongoing degradation through industrial development, and it is Indigenous knowledge systems that provide protective mechanisms. The data is clear. What is cloudy is the political will of the nations that steered us onto this destructive path, and even the will of those who ostensibly share the goal of seeing a thriving planet.

Conservation has long been the language we use to describe the need to protect the natural world, and this is generally the way that governments frame their approaches to protecting 30% of the nation’s lands and oceans by 2030, aka the 30 × 30 plan. There are good reasons, however, to question conventional conservation, given the ways it is often practiced. And the best way to understand these shortcomings is to trace them back to their roots.

“It is, of course, absurd to assume that the Indians fired the forests with any idea of forest conservation in mind. . . . It is probably a safe prediction to state that should light-burning continue for another 50 years our existing forest areas would be further curtailed to a very considerable extent.”

So wrote Aldo Leopold in 1920, when he was an early-career forester employed by the U.S. Forest Service. Leopold’s views—then considered cutting-edge silviculture—reflected an approach to forest management that viewed trees solely as a commodity in service to the capitalist state. Called “wise use” at the time, this policy also reflected the United States’ approach to American Indians: that Indians were ignorant savages who couldn’t possibly know anything important about managing landscapes they had been living on for thousands of years.

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A century later, the folly of Leopold’s views and the Forest Service policies they inspired have come back to haunt all of us. We know now, as Native people knew then, that the government’s decision to end Indigenous burning practices would lead to the kinds of problems we now face in the West with extreme wildfires. Water diversion, the overdrafting of aquifers and persistent drought from climate change exacerbate the danger. In a way, Leopold was right: Indian people did not manage their landscapes for the purpose of maximizing profits under the guise of “conservation.” Their traditional knowledge was the foundation that ensured healthy, sustainable ecosystems for both human and nonhuman life in relationships defined by reciprocity and responsibility.

Institutional land conservation began in the U.S. in the 19th century at a time when the nation was engaged in brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns against Indians to make way for settlers. The creation of the national park system, often referred to as “America’s best idea,” came at the expense of Native people and became the model for conservation globally. Under what is now called “fortress conservation,” as Indigenous peoples, human rights groups and scholars have pointed out, Indigenous peoples face land dispossession and other rights violations in the name of environmental protection, perpetrated by state governments and often supported by Big Green organizations.

Late in his life, when he wrote his famous treatise on land ethics, Leopold realized that a view of land that did not recognize the interconnection of humans with what he called biotic communities was foolish. As a white settler, however, his biggest blind spot was the country’s relationship to Native people and their relationships with the natural world. He couldn’t see that at the root of Native cultures were intelligent land-management practices that guaranteed long-term survival in healthy ecosystems.

In the U.S., we are only just beginning to have honest conversations about the country’s true “original sin,” colonialism, with its twin pillars of slavery and Indigenous genocide and land theft. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 became a lightning rod for environmental activists all over the country, many of whom learned for the first time about their country’s carefully

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sanitized history. Then, the appointment of Laguna Pueblo citizen Deb Haaland as President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Interior provided an entirely new kind of platform for un-erasing Native issues, especially given her demonstrated commitment not to perpetuate the whitewashing of U.S. history. And now, the #landback movement is organized, funded and speaking truth to power in unprecedented ways.

Land return does not mean that everyone who is not Indigenous to what is today called the United States is expected to pack up and go back to their ancestral places on other continents. It does mean that American Indian people regain control and jurisdiction over lands they have successfully stewarded for millennia. This includes the return of public lands; 48% of all the land in the Western states is public land, taken from Native people in ways that profoundly betray the United States’ image of itself as a democratic and just nation. It also includes the numerous ways Native people can be included in governance and decision-making in land trusts, conservancies, co-management and other kinds of collective land-stewardship arrangements.

For tips on using metacommentary, see Chapter 11 .

Restoring lands to Indigenous control is not reparations or racial justice; rather, it is environmental justice in the most expansive sense of the term. It is a major step in redressing relationships that have not been right since first contact. And history shows that no one knows how to manage their ecosystems better than the Original People who have tended these landscapes intelligently since time immemorial, from the Wabanaki in Maine to the Gwich’in people of Alaska, and from the Karuk and Yurok in Northern California and the Kānaka Maoli in Hawai’i. If ensuring the sustainability of healthy ecosystems for future generations of all Americans is the goal, then Indigenous land back is a win-win for everyone. And the guarding of tribal sovereignty is central to all of it.

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Joining the Conversation

1. According to Dina Gilio-Whitaker, what are the most important differences between how Indigenous people understand their relationship with the natural world and how “settler culture[s]” regard the land and those that live on it (paragraph 3)? In what ways have these differences contributed to the effects of the climate crisis now seen in the American West?

2. Tribal sovereignty lies at the heart of Gilio-Whitaker’s argument. What is unique about the relationship between the United States and Native tribes, and why does Gilio-Whitaker insist that viewing this relationship solely through the lens of race is “not broad enough” (paragraph 4)? What are two ways the US government has “violate[d] the environmental integrity” (paragraph 5) of Native lands, either now or in the past?

3. In paragraph 12, Gilio-Whitaker inserts a quote from Aldo Leopold, an American philosopher and environmentalist. Paraphrase Leopold’s quotation in your own words. What is Gilio-Whitaker’s response to Leopold’s views about how Native people managed their land? Compose a new frame for this quotation that Gilio-Whitaker could include in her essay. Make sure you clearly introduce and explain Leopold’s quotation using the strategies explained in Chapter 3 .

4. Gilio-Whitaker is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes and an Indigenous activist, yet in this essay, she does not use the first person (“I”) to make her argument, nor does she rely on her personal experience as evidence. Why do you think she made these choices? How does her more objective and academic tone affect how you read and respond to her argument?

5. In paragraphs 17 and 18, Gilio-Whitaker uses metacommentary (see Chapter 11 ) to clarify her proposal for returning land back to American Indian tribes. What does “land return” mean, according to Gilio-Whitaker? What does it not mean?

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6. Gilio-Whitaker claims that all is not lost in the fight against climate change: “There is still time,” (paragraph 9) she argues. This hopeful statement is echoed by other authors in this chapter, including David Wallace-Wells, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, and Matt Ridley. What should be the top priority to address the climate crisis in the time we have, according to Gilio-Whitaker? Write a short response that compares Gilio-Whitaker’s answer to this question to what the other authors in this chapter might propose. What approach do you think is most feasible? Why?

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Glossary

Aldo Leopold American ecologist and writer (1887–1948) widely considered the father of wlidlife ecology

overdrafting of aquifers extracting groundwater from a water-bearing rock that exceeds the average amount of water that is returned to it by rainfall

Big Green a term—often used critically—that describes the most prominent environmental organizations in the United States

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TWENTY-THREE

“WHAT’S COLLEGE FOR?”

* * *

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Colleges and universities are feeling the squeeze: student loan debt, demographic shifts, and public funding cuts to higher education are leading some to question the value of a college degree. In response, many institutions are creating ad campaigns—like the proposed one pictured above—promoting the benefits of college for both individual students and wider society. Colleges and universities, they argue, are an asset to democracy, serving as cultural hubs and engines of innovation and economic development.

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1. Look at the slogan on the billboard, which evokes a long-running ad campaign, “got milk?” Do you think this message is effective? Why or why not? Think about the conversations you had as you considered the value of college. Which arguments did you find most persuasive? Why?

2. Look at what surrounds the billboard. Who, beyond individual students, are stakeholders in conversations about the value of college? How does your college or university contribute to the civic, economic, and cultural well-being of your local community. What should colleges and universities do to demonstrate their value to the communities they belong to?

***

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO GO TO COLLEGE ? A recent, research-based article by professor of evolutionary psychology Glenn Geher in Psychology Today lists fourteen reasons why young adults benefit from a college education. The list begins with a strong financial incentive: economists have shown that college graduates, on average, make over a million dollars more in lifetime earnings than those with some or no college. Geher also lists the development of work-oriented skills, such as time management, project completion, writing, public speaking, experience following rules and guidelines, and the ability to work in groups. Academically, college offers opportunities for both in-depth mastery of specialized knowledge and pursuit of general knowledge, allowing students to enjoy learning for learning’s sake. Many colleges and universities are increasingly emphasizing service learning, providing unique opportunities to pair coursework with community engagement. The article finally highlights personal growth, experience interacting with diverse groups of people, exposure to new ways of thinking, and the opportunity to make lifelong friends.

Taken together, these reasons offer a powerful rationale for considering higher education, a rationale widely supported by parents, schoolteachers and administrators, and community leaders. It’s no surprise that over three quarters of recent high school graduates in the United States plan to pursue postsecondary education, whether at a two- year college, technical school, four-year institution, or university.

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Though college attendance rates have reached an all-time high, there are those who question the value of college, especially when considering the enormous and ever-increasing expense. Critics also discuss the national problem of debt from student loans that can prove challenging, in some cases almost impossible, to pay off. Graduates may experience difficulty finding lucrative employment as the economy rises and falls. And the college experience itself is not immune to criticism, with well- publicized stories of large, impersonal lecture classes, apparently uncaring faculty, overworked and understaffed advising centers, and a shortage of medical and psychological professionals to help students cope with the many physical and emotional problems they may experience. For reasons such as these, it makes good sense for prospective students to think carefully about their rationale for pursuing post–high school education, to consider the many options available to them, and to develop concrete yet flexible plans for how to do so.

The first two essays in this chapter center on changing patterns in statistical academic performance by gender. Carine M. Feyten, president of a women’s college, argues that though male students are increasingly posting test scores and GPAs lower than those of female students, they are doing fine, and that the framing of male underperformance as a “crisis” dismisses the gains of female students after decades of educational and intellectual discrimination. Richard V. Reeves, who studies the middle class, inequality, and social mobility, sees the trend of male students increasingly falling behind their female counterparts as a true crisis, and urges schools and colleges to focus more on the problems of male students and to implement programs that engage young men more productively in learning.

Several authors in this chapter examine particular problems that some students face when pursuing higher education. College president Sylvia Mathews Burwell writes of students’ increasing need for mental health services and offers suggestions for students, families, and institutions to address these concerns more effectively. Student writer Yael Lenga addresses the challenges students with disabilities face in higher education and argues that making campuses more accessible could improve academic outcomes, retention, and graduation rates for all students. Political analyst Charles Fain Lehman highlights the financial debt many students accrue in paying for college and the long-term difficulties many have in paying off their loans. Also focusing on the

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subject of student debt, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fenaba Addo, both economists and Black women, discuss data indicating that students of color, particularly women, are among those most likely to be affected by debt problems and most likely to benefit from loan forgiveness policies.

Additional essays in the chapter consider ways that college faculty and staff can help to improve students’ experiences and outcomes, as well as potential obstacles to such improvements. The late educator Mike Rose acknowledges that community colleges have often been a path by which less privileged students achieve upward mobility. However, he argues that those institutions, and society as a whole, need to do more to address economic and social inequality and to bring down existing barriers to opportunity for poor and middle-class students. In a similar vein, journalist Anna Clark extols the advantages of open admission community colleges while critiquing a recent trend of many such institutions to drop the term “community” from their name. Clark argues that the community orientation of two-year institutions is one of their primary strengths and should be emphasized rather than obscured. Finally, professor and author Gerald Graff argues that we tend to associate “the educated life” too readily with “subjects and texts” considered “inherently weighty and academic.” He suggests that it matters less whether we read Shakespeare’s Macbeth or a Marvel comic book than whether we approach the subject in an “analytic, intellectual” way.

As a college student yourself, you’ll find a great deal to think and write about in this chapter—and on its companion blog, “They Say / I Blog .” The discussions here may be quite familiar to you, or they may be entirely new perspectives about higher education—but your voice will matter deeply in continuing the conversation.

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Glossary

lucrative well-paying

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The Boys Are Doing Just Fine

CARINE M. FEYTEN

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CARINE M. FEYTEN is the chancellor and president of Texas Woman’s University, a university with a long history of promoting women’s education. Feyten has worked in higher education for over thirty years: before her appointment as chancellor of Texas Woman’s University, she was a dean at Miami University in Oxford, OH, and a professor of secondary education at University of South Florida. A native of Belgium, Feyten earned her PhD in interdisciplinary education from the University of South Florida. Her essay was published by the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2022.

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IF YOU HAVE READ ANYTHING about college enrollment in America recently, you are probably aware of the supposed “crisis” for college- going men. The percentage of undergraduate students who are male, which was as high as 57 percent in 1970, has dipped to an all-time low of 40 percent. Application data suggest that the gap between men and women will only grow. Some observers have used this and other enrollment data to elevate a legitimate molehill of concern into a mountain of crisis .

The reality is that more men are attending college than ever before. According to the Pew Research Center, 36 percent of American men ages 25 to 34 had a bachelor’s degree in 2021. That number has risen from just 20 percent in 1970. Over the same 51-year span, the percentage of women ages 25 to 34 with a bachelor’s degree has risen from 12 percent to 46 percent. Today, the average student body is a 60-40 split in

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favor of women. The growing gap between men and women is not because men are enrolling less but because women are enrolling more.

That’s not a crisis. A crisis is closer to what’s happening to women in the work force. In 2020, women earned 84 percent of what men earned. That figure has barely budged in the last 15 years. The gap is even more appalling when we disaggregate for race and ethnicity. When compounded over years, a recent Social Security Administration report shows, the lifetime earnings gap for a man with a bachelor’s degree is 43-percent more than for a woman with a bachelor’s degree. That gap is almost double for those without a high-school degree.

While there are higher-paying jobs in the energy sector, construction, and agriculture that do not require a college credential, they also do not employ many women. These longstanding economic structures push women to earn a college credential just to have a chance at making a livable wage. It is no wonder women are enrolling in college at higher rates, working harder at obtaining a degree, and graduating more quickly. It simply means more to and for them.

Meanwhile, at the top of the economic food chain, we still have a need for articles like “The Top Jobs Where Women Are Outnumbered by Men Named John.” In 2021, women held a scant 41 of chief-executive positions at Fortune 500 companies—a record as reported by Fortune . Even in academe, women constitute less than one-third of presidential posts. And I hardly need to mention that the United States has never had a woman president.

Diverse perspectives in leadership usher innovation, essential for a fiercely competitive global economy. To deal with this imbalance at the top, Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, says we need to “teach girls bravery, not perfection,” which some institutions do very well, as Forbes illuminates in “Want Your Daughter to Go to the C-Suite? Send Her to a Women’s College.”

Even at my woman-focused university, with 90-percent female enrollment, the student body elected a male for president of the student- government association twice during my eight-year tenure. To me, this

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situation highlights the degree to which women in general are indeed socialized to see men as leaders. Changing that mental model takes intentional, ongoing effort.

When women make up most of the student body, there is no alternative but for those female students to step up and lead in student government, in club sports, and even in just answering questions in the classroom. It is in these settings that we teach women bravery. Frankly, women’s colleges are excellent at developing strong women leaders. And yet, of the 230 women’s colleges in existence in 1960, 80 percent have closed. How’s that for a crisis?

I acknowledge that men’s college completion rates trail those of women. Racial and ethnic achievement gaps persist and were even exacerbated by the pandemic in some cases. These are complex issues tied to economic conditions and unjust social structures.

For more on anticipating objections, see Chapter 6 .

But so is—and has been—the story for women who only recently caught up to men in college-going numbers—and who have a long way to go in the work-force and leadership positions. Much like Ginger Rogers , today’s women are doing everything the men are doing but “backward and in heels,” to which I would add: “and for less pay.”

In Texas, we like to say that in order to succeed, you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get to work. It seems as though women are doing just that, and yet, some characterize women’s enrollment outpacing men’s as a crisis. Maybe we should fan the flames of some real crises, like pay equity or the closure of women’s colleges. Relatively speaking, the boys are doing just fine.

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Joining the Conversation

1. At the beginning of her essay, Carine M. Feyten quickly summarizes the “they say” that motivates her argument. Paraphrase this “they say” in your own words. Does she agree, disagree, or agree and disagree with this “they say”?

2. Feyten asserts, “It is no wonder women are enrolling in college at higher rates, working harder at obtaining a degree, and graduating more quickly. It simply means more to and for them” (paragraph 4). Why, according to the author, does a college degree “mean[] more” to women, as opposed to men? Discuss Feyten’s claim with a classmate or friend. Do you agree, disagree, or both with Feyten’s argument? Why?

3. The author is the chancellor of Texas Woman’s University, a university that primarily serves women. Where in her essay do you see her using her experience and perspective to make points that support her “I say”? How does her role affect her credibility as an author?

4. Where in her essay does Feyten introduce and respond to a naysayer? What is another naysayer Feyten could include in her essay that you think would further strengthen her argument?

5. One of Feyten’s central points is that even though more women than men are earning college degrees, men still disproportionately hold positions of power “at the top of the economic food chain” (paragraph 5). What evidence does she give to support this claim? What do you think contributes to this persistent gender disparity?

6. The author references the gender pay gap in her argument. Do some quick research on the gender pay gap in the United States and the world. What factors contribute to the gender pay gap? What structural changes—beyond encouraging women to earn college degrees—do you think will help address the gender pay gap?

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Glossary

molehill of concern into a mountain of crisis references the idiom “making a mountain out of a molehill,” where a minor issue is made to seem more important than it is

Ginger Rogers Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were dance partners in ten films between 1933 and 1949. Rogers did the same choreography as Astaire, but doing it “backward and in heels” increased its difficulty.

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No, the Boys Are Not Doing Just Fine

RICHARD V. REEVES

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RICHARD V. REEVES is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. He leads the Boys and Men Project, a research project dedicated to investigating the economic and educational challenges boys and men face. Reeves has published three books, including Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (2022). A dual UK-US citizen, Reeves earned his PhD from Warwick University. This piece appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2022.

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IS THERE A CRISIS in male college-going? Or, as Carine M. Feyten argues in a recent Chronicle opinion, is it the case that “The Boys Are Doing Just Fine”?

Feyten, chancellor and president of Texas Woman’s University, acknowledges the large disparities between men and women in higher education. The difference in the share of bachelor’s degrees going to women and men is in fact wider today than it was in 1972, when Title IX was passed—but in the opposite direction. Certainly, many people back then saw the gender gap as a crisis big enough to justify new legislation and organizing. As well as Title IX, the 1970s saw the passage of the Women’s Education Equity Act , mostly aimed at elementary and secondary schools, and the founding of the National Coalition for Women & Girls in Education .

There are many who, like Feyten, believe that gender inequality in education is a problem only when it is women and girls who are left

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behind. But given the vital importance of education in the labor market, such inequality matters even when it is men and boys who are trailing. As Francisco Ferreira, Amartya Sen Chair in Inequality Studies at the London School of Economics, writes: “There is now wide consensus that gender inequalities are unfair, and lead to wasted human potential. That remains true when the disadvantaged are boys, as well as girls.”

Feyten is correct that the main reason for the gap in college enrollment and degree attainment is the extraordinary rise in both the absolute numbers and share of women, though it is important to note the dramatic fall in male college enrollment during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic, there was a large gender gap in college enrollment. But just as troubling are the differences in the chances of completing a degree, especially in a timely manner. The four-year graduation rate among women is 10 percentage points higher than for men.

Gender gaps in higher education do not appear out of nowhere. To a large extent they reflect the disparities in the K-12 education system. Girls outperform boys at every stage, and in almost every subject. According to my analysis, two-thirds of the students graduating high school with a GPA in the top 10 percent of the distribution are female. The ratio is reversed at the bottom.

In 2018, 88 percent of girls graduated from high school on time (i.e., four years after enrolling), compared with 82 percent of boys. The male average graduation rate is only a little higher than the 80 percent average among economically disadvantaged students. And, critically, the boys who are struggling most are those from such backgrounds. The poorer the family or the neighborhood, the wider the gender gap in education. “Poverty and exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods during childhood are particularly harmful for boys,” concludes an NBER working paper co-authored by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty.

Race matters hugely here, too. Black boys and men face the most acute challenge throughout the education system, while Black women are making impressive gains. In recent years, for every BA awarded to a Black man, nearly two went to Black women. This trend persists at even

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the highest levels of American higher ed. I could go on and on about this data (and in fact I have, in my forthcoming book).

It is certainly true, as Feyten points out, that there remain many challenges for women in the United States. Roughly 30 percent of college presidents are women, for example, up from 21 percent in 2001. But far from simply accepting this inequality, the American Council on Education has launched a concerted campaign, the Moving the Needle initiative , to reach parity in college leadership by 2030.

This is an ambitious goal, but it is perhaps achievable: Half of current college presidents have said they plan to leave their position in the next five years. Colleges have pledged to appoint women to senior positions wherever possible. This is terrific and constitutes a strong response to a real inequality. But where are the equivalent pledges to do better in terms of attracting and retaining male students?

Likewise, as Feyten makes clear, there remains a gender pay gap once men and women start work. And yet it’s important to note that this gap is now in significant part a consequence of women taking more time out of the labor market to care for children. The pay gap is substantially a parenting gap, and while that may stem from traditional expectations, historical inequalities, or personal decisions, it is not necessarily tied to an inability to find fairly compensated work. On the other side of the gender divide, many of the reasonably paid jobs that men used to be able to do with low levels of education are disappearing.

We can think two thoughts at once. Yes, there is more to do to lower the barriers facing women in the labor market—above all, by reducing the trade-off between caring for children and earnings for mothers. But there is also much to be done to address the specific challenges faced by men and boys, including in the education system. To say that only one matters is a false choice.

For more examples of agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously, see Chapter 4 .

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Joining the Conversation

1. This essay is a response to Carine M. Feyten’s argument, “The Boys Are Doing Just Fine,” which is included in this chapter on pages 556–59 . Read Feyten’s argument. Where do you see Richard V. Reeves making specific moves—metacommentary, voice markers, transitions—to signal to his readers that his essay is a direct response to Feyten’s argument? How would you describe his tone in responding to Feyten’s essay?

2. In his response to Feyten’s argument, the author concedes some points while also standing his ground. What parts of Feyten’s argument does the author agree with? What parts of Feyten’s argument does he disagree with?

3. Reeves argues that the gender gap in education starts much earlier than college. What evidence does he give to support this claim? According to Reeves, which boys struggle the most in the US educational system?

4. Why does it matter that fewer boys and men are completing high school and college? Compose a response to this “so what?” question that Reeves could incorporate in his essay. See Chapter 8 for templates to use in your response.

5. Look up the retention and graduation rates published by your college or university. These rates are typically split into demographic categories, including race, ethnicity, and gender. What trends do you see in your college’s data? What in the data do you find surprising? Does this data support or challenge the claims Reeves makes in his essay? How so?

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Glossary

Chronicle The Chronicle of Higher Education , a weekly newspaper that publishes articles and opinion pieces on issues relevant to educators

Title IX an Education Amendment that protects people from sex-based discrimination in education programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance; adopted in 1972

National Coalition for Women & Girls in Education a nonprofit organization established to educate the public about educational equity for women and girls, as well as to monitor legislation and publish research on issues of equity in education

NBER working paper a research paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that has not yet been published

Moving the Needle initiative initiative from the American Council on Education to increase the number of women in senior leadership positions in higher education

Women’s Educational Equity Act a law outlining federal protections against discrimination against women in education, including developing nonsexist curricula, passed by Congress in 1974

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Disability in Higher Education: Building Access and Building Futures

YAEL LENGA

* * *

YAEL LENGA wrote this essay while enrolled at the University of Illinois Chicago. A neuroscience and sociology major with a minor in disability and human development, Lenga hopes to make mental health treatment more accessible to her Deaf and disabled communities. This essay is documented in APA style.

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FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, MY CHILDHOOD WAS NORMAL . I learned how to brush my teeth, tie my shoes, and change my hearing aid batteries on my own from a young age. I collected many words for myself over the years: “hearing impaired” (which would one day prickle at me), “hard-of-hearing,” “disabled,” and eventually, tentatively, “Deaf” with a capital D. But as a little kid, it was easiest to say I had “bad ears,” just like my mom had “bad hands.”

For all that we said about my mom’s hands, she had the magic touch. Her strategic mind and unwavering protective instincts made sure I had legal access to my accommodations, and every teacher from pre-K on was made aware of my deafness and what that meant in the classroom. She was the first hearing itinerant I ever had.

I was lucky—I never had to fight for my needs alone.

As I got older, I grew into the same fierce advocate my mother had been for me. Unfortunately, not every student with a disability grows up

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with such a strong support system, and college rarely fills this gap. Instead, once they enter higher education, disabled students are expected to have the skills necessary to request support and navigate an overly complicated system on their own, all the while dealing with stigma and bias (Scott, 2019).

No matter how lonely it can feel, or how easily academia dismisses accessibility, there are disabled students at every school, and none of us should be left behind. Disability is a natural part of being human, after all. It can be defined in a multitude of ways, but I choose to look beyond medical terminology; instead, I focus broadly on how our bodies and minds interact with the world around us, and how this shapes our subjective experiences. Disability is fluid: anyone can become disabled at any time, and the manifestation of one’s disability is also fluid. Further, disability affects everyone: Mia Mingus (2017), a queer disabled author of color, reminds us that “no matter what community you’re working with, you are working with disabled people.” She emphasizes that “disability is not monolithic ” (2011), and indeed, disability is experienced in countless diverse ways, visibly or invisibly.

As a disabled student, I have seen the unique ways in which we interact with both the medical system and the education system to access the support we need, all while navigating our newfound adulthood. Sadly, there are still significant academic disparities among disabled students, as many of us are unprepared to handle the sheer number of barriers in higher education. Students with disabilities not only deserve but possess the legal right to access, experience, and participate in all areas of their academic life—and this right must be protected. I intend to show why educational institutions must take more responsibility in addressing ableism. Accessibility needs to be a priority and making systemic changes that not just accommodate but empower all students is ultimately an investment in the entire academic community.

To navigate higher education more easily, all students with disabilities should know their rights. The passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) codified the rights of disabled people in federal law. Without diving too deep into legal minutiae, I can say that this legislation applies to both

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public and private institutions. All campus programs, materials, and buildings must be made accessible to students with disabilities. While I and most of my undergraduate peers were born after the ADA’s passage in 1990, we must not take for granted the significance of this legislation and the sheer volume of changes made in everyday society.

In an ideal world, the passage of the ADA and other such laws would have ushered in a utopian era of accessibility. While those outside of the disability community might naïvely assume that now everyone has unfettered access to education, disabled students ultimately fail to receive equitable treatment due to the limitations of these laws. For example, the ADA is an unfunded mandate, which means that universities are given a checklist of accessibility measures to fulfill without any federal money: it simply “establishes a minimum baseline of enforceable standards” (Axelrod & Lenga, 2020). Moreover, the decisions on how to implement these standards are left up to schools without any guidance or supervision from the federal government. Oftentimes, academic institutions follow the letter instead of the spirit of the law, which means providing the bare minimum of accommodations to prevent a lawsuit rather than working toward equity.

Although schools may claim that they provide sufficient support, there are several instances where a lack of federal oversight lets students fall through the cracks. For instance, note-taking services are relatively common accommodations, but many students report difficulty receiving notes from peer note-takers at all (Scott, 2019). When students do receive notes, they often are incomplete or inaccessible. For example, on one memorable occasion, I saw notes submitted in illegible neon purple cursive handwriting. In other words, schools may be fully complying with the law, and yet student needs are not adequately met. Administrators can also find loopholes in the law, such as refusing to provide accommodations or dismissing the need to renovate inaccessible buildings by exaggerating the burden it will create—on the institution.

Apparently, lifting the burden on students with disabilities is not always a priority.

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Instead, as recent data suggest, disabled students are more likely to suffer academically due to ableism. The US Census’ American Community Survey found in 2019 that only 18% of people 25 and older who reported having a disability had a bachelor’s degree or higher—a proportion much lower than the 36% of people in the same age group who did not report a disability (PNPI, 2022). Moreover, 25% of first- time students with disabilities drop out of university by the end of their first year, and 35% drop out by the end of their second year (Shaewitz & Crandall, 2020). Unfortunately, I speak from experience when I say that there are faculty, staff, and administrators who will equate these academic disparities to individual failings rather than to a larger systemic issue. Let me be clear: these academic disparities exist because academic institutions do not properly prioritize equity and accessibility. Disabled students are just as capable of scholastic excellence as our abled peers, and we are just as worthy of accessing college as anyone else—all we need is adequate support.

This support does not come easily: every student with a disability must simultaneously prove that they are disabled enough to deserve accommodations while also justifying that they are worth investing in. Disabled students must advocate for their own needs to request these services, which typically requires disclosing their disability and providing the necessary documentation. For most campuses, there exists a Disability Resource Center (DRC) (or similarly named alternative) that coordinates these processes.

While it is true that people with disabilities know their own needs best, and must therefore be involved in the accommodations process, the existing system is filled with barriers for students attempting to self- advocate. For instance, when the National Center for College Students with Disabilities (NCCSD) conducted seven focus groups to determine how ableism manifests on different campuses, all seven named barriers in working with these centers. Once students become aware of the existence of these centers—a challenge on its own—the procedures for documenting one’s disability and requesting accommodations generate a myriad of questions (Scott, 2019). Some students shared that they were unclear on which disability was eligible for support. Others weren’t sure how to acquire the necessary documentation to prove their disability or were unable to pay for diagnostic testing. Even students who

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successfully registered with their DRCs expressed confusion with the process of acquiring their accommodations or services.

Moreover, all seven of the NCCSD focus groups mentioned that a lack of self-advocacy training was a serious concern (Scott, 2019). Without the presence of qualified advisors and case managers, disabled students are forced to take on the burden of defending themselves to faculty and staff when their accommodations are questioned. For someone living with a disability, this added stress and exhaustion can be insurmountable—and many students choose to suffer in silence instead. There is a delicate balance to strike here: students with disabilities know their needs best, and yet we cannot be expected to create solutions on our own. Besides, using the DRC can only get you so far when the school’s physical infrastructure is unprepared to handle people with disabilities. Many disabled students discuss physical barriers as one of the main forms of ableism they experience, such as blocked or absent ramps, non- functioning door openers, or issues with student housing. As one student aptly puts it, “‘if you can’t even get to class, . . . you can’t even get to the point where you have other problems’” (Scott, 2019). Ironically, when my school’s DRC was constructed, it wasn’t wheelchair accessible. How are students expected to self-advocate when they can’t even enter their Disability Resource Center?

This has to change.

Ultimately, tangible improvements lie in the hands of school policymakers, but administrators often claim that there are not enough disabled students to warrant these budgetary and policy-related adjustments. First and foremost, disability is underrepresented in data since it relies on survey question phrasing, an individual’s access to health care, and their comfort with self-disclosure. That being said, the National Center for Educational Statistics found that in 2015, the presence of students with reported disabilities appears to have stabilized around 11% (Scott, 2019), which is a significant percentage of students, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. It is no secret that the effects of COVID-19 have led to an increase in disabled Americans, and as we understand more about what constitutes a disability and the importance of access to health care, I only expect this percentage to increase.

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Still, many administrators might insist that little time can be spent on the needs of a ‘relatively small’ subset of the student population. This rhetoric is frankly short-sighted: establishing a culture of inclusion benefits everyone. Renovating buildings to build ramps, improve elevator access, and install automatic door-openers helps anyone pushing wheeled carts or carrying heavy supplies. Even simpler, attendance policies that allow for multiple forms of participation are helpful to anyone experiencing a health flare, issues with commuting, or even a family emergency. It costs nothing to embed policies promoting accessibility and inclusivity on a school-wide scale. In fact, it may well be profitable! Investing in disabled students, even without apportioning any funds, can improve academic outcomes, retention, and graduation rates.

Academic institutions are capable of implementing various strategies to ensure full inclusion on campus. For instance, Dahlia Shaewitz and Jennifer Crandall’s blog post on Higher Education Today recommends building “faculty capacity” by giving them a deeper understanding of disability bias and accessibility (2020). Further, in interviews conducted by Scott (2019), disabled students reinforced the importance of inclusive instruction and programming, as many were grateful for instructors who directed them to the appropriate services or proactively discussed accessibility one-on-one. We can conclude from this research that if disability sensitivity trainings are implemented on a school-wide basis, they will reduce the burden on disabled students to educate professors and defend their needs. When accessibility is embedded into the culture, policies, and structure of a university, all students—and all faculty— benefit.

Our very presence challenges institutions and systems to redefine what equity looks like. Mingus (2017) writes that “we can use access as a tool to transform the broader conditions we live in, to transform the conditions that created that inaccessibility in the first place.” We deserve better, and our schools are capable of doing better. Building access allows us to shape both our individual futures and the future of higher education. Disability issues must be brought out of the shadows and into the boardrooms and classrooms of universities across the world. Each and every school wants to push its students to transform the world—and disabled students have the power to do so, as long as we are given an equitable seat at the table.

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As students with disabilities, we bring unique insight and perspective to our schools. As we learn, people in turn learn from us, and we can create great change. We are inheriting a rich tradition of activism: we have the Rolling Quads at UC Berkeley to thank in part for the passage of Section 504 and the ADA (Abdelfatah, 2020). We must honor the perseverance of those who paved the way, both literally and metaphorically, for students with disabilities to access higher education today. As a community, we have come so far, and while there is much left to achieve, the continued work of disabled activists continues to give me hope.

Disability justice, as explained by Sins Invalid, is a framework that shifts focus away from the legal sphere and toward collective access. This movement puts forth the (somehow radical) notion that all people have inherent worth (Sins Invalid, 2015), and pushes us to redefine how we build communities. Interdependence is one of the ten principles of disability justice and exposes independence as a myth: everyone, regardless of ability, relies on others for support in one way or another. It is true that many of us need medical care from family or friends, and many others rely on a therapist or personal assistant. I myself often need an interpreter or a captioner. However, people with disabilities are not burdens for having access needs. All people have support needs of some sort, and when those needs are met, the entire community benefits. Mingus (2017) explains that practicing interdependence pushes us “towards relationships where we are all valued and have things to offer.” I strongly believe that students with disabilities bring so much to academia, and deserve to be seen as contributors worth investing in.

Tackling inaccessibility in higher education will require collaboration at every level. Administrators, faculty, and staff must work with disabled students to ensure we receive the services we are legally entitled to. By taking proactive measures to streamline procedures and implement policies that prioritize accessibility, students with disabilities are no longer made to feel like an afterthought or a burden. As such, we perform better scholastically and contribute more to the academic community. Ultimately, respecting the needs of disabled students creates a fundamental shift in campus culture: committing to students with

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disabilities is a commitment to making universities a more inclusive and equitable place for everyone.

Access is a fundamental right, but it is also much more. Disability justice invites us—indeed, compels us—to reimagine access as care, as what Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) calls both a “collective responsibility” and a “collective joy.” I firmly agree and would argue alongside Mingus (2018) that “‘disability justice’ is simply another term for love,” and that “our work for liberation is simply a practice of love— one of the deepest and most profound there is.” I write with deep and hard-won love for my ears, for my mom’s hands, for the community that has taught me so much about strength and empathy. I write with love for every student defending their right to an education, and I write with hope for our futures to be filled with access and its joys.

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REFERENCES

Abdelfatah, R. (Host). (2020, July 30). A.D.A. now! [Audio podcast transcript]. In Throughline . NPR. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/89 5896462

Axelrod, C., & Lenga, Y. (2020, July 26). Disrupting the status quo: Accessibility as the bare minimum. 2axend . https://www.2axend.co m/disrupting-the-status-quo-accessibility-as-the-bare-minimum/

Mingus, M. (2011, February 12). Changing the framework: Disability justice. Leaving Evidence . https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2 011/02/12/changing-the-framework-disability-justice/

Mingus, M. (2017, April 12). Access intimacy, interdependence and disability justice. Leaving Evidence . https://leavingevidence.wordpr ess.com/2017/04/12/access-intimacy-interdependence-and-disability -justice/

Mingus, M. (2018, November 3). “Disability justice” is simply another term for love. Leaving Evidence. https://leavingevidence.wordpress. com/2018/11/03/disability-justice-is-simply-another-term-for-love/

Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.

Postsecondary National Policy Institute. (2022, September 26). Students with disabilities in higher education. PNPI. https://pnpi.org/students -with-disabilities-in-higher-education/

Scott, S. (2019, April). Access and participation in higher education: Perspectives of college students with disabilities. NCCSD Research Brief, 2 (2), 1-25. www.nccsdonline.org/uploads/7/6/7/7/7677280/na _focus_groups_research_brief_final_pdf.pdf

Shaewitz, D., & Crandall, J. R. (2020, October 19). Higher education’s challenge: Disability inclusion on campus. Higher Education Today

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. https://www.higheredtoday.org/2020/10/19/higher-educations-chall enge-disability-inclusion-campus/

Sins Invalid. (2015, September 17). 10 principles of disability Justice. Sins Invalid. www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/10-principles-of-disability-ju stice

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Joining the Conversation

1. Yael Lenga addresses the common misconception that federal laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act guarantee accessibility for college students with disabilities. What is her response to this “they say”? Why, even with these laws, are the needs of students with disabilities “not adequately met” (paragraph 9) in colleges and universities?

2. The author states, “inclusion benefits everyone” (paragraph 17). How does “everyone” in higher education, not just students with disabilities, benefit from more inclusive policies and accessible spaces? Who has a stake in her argument?

3. Read paragraph 11. How does the evidence the author includes support her main claim in this paragraph? What strategies does she use to connect this evidence to her overall argument?

4. In her essay also included in this chapter, Sylvia Mathews Burwell makes the case that universities need to invest providing more mental health support for students. Read her argument, “Generation Stress: The Mental Health Crisis on Campus,” on pages 578–87 . On what points would Burwell and Lenga agree? On what points might they disagree?

5. Talk with a classmate about how your college or university is (or is not) accessible to students with a wide range of visible and invisible disabilities. Do some research on what resources are available on your campus for disabled students. Then, propose one change to make your campus “a more inclusive and equitable space for everyone” (paragraph 22).

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Glossary

monolithic rigid, uniform

infrastructure structures and facilities, including buildings

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Endnotes

hearing itinerant: an advocate who provides specialized services to Deaf and hard-of-hearing studentsReturn to reference hearing itinerant student with a disability: I recognize and respect that some hold tightly to their disabled identity, while others prefer to be seen as an individual first, and I therefore use identity-first and person-first language interchangeably.Return to reference student with a disability Rolling Quads: a group of physically disabled students led by Ed Roberts, who fought for disability rights at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, eventually founding the Center for Independent Living (CIL) in 1972Return to reference Rolling Quads

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Generation Stress: The Mental Health Crisis on Campus

SYLVIA MATHEWS BURWELL

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SYLVIA MATHEWS BURWELL is the president of American University. Previously, she served as the US secretary of health and human services under President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2017. She is a lifelong public servant, having worked in leadership positions in several federal government agencies and nonprofit organizations. A native of West Virginia, she is a graduate of Harvard University and University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. This essay was published in Foreign Affairs in 2018.

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IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE TIME of their life—the halcyon days of college, when young adults grow, acquire knowledge, and learn new skills. But according to the 2016–17 Healthy Minds Study, an annual survey of mental health on American college campuses, while 44 percent of students said that they were flourishing, 39 percent reported experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety. The proportion of students experiencing suicidal ideation has grown from 6 percent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2017. The percentage of students receiving psychotherapy has jumped from 13 percent to 24 percent over the same period. Even though more students are getting help, only a little more than half of those with symptoms of depression and anxiety had received treatment in the previous year.

The rise in mental health challenges is not limited to college students. One in every four adults in the United States will suffer from an anxiety

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disorder in the course of his or her lifetime, and suicide rates for men and women have risen since 2000. Whether these figures are a passing trend, the new normal, or a harbinger of greater challenges to come, one cannot fully know. But no matter what, universities need to deal with this uptick in psychological distress. No longer can they consider students’ mental health to be outside their area of responsibility.

Nowadays, that responsibility has broadened to include increasing students’ resiliency—that is, helping them not just avoid stress but also develop the tools to work through it. Resiliency is about decreasing students’ sense of overwhelming stress while fostering their growing autonomy to tackle difficult life challenges. It’s also about treating their very real depression and anxiety.

Taking responsibility for students’ mental health needs is particularly complex at a time when universities are rightfully under pressure about cost and access. And it is all the more complex given that part of the core mission of higher education is to challenge students. To put it succinctly, college is supposed to be hard. How to balance the natural challenges and stress that university life presents while supporting students’ mental health is an increasingly difficult tightrope to walk. Yet it needs to be walked, since students’ mental health is a growing concern, and when that health is poor, it can inhibit the core mission of learning. To address the issue, universities must raise awareness of the problem through education inside and outside the academy; focus on prevention, detection, and treatment; and acknowledge the importance of community —all while recognizing that stress is a part of life.

Following World War II, the United States built a thriving middle class and became the engine of the global economy thanks to the foundation of a thriving higher education system. Now, that same system must be a part of resolving today’s mental health crisis, which presents a broad challenge to American competitiveness and productivity.

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Stressed Out

In my first year as president of American University, I met with students from a variety of backgrounds and quickly learned that they have a great deal of insight into why they experience more stress and anxiety than previous generations. The answer boils down to three factors: safety, economics, and technology.

Students’ concerns about safety stem from different sources. Most undergraduates have no memory of a world before 9/11. They have grown up with bag searches on subways, SWAT teams at stadiums, and body scanners at airports—constant visual reminders that the United States was attacked and could be again. Students of an older generation would note that those are no different from Cold War–era “duck and cover” drills. Yet today’s students point out that Americans never experienced nuclear war, only the threat of it.

See Chapter 6 for other examples of how to engage opposing views fairly.

They have also grown up with increasingly deadly mass shootings. This fall, students arrived on campus with the 2018 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, fresh in their minds, but they also remember the attacks in 2017 at a concert in Las Vegas, in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and in 2007 at Virginia Tech. For some students on campus, incidents that have involved racially motivated acts of violence —such as the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017—add to their fear, stress, and anxiety. Female students have additional cause for worry. While the increasing transparency about how often sexual assault occurs on campus has helped advance the conversation about the issue, it has also added to safety concerns.

Other fears are rooted in economics. A college education is essential to social mobility, but tuition at both public and private universities

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continues to rise. Many students, especially first-generation college students, come from families with already stretched budgets and little experience in the nuances of financing higher education, making the prospect of student debt particularly daunting.

Students also worry about the economy they are graduating into— they are old enough to remember the Great Recession —and fear that they will end up jobless, unable to pay off their debt, and forced to live with their parents. Although unemployment is now low in the United States, wage growth has stayed relatively flat throughout the recovery, and early career salaries, in particular, dropped during the recession.

As a result, many students worry that they will do no better than their parents, and with good reason: in the United States, the likelihood that a child will earn more than his or her parents has dropped from 90 percent to 50 percent over the past half century. Students also see an economy that offers them not a single career choice but an ever-changing panoply of career steps. Such a path may be exciting, but it is nowhere as conducive to stable health insurance and a secure retirement as the one their parents and grandparents followed.

Then there is the anxiety that results from social media. Part of the stress has to do with the pressure on young people to constantly present a curated version of their lives on Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms. The way I translate this concern to older generations is by asking, “What would it be like if you had to update your résumé every day?” The obvious answer: incredibly stressful. Another part of the stress comes from the observing side of social media. Because people tend to heavily curate what they present, it can sometimes seem as if everyone else has better internships, earns higher grades, and attends more exclusive parties.

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Things Really Are Different

Some argue that all this is nothing new, that school has always been anxiety inducing. But regardless of whether today’s students really do face a greater number of stressors than generations past, there is little doubt that the impact of those stressors is felt more than before. Today’s young adults seem to arrive at college with less resiliency and a lower appetite for risk and failure.

In raising their children, parents have focused more on protecting them from stress and anxiety and less on teaching them how to cope. Today’s incoming classes are of a generation that received athletic trophies merely for participating. Becoming so used to winning makes it all the harder to deal with losing. It makes it harder to learn resiliency. On top of this, parents have created a culture of risk aversion. Today’s students were warned as children not to walk home alone, and they grew up playing on playgrounds designed to break their falls. In many ways, children have been taught both explicitly and implicitly to avoid risk, and for many of them, the resulting safety has made them less capable of coping with failure and disappointment.

When students have a panic attack because they received a B minus on a test, it becomes clear that parents have probably not done enough to prepare them for the fact that life involves both success and failure. Today, high school graduates arrive on American University’s campus with higher sat scores, more Advanced Placement credits, and more International Baccalaureate degrees than ever before. They are book smart but perhaps less life ready. This problem can be seen not only in how they deal with bad news but also in what they know about basic life skills, from managing their finances to doing their laundry. There are exceptions, of course, but American University’s faculty and staff are probably not unique in observing that students increasingly come to college with less mastery of such skills.

Another way that today’s students differ from their predecessors is in their relationships with their parents and other adults in their lives. Gone

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are the days when a five-minute phone call every Sunday was the extent of communication with family. For many students, thanks in part to advances in technology, there is nearly constant communication with parents through texting and calls. In the interactions I see with faculty and staff on campus, students seem to seek more adult guidance and assistance with problem solving than previous generations did.

For more on how repeating key terms and phrases can help you connect the parts, see Chapter 9 .

Stress can play out in different ways. One common type of student is the overachiever: a first-year student who was at the top of his class in high school and never needed to exert much effort to get there. In his first semester at college, he fails a couple of midterm exams and finds himself too embarrassed to lean on his support network from home. At night, when his friends have gone to bed, he heads to the library and immerses himself in his studies. Eventually, he’s sleeping less than four hours a night. And only when he reaches a breaking point does he seek out counseling that can help him work through his own expectations and time management.

Another common type is the overcommitted student. She comes to college with a strong sense of what she wants to do afterward—say, work on a political campaign—and loads up on extracurricular activities in pursuit of that goal. In her first semester, she joins several political clubs, runs for student government, and takes on a part-time internship on Capitol Hill. She even adds an extra class to get ahead. Without this level of commitment, she fears, she won’t be competitive for the best campaigns. The result is long days of meetings, work, and classes, along with late nights trying to catch up. Only after she breaks down emotionally does she confide in her dorm’s resident assistant, who refers her to the counseling center.

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Challenge and Response

According to a 2015 report from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, the number of students visiting counseling centers increased by 30 percent between 2009 and 2015 (enrollment grew by only 6 percent). Across the country, colleges and universities are adding extra professional staff to help students, in part because the types of counseling needs have also expanded. Some students arrive with complex medication regimes, whereas others are part of the growing number of students experiencing thoughts of suicide, a trend that requires more emergency services, such as 24-hour rapid-response counseling. As student bodies become more diverse, schools need support staff who can reach across cultural divides. Adding all these resources is not easy, especially for schools in rural areas, where mental health providers are in short supply.

Universities are struggling to keep up with rising numbers of students seeking support: according to the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, in 2016–17, 34 percent of college counseling centers had to put some students on a waitlist. And it’s important to note that many students remain reluctant to talk to a professional: while stigma concerning mental health today is less than what it was in the past, it still impedes students from recognizing their challenges, seeking out help, and committing to treatment.

Universities are putting more effort into prevention. Harvard University has started the Success-Failure Project, a program that hosts discussions aimed at redefining success and dealing with rejection. Duke University offers a mindfulness program designed to help students manage stress. At American University, we introduced a mandatory, two- semester course aimed at helping students adjust to their first year in college. Of course, it’s important to make sure such programs don’t end up adding to the problem: when I asked students if stress-reduction seminars might be helpful, one responded, “Please don’t add anything to my already packed schedule that will further stress me out!”

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Campuses that focus on creating a sense of community and belonging find that students who have support networks to turn to are better able to work through their challenges and stress. This sense of belonging can act as a preventive tool, countering students’ feelings of loneliness and depression and providing a way for them to alert others to the problems they are facing. Increasing a campus’ sense of community can often mean running into long-standing questions—for instance, about the value of fraternities and sororities and about whether to increase student engagement by offering more activities and clubs. Universities must face these old questions in the new context of growing mental health issues.

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Producing Happier Graduates

Universities are in the early stages of grappling with the increase in stress and anxiety. Although there is no agreed-on formula at this time, there are some approaches that show promise.

There is general agreement that the solution lies in more education about the issue, inside and outside the academy. Creating awareness of the problem and teaching faculty, staff, and students how to prevent, recognize, and respond to it can help. Just as many campuses have made progress on educating students about sexual assault, they can do the same when it comes to mental health.

Moreover, as odd as it may sound, universities should draw on some of the lessons learned during the 2014 Ebola outbreak—a global health threat that emerged during my tenure as U.S. secretary of health and human services—and adopt a public health approach to the problem. With Ebola, the priorities were prevention, detection, and treatment. These core elements can also guide universities in framing their approach to mental health. Prevention can mean introducing courses that help students adjust to college life. Detection might mean developing ways to quickly notice when a student doesn’t download an assignment or show up for classes.

As for treatment, universities need to secure adequate resources for counseling so that students seeking help receive timely and effective care. On many campuses, triage systems prioritize the most acute cases, determine which students can be treated in a limited number of sessions, and refer to other providers those who require long-term care. No university is capable of offering unlimited sessions and all kinds of care, so administrators need to determine which cases to refer and which to keep in house. They must also have the capacity to meet demand without long waitlists for treatment. To inform their investments, universities should use data about their campus’ particular needs—especially at a time when the economics of higher education are under both scrutiny and pressure.

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Universities also need to acknowledge the power of communities. Communities can not only act as a knowledge base and a source of referrals; at a more basic level, they can also stem the problem to begin with. Study after study has found that social connectedness is correlated with well-being and resiliency, so universities should strive to build inclusive communities. Encouraging in-person (not Instagram) connections can help. Administrators should make sure that students are aware of the clubs and groups on campus, offer a sense of belonging, and invest in first-year residence halls and other communities for living and learning. Faculty and staff should recognize the value of engaging with students.

Finally, students, parents, and universities should embrace the healthy idea that stress is a part of what makes college great. College students develop intellectually, socially, and morally through a combination of challenge and support. Their time on campus should be not so overwhelming that they retreat, yet not so comfortable that there is no incentive to grow. Thus, the college experience should teach students not to avoid challenges—life is full of them, after all—but how to handle the stress that results. Recognizing this is the first step to producing more resilient students, as well as happier, better-adjusted graduates.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Sylvia Mathews Burwell is president of a major university in Washington, DC, and previously served as secretary of health and human services for the United States. What is the mental health crisis she is describing and what does she say needs to be done about it? How do her executive experience and background affect your response to her argument?

2. Burwell highlights student stress in three areas: “safety, economics, and technology” (paragraph 6). For the first two areas, she provides a naysayer, anticipating a possible objection that a critical reader might offer. Find each naysayer and examine how she responds to it. Specifically, how does she use her response to develop her own argument? For the third area, stress due to technology, come up with a naysayer and a potential response.

3. This article is divided into four sections. What is the specific focus of each, and what connecting language does Burwell provide to link one section to the next?

4. This essay was composed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Imagine you are Burwell’s editor, helping her revise and update her essay. What revisions would you suggest? What is one significant way the pandemic affected the mental health of college students that is different from the stressors Burwell already references in her essay?

5. Investigate your college’s approach to and resources supporting student mental health. How does your institution’s offerings stack up against the author’s recommendations? How, if at all, might it be improved?

6. Burwell concludes by asserting that “the college experience should teach students not to avoid challenges—life is full of them, after all—but how to handle the stress that results.” Discuss

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this statement with a classmate or friend. Write a “they say / I say” response to this conclusion In your response, refer to your conversation and use examples from your own experience.

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Glossary

halcyon a period of time characterized by happiness and contentment

ideation forming ideas or concepts about something

SWAT acronym for “special weapons and tactics,” a specialized police unit that uses military equipment and tactics

Great Recession the economic decline from 2007 to 2009

International Baccalaureate a nonprofit educational organization that has developed the IB Diploma Programme, an internationally accepted curriculum for entry into higher education

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Community College: The Great Equalizer?

MIKE ROSE

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MIKE ROSE was an award-winning scholar and public intellectual whose scholarship on literacy and education shed light on the inequities of the American education system, especially for working-class students. His books include Lives on the Boundary (1986), The Mind At Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker (2004), and Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Chance at Education (2012). He earned his PhD at the University of California at Los Angeles and was a member of the UCLA faculty for nearly forty years. Mike Rose passed away in 2021. This essay, one of the last pieces he wrote, was published by Dissent in 2021.

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IN THE AMERICAN CONSCIOUSNESS , education is, in Horace Mann’s words, the “great equalizer” of class differences. Through schooling, students can ascend the social-economic ladder. The journey of first- generation community college students provides one way to consider this belief. As inequality widens and rigidifies, what economic barriers to success do such students face?

Let us begin with the basic objects it takes to go to school: books, paper, notebooks, pens and pencils, calculator, computer, cell phone, tools, and supplies. Some of these items might be covered by financial aid awarded to needy students, though that aid can be late in coming. It is not uncommon for students to be in the second or third week of classes without books. For students in occupational programs—from

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construction trades to cosmetology—tools and kits of supplies are essential. If they are damaged or stolen, students have to divert money from other necessities or cast about for an emergency loan. Unless students are in an unusually well-funded program, they are typically on their own for computers and other electronic devices.

Inequality is not only material but also spatial. To be a successful student takes a place to study, to read those books, to write, to practice the skills and routines of a trade. Though COVID-19 closed down many buildings, there are usually designated spaces on campus for those whose family and work commitments and transportation arrangements permit their use. Otherwise, one hopes for a room. A nook. A corner of an apartment—not always possible if one lives in close quarters with family or friends. One student I mentored read his books with a flashlight on the front steps of his parents’ apartment. Another student I interviewed set a little table in one of her halfway house’s bathrooms—a table of her own.

Some students have no stable place to lay that book at all. According to the #RealCollege Survey of the Hope Center at Temple University in 2020, 52 percent of students at two-year colleges reported being “housing insecure.” They are short on rent, close to eviction, or they have crossed that line, staying temporarily with relatives or friends or couch surfing, one step away from the streets. Another student I mentored slept in his car for six months until one of his instructors secured him Section 8 housing and bought him bedding and towels. A student he knew slept behind the dumpster in the back of the school’s library. They showered in the gym when it opened at 6 a.m.

According to the #RealCollege Survey, 39 percent of community college students report worrying about having enough to eat. Food pantries exist at over 700 two and four-year colleges across the country. The experience of poverty includes several sensations: the gnawing in your stomach, woozy lightheadedness. For students with a family, the gnawing can be psychological as well as physical. They worry that they have failed as a parent. Access to healthcare, let alone quality healthcare, is also a major problem in low-income communities. Students growing up in such communities are generally exposed to environmental toxins and might not have been adequately treated for chronic diseases like

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diabetes or asthma, or for dental, vision, and hearing problems. Universal standard eyecare alone would have a positive effect on these students’ retention and achievement.

For students with ADHD and learning disabilities, the odds are that the treatment they receive is not of the same quality and consistency as that of their more affluent peers—and it is highly unlikely that they get the added benefit of private remedial programs or tutors. Over the years, I have worked with many college students, especially older, returning students, who have some kind of cognitive processing difficulty but have never been introduced to compensatory strategies and cognitive work- arounds. Some students contend with mental illness or addiction. A significant number of students from low-income communities have also experienced or witnessed things on the streets or in their families or at the hands of law enforcement that no young person should bear, which leave scars physical and spiritual that can affect their performance in school.

As they enter college, students from all income levels find themselves facing academic and social demands for which they are not prepared. For students from under-resourced schools, whose families could not afford the educational products and services available to their middle-class peers, there is a greater chance they will need assistance to meet the analytical reading, writing, and mathematical requirements of their classes. It is also possible that they won’t have been taught subject- area knowledge that is prerequisite for coursework, from biology to music to the construction trades.

When students are the first in their family to go to college, a predictable unfamiliarity with institutional practices—from how to get financial aid information to how to use professors’ office hours—can slide into a feeling of overall incompetence. “There’s no fucking way I belong here,” an older student said to me after a few difficult weeks in an introductory math class.

Addressing economic and social inequality will be a massive national undertaking, for it will involve everything from monetary policy and tax reform to rebuilding the social safety net. The more modest goal of lifting some of the weight off of the students we’ve been discussing will also be demanding. It begins with increased financial aid and the

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establishment of emergency grant and loan programs. If they don’t already, colleges need to provide child care and assist in connecting students with social service agencies for food, housing, and healthcare. Also, colleges can schedule classes, counseling, and tutorials to be more hospitable for students who work or have families; many of the online options made available and expanded during the pandemic should be extended. Some colleges have already undertaken these remedies, which complement longer-term efforts to improve remedial instruction, create programs for vulnerable student populations, and restructure and consolidate curriculum—all efforts to address the fact that the community college completion rate of a certificate or degree is under 40 percent.

To do right by these students, however, we have to go beyond the fiscal and structural to the level of foundational beliefs. We need a full picture of their lives in order to serve them well. There is a tendency to understand and define lower-income people by and through their poverty. We confuse the burdens they carry with who they are. For students who live within the oppressive boundaries of structural inequality, the pressing need to make a buck constrains the means they have available to give expression to their full humanity. But within those constraints, students continue to dream, solve problems, make plans, and work toward a meaningful future. It is that fuller expression of their humanity they seek by going to college.

The majority of low-income students come to college with the firm goal of improving their economic lot in life, from earning certificates in short- term occupational programs to achieving an associate degree and transferring to a four-year college or university. For some, this desire to get ahead is articulated through a particular subject or occupation, a desire to be a chef or a nurse, a graphic artist or an engineer—careers that bring financial reward but also involve humanitarian, aesthetic, or intellectual values. Some students with families of their own want to be better educated so they can help their kids and become role models. Some who are returning to school want to remedy what they see as past failure, a nagging source of shame. And some, young and not-so-young, feel stuck in their lives, trapped in dead-end jobs or unable to find steady work at all. They are desperate to chart a new path. These and other

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forces in their lives carry them forward, a potent blend of economic, familial, and deeply personal motives.

Being in college itself can be powerfully motivating, giving rise to new reasons to continue. Though some classes seem useless and just an administrative hurdle, others engage you. You learn to use tools and instruments that expand what you can do. The interests that contributed to your coming to college are stimulated: human behavior, or gaming and new media, or fashion, or robotics, or the history of your people. These interests are being developed; you are becoming knowledgeable. In some cases, you are learning new ways to talk about and examine your own life and the lives around you. “I am learning the terms of the misery I lived,” an older student tells me. Or you discover, perhaps to your great surprise, subjects and careers you didn’t know about. You’re meeting new people, maybe people with backgrounds unfamiliar to you, people from other countries who rattle your biases. You’re also meeting people with interests and goals similar to yours—you begin to form a small community of support. This community can include faculty and staff, people who are part of the educational and occupational networks you need to enter. You are in the game, learning about college and how to “do college,” which is not at all a trivial thing in an education- and credential-oriented society.

The burning question that a number of community college personnel are trying to address is how to make these kinds of sustaining experiences available to more people entering their institutions, especially those who stand to benefit the most in terms of economic and social mobility: low-income, first-generation college-goers. Their experiences have implications beyond the community college.

For templates on saying why it matters, see Chapter 8 .

I began this essay with the many economic barriers community college students face—finding ways to overcome these obstacles is phenomenally important. But if tomorrow a public policy miracle occurred and financial aid, an emergency grant program, and a range of

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social services were fully funded and available, and community colleges were able to offer all needed courses and counseling, students trying to advance their prospects could still face a curriculum and styles of instruction that reinforce rather than liberate them from their unequal position in the social order. In education we have a troubling history of imagining the working-class student as a bundle of characteristics that reflect deep biases. These students, the thinking goes, are practical and pragmatic, “concrete thinkers” concerned with tangible financial outcomes, not intellectually inclined, not taken with ideas or abstractions or subjects typically thought to be “academic.” This cluster of ideas about student ability, motives, and interests becomes a kind of common sense that affects everything from the allocation of resources to the content of curriculum to the ideas students hold about themselves.

We have long told a story to ourselves about going to college: that young people on the cusp of adulthood leave home for a place (with old brick buildings covered with ivy) to study a subject that interests them, and perhaps discover new interests. They will read, and meet new people, and form lasting networks of friends—and, yes, party, and get into mild trouble, and gain a broken heart. This is a time of growth, of exploration, of “finding oneself,” of reflection on the big existential questions. In contrast, much of what is imagined for the community college student in popular and policy discourse is pragmatic and focused on economic outcomes—the prototypical student aiming toward secure employment and a career. This is especially the case where older students are concerned. If there is a language of discovery in this portrayal, it has to do with discovering the right occupation, the best fit with one’s interests and resources.

There’s truth to this portrait, as far as it goes. The adolescent-going- off-to-college scenario presupposes financial security and relative freedom from obligation. It is a scenario steeped in privilege that most community college students lack. But first-generation community college students still have the same human need to comprehend what is happening to them, to think things through, to reflect on their future. We have to be vigilant to not let the economic urgency of their situation reduce them to one-dimensional beings. As economics is lived, it is not sealed off from psychological and social needs or, for that matter, from

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moral questions about how to lead our lives. But you will not find in policy documents related to the community college any significant discussion of reflection, contemplation, or discovery—other than discovery related to occupation.

Therein lies a problem as old as Aristotle’s denial that slaves and other manual workers had the capacity to reflect philosophically: we slide so easily from a focus on work and economic need to attributions about people’s minds.

The language and personnel involved in the creation of an opportunity for reflection at community college might be quite different from that of an Ivy League school. Community colleges will need to be administratively supple and innovative in scheduling this opportunity, for there are so many demands on students’ lives. They need to be given the time to make sense of this key juncture in their development, to reflect on the decisions that lie before them in the educational journey they’ve undertaken. These decisions could have life-changing consequences for them and their families. Such change involves not only questions of resources and commitments but also questions of meaning and value: What is good work? What is the relation of the work I do to who I am and who I want to be? How do these decisions affect my sense of myself as a husband or wife, mother or father?

The resources colleges need to give students room to contemplate these questions might not be forthcoming. But colleges can right now begin to examine their own assumptions about their students. A worthy response to those students’ pressing needs will require an educational imagination that draws on the full range of their experience and ability.

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Joining the Conversation

1. In his introduction, Mike Rose refers to the idea that education is “the great equalizer” in a democratic society. Explain what this phrase means in your own words. How do you think Rose would respond to the question he poses in his title: are community colleges today acting as “the great equalizer”? Why or why not?

2. The author describes challenges many community college students from low-income communities face: material inequities, spatial inequities, educational inequities, food insecurity, lack of health care. Pick one of these challenges and explain it in your own words. What evidence does Rose use to support his points? Which evidence and examples did you find particularly persuasive, and why?

3. Rose writes, “To do right by these students, however, we have to go beyond the fiscal and structural to the level of foundational beliefs. We need a full picture of their lives in order to serve them well. There is a tendency to understand and define lower-income people by and through their poverty. We confuse the burdens they carry with who they are” (paragraph 10). What inaccurate assumptions are made about low-income community college students, according to Rose? Explain one significant consequence of these faulty assumptions in terms of how community colleges are structured, what programs they offer, and how community colleges define their priorities.

4. At the end of his essay, Rose shifts to using the second person, “you.” How did this shift affect you as a reader? Why do you think he made this choice?

5. So what? Who cares? Why is it important that policy makers, administrators, and instructors resist the “deep biases” our society has toward working-class people and students? Who should care about Rose’s argument beyond those who attend, work at, or teach at a community college?

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6. Reflect on your own goals as a college student. Why are you here? Do your goals fulfill the expectations set out for you, or do they challenge assumptions that might have been made about you? How so? Then, compose a short response to this chapter’s organizing question (“What’s college for?”) In your response, include a quote from Rose’s essay, and make sure to fully introduce and explain the quote.

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Glossary

Horace Mann American educational reformer (1796–1859)

ADHD acronym for “attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder,” which includes symptoms of inattention, excessive movement for the setting, and impulsivity

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Why We Need to Keep the “Community” in Community Colleges

ANNA CLARK

* * *

ANNA CLARK is a journalist and author of The Poisoned City , an account of the drinking water crisis in Flint, MI. Her investigative reporting, published in Politico , the New York Times , and the Washington Post , focuses on the environment, education, politics, and her hometown, Detroit. She is a faculty member in Alma College’s MFA program in creative writing. She graduated from the University of Michigan and served as a Fulbright fellow in Nairobi, Kenya. This article appeared in Next City in 2015.

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MY PARENTS TOOK TURNS going to college. While raising three kids, my father lost his left big toe in an accident at a tool-and-die shop and Mom babysat dozens of neighborhood rugrats. We didn’t have enough. The kitchen cabinets were too bare. So, Dad signed up for classes at Lake Michigan College, the local two-year school formerly known as Benton Harbor Community College.

With his hands cupping his chin at a lamplit table, he softly read aloud from his textbooks; for years, his murmuring carried down the hallway to my bedroom, like a lullaby. When I was 11, he earned his bachelor’s degree through an extension program hosted by LMC and got a job at Whirlpool Corporation. Then it was Mom’s turn. She did her homework alongside my siblings and I at the kitchen table. The same year I graduated high school, she earned her associate’s degree, on her way to her own B.A. My mother and I posed in front of the fireplace,

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each in cap and gown, grinning for the camera, for each other, for wherever it was we were headed next.

Bergen Community College commencement at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ.

But there is an escalating movement of community colleges dropping the word “community” from their names. The latest is Prince William Sound Community College in Valdez, Alaska, which announced this month that it will be known simply as Prince William Sound College. Henry Ford Community College outside Detroit has become Henry Ford College. Jackson Community College in Michigan is now Jackson College. Three Seattle community colleges began the fall semester with truncated names. Twenty-eight schools make up the Florida College System, which was known as the Florida Community College System

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until 2009; only three individual campuses still have “community” in their name. In all, more than 80 schools have cut “community” in the past 30 years, with at least 40 doing so in the last decade.

This is a bad move.

Administration officials insist that the name change does not signify a change in mission. Rather, they cite the broadening scope of their campuses. Many now offer bachelor’s degrees in select fields, either through independent programs or in partnership with four-year schools. Twenty-five percent of community colleges offer on-campus housing. Not only do the schools want their name to broadcast the breadth of their offerings, but programming expansion also can coincide with shifts in accreditation or funding status.

See Chapter 1 for other examples of how to introduce what “they say.”

You might even consider this part of their natural evolution. The first public two-year college was founded in 1901 in Illinois, Joliet Junior College. Shifting from an emphasis on liberal arts to Depression-era workforce training, these colleges were open to women at a time when few others were. Community colleges got their biggest boost in 1948, when the Truman Commission , combined with the GI Bill , catalyzed a national network of schools that were agile enough to meet local needs. Today, there are around 1,100 community colleges in the U.S. In addition to offering credit courses and innovative training programs, these campuses are community nerve centers: They provide space for civic groups to meet, host blood drives and bring top-notch theater to small towns.

But the name change is also an attempt to heighten the prestige of community colleges. While nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States attend two-year schools, enrollment is unstable, riding the tides of economic trends. Better employment rates mean fewer students,

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which is why numbers have dropped for three consecutive years. Retention is a perpetual battle for open-access schools, and their reliance on underpaid adjunct faculty is troubling. Community colleges have a tremendous champion in the Obama Administration, with the President suggesting that they should be as “free and universal” as high school. But his “America’s College Promise” initiative has struggled to get congressional support and funding. Some campuses are battling financial disorder, and dramatically hiking tuition. (Some states, however, are picking up the mantle themselves. This month, Oregon followed Tennessee in passing a law that offers free enrollment at community campuses.)

As well, the welcoming-to-all nature of these schools can be disparaged with unfortunate local nicknames—LMC, for example, is derided as “Last Minute College.” The name change is supposed to inflate the appeal of these schools. But it is a decision that mistakes image for substance, an alarming precedent for an institution of higher learning. It has the reek of market research. When Jackson College announced its new name in 2013, officials boasted about how it will make them more marketable to international students. This is a surprising turn for a campus founded in 1928 to serve the people of rural mid-Michigan.

By assuming a name that has the ring of a traditional four-year school, community colleges are playing into the stereotype that they are less valuable than their counterparts. They give credence to the second- class stigma. “I’m not sure at what point ‘community college’ was branded a dirty term,” a columnist at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, wrote recently in the school paper, “but I’ve found myself red in the face when someone asked me where I go to school. In a room full of university students.”

Now, we are seeing that even top leaders of community colleges buy into this insecurity, to the point where they take the drastic and expensive step of hiding behind a new name. They would do better to save the money they’re spending on changing logos, signage and stationery, and direct it toward telling a more proud and truthful story about what these institutions contribute to society.

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Community colleges are a different animal than four-year schools, after all. They deserve to be taken on their own terms. Traditional education metrics, like the time it takes to graduate, aren’t neatly comparable. The Department of Education’s measure of graduation rates is designed for students who enroll in the fall as first-time degree- seeking undergraduates who attend school full-time. None of that describes the majority of community college students. Most attend part- time, begin in “off” semesters, transfer to other schools and, in many cases, they are not seeking a degree or certificate when they sign up for classes. All of this distorts the statistics on community colleges, confusing “graduation” as a synonym for “educational completion.”

For more on how reasons should support what you say, see Chapter 4 .

Because they serve a different population—including working adults, like my parents—their singular value should be recognized. And when it comes down to it, despite the snide nicknames, people get this. A June Gallup poll revealed that Americans are about as likely to describe the education at a community college as “excellent” or “good” as they are to positively rate four-year schools. With the national student loan debt at a preposterous $1.2 trillion, that fact deserves a spotlight.

Community colleges are, at heart, a radical manifestation of the belief that access to education, knowledge and culture are a public good. By stripping the “community” from their names, these schools give up too much ground to those who believe otherwise.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Why does Anna Clark believe that removing the term “community” from community colleges is such a bad idea? In her view, what role should community colleges play in their communities, and how does that role differ from that of other colleges and universities?

2. In paragraph 5, the author presents her “I say,” which she goes on to explain for the remainder of the essay. What language strategy does she use to present her argument and to distinguish her view from those leading up to it? How effective is she in introducing her argument, and why?

3. Clark states in paragraph 10, “By assuming a name that has the ring of a traditional four-year school, community colleges are playing into the stereotype that they are less valuable than their counterparts. They give credence to the second-class stigma.” How would you respond to this argument?

4. Both Clark and Mike Rose, author of “Community College: The Great Equalizer?” (pp. 589–97 ) assert the value of community college for both students and their communities. Read Mike Rose’s argument. What do you think is the most important difference between his argument and Clark’s?

5. Go to theysayiblog.com and search for the commercial from San Joaquin Valley College in which a jug of laundry detergent tries to convey a serious message to a potential future student. How might author Anna Clark respond to this commercial?

6. Do some research on your local community college. Look at its enrollment figures, graduation rates, and degree and certificate programs offered. Discuss your research with a classmate or friend. Then, compose your own argument to an audience of high school students about the value of attending community college.

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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Glossary

Truman Commission published a report in 1947 that called for a system of public community colleges

GI Bill a bill passed in 1944 that provided financial assistance for veterans to attend college

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Hidden Intellectualism

GERALD GRAFF

* * *

GERALD GRAFF , a coauthor of this book, is Professor Emeritus of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a past president of the Modern Language Association, the world’s largest professional association of university scholars and teachers. This essay is adapted from his 2003 book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind.

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EVERYONE KNOWS SOME YOUNG PERSON who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school. What a waste, we think, that one who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work. What doesn’t occur to us, though, is that schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into good academic work.

Nor do we consider one of the major reasons why schools and colleges overlook the intellectual potential of street smarts: the fact that we associate those street smarts with anti-intellectual concerns. We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic. We assume that it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, fashion, sports, TV, or video games.

The trouble with this assumption is that no necessary connection has ever been established between any text or subject and the educational depth and weight of the discussion it can generate. Real intellectuals turn

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any subject, however lightweight it may seem, into grist for their mill through the thoughtful questions they bring to it, whereas a dullard will find a way to drain the interest out of the richest subject. That’s why a George Orwell writing on the cultural meanings of penny postcards is infinitely more substantial than the cogitations of many professors on Shakespeare or globalization (104–16).

See pp. 65–69 for tips on disagreeing, with reasons.

Students do need to read models of intellectually challenging writing —and Orwell is a great one—if they are to become intellectuals themselves. But they would be more prone to take on intellectual identities if we encouraged them to do so at first on subjects that interest them rather than ones that interest us.

I offer my own adolescent experience as a case in point. Until I entered college, I hated books and cared only for sports. The only reading I cared to do or could do was sports magazines, on which I became hooked, becoming a regular reader of Sport magazine in the late forties, Sports Illustrated when it began publishing in 1954, and the annual magazine guides to professional baseball, football, and basketball. I also loved the sports novels for boys of John R. Tunis and Clair Bee and autobiographies of sports stars like Joe DiMaggio’s Lucky to Be a Yankee and Bob Feller’s Strikeout Story . In short, I was your typical teenage anti-intellectual—or so I believed for a long time. I have recently come to think, however, that my preference for sports over schoolwork was not anti-intellectualism so much as intellectualism by other means.

In the Chicago neighborhood I grew up in, which had become a melting pot after World War II, our block was solidly middle class, but just a block away—doubtless concentrated there by the real estate companies—were African Americans, Native Americans, and “hillbilly” whites who had recently fled postwar joblessness in the South and

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Appalachia. Negotiating this class boundary was a tricky matter. On the one hand, it was necessary to maintain the boundary between “clean-cut” boys like me and working-class “hoods,” as we called them, which meant that it was good to be openly smart in a bookish sort of way. On the other hand, I was desperate for the approval of the hoods, whom I encountered daily on the playing field and in the neighborhood, and for this purpose it was not at all good to be book-smart. The hoods would turn on you if they sensed you were putting on airs over them: “Who you lookin’ at, smart ass?” as a leather-jacketed youth once said to me as he relieved me of my pocket change along with my self-respect.

I grew up torn, then, between the need to prove I was smart and the fear of a beating if I proved it too well; between the need not to jeopardize my respectable future and the need to impress the hoods. As I lived it, the conflict came down to a choice between being physically tough and being verbal. For a boy in my neighborhood and elementary school, only being “tough” earned you complete legitimacy. I still recall endless, complicated debates in this period with my closest pals over who was “the toughest guy in the school.” If you were less than negligible as a fighter, as I was, you settled for the next best thing, which was to be inarticulate, carefully hiding telltale marks of literacy like correct grammar and pronunciation.

In one way, then, it would be hard to imagine an adolescence more thoroughly anti-intellectual than mine. Yet in retrospect, I see that it’s more complicated, that I and the 1950s themselves were not simply hostile toward intellectualism, but divided and ambivalent. When Marilyn Monroe married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 after divorcing the retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio, the symbolic triumph of geek over jock suggested the way the wind was blowing. Even Elvis, according to his biographer Peter Guralnick, turns out to have supported Adlai over Ike in the presidential election of 1956. “I don’t dig the intellectual bit,” he told reporters. “But I’m telling you, man, he knows the most” (327).

Though I too thought I did not “dig the intellectual bit,” I see now that I was unwittingly in training for it. The germs had actually been planted in the seemingly philistine debates about which boys were the toughest. I see now that in the interminable analysis of sports teams, movies, and toughness that my friends and I engaged in—a type of

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analysis, needless to say, that the real toughs would never have stooped to—I was already betraying an allegiance to the egghead world. I was practicing being an intellectual before I knew that was what I wanted to be.

It was in these discussions with friends about toughness and sports, I think, and in my reading of sports books and magazines, that I began to learn the rudiments of the intellectual life: how to make an argument, weigh different kinds of evidence, move between particulars and generalizations, summarize the views of others, and enter a conversation about ideas. It was in reading and arguing about sports and toughness that I experienced what it felt like to propose a generalization, restate and respond to a counterargument, and perform other intellectualizing operations, including composing the kind of sentences I am writing now.

Only much later did it dawn on me that the sports world was more compelling than school because it was more intellectual than school, not less. Sports after all was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not. I believe that street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture not because street smarts are nonintellectual, as we generally suppose, but because they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture, which seems pale and unreal.

They also satisfy the thirst for community. When you entered sports debates, you became part of a community that was not limited to your family and friends, but was national and public. Whereas schoolwork isolated you from others, the pennant race or Ted Williams’s .400 batting average was something you could talk about with people you had never met. Sports introduced you not only to a culture steeped in argument, but to a public argument culture that transcended the personal. I can’t blame my schools for failing to make intellectual culture resemble the Super Bowl, but I do fault them for failing to learn anything from the sports and entertainment worlds about how to organize and represent intellectual culture, how to exploit its gamelike element and turn it into arresting public spectacle that might have competed more successfully for my youthful attention.

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For here is another thing that never dawned on me and is still kept hidden from students, with tragic results: that the real intellectual world, the one that existed in the big world beyond school, is organized very much like the world of team sports, with rival texts, rival interpretations and evaluations of texts, rival theories of why they should be read and taught, and elaborate team competitions in which “fans” of writers, intellectual systems, methodologies, and -isms contend against each other.

To be sure, school contained plenty of competition, which became more invidious as one moved up the ladder (and has become even more so today with the advent of high-stakes testing). In this competition, points were scored not by making arguments, but by a show of information or vast reading, by grade-grubbing, or other forms of one- upmanship. School competition, in short, reproduced the less attractive features of sports culture without those that create close bonds and community.

And in distancing themselves from anything as enjoyable and absorbing as sports, my schools missed the opportunity to capitalize on an element of drama and conflict that the intellectual world shares with sports. Consequently, I failed to see the parallels between the sports and academic worlds that could have helped me cross more readily from one argument culture to the other.

Sports is only one of the domains whose potential for literacy training (and not only for males) is seriously underestimated by educators, who see sports as competing with academic development rather than a route to it. But if this argument suggests why it is a good idea to assign readings and topics that are close to students’ existing interests, it also suggests the limits of this tactic. For students who get excited about the chance to write about their passion for cars will often write as poorly and unreflectively on that topic as on Shakespeare or Plato. Here is the flip side of what I pointed out before: that there’s no necessary relation between the degree of interest a student shows in a text or subject and the quality of thought or expression such a student manifests in writing or talking about it. The challenge, as college professor Ned Laff has put it, “is not simply to exploit students’

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nonacademic interests, but to get them to see those interests through academic eyes.”

To say that students need to see their interests “through academic eyes” is to say that street smarts are not enough. Making students’ nonacademic interests an object of academic study is useful, then, for getting students’ attention and overcoming their boredom and alienation, but this tactic won’t in itself necessarily move them closer to an academically rigorous treatment of those interests. On the other hand, inviting students to write about cars, sports, or clothing fashions does not have to be a pedagogical cop-out as long as students are required to see these interests “through academic eyes,” that is, to think and write about cars, sports, and fashions in a reflective, analytical way, one that sees them as microcosms of what is going on in the wider culture.

If I am right, then schools and colleges are missing an opportunity when they do not encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study. It is self-defeating to decline to introduce any text or subject that figures to engage students who will otherwise tune out academic work entirely. If a student cannot get interested in Mill’s On Liberty but will read Sports Illustrated or Vogue or the hip-hop magazine Source with absorption, this is a strong argument for assigning the magazines over the classic. It’s a good bet that if students get hooked on reading and writing by doing term papers on Source, they will eventually get to On Liberty. But even if they don’t, the magazine reading will make them more literate and reflective than they would be otherwise. So it makes pedagogical sense to develop classroom units on sports, cars, fashions, rap music, and other such topics. Give me the student anytime who writes a sharply argued, sociologically acute analysis of an issue in Source over the student who writes a lifeless explication of Hamlet or Socrates’ Apology .

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WORKS CITED

Cramer, Richard Ben. Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life . Simon, 2000.

DiMaggio, Joe. Lucky to Be a Yankee . Bantam, 1949.

Feller, Bob. Strikeout Story . Bantam, 1948.

Guralnick, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley . Little, Brown, 1994.

Orwell, George. A Collection of Essays . Harcourt, 1953.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Gerald Graff begins his essay with the view that we generally associate “book smarts” with intellectualism and “street smarts” with anti-intellectualism. Graff then provides an extended example from his early life to counter this viewpoint. What do you think of his argument that boyhood conversations about sports provided a solid foundation for his later intellectual life? What support does he provide, and how persuasive is it?

2. Graff argues in paragraph 13 that the intellectual world is much like the world of team sports, with “rival texts . . . , rival theories . . . , and elaborate team competitions.” Can you think of any examples from your own experience that support this assertion? In what ways do you think “the real intellectual world” is different from the world of team sports?

3. Imagine a conversation between Graff and Mike Rose (pp. 589– 97 ) in which they discuss who and what gets to be labeled as “intellectual.” How are working-class community college students regarded, according to Rose? What opportunities are open or closed to them? What intellectual skills can people develop outside the realm of formal education, according to Graff? What similarities do you see between their arguments?

4. So what? Who cares? Graff does not answer these questions explicitly. Do it for him: write a brief paragraph saying why his argument matters, and for whom.

5. Graff argues that schools should encourage students to think critically, read, and write about areas of personal interest such as cars, fashion, or music—as long as they do so in an intellectually serious way. What do you think? Write an essay considering the educational merits of such a proposal, taking Graff’s argument as a “they say.”

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Glossary

Adlai Adlai Stevenson, Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956. He lost to Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower both times.

Ike Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States (1935– 61)

transcended went beyond the boundaries

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The Student Loan Trap: When Debt Delays Life

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN

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CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal , and a contributing writer for the Institute for Family Studies. His reporting on immigration, criminal justice, and social issues have appeared in the Wall Street Journal , Tablet , and the Weekly Standard. Originally from Pittsburgh, Lehman is a 2016 graduate of Yale University. This essay was published in the American Conservative in 2019.

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RODNEY SPANGLER FIRST ENROLLED at the University of North Texas in 2001. There, he pursued a degree in what the school now calls “integrative studies,” focusing on history, philosophy, and criminal justice. Rodney also worked full time, and so attended UNT on and off until 2007.

For every semester of classes, Spangler took out student loans. When he left—without a degree—he estimates that he had about $30,000 in outstanding student debt.

“At first I always intended to repay them, but the first time I took a semester off, I started getting due notices/bills for them,” Spangler told The American Conservative by email. “[I s]tarted going back, but the ones that came due kept sending notices, like there was no ‘pause’ button.”

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Overwhelmed by bills, Spangler simply stopped paying. Today, thanks to interest and delinquency penalties, he estimates his outstanding debt is about $60,000—double what it was. “I just don’t see how I can ever pay those off,” Spangler wrote, “short of winning the lottery.”

Of course, it’s possible to go on living with a five-figure debt hanging over your head, but it imposes more than its fair share of limitations. When Spangler tried to get a job in law enforcement, he met all the requirements, but was denied because of his credit history.

“I had some of the highest placement scores they had seen,” Spangler claims, “but my credit report had too many negative marks.” With one or two exceptions, all of those marks were from student loans.

The weight of the debt has not only hindered Spangler’s search for employment—it has also affected his family and romantic life. He has had to rely on his parents to cosign for loans. And, he says, he has been “a little reticent to pursue a serious relationship,” thanks in part to fear of being judged for his debt.

Spangler is not alone: he’s one of the 44 million Americans who holds student debt, 30 percent of the population who have attended college. Together, they owe about $1.5 trillion, a bigger burden than credit cards, auto loans, or any other non-mortgage debt.

That there is a student debt crisis is not news. Media sites report on it frequently; academics attend to it with increasing trepidation. But in focusing on the scale of the problem, we sometimes forget to think about how all that debt affects people’s lives.

Specifically, the last 20 years of student debt accumulation—driven largely by federal policy—have radically shifted the life-courses of younger Americans, whether late Gen Xers like Spangler or Millennials. Millions of Americans now enter adulthood with a burden unfaced by their parents or grandparents, which in turn slows their family formation,

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alters labor market behavior, and represents a profound alteration to how they live out citizenship.

Americans, historically, had little schooling. In 1900, less than 10 percent went to or graduated from high school; by 1910, the median adult had completed only 8 years of schooling. Americans, since Tocqueville’s time at least, have believed that education was the nursemaid of citizenship. But only recently has that come to mean more than primary schooling.

The modern, post-war economy, however, precipitated a radical change in America’s educational composition. In 1962, just 19 percent had been to college; today, 61 percent have. The proportion actually graduating went from 9 to 35 percent in the same period. In short, over the past half century, higher education has gone from the exception to the norm.

Stretching back at least to the G.I. Bill, government has carried the lion’s share for this transition. In 1965, the government began to offer its credibility as a guarantor of private student loans under the Federal Family Education Loan Program. In the early 1990s, the Department of Education started issuing student loans itself, under the Federal Direct Loan Program.

The amount of debt held by the DOE rose steadily through the 1990s and early 2000s, then exploded during the Great Recession. Preston Cooper, an education research analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, told [the American Conservative ] that many Americans, forced out of the full-time workforce, opted to reskill—and took on lots of debt to do so. The feds funded that choice: as of 2015, 91 percent of all student loans were publicly held.

Publicly available data on federal student loans thus get us most of the way to a picture of the student debtor population. Those data show that as federal loans became readily available, millions of Americans took them on.

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Clearly, some older Americans—especially ages 35 to 49—have debt, likely thanks to grad school and the Great Recession reskilling. But there is a pronounced disjuncture between even that group and America’s younger adults. Among those who have attended (although not necessarily graduated from) college, more than half are in debt.

We can look closer for an even starker picture. The mode 25- to 34- year-old debtor has between $20,000 and $40,000 of debt—the median annual salary for a recent college grad is about $50,000. Americans currently in and fresh out of college owe similarly high amounts.

Maybe student debt is not so bad. As David Leonhardt argued in a recent New York Times op-ed, it is in large part held by college-educated kids from the top income quartile, who can expect a substantial wage premium. Student debtors are likely to be well-off, and a college degree will make them more so.

Two issues complicate this argument, however. The first is what we might call the “Somes”: those who, like Spangler, have more than a high school degree but less than a college degree, i.e. only “some” college experience. Federal survey data show that “Somes” account for the second-highest proportion of all adults and the highest proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds.

For tips on how to use voice markers to distinguish who is saying what, see Chapter 5 .

Whereas debt-holding college grads usually do well, Somes don’t. Essentially all of the college wage premium accrues upon graduation, thanks to what economists call the “sheepskin effect”—the earnings boost comes with the diploma.

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Figure 1. Federal Student Debt Holders as a Percentage of College-Attended Population

The y axis measures the percentage of federal student debt holders among the college-attended population. The x axis specifies age groups. These age groups are 19 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 49, 50 to 61, and 62 plus years old. Each bar is labeled with the percentage of federal student debt holders in the college-attended population of each age group. The percentage of federal student debt holders trends downward from younger to older age groups. 52.4% of college- attended people aged 19 to 25 hold federal student debt. 51% of college-attended people aged 25 to 34 hold federal student debt. 34% of college-attended people aged 35 to 49 hold federal student. 18.9% of college-attended people aged 50 to 61 hold federal student debt. 5.2% of college-attended people aged 62 plus hold federal student debt.

Source: U.S. Department of Ed.; Pop. figures from Current Population Survey ASEC/IPUMS.

Q1 2018, includes all with at least some college

The obverse of this is that Somes end up looking more like their peers with a high-school degree than a college one—except, that is, for a lot of student debt. As Leonhardt notes, 40 percent of Somes borrowers

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defaulted on their loans, compared to just 8 percent who graduated. For a significant part of the student-loan-debtor population, then, there is no college-degree cushion.

There’s a bigger problem: even among grads, student debt slows the set of life choices we commonly associate with adulthood. Even if most debtors eventually get their lives on track, debt has substantial effects on how long it takes them to do so.

Unsurprisingly, having debt shapes young Americans’ job market decisions. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that grads with debt pick higher salary jobs, often over “public-interest” positions. They also found that bearing debt may affect students’ “academic decisions during college” in a way likely tied to their ultimate career trajectory. Young Americans may be more cautious about entering low-paying, high-social-significance roles—including politics, an area where older Americans are conspicuously over-represented.

Then there’s homeownership. Americans in their 20s have always been unlikely to buy, but Millennials may be delaying well into their 30s. The couple profiled in a recent Politico article on Millennials’ homebuying were 32 and 33, respectively; both cited their student debt as delaying their purchase. Analysis of British homeownership trends shows this is a common phenomenon, linking increased student debt levels to a “delay” in “first-time homeownership transition.”

All of this contributes to late family formation. Fewer young adults are married than ever and multiple analyses have found that student debt encourages cohabitation and reduces marriage among college-educated women (although, interestingly, not among men). That translates into less sex, and correspondingly fewer kids. A New York Times /Morning Consult poll found that 64 percent of young adults had fewer kids because of the cost of childcare (and, presumably, their ability to meet it); among those who claimed not to want kids, 13 percent explicitly cited their student debt as the reason.

All of this is fairly intuitive—if you have five figures of debt, paying it down will inevitably require trade-offs, which means delaying life. But

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it means that college debt directly slows young adults on the path their parents enjoyed—homes, marriage, children, etc.

That’s the big problem. Even bracketing the Somes, spiraling student debt has had a lasting impact on how hard young Americans have to work just to make it to the same place as previous generations. The new normal of debt necessarily alters the shape of American life.

See Chapter 8 for more about why it’s important to say why your argument matters.

Figure 2. Federal Student Loan Distribution, by Debt Size and Age Group, 2018

The data generally shows that younger people hold the highest percentage of federal student loan debt and older people hold the lowest percentage. The y axis measures percentages of federal student loan distributions, ranging between 0.0% to 15.0%. The x axis specifies debt sizes in groups, from less than $5,000 to over $200,000. The x axis also specifies age groups, including 18 to 24 years, 25 to 34 years, 35 to 49 years, 50 to 61 years, and 62 plus years old. Graph shows that federal student loan distributions are

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highest among people aged 18 to 24. Federal student loan distributions tend to decrease among age groups, so that everyone within the 62 plus years old age group has less than 2.5% student loan debt.

Source: U.S. Department of Ed.; Pop. figures from Current Population Survey ASEC/IPUMS

(*18 to 24 group may include small number of borrowers below age 18).

Figure 3. Education Distribution, by Level and Age Group, Q1 2018

The y axis measures percentages of education attainment distributions, ranging from 0% to 50%. The x axis specifies education levels, such as less than a high school education, a high school level or G.E.D., some college, college, and more than a college education. The x axis also specifies age groups, including 19 to 24 years, 25 to 34 years, 35 to 49 years, 50 to 61 years, and 62 plus years old. The 19 to 24 age group has the highest variance of education attainment distributions, with about 45% having some college level experience. The other age groups tend to be consistent in their education attainment distributions, with the highest

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percentages specifying a high school level/ G.E.D. or some college experience.

Source: Current Population Survey ASEC/IPUMS.

Crushing debt and delayed lives are of course unpleasant individual experiences, but there is a deeper problem of political equity. In America, there is a strong connection between education and the ideal of citizenship—a republic requires an educated populace. This connection implicates more than just reading and writing— Eleanor Roosevelt contended that every discipline, from Latin to mathematics, informs good citizenship.

In a society where education is a prerequisite for civic participation, raising the floor of expected educational attainment, we thought, would make better citizens. This was, for example, the instinct which induced President Barack Obama to call on “every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. . . . every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.”

But what is meant as inclusionary ends up exclusionary. The explosion of student debt, with its concurrent effects on debtors’ lives, means that many who go to college struggle along on the path to full, independent American life. Deviations from life course constrain young Americans in their ability to give back to their communities, to raise families, to buy homes, to teach responsible membership in society—in short, to be a citizen. The debt-financed education revolution risks retarding precisely the democratic goal it was meant to serve.

When we spoke, Rodney Spangler was 39, almost 40. He intends to go back to school next fall. He will still be heavily in debt, although perhaps finally getting a degree will help. Even so, he’ll have worked for decades for a position his parents could have reached with a high school education.

The proportion of the population that is college-exposed broke 50 percent in 2000 and has risen steadily since then. According to the Pew

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Research Center, the rising generation of “post-Millennials” are expected to be the most educated ever, with nearly 60 percent of those over 18 enrolled in college. If, as so many have argued, a new generation needs a renewed commitment to American citizenship, then they also need help surpassing the limitations stopping them from most fully living that commitment.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Charles Fain Lehman begins this article with the story of one former college student whose life has been severely affected by college debt. How effective is this opening anecdote in drawing your attention and introducing his argument? How well does this student’s plight reflect the overall problem of college debt that the author describes?

2. Paragraph 18 begins, “Maybe student debt is not so bad,” then discusses and responds to a recent argument to that effect. Find where in this discussion the author addresses “so what?” and “who cares?” questions. What does he say, and what might you add to these statements?

3. In paragraph 28, Lehman states that former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt contended that “every discipline, from Latin to mathematics, informs good citizenship,” and he goes on in paragraph 29 to say that “education is a prerequisite for civic participation.” Do you agree with this view? According to Lehman, how does the student debt crisis relate to this argument? How would you respond to Lehman’s argument?

4. Examine the bar graph on page 620 listing data on amount of student debt by age group. How do the data support Lehman’s argument? Answer the same question with regard to the bar graph on page 621 showing average level of education by age group.

5. In their article also included this chapter, economists Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fenaba Addo also analyze the effects of student loan debt on young people. Read their article, “Student Loan Forgiveness Critics Are Wrong about Who Benefits and Why” (pp. 625–30 ). Then, imagine Opoku-Agyeman and Addo are having a face-to-face conversation with Lehman about who is most affected by the student loan debt crisis. What points would these authors raise in this conversation? Compose a short

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dialogue that includes moments of agreement and disagreement among the authors.

6. Research practical strategies for reducing college student debt, and write a “they say / I say” argument recommending what you see as the best strategies for an audience of prospective college applicants and their families.

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Glossary

Eleanor Roosevelt First Lady of the United States (1933–45)

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Student Loan Forgiveness Critics Are Wrong about Who Benefits and Why

ANNA GIFTY OPOKU-AGYEMAN AND FENABA ADDO

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ANNA GIFTY OPOKU -AGYEMAN is the cofounder of the Sadie Collective, an organization that addresses the underrepresentation of Black women working in economic institutions. Opoku-Agyeman was born in Ghana and is a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School.

FENABA ADDO is an associate professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She researches how structural inequities lead to racial disparities in student debt and wealth accumulation. She earned her PhD from Cornell University. This essay was published in Teen Vogue in 2022.

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IN LATE AUGUST , the Biden administration announced that it will cancel student debt: $10,000 worth of federal student loans for those earning $125,000 or less and $20,000 for Pell Grant awardees under that same restriction. The administration also announced that under a new income repayment plan it will cap repayment at 5% of one’s discretionary income and discharge any existing debt after 10 years, down from 20 years.

Democrats are using the momentum from the announcement as a way to potentially gain some political ground ahead of the midterm elections in November. Strategically, that is the right move. Giving people oxygen in an already tight space is definitely a win and will yield dividends.

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But air should not be scarce in the first place. The current proposal is good, but there is still room for improvement, because America’s student debt crisis begins and ends with Black women, who—even after this announcement—still bear, on average, the highest burden. According to the American Association of University Women, or AAUW, Black women have the highest amount of student debt while having the lowest returns on their college degree.

Fifty-seven percent of Black women repaying student loans in 2016 reported that they were unable to meet essential expenses. This is not surprising. In 2020, Black women earned 63% of what white men earned, while white women earned 79%. Not to mention, research shows that the median amount of wealth for single Black women with a bachelor’s degree is only $5,000, and $500 for those with no degree. What’s more, as University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor and New York Times opinion columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom has pointed out, many Black college students accrue debt even if they don’t graduate. It’s a crisis of epic proportions.

Opponents of the current student debt forgiveness proposal have several reasons for believing the policy is terrible, including, particularly, that only the very rich will benefit (i.e., it’s regressive) and that those who need to have their debt forgiven are financially irresponsible. But these views fail to address how race, wealth, and gender construct different economic realities for different people.

Critics of complete debt cancellation often cite analyses from the Urban Institute and Federal Reserve Bank of New York to show how much debt burden is carried by different income brackets by percentile. The prevailing argument is that student debt forgiveness will help high- income households disproportionately because they have the largest loan balances. What both analyses fail to adequately take into account, however, is that debt burden and generational wealth differ across race and gender.

See Chapter 6 for other examples of how to engage opposing views fairly.

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We can think of wealth, here, as the difference between the value of one’s assets minus their liabilities, or debts. Fenaba’s own research looking into parental wealth and the middle class alongside student debt has found that Black students, in particular, tend to rely more on loans than white students, have higher debt burdens, and are more likely to default. Black-white disparities in wealth are related to Black-white differences in student debt accumulation, and disparities in student accumulation and repayment have been contributing to Black-white wealth gaps.

According to the Institute for College & Success, in 2016, 85% of Black bachelor’s degree recipients graduated with debt, compared with just under 70% of their white peers. Although Black borrowers carry, on average, higher levels of student debt than other borrowers, women across all races carry more student debt than men. At both the graduate and undergraduate level, Black women carry the most per capita education loan debt in the nation.

The second critique, that those who have their debt forgiven are inherently irresponsible with their funds, is eerily similar to the belief that poor people need to “ pull themselves up by their bootstraps ,” and it perpetuates racist tropes like “the welfare queen .” These arguments suggest that the debt crisis is a result of individual failings and poor decision-making rather than deliberate policy decisions made at the state and federal levels. Furthermore, student loan debt was considered good debt because it was tied to educational attainment and long-term financial prosperity.

Familial and kin networks are essential for access to economic resources. A recent poll from NPR and Harvard University found that white adults in the United States are more than twice as likely as their Black and Latino counterparts to receive sizable financial help from their loved ones. Yet many critics cling to individual-level drivers, such as that borrowers lack financial education. Fenaba’s coauthored work found no evidence that differences in financial literacy account for racial

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differences in student debt; a subsequent coauthored research article found that if Black youth had the same debt burden as white youth, the racial wealth gap between them would decrease by approximately 10.5%. An emphasis on financial irresponsibility minimizes the structural conditions that led to the crisis. It individualizes the problem by focusing on solutions centered on the borrower and their supposed lack of understanding or uninformed decision-making.

Without question, the current student debt forgiveness proposal does not do enough to address persistent economic inequality among racial and ethnic groups. Though Black borrowers are disproportionately burdened by debt, education professor Dominique Baker finds that Latino and Asian students also have a higher debt to income ratio than white borrowers. No one expects the racial wealth gap to close overnight, but full participation in the economy requires that Black people—especially Black women—have the opportunity to build wealth.

This is why using the average white borrower as a proxy of progress misses the mark. If we are to forgive the debt of the most vulnerable, then Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to forgive up to $50,000 or Senator Bernie Sanders’s plan to forgive all student debt are the only options to ensure that everyone, especially Black women, who have an average student debt of $37,558, has a shot at building household wealth. Sara Goldrick-Rab, author of Paying the Price , said we should also push for more policies that address student debt forgiveness because “half of everyone with debt doesn’t even have a degree, so we cannot pretend they are better off.”

The current student loan forgiveness plan should be where the conversation starts, not where it ends. For example, the Biden plan discharges more loan debt ($20,000) for Pell grant awardees, who are disproportionately Black. But more borrowers can be helped with additional expansions and policy targets. Under Schumer and Warren’s plan, all other demographic groups would see their student loan burdens lightened too.

Additionally, a 2018 study found that for-profit college and university graduates take on more debt and experience worse outcomes in the workforce, which means more student debt borrowers who enrolled in these institutions would also catch a break. One rather simple

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yet ingenious policy target would be to center Black female borrowers. This is what Janelle Jones, previously the Department of Labor’s chief economist, and the first Black person to hold the position, calls Black Women Best: the argument that if Black women can one day thrive in the economy, then it must finally be working for everyone.

The crux of the underlying issue remains the lack of resources for Black (and brown) households as the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow , segregation, and mass incarceration continues to present obstacles for Black Americans. There is simply no building back together if only one group gets to build while others are left behind. Any counter narrative that suggests otherwise excludes the most vulnerable among us. What the data makes abundantly clear is that the best outcome for the most marginalized among us can be—and likely is—a better outcome for everyone else. With student debt forgiveness, this undeniable truth remains to be seen.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Economists Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fenaba Addo argue that the conversation about student loan debt and forgiveness does not adequately consider how “race, wealth, and gender construct different economic realities for different people” (paragraph 5). What group of people are they most concerned about, and why?

2. The authors describe two common misconceptions about student loan debt that are often put forth by critics who are opposed to policies that would cancel the student loan debt held by individual borrowers. What are these two common misconceptions? Notice how the authors present these “they say”s. Describe the strategies the authors use to signal to their readers when they are expressing their view versus when they are stating someone else’s view.

3. The authors push back on arguments that individualize the student loan debt issue by focusing primarily on the choices of an individual borrower. Why? What else, beyond an individual borrower’s control, impacts how much student loan debt they take on to pursue a college degree?

4. Do some quick research on the concept of generational wealth and racial wealth inequities, starting with reading Nick Maggiulli’s article, “Give Black Households More Economic Power,” posted on theysayiblog.com . Why, on average, do White families in the United States have more generational wealth than Black families? How should policy makers account for these differences as they draft and debate student loan forgiveness policies?

5. Talk with a few people about student loan forgiveness policies in the United States, doing your best to survey people of different ages and backgrounds. Listen closely to the points they make about student loan debt. What perspectives and arguments come

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up often? Whose views are not present? Why do you think that is?

6. Should student loan debt be forgiven? How much, and for whom? Why? Compose a short “I say” response to these questions. In your response, reference Opoku-Agyeman and Addo’s article and other readings from this chapter.

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Glossary

pull themselves up by their bootstraps an expression that initially meant an impossible task—bootstraps are attached to the heels of men’s lace-up short boots—but came to represent individual achievement in moving up through social classes

welfare queen a derogatory term for a woman who misuses the welfare system to collect higher payments than she qualifies for

Jim Crow initially a racist caricature performed by T. D. Rice in blackface during minstrel shows in the 1830s; came to refer to laws enforcing racial segregation in the 1870s

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TWENTY-FOUR

“HOW CAN WE BRIDGE THE DIFFERENCES THAT DIVIDE

US?”

* * *

Two women are seated along the side of the table, with a man positioned at the head. The mans open mouth implies that he is the

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speaker of the text displayed at the bottom of the screen. This text states, Thats strange. I remember it differently, in a way that aligns with my worldview and casts me in a positive light.

Instead of debates that are a true conflict of ideas, people often seek out arguments that support what they already think. Researchers call this “confirmation bias,” and as this cartoon by Sofia Warren for the New Yorker shows, it can trick people into only hearing the voices that echo their own long-held beliefs.

1. Look at the scene in the cartoon. Think about the last time you were in a conversation that challenged your worldview or assumptions. Where were you? How did it feel to be challenged in this way?

2. Read the caption and look at the body language of the people in this cartoon. Where are they? What are they doing? What do you think will happen next in this scene?

***

IN A RECENT MULTIPART SERIES by the Associated Press called “Divided America,” the opening paragraph of the series begins:

“It’s no longer just Republican vs. Democrat, or liberal vs. conservative. It’s the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent, rural vs. urban, white men against the world. Climate doubters clash with believers. Bathrooms have become battlefields, borders are battle lines. Sex and race, faith and ethnicity . . . the melting pot seems to be boiling over.”

Despite these hardening divisions, survey after survey shows that a majority of people actually feel deep frustration over living in such a polarized society. Many have begun to wonder how long a democratic system of government can continue to function effectively when even basic facts embraced by one faction are seen as untrustworthy by another.

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So how do we as individuals find common ground? Possible first steps involve venturing out of our comfort zones to listen and pay attention to viewpoints that challenge our own, finding ways to respond thoughtfully and considering how best to move forward as a society despite a lack of consensus on important issues. Accordingly, this chapter’s readings comprise a serious effort to understand and move beyond our differences.

One set of readings in the chapter pinpoints existing divisions and offers possible ways of bridging those divides. Sean Blanda, writer and technology entrepreneur, suggests that we show compassion and respect for “the other side,” his term for how we label people who don’t think exactly the way we do. College student Kelly Coryell examines the phrase “All Lives Matter,” used in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. She concludes that, if Black Lives Matter and similar movements are ignored or silenced, the status quo of racial inequity will be perpetuated. David Brooks, a conservative writer for the New York Times , lauds the positive effects of nationalism and a shared national culture as demonstrated in Ukraine, especially as a response to foreign aggressors. Professor of international affairs Yascha Mounk, himself an immigrant to the United States from Eastern Europe, argues that a civic patriotism based on shared values is preferable to ethnic nationalism as a way of uniting our diverse citizenry. However, in building civic patriotism, he stresses the need to focus on key aspects of everyday culture that are widely shared. Finally, Andre M. Perry, who writes about race and economics as a fellow at the Brookings Institution, posits that policies to reduce poverty in the United States could both heal the economy and bridge an increasingly divided nation.

Another set of readings examines controversy over immigration to the United States. Journalist and professor Suketu Mehta, whose family came to the United States from India when he was a child, cites evidence showing that immigration as a whole benefits the country economically as well as culturally. In contrast, writer and political consultant David Frum presents a less rosy view of immigration’s impact on the nation.

A final pair of readings in the chapter explores the impact of terminology, language, and self-definition through presenting two opinions on the term “Latinx” as a nongendered replacement for “Latino” or “Latina.” Journalist Paola Ramos offers a defense of

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“Latinx” to describe the United States’ diverse population of immigrants and citizens with ancestry in Latin America, a term she describes as “transcending all borders of race, age, gender, issue, nationality, sexual orientation, and identity.” However, Bryan Betancur, a professor at Bronx Community College, rejects the term “Latinx,” favoring the term “Latine,” which remains inclusive while prioritizing Spanish pronunciation.

You will encounter a range of perspectives on divisive issues while reading this chapter and its companion website, “They Say / I Blog .” As you do so, you may be challenged to examine and possibly reconsider some of your own views, and at the very least, consider how you think a productive debate can occur between people who fundamentally disagree.

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Glossary

fundamentally with regard to what is primary, or at the root of something

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The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

SEAN BLANDA

* * *

SEAN BLANDA builds editorial products that serve a variety of communities. He is the co-director of Crossbeam, a networking platform, and the cofounder of Technical.ly, a startup based in Philadelphia that “grows local technology communities by connecting organizations and people through news, events, and services.” This 2016 essay first appeared in Medium .

________

THERE’S A FUN GAME I like to play in a group of trusted friends called “Controversial Opinion.” The rules are simple: Don’t talk about what was shared during Controversial Opinion afterward and you aren’t allowed to “argue”—only to ask questions about why that person feels that way. Opinions can range from “I think James Bond movies are overrated” to “I think Donald Trump would make an excellent president.”

Usually, someone responds to an opinion with, “Oh my god! I had no idea you were one of those people!” Which is really another way of saying “I thought you were on my team!”

In psychology, the idea that everyone is like us is called the “false- consensus bias.” This bias often manifests itself when we see TV ratings (“Who the hell are all these people that watch NCIS ?”) or in politics (“Everyone I know is for stricter gun control! Who are these backwards rubes that disagree?!”) or polls (“Who are these people voting for Ben Carson ?”).

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Online it means we can be blindsided by the opinions of our friends or, more broadly, America. Over time, this morphs into a subconscious belief that we and our friends are the sane ones and that there’s a crazy “Other Side” that must be laughed at—an Other Side that just doesn’t “get it,” and is clearly not as intelligent as “us.” But this holier-than-thou social media behavior is counterproductive; it’s self-aggrandizement at the cost of actual nuanced discourse, and if we want to consider online discourse productive, we need to move past this.

What is emerging is the worst kind of echo chamber, one where those inside are increasingly convinced that everyone shares their world view, that their ranks are growing when they aren’t. It’s like clockwork: an event happens and then your social media circle is shocked when a non– social media peer group public reacts to news in an unexpected way. They then mock the Other Side for being “out of touch” or “dumb.”

The two kingdoms are completely identical and face each other across a river. The kingdom on the left is labeled our blessed homeland while the kingdom on the right is labeled their barbarous wastes. The ships and castles for the kingdom on the left are labeled our glorious leader, our great religion, our noble populace, and our heroic adventurers. The ships and castles for the kingdom on the

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right are labeled their wicked despot, their primitive superstition, their backward savages, and their brutish invaders.

Fredrik deBoer, one of my favorite writers around, touched on this in his essay “Getting Past the Coalition of the Cool.” He writes:

[The Internet] encourages people to collapse any distinction between their work life, their social life, and their political life. “Hey, that person who tweets about the TV shows I like also dislikes injustice,” which over time becomes “I can identify an ally by the TV shows they like.” The fact that you can mine a Rihanna video for political content becomes, in that vague internety way, the sense that people who don’t see political content in Rihanna’s music aren’t on your side.

When someone communicates that they are not “on our side” our first reaction is to run away or dismiss them as stupid. To be sure, there are hateful, racist people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes [for] just one of your synapses to fire. I’m instead referencing those who actually believe in an opposing viewpoint of a complicated issue, and do so for genuine, considered reasons. Or at least, for reasons just as good as yours.

Text and circles of different sizes and colors indicate survey results. Lines and text are connected to each circle, indicating percentages of respondents that hear or read something in the news that makes them angry, as well as how often. 31% state a few times a day, represented by a large circle. 37% state one a day, represented by the largest

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circle in the diagram. 20% state once a week, represented by a medium-sized circle. 5% state once a month, represented by the smallest circle in the diagram. 6% state rarely, represented by a small circle.

This is not a “political correctness” issue. It’s a fundamental rejection of the possibility to consider that the people who don’t feel the same way you do might be right. It’s a preference to see the Other Side as a cardboard cutout, and not the complicated individual human beings that they actually are.

What happens instead of genuine intellectual curiosity is the sharing of Slate or Daily Kos or Fox News or Red State links. Sites that exist almost solely to produce content to be shared so friends can pat each other on the back and mock the Other Side. Look at the Other Side! So dumb and unable to see this the way I do!

Sharing links that mock a caricature of the Other Side isn’t signaling that we’re somehow more informed. It signals that we’d rather be smug assholes than consider alternative views. It signals that we’d much rather show our friends that we’re like them than try to understand those who are not.

It’s impossible to consider yourself a curious person and participate in social media in this way. We cannot consider ourselves “empathetic” only to turn around and belittle those who don’t agree with us.

On Twitter and Facebook this means we prioritize by sharing stuff that will garner approval of our peers over stuff that’s actually, you know, true. We share stuff that ignores wider realities, selectively shares information, or is just an outright falsehood. The misinformation is so rampant that the Washington Post stopped publishing its Internet fact- checking column because people didn’t seem to care if stuff was true.

Where debunking an Internet fake once involved some research, it’s now often as simple as clicking around for an “about” or “disclaimer” page. And where a willingness to believe hoaxes once seemed to come

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from a place of honest ignorance or misunderstanding, that’s frequently no longer the case. Headlines like “ Casey Anthony found dismembered in truck” go viral via old-fashioned schadenfreude — even hate.

…

Institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always , that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views—even when it’s demonstrably fake.

The solution, as deBoer says: “You have to be willing to sacrifice your carefully curated social performance and be willing to work with people who are not like you. ” In other words you have to recognize that the Other Side is made of actual people.

But I’d like to go a step further. We should all enter every issue with the very real possibility that we might be wrong this time .

Isn’t it possible that you, reader of Medium and Twitter power user, like me, suffer from this from time to time? Isn’t it possible that we’re not right about everything? That those who live in places not where you live, watch shows that you don’t watch, and read books that you don’t read, have opinions and belief systems just as valid as yours? That maybe you don’t see the entire picture?

Think political correctness has gotten out of control? Follow the many great social activists on Twitter. Think America’s stance on guns is puzzling? Read the stories of the 31% of Americans that own a firearm. This is not to say the Other Side is “right” but that they likely have real reasons to feel that way. And only after understanding those reasons can a real discussion take place.

See Chapter 11 for ways to clarify and elaborate on your point.

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As any debate club veteran knows, if you can’t make your opponent’s point for them, you don’t truly grasp the issue. We can bemoan political gridlock and a divisive media all we want. But we won’t truly progress as individuals until we make an honest effort to understand those that are not like us. And you won’t convince anyone to feel the way you do if you don’t respect their position and opinions.

A dare for the next time you’re in a discussion with someone you disagree with: Don’t try to “win.” Don’t try to “convince” anyone of your viewpoint. Don’t score points by mocking them to your peers. Instead try to “lose.” Hear them out. Ask them to convince you and mean it. No one is going to tell your environmentalist friends that you merely asked follow-up questions after your brother made his pro-fracking case.

Or, the next time you feel compelled to share a link on social media about current events, ask yourself why you are doing it. Is it because that link brings to light information you hadn’t considered? Or does it confirm your world view, reminding your circle of intellectual teammates that you’re not on the Other Side?

I implore you to seek out your opposite. When you hear someone cite “facts” that don’t support your viewpoint don’t think “that can’t be true!” Instead consider, “Hm, maybe that person is right? I should look into this.” Because refusing to truly understand those who disagree with you is intellectual laziness and worse, is usually worse than what you’re accusing the Other Side of doing.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Sean Blanda begins his essay by defining “false-consensus bias” (paragraph 3). Explain what this concept is, and give an example from your own experience or observation that you think demonstrates this bias.

2. In paragraph 6, Blanda introduces a quotation by Fredrik deBoer, but he doesn’t follow it with an explanation. How would you recommend that Blanda do so? (See page 51 for ways to create a “quotation sandwich.”)

3. So what? Who cares? Where in this piece does Blanda explain why his argument matters? Has he persuaded you, and if not, why not?

4. Choose an issue of importance to you and write a tweet (280 characters or less) or a social media post that demonstrates respect for the “Other Side.”

5. Go to theysayiblog.com and search for “(Alt-) right and wrong” by Brendan Novak. How do Novak’s views compare with Blanda’s—how are they similar, and how are they different?

6. Read Yascha Mounk’s essay in this chapter, “The Everyday Patriotism of Diverse Democracies.” At the end of his essay, Mounk describes the “contentious debate” happening in countries around the world about “how much commonality of spirit they can hope for” (page 650 , paragraph 23). What do the people on each side think, according to Mounk? What would Blanda suggest that each side do to understand the “Other Side”?

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Glossary

James Bond movies a series of spy movies (1962–2021) based on the character from Ian Fleming’s novels

rubes originally a derogatory term for a country boy who was easily fooled; now unsophisticated, awkward people

Ben Carson retired neurosurgeon; sought the Republican nomination for president in 2016; secretary of Housing and Urban Development (2017–21)

self-aggrandizement excessive self-promotion

schadenfreude taking pleasure in someone’s misfortune (German)

Casey Anthony mother aquitted in the killing of her daughter; the trial was widely followed on social media and the crime never solved

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The Everyday Patriotism of Diverse Democracies

YASCHA MOUNK

* * *

YASCHA MOUNK is a contributing editor to the Atlantic and professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. The author of four books, Mounk also founded the digital publication platform Persuasion , hosts “The Good Fight” podcast, and serves a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations. Mounk was born in Germany and earned his PhD in government from Harvard University. This piece, an excerpt from his book The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure , was published in the Wall Street Journal in 2022.

________

IN THE MOST DESPAIRING MONTHS OF WORLD WAR II, when the planes of the Wehrmacht were raining bombs upon London, and the Nazis seemed destined to rule vast swaths of Europe, George Orwell set out to write about a surprising subject: the virtues of patriotism.

Orwell was as aware of the destructive potential of nationalism as any of his compatriots. A few years earlier, he had joined an international band of idealists to defend the Spanish Republic against its fascist enemies. “The energy that actually shapes the world,” Orwell warned those who still dismissed Adolf Hitler as too absurd to pose a real threat, “springs from emotions—racial pride, leader worship, religious belief, love of war—which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms.”

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But it is precisely because Orwell knew how powerfully such emotions drive politics, and how destructive they can become when they are allowed to fester, that he defended a constructive form of patriotism. “What has kept England on its feet during the past year?” he asked. In the main, he answered, it was “the atavistic emotion of patriotism.”

Orwell’s ambivalent case for patriotism is of renewed relevance today. When cruise missiles first homed in on their targets in Kyiv, much of the world assumed that Russian troops would soon reach the Ukrainian capital. But to the astonishment of both Western intelligence analysts and the war’s architects in the Kremlin, Ukraine has so far managed to resist. Fueled by a collective determination to defend their homeland, however poor the odds, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been able to withstand brutal attacks by a much larger invading force.

But love of country can go wrong as readily today as it has in the past. In its most aggressive and exclusionary forms, nationalism can lead to the attacks on ethnic and religious outsiders that we have seen in Western democracies, or even provide the pretext for one country to annex the territory of another. Vladimir Putin, too, claims to be a patriot.

So how can defenders of democracy summon the power of patriotism without opening the door to prejudice and chauvinism? And do the citizens of deeply diverse countries like the United States even have enough in common to sustain a meaningful form of collective solidarity?

The most traditional form of nationalism emphasizes common descent. Advocates of an ethnic conception of patriotism argue that most nations are rooted in the history of particular peoples and should continue to recognize those who descend from its original inhabitants as having special standing.

But the changes of the past half-century, especially in democracies that experienced a high level of immigration, have made such an ethnic conception of nationalism impractical and destructive. Forever hailing the achievements of one part of the population, ethnic nationalism is unable to acknowledge to what extent most countries are now shaped by immigrants and their descendants. It fails to give members of modern

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democracies who belong to minority groups full credit for their contributions, making it far more difficult to sustain genuine solidarity in countries undergoing rapid demographic change.

Philosophers and politicians who recognize that ethnic nationalism cannot provide a sensible basis for a diverse democracy, but don’t want to give up on patriotism altogether, usually make the case for a time- tested alternative: civic patriotism. To be proud to be an American, they say, is to love the ideals and institutions to which the country committed itself in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The advantages of civic patriotism are significant. Unlike ethnic nationalism, it allows anybody who is willing to embrace a set of shared political values to become a full member of the community. So long as immigrants from such different places as Morocco, Thailand, Zimbabwe and El Salvador agree to abide by the Constitution, they should be able to live together in peace—and become as American as a White Anglo- Saxon Protestant whose forefathers arrived on these shores hundreds of years ago.

There is also some reason to think that civic patriotism is less likely to draw countries into international conflict than ethnic forms of nationalism. A love of country that is based in a belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own ethnic or racial group provides an easy excuse for those who want to dismiss the legitimate interests of other nations. But a nation that is founded on the importance of self-determination should be able to recognize that other countries also have a legitimate interest in ruling themselves. Civic patriotism should be better able than ethnic nationalism to welcome newcomers into the fold and sustain meaningful international cooperation.

For all of those reasons, the idea of civic patriotism strongly appeals to me. It defines nations by their highest ideals rather than their basest instincts. And it gives citizens a way to take pride in their country without indulging in bigotry or chauvinism. If I didn’t hesitate to swear an oath of citizenship when I became an American citizen five years ago, it is, in part, because I love the Declaration of Independence and the

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Constitution and the inspiration they have provided for civic patriotism, both at home and abroad.

Even so, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that civic patriotism is at best a partial answer to the question of how contemporary democracies can sustain a common national identity. Patriotism is one of the most universal sentiments in the modern world. Most citizens of democracies feel it at least to some extent. But an interest in high-flown civic ideals and civic documents remains the preserve of a politically minded minority.

Noble though the idea may be, civic patriotism will never fully describe what most people feel when they think of their country with love or affection. In putting abstract political principles at the center of our collective sentiments, the notion of civic patriotism runs the danger of mischaracterizing a sentiment that is, at least as much, about our emotional attachment to real people and places. We need to complement the civic conception of patriotism with another dimension—one which recognizes the key role played by everyday culture.

In 1993 John Major, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, delivered a speech to reassure his country that a closer relationship with Europe wouldn’t alter its essential character. Even if parliament ratified the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union, he said, Britain would “still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers.”

The speech was widely mocked: The idea that warm beer would forever define Britain seemed silly to many of his compatriots. Major’s failure is no aberration. Whenever politicians try to define the nature of their country, they end up sounding cheesy, antiquated or both. It would be easy to conclude that these smart politicians and their well-paid speechwriters keep failing because they are trying to give voice to something that doesn’t exist.

Yet as someone who has lived in five different countries, I am daily struck by the extent to which national cultures continue to differ from one another. Even in the European Union, where borders between

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member states have almost disappeared, nations continue to shape the “cultural scripts” that, as the sociologists Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka put it, set “background norms, templates, guidelines or models for ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and speaking.”

For more ways of weaving in personal experience, see Chapter 7 .

When people say that they love their country, they aren’t necessarily celebrating the ethnic links that unite members of the majority group. Nor need they be thinking about politics or the constitution. While politicians might, for lack of better words, invoke a lot of clichés or historical symbols when making patriotic speeches, most people arrive at their cultural patriotism by a more direct and unpretentious route. Their love of country is deeply imbued with their appreciation of its everyday sights and smells and sounds and tastes. Their affection is for the things that make up everyday life: their fields and cities, dishes and customs, buildings and cultural scripts.

There is a way to invoke culture that excludes newcomers and minority groups, that values purity over inclusion. For cultural traditionalists, Italy would cease being Italy if a greater number of Italians chose not to celebrate Christmas, and India would cease being India if most Indians started to celebrate Halloween. But in a diverse democracy, culture bears the mark of many different groups. When asked about their favorite foods, Germans are now more likely to mention a “foreign” dish like spaghetti Bolognese or Döner kebab than they are to go on about a “local” dish like Schweinshaxe . And when Americans think about dishes they love, they are as likely to list pizza and tacos as they are to talk about meat loaf or apple pie.

This living, breathing, ever-changing everyday culture is open to immigrants and ethnic minorities. Though minority groups often retain pride in elements of their ancestral culture, the vast majority of them are, simultaneously, perfectly comfortable with the cultural mainstream. In

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most diverse democracies, members of ethnic or religious minorities are among the most fervent fans of local sports teams and celebrities. They keenly celebrate nondenominational holidays like Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. In some places, they are even appropriating the most traditional and stereotypical aspects of national culture for themselves: Scots of Indian extraction have taken to the kilt in considerable numbers, for example, while Bavarians with Turkish roots are increasingly likely to don lederhosen when they go to the Oktoberfest.

Skeptics may ask why anyone should love the culture of a particular modern nation state when all nations increasingly resemble one another, contain a lot of variety within their own borders, and suffer from serious injustices. But when someone says that they love Brazil or Indonesia or the U.S., they don’t mean that their attributes are unique, that there is nothing wrong with them, or that other countries are terrible. They are simply expressing a special affection for what is theirs.

As a German Jew whose ancestors perished in the Holocaust, I find that patriotism doesn’t come naturally to me. But for diverse democracies like the U.S. to thrive, citizens of many different ethnic and religious groups need to sustain a real sense of solidarity with one another.

Many countries in the world are now in the middle of a contentious debate about how much commonality of spirit they can hope for. Some voices on the right claim that immigration and demographic change are destroying social cohesion. They believe that the historical success of countries like the U.S. depended on the religion or even the ethnicity of the majority group and will inevitably erode as a result of its relative decline. Meanwhile, some voices on the left believe that the citizens of modern nations will forever be defined, first and foremost, by their religion or ethnicity. To hope that “whites” and “people of color” could subordinate their differences to a shared national identity, they say, is to be naive about the enduring force of racism.

It is easy to see why this kind of pessimism is now in fashion. Deep racial injustices undoubtedly endure in virtually all countries. And with the share of residents born outside America higher than it has been at any point in living memory, cultural differences between immigrants and natives really can feel especially stark . Even so, it would be a dangerous

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mistake to overlook how much Americans who belong to different ethnic and religious groups have in common—or to give up on a future in which they might come to feel an even deeper kinship.

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Joining the Conversation

1. In his essay, Yascha Mounk explains three different kinds of patriotism. Describe the differences among “an ethnic conception of patriotism” (paragraph 7), “civic patriotism” (paragraph 9), and a patriotism rooted in a shared “everyday culture” (paragraph 14). According to the author, what are the problems with the first two kinds of patriotism?

2. In paragraph 21, the author inserts a naysayer: “Skeptics may ask . . .” Summarize this naysayer argument in your own words. Do you think that Mounk effectively answers the objections raised by this naysayer? Why or why not?

3. Identify two places in Mounk’s text where he says why his argument matters and for whom it matters. Paraphrase his response in your own words: Who should care about creating a shared national identity, and why?

4. At key points in his text, the author incorporates his own experiences and identity. Choose one of these moments, and explain how his background supports the claims he makes about cultural patriotism. How does the author’s choice to include his own experience affect his credibility?

5. What everyday things contribute to a shared national culture, according to the author? What examples does he give? Create a multimodal collage of pictures, videos, and/or sounds that show how you participate in the everyday culture of your country. Think about holidays, food, music, festivals, sports, and other things that connect you to others beyond your own immediate family and community. Share your collage with a classmate and compare the examples you included.

6. Read the essay, “Jobs, Crime, and Culture” by Suketu Mehta on pages 658–72 . Mehta describes the United States as “this messy mix . . . this rude commingling”. What does Mehta mean by this?

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Do you think Mounk would agree, disagree, or agree and disagree with Mehta’s definition of the United States? How so?

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Glossary

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or “WASP”; sociological term and acronym describing members of the white Protestant upper class

spaghetti Bolognese spaghetti with meat sauce (Italian)

Döner kebab seasoned meat roasted on a vertical rotisserie, sliced thinly and stuffed, with vegetables and sauce, into a pita or wrapped in flatbread (Turkish)

Schweinshaxe a roasted ham hock, or pork knuckle (German)

kilt a wrap-around garment resembling a knee-length skirt, cut from worsted (strong, smooth) wool with a tartan weave; originally Scottish Highland dress for men

lederhosen knee-length leather breeches (short pants), often worn with suspenders in an “H” style; traditional German clothing for boys and men

stark severe

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The Triumph of the Ukrainian Idea

DAVID BROOKS

* * *

DAVID BROOKS has been a columnist for the New York Times since 2003, where he writes broadly on politics and culture. Previously, he worked as an editor at the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard and as a contributing editor for Newsweek and the Atlantic. Born in Toronto, Brooks is also the author of five books and a commentator on PBS NewsHour . This piece was published in the New York Times in 2022.

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THE WAR IN UKRAINE IS NOT ONLY A MILITARY EVENT ; it’s an intellectual event. The Ukrainians are winning not only because of the superiority of their troops. They are winning because they are fighting for a superior idea—an idea that inspires Ukrainians to fight so doggedly, an idea that inspires people across the West to stand behind Ukraine and back it to the hilt.

That idea is actually two ideas jammed together. The first is liberalism, which promotes democracy, individual dignity, a rule-based international order.

The second idea is nationalism. Volodymyr Zelensky is a nationalist. He is fighting not just for democracy but also for Ukraine—Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian land, the Ukrainian people and tongue. The symbol of this war is the Ukrainian flag, a nationalist symbol.

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There are many people who assume that liberalism and nationalism are opposites. Liberalism, in their mind, is modern and progressive. It’s about freedom of choice, diversity and individual autonomy. Nationalism, meanwhile, is primordial, xenophobic , tribal, aggressive and exclusionary.

Modern countries, by this thinking, should try to tamp down nationalist passions and embrace the universal brotherhood of all humankind. As John Lennon famously sang, “Imagine there’s no countries . . . / Nothing to kill or die for.”

Those people are not all wrong. Nationalism has a lot of blood on its hands. But it has become clear that there are two kinds of nationalism: the illiberal nationalism of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and the liberal nationalism of Zelensky. The former nationalism is backward- looking, xenophobic and authoritarian . The latter nationalism is forward-looking, inclusive and builds a society around the rule of law, not the personal power of the maximum leader. It’s become clear that if it is to survive, liberalism needs to rest on a bed of this kind of nationalism.

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For tips on repeating key terms and phrases, see Chapter 9 .

Nationalism provides people with a fervent sense of belonging. Countries don’t hold together because citizens make a cold assessment that it’s in their self-interest to do so. Countries are held together by shared loves for a particular way of life, a particular culture, a particular land. These loves have to be stirred in the heart before they can be analyzed by the brain.

Nationalism provides people with a sense of meaning. Nationalists tell stories that stretch from a glorious, if broken, past forward to a golden future. Individuals live and die, but the nation goes on. People feel their life has significance because they contribute these eternal stories. “Freedom is hollow outside of a meaning-providing system” Yael Tamir writes in her book Why Nationalism .

Democracies need nationalism if they are to defend themselves against their foes. Democracies also need this kind of nationalism if they are to hold together. In his book The Great Experiment, Yascha Mounk celebrates the growing diversity enjoyed by many Western nations. But he argues they also need the centripetal force of “cultural patriotism” to balance the centrifugal forces that this diversity ignites.

Finally, democracies need this kind of nationalism to regenerate the nation. Liberal nationalists are not stuck with a single archaic national narrative. They are perpetually going back, reinterpreting the past, modernizing the story and reinventing the community.

Over the past decades this kind of ardent nationalism has often been regarded as passé within the circles of the educated elites. I suspect there are many people in this country who are proud to wear the Ukrainian flag but wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an American flag because they fear it would mark them as reactionary, jingoistic , low class.

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The first problem with this posture is that it opened up a cultural divide between the educated class and the millions of Americans for whom patriotism is a central part of their identity. Second, by associating liberalism with the cosmopolitan global elite, it made liberalism seem like a system used to preserve the privileges of that elite. The populist class backlash combined with an anti-liberal backlash, imperiling democracies across the globe. Third, it opened the door for people like Trump to seize and hijack American patriotism.

Liberal nationalism believes in what liberals believe, but it also believes that nations are moral communities and the borders that define them need to be secure. It believes that it’s sometimes OK to put Americans first—to adopt policies that give American workers an edge over workers elsewhere. It believes it’s important to celebrate diversity, but a country that doesn’t construct a shared moral culture will probably rip itself to shreds.

American nationalism has characteristically been a liberal nationalism. From Alexander Hamilton to Walt Whitman to Theodore Roosevelt , it has often been a song in praise of a liberal revolution, a liberal constitution and a diverse, liberal society. Trumpian nationalism doesn’t flow from that traditional American nationalism but is a repudiation of it.

Ukraine’s tenacity shows how powerful liberal nationalism can be in the face of an authoritarian threat. It shows how liberal nationalism can mobilize a society and inspire it to fantastic achievements. It shows what a renewed American liberal nationalism could do, if only the center and left could get over their squeamishness about patriotic ardor and would embrace and reinvent our national tradition.

Yael Tamir makes the essential point: “Self-centered individualism must therefore be replaced with a more collectivist spirit that nationalism knows how to kindle.”

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Joining the Conversation

1. David Brooks says the Ukrainians are fighting for “two ideas jammed together” (paragraph 2). What are those two ideas? What common misconception about these two ideas does Brooks address at the beginning of his argument? What is Brooks’s response to this “they say”?

2. What is the difference between “liberal nationalism” and “illiberal nationalism” (paragraph 6)? What examples and evidence does the author give in his argument to support how he defines these two types of nationalism?

3. The author skillfully guides his reader through his argument by repeating key terms. Choose one paragraph where he repeats an important term or phrase several times. What term or phrase does he repeat? How does this repetition emphasize the author’s central point and focus your attention as a reader?

4. One of the voices Brooks brings into his argument is writer Yascha Mounk, whose essay is in this chapter. Read Mounk’s argument. Why, according to Brooks and Mounk, do modern-day diverse democracies like the United States need “liberal nationalism” (paragraph 6) or “cultural patriotism” (paragraph 9)? Beyond these collective benefits, what can a sense of nationalism do for individual people?

5. Brooks writes, “I suspect there are many people in this country who are proud to wear the Ukrainian flag but wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an American flag because they fear it would mark them as reactionary, jingoistic, low class” (paragraph 11). Why is patriotism causing a “cultural divide” (paragraph 12) in the United States? What contributes to this cultural divide? Do you think a Ukrainian-like shared nationalism is possible in the United States? Why or why not?

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Glossary

xenophobic having a dislike or fear of people from other countries

authoritarian enforcing a submission to authority, particularly the government

jingoistic patriotic to an extreme, through aggressive and often warlike foreign policy

populist concerning ordinary people

Alexander Hamilton founding father (1755–1804) and the United States’ first secretary of the Treasury (1789–95) under President George Washington

Walt Whitman American poet and journalist (1819–1892) known for his depiction of “common people” and his use of free verse in “Leaves of Grass” (1855)

Theodore Roosevelt American politician (1858–1919) and 26th president of the United States (1901–09)

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Jobs, Crime, and Culture: The Threats That Aren’t

SUKETU MEHTA

* * *

SUKETU MEHTA is an associate professor of journalism at New York University and an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction who has published in the New Yorker , Granta , and Harper’s Magazine . His writing considers the politics of immigration and migration from both an academic and a personal lens. Mehta was raised in Mumbai, India, and immigrated to New York as a teenager. This essay is from his 2019 book, This Land Is Our Land .

________

THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST IMMIGRATION are most often about jobs, crime, and culture: that immigrants take away native jobs; that they increase the crime rate; that they are an alien culture.

The first two arguments are demonstrably false.

When people first immigrate, they compete most not with the native- born, but with immigrants who’ve gotten off the boat just before them. But the previous year’s immigrants don’t mind, because many of the newcomers are related to them. And in any case, the difference it makes in their wages is minuscule .

In 2006, Mayor Bloomberg, then a Republican, testified in the Senate right after the mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, who wanted landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants to be locked up. 1

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Bloomberg said there were half a million undocumented immigrants in New York City, “And let’s be honest: they arrive for a good reason— they want a better life for themselves and their families, and our businesses need them and hire them! Although they broke the law by illegally crossing our borders or overstaying their visas, and our businesses broke the law by employing them, our City’s economy would be a shell of itself had they not, and it would collapse if they were deported. The same holds true for the nation.”

But just as there are climate change skeptics, there are immigration skeptics. There’s a global consensus among 99 percent of legitimate economists that immigration is good for the economy. Then there’s George Borjas, an economist at Harvard. He is among the very few to have presented any kind of serious evidence that it is not so. “Although immigration makes the aggregate economy larger, the actual net benefit accruing to natives is small, equal to an estimated two-tenths of 1 percent of GDP . There is little evidence indicating that immigration (legal and / or illegal) creates large net gains for native-born Americans.” 2

Borjas further argues that immigration has harmed those Americans who were already least able to withstand harm. He estimates that

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immigration has cut the wages of American high school dropouts by 3 to 5 percent, or an average of $1,800 a year. And, yes, for many, that $1,800 is a significant amount.

In 2015, Borjas published a study claiming that the arrival of the “Marielitos,” the 125,000 prisoners that Castro emptied from his jails in 1980 and put on boats to Florida, made the wages of high school dropouts in the area plunge by 10 to 30 percent. This study was cited by none other than Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller in support of his draconian restrictions on immigration. 3

But later analysis showed that Borjas’s study was, at the very least, deeply flawed—in part because it used sample sizes as small as seventeen to twenty-four people per year, and focused on the people who could confirm his hypothesis. Borjas eliminated Hispanic dropouts, women, and workers who’re not between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-nine—who constitute a combined 91 percent of low-skilled workers in Miami—in his samples of people affected by the Marielitos. According to the U.C. Berkeley economists Giovanni Peri and Vasil Yasenov, the new immigrants may have actually had a positive effect on the local job market because they created a demand for services, from supermarkets to auto repair shops. In any case, the Marielitos are thriving, and the Florida job market quickly recovered from whatever short-term effects the influx might have had. 4

Do immigrants steal jobs from the natives? Çag˘lar Özden, a lead economist for the World Bank’s Development and Research Group, maintains that they don’t. “In general Özden found that migrants often take jobs that locals don’t want or can’t fill . . . Özden also found that unskilled migrants tend either to have no impact on local wages and employment or to increase wages and employment,” summarizes the analyst Ruchir Sharma, the chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. 5 If you can have an immigrant nanny mind your children, you can go to work as a writer or a dentist and make more money than if you were home minding your children.

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The economist Michael Clemens makes a similar point. As The Atlantic explains,

he [Clemens] and his co-authors, through study of all the available economic literature, have found that decades of immigration of tens of millions of people to the United States has reduced real wages for the average American worker by fractions of a percent, if at all . . . Clemens’s research also challenges the notion that immigrants take away jobs from Americans. In agriculture, for example, he has estimated that for every three seasonal workers who are brought in, one American job is created across all sectors. Directly, workers need managers, and more often than not those managers are Americans. Indirectly, workers buy things, which means more Americans are needed to sell and produce those things. And yet, Clemens told me, “when a bus of 60 Mexicans is coming up from the border, nobody looks at it and says ‘Ah, there’s 20 American jobs.’ ” 6

Close to half of American farmworkers are here illegally. 7 Expelling them will not only decimate American agriculture; it will make no difference to the wages of native farmworkers. When the Bracero “guest worker” program ended in 1964, and Mexican farmworkers, who had done backbreaking work in the fields to replace Americans shipped off to the battlefields of Europe, were asked to go back, they were not replaced by American workers. Their bosses simply shifted to less labor- intensive crops and introduced more machines in the fields.

Instead, the nation would be better served if the farmworkers and most of the other undocumented who’re already here, like the Dreamers, got amnesty. There’s a precedent for this. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, also known as the “Reagan amnesty,” which gave green cards to 2.7 million undocumented people. After it passed, the wages of the legalized workers went up, tax revenues increased as they started filing tax returns, and the crime rate fell by 5 percent, as property crimes decreased because the undocumented could work legally. 8

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There will be winners from free trade and free movement of people —like technology corporations. And there will be losers, for a while— like the unskilled. But the winners could be made to give away a part of their winnings to the losers through taxes. One way to do this would be to make the earned income tax credit much more generous. This would help both immigrants and the high school dropouts whose prospects are most hurt by immigration. More federal funds should be made available for areas such as border towns that are struggling with the impact of rising migration, in the form of aid for schools and hospitals. These funds could also be raised through a fee that would be charged to companies for each skilled immigrant they sponsor.

Ultimately, whatever the merits of Borjas’s argument, the solution isn’t to keep low-skilled workers out, which would be catastrophic for entire sectors of the economy. (For example, four out of eight of Maryland’s crab-picking businesses closed in 2018 because of the difficulty of finding seasonal migrant labor after Trump’s restrictions.) 9 It’s to get more students through high school. Then the migrants with lower skills can begin their climb on the ladder of economic opportunity working as apple pickers and nannies, while those born here can work as clerks and call-center workers. And both can dream of their children becoming doctors and presidents.

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Migrant farm workers harvest strawberries in California.

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If you want to make the economy grow, let in more immigrants—and legalize the ones already here.

Immigrants, particularly the undocumented, are presented by politicians and Fox anchors as a feral horde of drug dealers and rapists. How criminally inclined are immigrants, really?

Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute analyzed crime statistics in Texas for 2016. Native-born Americans were convicted of crimes at a rate of 2,116 per 100,000 people. For legal immigrants, that number plunged to 292 per 100,000; for illegal immigrants, 879. “The native- born criminal conviction rate was thus 2.4 times as high as the criminal conviction rate for illegal immigrants in that year and 7.2 times as high as that of legal immigrants,” writes Nowrasteh. 10

A 2018 study in the journal Criminology studied the correlation between levels of undocumented immigration in American states and the prevalence of crime, from 1990 to 2014. The conclusion was unambiguous: “Increases in the undocumented immigrant population within states are associated with significant decreases in the prevalence of violence,” the study found. For every 1 percent increase in the undocumented population, there were 49 fewer violent crimes per 100,000 people. “Immigrants are driven by pursuit of education and economic opportunities for themselves and their families,” said Michael Light, one of the study’s coauthors. “Migration—especially undocumented migration—requires a lot of motivation and planning. Those are characters that aren’t correlated with a high crime- prone disposition.” 11

According to a 2018 Yale survey, the number of undocumented immigrants in America now stands at 22.1 million—and could be as high as 29.5 million. This may mean that the undocumented commit crimes at half the rates originally attributed to them. “You have the same number of crimes but now spread over twice as many people as was believed before, which right away means that the crime rate among undocumented immigrants is essentially half whatever was previously believed,” said Edward Kaplan, a coauthor of the study. 12

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If you want to make the country safer, let in more immigrants—legal or otherwise.

The third complaint, that immigrants bring in a culture different from an existing one, is the most valid. So, if you’re living in a kind of Norman Rockwell America, you might not like a cantina to open up next door blaring salsa music. But your neighbor, bored out of his mind by the sterility of Norman Rockwell’s America, might welcome it. You don’t get to define what a national culture is. Americans don’t; even Europeans don’t, because go back a few decades and the definition of French, or British, or German culture—what religions and foods and ethnic origins constituted it—was radically different from what it is today.

For a discussion of effective transitions, see Chapter 9 .

Might you consider that by our moving here we will make things better—not just economically but also culturally? That there is something worthwhile in the cultures we bring with us—all of us, not just the Asian model minorities—and some of it is something that you can learn from? It could be our work ethic, it could be our love of family, it could be our gorgeous dresses or soulful music, it could be our richly spiced cuisine or our complex myths. Our old gods will meet your newer gods and produce a hybrid better suited for worship by all.

The street food of Germany is doner kebab ; of Great Britain, chicken tikka masala ; of France, couscous . The most exciting music in Paris isn’t Edith Piaf but the Afropop playing in dozens of clubs in and around the city.

We were also drawn here by your songs. My father moved himself, and his wife and three children, to America to expand his family diamond business. But there was a deeper, more long-standing attraction, which had begun in college in Calcutta, in the 1950s. It was when my father was first exposed to the great rock ’n’ yell of Chuck Berry and

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Elvis—music that the Jesuit deans of St. Xavier’s tried to ban because they couldn’t stand to see their students gyrating their pelvises. My father had never heard such an awesome caterwaul before, and—along with America’s decadent movies and books—it seeded the young man’s desire to go live there someday.

And isn’t that, after all, what makes America work: this messy mix, this barbaric yawp , this redneck rondeau , this rude commingling? Isn’t this what permeates its films, movies, books; and isn’t it the principal product it can still export? It is American culture’s permissiveness, openness, and vigor that still attract the masses to the Golden Door , not its rigidity.

An argument that’s been resurfacing is that this new crop of immigrants, unlike previous waves of migrants, doesn’t assimilate. “The vast majority of past immigrants changed their values, not America’s, when they came to this country. They came here to become American, not only in terms of language, citizenship, and national identity, but also in terms of values,” wrote the radio host Dennis Prager in National Review . “But while some immigrants still do, the majority does not. They want to become American citizens in order to better their lives—a completely understandable motivation—not to embrace American values and identity. The majority of today’s immigrants from Latin America, for example, wishes to become wealthier . . . Latin Americans.” 13

On this question, a lot of people on both sides throw around facts and figures out of their own hats . What was needed was an authoritative, thoroughly researched study conducted by a respected, impartial organization.

In 2015, the federal government—the U.S. Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services and the National Science Foundation—asked the National Academy of Sciences to undertake just such a study. It was, and remains, the definitive word on the subject. The 500-page report looked at 41 million immigrants and their 37 million children. It assembled research from 18 leading economists, demographers, and migration scholars—including immigration skeptics like George Borjas. 14

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English-language learning “is happening as rapidly or faster now than it did for earlier waves of mainly European immigrants in the 20th century,” the report found. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, 95 percent of immigrants think learning English is essential or important. By the second generation, educational achievement catches up to the children of the native-born. By the third generation, most immigrant children speak only English. 15 Only 41 percent of third-generation Mexican American children, for example, speak exclusively Spanish at home. 16 The report also found that incarceration rates for immigrant men in the eighteen-to- thirty-nine age group are a quarter of those for native-born men. “Cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have much lower rates of crime and violence.” 17

As for jobs, 86 percent of first-generation immigrant males participate in the labor force, which is a higher rate than the native-born. “Immigrant men with the lowest level of education are more likely to be employed than comparable native-born men, indicating that immigrants appear to be filling low-skilled jobs that native-born Americans are not available or willing to take.” 18

The study found that in almost all categories, immigrants do better than the native-born. “Foreign-born immigrants have better infant, child, and adult health outcomes than the U.S.-born population in general and better outcomes than U.S.-born members of their ethnic group. In comparison with native-born Americans, the foreign-born are less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and all cancers combined; they experience fewer chronic health conditions, lower infant mortality rates, lower rates of obesity, and fewer functional limitations. Immigrants also have a lower prevalence of depression and of alcohol abuse.” They also get divorced less.

There were some caveats . The first to arrive need more government help than they contribute in taxes, such as public schooling for their children, as have newly arrived immigrants in the past. The total annual cost to all levels of government is $57 billion. But the children of these immigrants, by the second generation, contribute $30 billion in taxes; by the third generation, $223 billion. 19

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By the third generation, immigrants assimilate into America—in all ways. Their crime, health, divorce, and education rates are the same as the native-born. They sit around on the couch and watch TV and grow obese; work or don’t work; study or don’t study; commit crimes; and dislike learning languages other than English at the same rates as the native-born. In other words, they’ve become fully American.

The report came down resolutely on one side of the debate:

Immigration is integral to the nation’s economic growth. The inflow of labor supply has helped the United States avoid the problems facing other economies that have stagnated as a result of unfavorable demographics, particularly the effects of an aging work force and reduced consumption by older residents. In addition, the infusion of human capital by high-skilled immigrants has boosted the nation’s capacity for innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological change.

Sometimes America isn’t even aware of the talent coming to its shores, or the way somebody let in for one skill can later demonstrate another. A farmworker could become a political activist; an engineer could open a restaurant. And their children . . . do what children of immigrants have always done. Although a Mexican migrant may start out mowing lawns, his children quickly move up, according to the report:

See Chapter 3 for more on explaining quotations.

Second generation children of immigrants from Mexico and Central America have made large leaps in occupational terms: 22 percent of second generation Mexican men and 31 percent of second generation men from Central America in 2003–2013 were in professional or managerial positions . . . The occupational leap for second generation women for this period was even greater, and the gap separating them from later generation women narrowed greatly. 20

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Immigrants also assimilate in other ways, less palatable to people like the Iowa representative Steve King, who famously declared, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” The primal fear of nativists like King is “They’re coming for our women! ” Oh, yes, we are —and for your men, too. One out of every seven marriages in America is interracial or interethnic, twice the rate of the last generation. In 1970, only 1 percent of American babies were descended from parents of different races. By 2013, that number had risen tenfold. In the next four decades, the number of interracial births will go up by 174 percent. 21

I’ve always found American definitions of “race” confusing. In India, I could understand categories of religion or caste. But what does it mean to be “black” or “white” in America? Is Obama half-white or half- black? The best answer to whites’ fear of being overrun by 2044 may be this: by then, “race” might not matter anymore.

“More than 35 percent of Americans said that one of their ‘close’ kin is of a different race,” says the National Academy of Sciences report. “Integration of immigrants and their descendants is a major contributor to this large degree of intermixing.” In the future, the lines between what Americans today think of as separate ethnoracial groups may become much more blurred. Indeed, immigrants become Americans not just by integrating into our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces, but also into our families. Very quickly, “they” become “us.”

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NOTES

1. Michael Bloomberg, “Mayor Bloomberg Testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Field Hearing on Federal Immigration Legislation.” New York City, Office of the Mayor (July 5, 2006). https:// wwwl.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/230-06/mayor-bloomberg-testif ies-before-u-s-senate-judiciary-committee-field-hearing-federal .

2. Jennifer Rubin, “What the Anti-Immigrant Movement Really Believes.” Washington Post (May 9, 2013). https://www.washingtonpost. com/blogs/right-tum/wp/2013/05/09/what-the-anti-immigrant-movement -really-believes/ .

3. George J. Borjas, “The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal.” ILR Review 7 , no. 5 (September 2015). https://www.nber.o rg/papers/w21588 .

4. Giovanni Peri and Vasil Yasenov, “The Labor Market Effects of a Refugee Wave: Applying the Synthetic Control Method to the Mariel Boatlift.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 21801 (December 2015, revised June 2017). https://www.nber.org/paper s/w21801 .

5. Ruchir Sharma, The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), p. 51.

6. Shaun Raviv, “If People Could Immigrate Anywhere, Would Poverty Be Eliminated?” Atlantic (April 26, 2013). https://www.theatlant ic.com/international/archive/2013/04/if-people-could-immigrate-anywhe re-would-poverty-be-eliminated/275332/.

7. Tamar Haspel, “Illegal Immigrants Help Fuel U.S. Farms. Does Affordable Produce Depend on Them?” Washington Post (March 17, 2017). https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-an-immigratio n-crackdown-who-will-pick-our-produce/2017/03/17/cc1c6df4-0a5d-11e 7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html .

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8. Rachel Kleinfeld, “Wanna Cut Crime? Let in More Immigrants, Legal and Illegal.” Newsweek (September 7, 2017). https://www.newswe ek.com/wanna-cut-crime-let-more-immigrants-legal-and-illegal-661183 .

9. Ryan Marshall, “Shortage of Blue Crab Pickers Forces Maryland Seafood Shops to Shut Down.” Delmarva Now (May 4, 2018). https://w ww.delmarvanow.com/story/money/2018/05/04/shortage-maryland-blue- crab-pickers-causes-seafood-shops-shutdown-h-2-b-visa-lottery/5779300 02/ .

10. Alex Nowrasteh, “Criminal Conviction Rates in Texas in 2016.” Cato Institute (April 23, 2018). https://www.cato.org/blog/criminal-convi ction-rates-texas-2016 .

11. Christopher Ingraham, “Two Charts Demolish the Notion That Immigrants Here Illegally Commit More Crime.” Washington Post (June 19, 2018). https://www.washingtonpost.coin/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/ two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit- more-crime/ .

12. Mohammad M. Fazel-Zarandi, Jonathan S. Feinstein, and Edward H. Kaplan, “The Number of Undocumented Immigrants in the United States: Estimates Based on Demographic Modeling with Data from 1990 to 2016.” PLOS ONE (September 21, 2018). https://journals.p los.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201193 .

13. Dennis Prager, “Immigrants Change Cultures—Whether New Yorkers in Florida or Latinos in America.” Townhall (July 17, 2018). http s://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2018/07/17/immigrants-chang e-cultures--whether-new-yorkers-in-florida-or-latinos-in-america-n25009 81 .

14. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015), p. 6. https://doi.org/10.17226/21746 .

15. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Most in U.S. Say It’s Essential That Immigrants Learn English.” Gallup (August 9, 2013). https://news.gallu p.com/poll/163895/say-essential-immigrants-learn-english.aspx .

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16. Jens Manuel Krogstad and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “A Majority of English-Speaking Hispanics in the U.S. Are Bilingual.” Pew Research Center (March 24, 2015). http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/0 3/24/a-majority-of-english-speaking-hispanics-in-the-u-s-are-bilingual/ .

17. Julia Preston, “Newest Immigrants Assimilating as Fast as Previous Ones, Report Says.” New York Times (September 21, 2015). htt ps://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/us/newest-immigrants-assimilating-a s-well-as-past-ones-report-says.html .

18. “Report Finds Immigrants Come to Resemble Native-Born Americans over Time, But Integration Not Always Linked to Greater Well-Being for Immigrants.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (September 21, 2015). http://www8.nationala cademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=21746 .

19. Julia Preston, “Immigrants Aren’t Taking Americans’ Jobs, New Study Finds.” New York Times (September 21, 2016). https://www.nytim es.com/2016/09/22/us/immigrants-arent-taking-americans-jobs-new-stud y-finds.html .

20. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015), p. 6. https://doi.org/10.17226/21746 .

21. Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Rich Morin, and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Multiracial in America: Proud, Diverse and Growing in Numbers.” Pew Research Center (June 11, 2015). http://www.pewsocialt rends.org/2015/06/11/multiracial-in-america/ .

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Joining the Conversation

1. Suketu Mehta, writer and professor of journalism, immigrated to the United States from India with his family as a child. While beginning his essay by listing arguments against immigration (“they say”), he proceeds to argue for the benefits of immigration to the United States. Summarize his argument in two or three sentences.

2. Mehta employs quotations from several authors whose views differ from his own, such as economist George Borjas and politician Steve King. Find two examples where Mehta presents views that he opposes, and then show how he is able to clearly distinguish those views from his own.

3. The author responds to three different arguments against immigration: that immigrants take away native jobs, that they increase the crime rate, and that they are an alien culture. How does he use transitions and other connecting devices to link the various parts of his essay?

4. David Frum’s “How Much Immigration Is Too Much? The Wrong Debate” (pp. 674–82 ), while acknowledging some positive effects of immigration to the United States, takes a more critical view overall than does Mehta on immigration as it impacts Americans economically and culturally. Given Frum’s specific concerns about immigration, how might he respond to Mehta’s argument?

5. Ask some of your relatives about your own family’s journey to the United States. If that is not possible, ask a friend or classmate. When and where did your family’s arrival take place and where from, what did they do to make a living, and how is immigration now viewed by your family? Finally, how would the family’s experience relate to the patterns described by Mehta?

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Glossary

minuscule extremely tiny

baby boomers individuals born between 1946 and 1964, when there was a significant increase in fertility rates

GDP acronym for “gross domestic product,” the monetary value of goods and services that a country produces and sells

feral wild; undomesticted, with animalistic connotations

horde a large group of people

Norman Rockwell American painter (1894–1978), known both for his sentimentalized portrayal of American life and for his unflinching depiction of racism during the civil rights era

doner kebab seasoned meat roasted on a vertical rotisserie, sliced thinly and stuffed, with vegetables and sauce, into a pita or wrapped in flatbread (Turkish)

chicken tikka masala chicken roasted in a spicy tomato-based sauce and served with yogurt (British, Indian)

couscous granule-size balls of steamed semolina wheat, often served with a stew on top (North African)

Edith Piaf France’s national chanteuse, or female singer (1915–1963); widely known for “La Vie en Rose” (1946)

Afropop popular music from Africa and the African diaspora

barbaric yawp

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from section 52 of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”; refers to how the speaker is “untranslatable”

rondeau a medieval or Renaissance type of French “fixed form” poetry, with a rhyming quintet, quatrain, and sestet, often set to music

Golden Door New York Harbor, through which immigrants passed; refers to the final line of Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” (1883)

out of their own hats from “talking through their hats”; knowing very little about what one is saying (idiom)

caveats cautions or conditions

palatable agreeable or acceptable to the taste or mind

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Endnotes

Note 1:Michael Bloomberg, “Mayor Bloomberg Testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Field Hearing on Federal Immigration Legislation.” New York City, Office of the Mayor (July 5, 2006). https://wwwl.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/230 -06/mayor-bloomberg-testifies-before-u-s-senate-judiciary-committ ee-field-hearing-federal .Return to reference 1 Note 2:Jennifer Rubin, “What the Anti-Immigrant Movement Really Believes.” Washington Post (May 9, 2013). https://www.was hingtonpost.com/blogs/right-tum/wp/2013/05/09/what-the-anti-imm igrant-movement-really-believes/ .Return to reference 2 Note 3:George J. Borjas, “The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal.” ILR Review 7 , no. 5 (September 2015). https://www.n ber.org/papers/w21588 .Return to reference 3 Note 4:Giovanni Peri and Vasil Yasenov, “The Labor Market Effects of a Refugee Wave: Applying the Synthetic Control Method to the Mariel Boatlift.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 21801 (December 2015, revised June 2017). http s://www.nber.org/papers/w21801 .Return to reference 4 Note 5:Ruchir Sharma, The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), p. 51.Return to reference 5 Note 6:Shaun Raviv, “If People Could Immigrate Anywhere, Would Poverty Be Eliminated?” Atlantic (April 26, 2013). https://www.the atlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/if-people-could-immigra te-anywhere-would-poverty-be-eliminated/275332/. Return to reference 6 Note 7:Tamar Haspel, “Illegal Immigrants Help Fuel U.S. Farms. Does Affordable Produce Depend on Them?” Washington Post (March 17, 2017). https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/i n-an-immigration-crackdown-who-will-pick-our-produce/2017/03/1 7/cc1c6df4-0a5d-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html .Return to reference 7

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Note 8:Rachel Kleinfeld, “Wanna Cut Crime? Let in More Immigrants, Legal and Illegal.” Newsweek (September 7, 2017). htt ps://www.newsweek.com/wanna-cut-crime-let-more-immigrants-le gal-and-illegal-661183 .Return to reference 8 Note 9:Ryan Marshall, “Shortage of Blue Crab Pickers Forces Maryland Seafood Shops to Shut Down.” Delmarva Now (May 4, 2018). https://www.delmarvanow.com/story/money/2018/05/04/sho rtage-maryland-blue-crab-pickers-causes-seafood-shops-shutdown- h-2-b-visa-lottery/577930002/ .Return to reference 9 Note 10:Alex Nowrasteh, “Criminal Conviction Rates in Texas in 2016.” Cato Institute (April 23, 2018). https://www.cato.org/blog/cr iminal-conviction-rates-texas-2016 .Return to reference 10 Note 11:Christopher Ingraham, “Two Charts Demolish the Notion That Immigrants Here Illegally Commit More Crime.” Washington Post (June 19, 2018). https://www.washingtonpost.coin/news/wonk/ wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-her e-illegally-commit-more-crime/ .Return to reference 11 Note 12:Mohammad M. Fazel-Zarandi, Jonathan S. Feinstein, and Edward H. Kaplan, “The Number of Undocumented Immigrants in the United States: Estimates Based on Demographic Modeling with Data from 1990 to 2016.” PLOS ONE (September 21, 2018). http s://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.02011 93 .Return to reference 12 Note 13:Dennis Prager, “Immigrants Change Cultures—Whether New Yorkers in Florida or Latinos in America.” Townhall (July 17, 2018). https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2018/07/17/im migrants-change-cultures--whether-new-yorkers-in-florida-or-latino s-in-america-n2500981 .Return to reference 13 Note 14:National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015), p. 6. https://do i.org/10.17226/21746 .Return to reference 14 Note 15:Jeffrey M. Jones, “Most in U.S. Say It’s Essential That Immigrants Learn English.” Gallup (August 9, 2013). https://news.g allup.com/poll/163895/say-essential-immigrants-learn-english.aspx .Return to reference 15 Note 16:Jens Manuel Krogstad and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “A Majority of English-Speaking Hispanics in the U.S. Are Bilingual.”

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Pew Research Center (March 24, 2015). http://www.pewresearch.or g/fact-tank/2015/03/24/a-majority-of-english-speaking-hispanics-in- the-u-s-are-bilingual/ .Return to reference 16 Note 17:Julia Preston, “Newest Immigrants Assimilating as Fast as Previous Ones, Report Says.” New York Times (September 21, 2015). https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/us/newest-immigrants- assimilating-as-well-as-past-ones-report-says.html .Return to reference 17 Note 18:“Report Finds Immigrants Come to Resemble Native-Born Americans over Time, But Integration Not Always Linked to Greater Well-Being for Immigrants.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (September 21, 2015). http:// www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID= 21746 .Return to reference 18 Note 19:Julia Preston, “Immigrants Aren’t Taking Americans’ Jobs, New Study Finds.” New York Times (September 21, 2016). https://w ww.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/us/immigrants-arent-taking-americans -jobs-new-study-finds.html .Return to reference 19 Note 20:National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015), p. 6. https://do i.org/10.17226/21746 .Return to reference 20 Note 21:Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Rich Morin, and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Multiracial in America: Proud, Diverse and Growing in Numbers.” Pew Research Center (June 11, 2015). htt p://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/multiracial-in-america/ .Return to reference 21

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How Much Immigration Is Too Much? The Wrong Debate

DAVID FRUM

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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of ten books. He writes on US domestic and foreign policy, and his essays and columns have been published in the Wall Street Journal , the Weekly Standard, Time , and Foreign Affairs . In 2001–02, Frum worked in the White House as a speechwriter for George W. Bush. This selection first appeared in the Atlantic in 2019.

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“WE WANTED WORKERS , but we got people instead.” So quipped the Swiss writer Max Frisch about the guest workers who came to northern Europe seeking economic opportunity in the aftermath of World War II. Yet when immigration is the subject, policy makers tend to concede the microphone to the economists—precisely the profession that looks at people and sees workers instead.

From an economic point of view, immigration is good because it encourages specialization and thus efficiency. In a low-immigration world, an American accountant might have to pay $25 or $30 an hour for yard services by American-born landscapers. At that price, she might choose to do the yard work herself. If higher immigration lowers the price of landscaping work to $10 to $12 an hour, she may hire a landscaper and devote her newfound free time to extra accounting work. Instead of leaving the office at 5 p.m. to cook dinner for her family, she can stay until 6 o’clock and order from Postmates as she drives home. Or she can buy more services than she otherwise would. A lower bid from

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an immigrant-employing contractor might allow her to renovate her kitchen this year rather than postponing it to next year.

But all of this only happens because lower-earning immigrants displace the Americans who used to do the work at higher costs. You may ask, “So what happens to those displaced Americans?” The economist’s answer is that, pressed by immigrant competition, displaced American workers are driven to “upskill.” Perhaps a former landscaper learns some Spanish, and thus can act as the foreman of a crew of immigrants. Perhaps he shifts to sales or design work. Either way, the economic models say, everybody is better off.

You may further ask, “Does this really happen? Don’t at least some displaced American workers end up unemployed or underemployed, unable to find work at anything close to their old wage level? Aren’t both American-born men and American-born women of prime working age less likely to work today than in the 1990s?”

Yes, all of that is true. But when workers quit the workforce, they disappear from the statistical samples on which the economic models are built. Labor-force statistics count only those in the labor force. If an American-born landscaper successfully upskills to foreman, his higher pay is recorded and measured. If an American-born landscaper retires early on a disability benefit, his lower income is not recorded and not measured. From a labor economist’s perspective, he has ceased to exist. Immigration’s economic costs and benefits will be calculated without reference to him.

See Chapter 6 on answering objections.

The battles over the accuracy of the models of immigration’s economic effects are as protracted and vicious as any in the social sciences. We can’t settle them here, and don’t need to. Instead, let’s focus on what economists generally do agree on.

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First, adding millions of additional immigrant workers every decade makes the American economy in the aggregate much bigger than it would otherwise be.

Second, immigration contributes very little to making native-born Americans richer than they would otherwise be. In 2007, in the course of arguing the economic case for more immigration, George W. Bush’s White House tried to quantify the net economic benefits of immigration to native-born Americans. The advocates’ own calculation yielded a figure of $37 billion a year. That’s not nothing, but in the context of a then–$13 trillion economy, it’s not much.

Third, the gains from immigration are divided very unequally. Immigrants reap most of them. Wealthy Americans claim much of the rest, in the form of the lower prices they pay for immigrant-produced services. Low-income Americans receive comparatively little benefit, and may well be made worse off, depending on who’s counting and what method they use.

And finally, while the impact of immigration on what the typical American earns is quite small, its impact on government finances is big. Estimates from the National Academy of Sciences suggest that on average, each immigrant costs his or her state and local governments $1,600 more a year in expenditures than he or she contributes in revenues. In especially generous states, the cost is much higher still: $2,050 in California; $3,650 in Wisconsin; $5,100 in Minnesota.

Immigrants are expensive to taxpayers because the foreign-born population of the United States is more likely to be poor and stay poor. Even when immigrants themselves do not qualify for a government benefit—typically because they are in the country illegally—their low income ensures that their children do. About half of immigrant-headed households receive some form of social assistance in any given year.

Assertions that federal tax revenue from immigrants can stabilize the finances of programs such as Medicare and Social Security overlook the truth that immigrants will get old and sick—and that in most cases, the taxes they pay over their working life will not cover the costs of their

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eventual claims on these programs. No matter how many millions of immigrants we absorb, they can’t help shore up these programs if they’ll need more in benefits than they can ever possibly pay in taxes. If a goal of immigration policy is to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, it would be wise to accept fewer immigrants overall, but more high- earning ones, who will pay more in taxes over their working years than they will collect in benefits in retirement. Under the present policy favoring large numbers of low-wage earners, the United States is accumulating huge future social-insurance liabilities in exchange for relatively meager tax contributions now.

Yet the true bottom line is this: Neither the fiscal costs nor the economic benefits of immigration are large enough to force a decision one way or the other. Accept the most negative estimate of immigration’s dollar costs, and the United States could still afford a lot of immigration. Believe the most positive reckoning of the dollar benefits that mass immigration provides, and they are not so large that the United States would be crazy to refuse them.

For good or ill, immigration’s most important effects are social and cultural, not economic. What are these effects, then? Some are good, some are bad, and some depend on the eye of the beholder.

For more on agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously, see Chapter 4 .

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Immigrants Are Making America Safer

Generally, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans do. And although the children of immigrants commit crimes at much higher rates than their parents do, some evidence suggests that cities with higher percentages of immigrants have experienced steeper reductions in crime. President Trump speaks often about the victims of crime committed by undocumented immigrants, but the years of high immigration since 1990 have seen the steepest declines in crime since modern recordkeeping began.

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Immigrants Are Making America Less Self-Destructive

Asians, who comprise the nation’s fastest-growing immigrant group, are half as likely to abuse drugs or alcohol as other population groups are. Only one-fifth of Hispanic households own a firearm, as opposed to one- half of white households.

The severest self-harm, suicide, is very much a problem of the native-born. Suicide rates have surged since 1999. But white people commit suicide at nearly three times the rate of ethnic minorities. The states with the highest percentages of immigrants have suffered least from the suicide surge; the states with the lowest percentages have suffered most.

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Immigrants Are Lowering America’s Average Skill Level

In 2007, ETS—the company that administers the SAT—warned of a gathering “perfect storm”: “Over the next 25 years or so,” it said, “as better-educated individuals leave the workforce they will be replaced by those who, on average, have lower levels of education and skill.” This warning shows every sign of being fulfilled. About 10 percent of the students in U.S. public schools are now non-native English speakers. Unsurprisingly, these students score consistently lower on national assessment tests than native speakers do. In 2017, nearly half of Hispanic fourth graders had not achieved even partial mastery of grade-level material. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, these children are at significant risk of dropping out of high school.

But here’s something more surprising: Evidence from North Carolina suggests that even a fairly small increase in the non-native-speaking presence in a classroom seriously depresses learning outcomes for all students. The nation has undertaken important educational reforms over the past generation. In many ways, that commitment has yielded heartening results. Yet since about 2007, progress has stalled, and in some cases even reversed. Cuts to state budgets during the Great Recession bear some of the responsibility. But so does immigration policy. The Hechinger Report , from Columbia University’s Teachers College, observes that the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress “was the first time that white students dropped below 50 percent of fourth-grade test takers. Hispanics now account for 26 percent of the fourth-grade population, up from 19 percent 10 years ago. Disproportionately poor, and sometimes not speaking English at home, Hispanics tend to score considerably lower than white students.”

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Immigrants Are Enabling Employers to Behave Badly

Most jobs are becoming impressively safer, year by year. You may think of mining as a uniquely hazardous industry. Yet in 2006, after a tragic sequence of accidents, Congress enacted the most sweeping mine-safety legislation in a generation. In the decade since, mining fatalities have declined by two-thirds.

Mining, however, is an industry dominated by native-born workers. Industries that rely on the foreign-born are improving much more slowly. Forestry, fishing, and farming are three of the most dangerous industries in the United States. They are 46 percent reliant on immigrant laborers, half of them undocumented. (Documented and undocumented immigrants together make up only 17 percent of the U.S. workforce as a whole.) Building and grounds maintenance is surprisingly dangerous work: 326 people died in 2017. Some 35 percent of grounds workers are immigrants. About 25 percent of construction workers are immigrants, but immigrants supply almost half the workers in the most dangerous areas, notably roofing and drywalling. When so many workers in a job category toil outside the law, the law won’t offer much protection.

America was built on the revolutionary idea, never fully realized, that those who labor might also govern—that every worker should be a voter. The struggle toward this ideal has been slow, arduous, and sometimes violent. The immigration surge has had the effect of setting this ideal back. Half a century after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the United States has again habituated itself to employing workers who cannot vote and therefore cannot protect their interests or even their lives.

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Immigrants Are Altering the Relationship between Americans and Their Government, and Making the Country More Hierarchical

Visitors to the United States used to be startled by the casual egalitarianism of American manners. “Have you ever realized to yourself as a fact that the porter who carries your box has not made himself inferior to you by the very act of carrying that box?” Anthony Trollope asked readers back home in Victorian England. If not, brace yourself: “That is the very lesson which the man wishes to teach you.”

That lesson may no longer be getting taught. In 1970, almost every U.S. resident was a U.S. citizen, enjoying all the political and civil rights of citizenship. Today, in immigration-dense states such as California, Texas, New Jersey, and New York, at least 10 percent of residents are not citizens. These people occupy a wide array of subordinated legal statuses. Some are legal permanent residents, lacking only the right to vote. Some are legal temporary residents, allowed to work but requiring permission to change employers. Some hold student visas, allowing them to study here but not to work. Some, such as the Dreamers, and persons displaced by natural disasters in the Caribbean or Central America, may have entered the country illegally but are authorized to remain and work under a temporary status that can continue for years or decades.

America is not yet Dubai or Qatar or ancient Athens, where citizenship is almost an aristocratic status rather than the shared birthright of all residents. But more and more of the people who live among Americans are not on equal legal footing with Americans. They cannot vote. They cannot qualify as jurors. If they commit a crime, they are subject not only to prison but to deportation. And because these noncitizens are keenly aware of those things, they adjust their behavior. They keep a low profile. They do not complain to the authorities if, say, their boss cheats them out of some of their pay, or if they’ve been attacked on the street, or if they are abused by a parent or partner at home.

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Heavy immigration has enabled the powerful—and the policy makers who disproportionately heed the powerful—to pay less attention to the disarray in so many segments of the U.S. population. Because the country imports so many workers, employers do not miss the labor of the millions of men consigned to long-term incarceration. Without the immigrant workers less prone to abuse drugs than the native-born, American elites might have noticed the opioid epidemic before it killed more Americans than died in the Vietnam, Korean, and Iraq Wars and the 9/11 attacks combined. The demand for universal health coverage might gain political force if so many of the uninsured were not noncitizens and nonvoters. None of this is immigrants’ fault, obviously. It is more true that America’s tendency to plutocracy explains immigration policies than that immigration policies explain the tendency to plutocracy. Managing immigration better is only one element of restoring equity to American life. But it is an essential element, without which it is hard to imagine how any other element can be achieved.

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Joining the Conversation

1. David Frum uses a “they say / I say” structure to frame his argument about the impact of immigration on the United States. Summarize his “they say” and corresponding “I say.” How do these statements relate to the subtitle of his article, “The Wrong Debate”? In other words, what, in Frum’s opinion, would be the right debate—that is, a more productive, relevant, insightful discussion on immigration?

2. The author states in paragraph 14 that “immigration’s most important effects are social and cultural, not economic. . . . Some are good, some are bad, and some depend on the eye of the beholder.” Of the five social and cultural effects he goes on to discuss, which do you think he would categorize as good, which as bad, and which as depending on the eye of the beholder? Provide evidence from the text to support your answer.

3. This article does not use metacommentary (as discussed in Chapter 11 ) to emphasize the significance of his argument. Write a sentence for him that includes metacommentary, beginning with the template “Essentially, I am arguing . . .” Where in the text would you place this statement, and why?

4. In “Jobs, Crime, and Culture: The Threats That Aren’t” (pp. 658– 72 ), Suketu Mehta offers a much more positive assessment of the effects of immigration on the US economy and culture. Take one or two of David Frum’s arguments, such as his assertion that immigrants are lowering America’s average skill level, and respond to it from Mehta’s perspective, drawing on the evidence that Mehta provides in his article.

5. Go to theysayiblog.com and find Peter Coy’s essay, “What Economists Think about Immigration Doesn’t Matter.” According to Coy, which groups of Americans are more likely to oppose immigration? Why? Do you think Frum would agree, disagree, or agree and disagree with Coy’s analysis?

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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Glossary

Postmates a food-delivery service, with headquarters in San Francisco, CA

Great Recession the economic decline from 2007 to 2009

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Addressing Poverty Can Heal an Increasingly Divided Country

ANDRE M. PERRY

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ANDRE M. PERRY is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He researches and writes on race, structural inequality, education, and asset devaluation in Black neighborhoods. He is professor of practice in economics at Washington University and a scholar-in-residence at American University. He was the founding dean of Davenport University’s College for Urban Education. Perry grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he earned his PhD in education policy and leadership at the University of Maryland College Park. Note: This post was originally published in 2019 on brookings.edu by Andre M. Perry.

________

HERE IS A RARELY PUBLICIZED FACT about our booming economy: Despite stock market highs and low unemployment, poverty in the U.S. is pervasive. The number of people earning less than $25,750 for a family of four is rising in both Republican and Democratic districts, and across racial and geographic lines. According to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Stateline, a division of the Pew Charitable Trusts, poverty increased in 30% of all U.S. counties between 2016 and 2018. Researchers found that poverty cut across racial and geographic boundaries “from 97% white and solidly Republican-voting Carter County in Kentucky to black-majority, Democratic Bullock County in Alabama.”

There’s a silver lining behind this economic storm cloud . Solving for poverty could potentially bridge the racial, geographic, and political

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divides that are eroding any appearance of cohesion the country may have. Poor people from diverse backgrounds share in a common suffering that we all should be rallying to alleviate.

For tips on saying why it matters, see Chapter 8 .

Economic distress between political districts deserves attention. Incomes in Republican voting districts have declined from $55,000 to $53,000 since 2008, according to Brookings analysis. Democratic districts, however, have seen median household income rise from $54,000 in 2008 to $61,000 in 2018.

That doesn’t mean all Democrats are benefiting from the economy, however. Additional Brookings research found that 54% of Black workers and 63% of Latino or Hispanic workers (who are more likely to vote Democratic) are disproportionately working in low-wage jobs, compared to 36% of white workers and 40% of Asian American workers (the national average for all workers is 44%). Meanwhile, the Black unemployment rate in Democratic voting cities remains twice that of their white counterparts.

For rural areas, economic prospects are bleak. After the 2008 recession, counties with fewer than 100,000 residents lost 17,500 businesses, according to the Economic Innovation Group. Although the rural poverty rate has declined from a 30-year peak of 18.4% in 2013 to 16.4% in 2017, it’s still higher than urban areas, which are at 12.9%. And productivity in these Republican-voting regions is declining, even in an economy President Trump has claimed is the “the best it has ever been.”

Many analysts join him in that assessment: They see the unemployment rate—which has been as low as 3.5%—as a reassuring sign amid fears of an impending recession. However, since the aggregate unemployment rate uses population-wide data, it does not account for

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differences among racial groups, geographic areas, and other specific characteristics, which paint a much different picture of the economy.

These very real economic differences have enflamed the country’s existing racial and regional divides. But could they also be a rallying cry for people in poverty across the political spectrum? Instead of focusing on our divides, maybe researchers should emphasize how low-income Americans of all races, geographies, or parties share an economic fate— and should share an economic agenda.

An agenda focused on poverty amelioration would start with workforce development initiatives that invest in people living in impoverished counties. Coal is not making a comeback, so the communities that have historically depended on the fossil fuel industry need to modernize through—among many other efforts—expanded access to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills.

“We live in a nation that makes sure they put a basketball and a football in the hands of every Black boy before the age of four,” engineer Calvin Mackie told me for a column I wrote for the Hechinger Report. Mackie runs STEM NOLA, an organization that seeks to engage community members in STEM fields.

“We have to put STEM in the hands of all of our children,” said Mackie. “From the time they are born, we have to introduce [children] to science and technology so they can see themselves as a participant in the 21st century.”

By “participant,” Mackie means employable.

This kind of cultural shift requires an unprecedented investment in people. To improve poverty rates, we need massive federal investments in training. But it doesn’t stop there. We need to give entrepreneurs in impoverished areas—who have historically been denied capital—better access to funds. Investments in community colleges can help them develop initiatives focused on training residents for jobs of the future as well as programs that help students deal with the stresses of poverty. For instance, Amarillo College, a community college located on the Texas

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Panhandle, has a fund dedicated to emergencies like utilities being cut off, which can force students to fall behind or drop out.

Too many people are still suffering in “the best it has ever been” economy. Things like an illness, a job loss, or the death of a family member all can drag a person—no matter their race or political preference—into poverty today. Combatting poverty is a way to unite the country through a common goal, because after all, we do share a common fate.

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Joining the Conversation

1. According to Andre M. Perry, which communities in the United States are most affected by poverty? Perry maintains that addressing poverty can “unite the country through a common goal” (paragraph 13). What do you think? Compose a response to Perry’s proposal in which you agree, disagree, or agree and disagree with his argument.

2. The author uses data and statistical analysis as evidence to illustrate key measures, such as mean household incomes or the percent of people working low-wage jobs. Choose one paragraph that includes this numerical data and revise it to remove the numbers. What is the story behind the statistics? Do you think the version with numerical data is more persuasive or less persuasive than the version without it? Why?

3. Perry argues that addressing poverty requires “an unprecedented investment in people” (paragraph 12). What specific policies does he propose to do this? Which proposal do you think has the most potential, and why?

4. The author includes a quote from engineer Calvin Mackie in his essay (paragraphs 9 and 10). Paraphrase Mackie’s argument in your own words. What is Mackie saying about the relationship between race, poverty, and opportunity in the United States? How does Mackie’s quote support Perry’s larger argument?

5. Do some research about poverty in your local community. You can look up US Census data on the poverty rates in your county or research the programs that already exist to address poverty in your community, city, or campus. Talk with a friend or a classmate about what you found. How does poverty affect your local community? Brainstorm and describe a new program or initiative that you think would effectively address poverty in your community or on your campus.

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6. Perry acknowledges how economically precarious many Americans are, as “an illness, a job loss, or the death of a family member all can drag a person . . . into poverty today” (paragraph 13). Often, people do not have a robust safety net, and as researchers Nora Kenworthy and Mark Igra explain in their article “Crowdfunding Isn’t Enough in a Crisis” some turn to crowdfunding to meet their basic needs. Find Kenworthy and Igra’s article on theysayiblog.com . What kind of policy initiatives do they think are necessary to support people living in poverty? How might Perry respond to their proposals?

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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Glossary

silver lining behind this economic storm cloud metaphor referring to the bright, silver outline tracing the edge of a dark storm cloud: every negative situation has a positive side to it (idiom)

amelioration the act of improving something

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All Words Matter: The Manipulation behind “All Lives Matter”

KELLY CORYELL

* * *

KELLY CORYELL wrote this essay in her first-year writing course at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, CA. An English major, Coryell works as a tutor in the college’s learning center and serves as a supplemental instruction leader for multilingual students. She plans to become an English professor. This essay, which is documented in MLA Style, was nominated for the Norton Writer’s Prize.

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I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE POPULAR SAYING “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I grew up as a tomboy; I’ve had more than my fair share of scrapes, bruises, and stitches. But I’ve found that words inflict the most painful injuries. On sleepless nights when I toss and turn, I’m not replaying the time I broke my foot over and over in my head—I’m thinking about some embarrassing thing I said that still makes me physically cringe or a time someone said something hurtful to me. Broken bones heal—words stay with us.

This is because words have power. A skilled wordsmith can influence us by using evocative words that elicit an emotional response. The meanings of these “loaded” words aren’t located in a dictionary. There is a context surrounding them that implies a meaning beyond the basic information they convey. Loaded words and phrases appeal to our emotions, not our logic—they enter our hearts, not our minds. They can manipulate, so sometimes people use loaded language to distract us from a flawed argument.

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Such is the case when people use the phrase “all lives matter” to oppose the phrase “Black lives matter.” In 2012, neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American teenager returning home from a late-night snack run. In 2013, Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges. This sparked the birth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, when activists Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors, frustrated with the systemic inequality and oppression exemplified by Zimmerman’s trial, started using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on Twitter . As more and more Black people died during police confrontations or in police custody—Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray—the movement, chanting the phrase “Black lives matter,” gained momentum and media coverage, eventually becoming a major talking point in the 2016 presidential election. And in the spring of 2020, the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, and Riah Milton reignited the BLM movement, leading to an overdue reckoning with racism in this country.

As a direct response, Americans who either disagreed with the BLM movement as a whole or who supported the movement but were uncomfortable with its slogan, began to chant their own phrase: “all lives matter.” It should be acknowledged that some of those who have used the phrase “all lives matter” did so naïvely aiming to unify people in a time of division, thinking of the words as a positive affirmation to which no one could object. However, saying “all lives matter” as a response to “Black lives matter” is, in reality, sending a dangerous message: it steals attention from the systematic oppression of Black Americans and actively distorts the message behind the BLM movement, manipulating the American people into maintaining the oppressive status quo.

See Chapter 1 for templates that introduce an ongoing debate.

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The phrase “all lives matter” belies the current racial inequality in America by implying that all lives are at equal risk. The racism and prejudice endured by African Americans didn’t end when slavery was abolished in 1865, it didn’t end when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it didn’t end when a Black man was elected president of the United States in 2008. Racial inequality in America persists to this day, ingrained and interwoven so deeply in American society that our prison systems and manufacturing industries depend on it. It’s so expertly hidden under layers of celebrity gossip in our media and blatant and bold lies from our politicians, and so “normalized” in our culture, that the privileged may not even be aware of the plight of Black Americans.

But the statistics speak for themselves. According to the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at six times the rate of white Americans for drug crimes (“Criminal Justice”). The Center for American Progress reported that in 2016, the median wealth of Black families was only 10 percent of the median wealth of white families (Hanks, Solomon, and Weller). Police shoot and kill Black Americans at two and a half times the rate of white Americans, according to a 2016 report by The Washington Post (Lowery). All these statistics point to the fact that Black lives are valued less than white lives in America. The BLM movement aims to change this depressing reality by insisting that “Black lives matter.”

For more on how to use reasons to disagree, see Chapter 4 .

Responding to “Black lives matter” with “all lives matter” ignores the unique prejudices and discrimination Black people experience in America. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie makes a parallel argument in her essay “I Decided to Call Myself a Happy Feminist.” Adichie explains why she calls herself a feminist instead of a human-rights activist. She writes:

Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and

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particular problem of gender. . . . For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that.

Adichie’s point is that not every human being suffers the oppression that women suffer. Therefore, campaigning for all humans, while noble, is irrelevant. It would ignore the specific plights of women, as well as the historical fact that those behind the oppression of women were other human beings—men. In the same way, emphasizing all lives takes much- needed focus away from the oppression specifically felt only by Black Americans—which is a direct result of the centuries of oppression at the hands of white Americans.

Later in her essay, Adichie recalls a conversation she once had about gender: “A man said to me, ‘Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?’ This type of question is a way of silencing a person’s specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman.” Shifting attention away from the female gender to the entirety of humankind silences the hardships women face simply because they are women . Talking over them by questioning their commitment to the whole, and not allowing them to share their experiences, smothers their voices. The same is true when shifting focus from “Black lives” to “all lives.” Saying “all lives matter” ignores the unique discrimination only Black Americans face, simply because they are Black . Dismissing the importance and relevance of their struggles because everyone has struggles misses the point entirely.

“All lives matter” implies that all lives endure an equal amount of hardship; therefore, the struggles of Black Americans deserve no more attention than the struggles of white Americans—which is demonstrably false statistically. Daniel Victor illustrates the harmful way the phrase “all lives matter” removes focus from the hardships of Black Americans in his article “Why ‘All Lives Matter’ Is Such a Perilous Phrase” for The New York Times . He writes:

Those in the Black Lives Matter movement say black people are in immediate danger and need immediate attention. . . .

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Saying “All Lives Matter” in response would suggest to them that all people are in equal danger, invalidating the specific concerns of black people.

“You’re watering the house that’s not burning, but you’re choosing to leave the house that’s burning unattended,” said Allen Kwabena Frimpong, an organizer for the New York chapter of Black Lives Matter. “It’s irresponsible.”

To put it simply, focusing too much on the whole can divert much needed attention from crises affecting a specific group.

As one Twitter user notes, “#AllLivesMatter is like I go to the Dr for a broken arm and he says ‘All Bones Matter’ ok but right now let’s take care of this broken one” (@djsoap92). In this analogy, only one bone needs immediate attention—ignoring it because all bones are important to a person’s health isn’t an appropriate response to the situation. Nor would be putting the injured person in a full-body cast—though that would be treating every bone equally. “All lives matter” doesn’t acknowledge that the lives of Black Americans are in greater danger due to the hundreds of years of systematic racism designed to devalue them. The point of saying “Black lives matter” is to bring attention to the fact that Black lives do not matter in our society. The BLM movement is not simply saying “Black people are shot and killed by the police,” it’s saying “Black people are shot and killed by the police at two and a half times the rate of white people .” Replying with “all races are shot and killed by the police” can be an acceptable response to the first statement, but not the second . Yet that is exactly what saying “all lives matter” does—it ignores the second statement, ignores the voices of BLM activists.

Using “all lives matter” as a response to “Black lives matter” perpetuates the misconception that BLM activists do not believe both sentiments. The core of the BLM movement is the belief that all lives matter—including Black lives, which are treated differently than white lives, not just by law enforcement but America as a whole. As J. Clara Chan explains in her article, “What Is ‘All Lives Matter’? A Short Explainer,” for The Wrap ,

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BLM supporters stress that the movement isn’t about believing no other races matter. Instead, the movement seeks to highlight and change how racism disproportionately affects the black community, in terms of police brutality, job security, socioeconomic status, educational opportunities, and more.

The BLM movement’s focus on particular inequities doesn’t mean other races don’t matter, but the phrase “all lives matter” is loaded language that implies they don’t. Dave Bry explains this manipulation in his article titled “‘All Lives Matter’ Is and Always Was Racist—and This Weekend’s Trump Rally Proved It” for the UK paper The Guardian . He writes:

Often people who say “all lives matter” say it pointedly, correctively under the veneer of the idea that “all men are created equal.” It is meant to refute the idea that “only” black lives matter.

But understanding “black lives matter” to mean “only” black lives matter has been a misinterpretation from the beginning, one made in ignorance of the intent of the statement and the statistical facts that led to it.

That is to say, “all lives matter” misinterprets the point the BLM movement is making—that all lives do matter; therefore, Black lives need to matter as much as white lives in American society. It isn’t “only Black lives matter”; it’s “Black lives matter, too .”

“All lives matter” manipulates people into believing those who say “Black lives matter” are against other lives. Jason Stanley explains the many ways language can be used as a tool for suppression in his New York Times opinion piece, “The Ways of Silencing.” Stanley writes, “Words are misappropriated and meanings twisted. I believe that these tactics are not really about making substantive claims, but rather play the role of silencing. They are, if you will, linguistic strategies for stealing the voices of others.” In other words, a group can be silenced if the language vital to their ability to express themselves and their beliefs is co-opted by another group. Supporters of “all lives matter” co-opted the language of the BLM movement, forcing a separation between the two phrases. As a result, BLM activists cannot say “all lives matter” without sounding like they oppose the views of the BLM movement, since “all

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lives matter” is no longer just a phrase but a rebuttal—a counterargument.

Saying “all lives matter” is premature, since it presupposes that equality has already been achieved. If Black lives really did matter as much as white lives in American society, then saying so would be as uncontroversial as stating any other fact. In fact, America is not a postracial society: poverty, education, health, incarceration rates—all are unequal between different races in America. We must acknowledge this ugly truth if we are ever going to change it. “All lives matter” invokes a naïve reality in which all races are holding hands in a great big circle, singing “This Land Is Your Land” as the sun smiles down on the world. “All lives matter,” like the statement “I don’t see race, I just see people,” may, at first, seem like a beautiful sentiment. Those who say such things may truly do so with the intent of creating a world where everyone is treated equally—regardless of race, gender, creed, orientation, and so on.

But upon close examination, these phrases—however well- meaning —are harmful because, aside from robbing people of their racial identities, they ignore race-based discrimination. How can one notice racism when one does not “see race”? How can one point out discrimination against African Americans if the only response one gets is “everyone matters”? If one insists that a goal has already been met when it hasn’t, why would anyone put in more effort toward reaching that goal? This is why “all lives matter” is so manipulative and damaging. It’s an attempt to convince us we don’t have to keep reaching for equality and justice, even though every fact around us tells us this is far from the case. Only by consciously acknowledging racial inequality will we ever be able to put an end to it.

The root of “all lives matter” boils down to one thing: privilege, and the reluctance to give it up in the name of equality. As Chris Boeskool put it in a Huffington Post opinion piece: “Equality can feel like oppression. But it’s not. What you’re feeling is just the discomfort of losing a little bit of your privilege.” Evening the playing field can feel like a bad thing to the person benefiting from the imbalance. In the 1960s, a white bus rider may have felt oppressed when she started having to compete with Black bus riders for the front seat—she lost the

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privilege of getting a guaranteed front seat because of her race. In the 1970s, a man might have complained that he could no longer “compliment” his female coworkers without them accusing him of sexual harassment—he lost the privilege of being able to say offensive things because of his gender. If American society starts to accept that Black lives matter as much as white lives, white Americans will lose some of the privileges afforded to them as a result of the oppression of Black Americans. Therefore, people who either do not realize they have this privilege, or people who simply don’t want to give it up, chant “all lives matter” in an effort to hold on to that privilege. If the BLM movement is silenced, the status quo of racial inequality will be maintained. The privileged must resist this unethical temptation and not mistake oppression as equality.

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WORKS CITED

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “I Decided to Call Myself a Happy Feminist.” The Guardian , 17 Oct. 2014, www.theguardian.com/boo ks/2014/oct/17/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-extract-we-should-all-be -feminists . Accessed 16 Mar. 2019.

Boeskool, Chris. “When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression.” Huffington Post , 14 Mar. 2016, www.huffpost.co m/entry/when-youre-accustomed-to-privilege_b_9460662 . Accessed 26 Feb. 2019.

Bry, Dave. “ ‘All Lives Matter’ Is and Always Was Racist—and This Weekend’s Trump Rally Proved It.” The Guardian , 23 Nov. 2015, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/23/all-lives-matter- racist-trump-weekend-campaign-rally-proved-it . Accessed 3 Mar. 2019.

Chan, J. Clara. “What Is ‘All Lives Matter’? A Short Explainer.” The Wrap , 13 July 2016, www.thewrap.com/what-is-all-lives-matter-a-s hort-explainer/ . Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.

“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP , 2018, www.naacp.org/criminal-j ustice-fact-sheet . Accessed 12 Mar. 2019.

@djsoap92. “#AllLivesMatter is like I go to the Dr for a broken arm and he says ‘All Bones Matter’ ok but right now let’s take care of this broken one.” Twitter , 5 July 2016, twitter.com/djsoap92/status/7505 63460921057280 . Accessed 6 Mar. 2019.

Hanks, Angela, et al. “Systematic Inequality: How America’s Structural Racism Helped Create the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Center for American Progress , 21 Feb. 2018, www.americanprogress.org/issue s/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality . Accessed 26 Feb. 2019.

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Lowery, Wesley. “Aren’t More White People than Black People Killed by Police? Yes, but No.” The Washington Post , 11 July 2016, www. washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/aren t-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no . Accessed 19 Feb. 2019.

Stanley, Jason. “The Ways of Silencing.” Opinionator , New York Times, 25 June 2011, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/the -ways-of-silencing . Accessed 25 Feb. 2019.

Victor, Daniel. “Why ‘All Lives Matter’ Is Such a Perilous Phrase.” The New York Times , 15 July 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/us/al l-lives-matter-black-lives-matter.html . Accessed 5 Mar. 2019.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Paragraph 4 of this essay includes Kelly Coryell’s “they say” and “I say” statements. Paraphrase these statements in your own words, and describe how the writer makes clear which statement is the “they say” and which the “I say.”

2. What evidence and arguments does the author use in support of her position regarding the phrases “all lives matter” and “Black lives matter”?

3. The essay does not contain explicit responses to “so what?” and “who cares?” questions that explain why Coryell’s arguments matter and for whom. See if you can construct these explanatory statements. Where in the essay would you insert them to best effect, and why?

4. The author quotes from a number of published works to develop her argument. Pick the quotation that you think offers the strongest support, and discuss how Coryell lays the groundwork for it beforehand and how she explains it afterward, a process described in Chapter 3 as the “quotation sandwich.”

5. Write a response to this essay using at least one of each of the following “they say / I say” strategies: agree and disagree, “I say” statement, “quotation sandwich,” naysayer, and “so what?” and “who cares?” questions.

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Glossary

belies does not give a true representation of something

postracial referring to a society or time when racism no longer exists

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Finding Latinx

PAOLA RAMOS

* * *

PAOLA RAMOS is a journalist who writes about Latinx culture. She is a correspondent for Vice and a contributor to Telemundo and MSNBC. Ramos, who earned a master’s in public policy from Harvard University, served in the Obama administration and was the deputy director for Hispanic media for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She was born in Miami and grew up in Spain. This piece is an excerpt from the introduction of her 2020 book, Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity.

________

I NEVER REALLY CAME OUT .

Until recently.

Even after my loving parents sat me down a couple of times in high school, with open minds yet suspicions of my sexual orientation, I refused to use the word “gay” to describe the way my heart chose to love. Then, when I moved to Washington, D.C., to work in politics, I caught myself cringing when I entered “Hispanic Group Meetings” for networking and idea exchange—not because they weren’t welcoming but because I often felt that I didn’t quite fit in. From afar, when I watched my father’s newscast on Univision, staring at a screen full of women who appeared to have just finished a Latin American beauty pageant, I questioned my own identity as a “Latina.” And even when I gave speeches throughout grad school, my Mexican Cuban heritage was overshadowed by an aggressive Spanish accent I unintentionally picked up during my childhood in Spain. Growing up between Madrid’s

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progressive environment and Miami’s conservative Cuban community muddled my own political views at a young age. Where, exactly, did I fit in?

Yes, I am queer; I am Latina; I am Cuban, Mexican, and first- generation American. These are words I was not ashamed of saying out loud—but there’s a difference between passive recognition and really owning one’s identity. I openly had girlfriends, checked the “Hispanic” box on school applications, carried three passports, and admired the way my parents’ immigrant journey was central to our being. Yet the truth is that for years I had either blindly danced around these identities or felt I had to choose one over the others. Almost as though I had to wear different hats depending on the rooms I entered or the prejudices I encountered. Safe here, but not so much there. Of course, tiptoeing around these spaces was nothing but a reflection of the immense privilege my citizenship status and light skin granted me in life. Had I been undocumented, or simply a shade darker, I’d carry a target on my back.

Looking back, I realize now that I never really “came out” as my whole self—as fully me . All of this changed the moment the word “Latinx” started rolling off my tongue.

Even though this mysterious term had been tossed around the Web since the early 2000s, I started using it shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. At the time, I didn’t fully understand exactly where that word came from or what it meant—all I knew was that it felt right . It felt more like me. It was a word I couldn’t recognize but one that seemed to know exactly who I was. That addendum , the “x,” set free the parts of myself that had deviated from the norms and traditions of the Latino culture I grew up in in a way that, interestingly, made me closer to, not further from, my own community. A word that wasn’t familiar but one that seemed to tout the uniqueness and diversity that had defined the sixty million Latinos living in the United States. One that felt it aimed to awaken not just a few of us, or half of us, or 90 percent of us—but every single one of us. Even those who had never been seen as “Latino” to begin with. And I wasn’t alone in feeling this.

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With Trump’s unforeseen win came a desire for belonging. His victory mobilized millions of people—women, youth, students, black communities, Latinos, immigrants, Dreamers, victims of sexual assault —to take to the streets and fill a void with their voices. People marched with furor, organized their communities, and spoke up in boardrooms and town halls, louder than they had before. Fear induced courage, and the undercurrent of racism that was now fully exposed pushed many of us to embrace inclusion. It was sometime amid this resurged movement that I noticed the word “Latinx” had started to become part of the daily vocabulary of the resistance. Latinx quickly became normalized in my circles, appearing everywhere—protest signs, conference calls, press releases, Twitter feeds, chants, and headlines. “What does Latinx even mean?” some colleagues and I would often ask one another. “Where did it even come from?” We didn’t know, but we kept using it.

There are different answers to that question. But language inevitably evolves with time. A changing vocabulary reflects how a community’s demographics transform the struggles a community faces during different periods in history. Language tells stories, and stories change.

Harvard University fellow Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernández points out that the use of the “x” is actually not a new phenomenon. As she writes in one of her articles: “Earliest uses of the ‘x’ come on the front end of Nahuatl-inspired writing of the word Chicano/Chicana as Xicano or Xicana.” In the 1960s and 1970s, the “x” was inserted to “ indigenize ” Mexican Americans. It was used as a tool to counter Latin America’s colonial history and ensure that indigenous peoples were not erased. Dr. Guidotti-Hernández also provides several historical examples of other ways in which the Latino community pushed back against linguistics in efforts to correct for misrepresentations, gender inequities, or exclusions of nationalities. That’s why, as she underscores, baby boomers fought so hard to institutionalize “ethnic studies” like Cuban American studies and Chicano studies programs on college campuses across America. The boomer generation prioritized nationalities over generalizations. That was the story then: in being able to say “Mexican” or “Guatemalan” over “Latino.” At some point, the word “Latino” was also controversial. Even though it is technically meant to include two genders, the word itself is still masculine. That’s why in the 1990s, people saw feminists rallying to demasculinize the gendered Spanish language, inserting symbols like @ or the neutralized o/a into their daily vocabulary. That was the story

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then: achieving gender equality and being able to explicitly say, “I am Latina.” Like human beings, language is meant to adapt, not to remain stagnant .

There’s been a long debate centered around the appropriate way to address our community: Do we say “Hispanics” or “Latinos”? Which one do we use? Which one should others use? For decades, the term “Hispanic” was mainstreamed. It was a term coined by a Mexican American staffer in the Richard Nixon administration, Grace Flores- Hughes. As has been reported, one of the reasons Grace advocated for the term “Hispanic” was that it explicitly stemmed from “Hispania,” the Spanish Empire. The word was able to more closely associate the community with its white European colonial past than with its Latin American roots. By embracing the term “Hispanic,” the community’s historic ties to indigenous people, enslaved Africans, and mestizos (the offspring of colonizers and indigenous and/or enslaved Africans) were erased from the picture, washed away as conquistadores swept over the Americas in the fifteenth century. That was the story then: to whiten the community as much as possible. Eventually, however, using the term “Latino/ Latina” became more popular over time, as it more deliberately embraced our Latin American ancestors. (By the way, Grace Flores- Hughes ended up becoming a member of the National Hispanic Advisory Council for Trump.)

Around 2004, coinciding with the Internet’s explosion, Latinx started popping up in online communities of queer Latinos. They were inserting the “x” as a way to express their breaks with gender binaries and welcome gender-nonconforming folks into the conversation. There, the initial story was about giving voice to the silenced and often discriminated-against LGBTQ Latinos, a point that was later strengthened by the 2016 Pulse massacre of forty-nine people, most of whom were queer Latinos. By 2018, as Latinx became more colloquial, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary , Eleventh Edition, officially added it to its pages, defining Latinx as “of, relating to, or marked by Latin American heritage—a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina .” And if you go into Google Trends, you’ll notice a steady rise in searches for the term.

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Yet a few years later, people are still wondering what the hell Latinx really means. If Latinx were used just to be more inclusive of queer folks, then perhaps the term wouldn’t cause such controversy and confusion. If the word were used simply to check the “queer” box, then perhaps people would be more okay with it, less afraid of it, more at peace with it. But Latinx is transcending all imaginable borders. All the borders that separated us by race, age, gender, issue, nationality, sexual orientation, and identity. All the ones that divided “us” from “them,” liberals and conservatives. Latinx is not constrained by the explanation given to us on paper by dictionaries, pollsters, and scholars. And that’s why, over the years, people from all different backgrounds kept resurfacing the term, signaling the beginning of the change we were all aching for.

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Paola has short curly dark hair, is wearing a black short-sleeved shirt with necklaces, and has a large smile on her face.

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Paola Ramos.

The reality is that for decades that ache for change was inside many of us. It was an ache that craved more unity, acceptance, and inclusion— an ache that simply wanted us to be seen. This ache wasn’t felt just inside the bubbles of activism, D.C. politics, and media—it was a sentiment that lay mostly in the fringes of those very elite spaces: inside homes and out of the public eye. It was in these places that I started recognizing that a lot more people than I thought were not only coming out as Latinx but giving life to that word in a way no dictionary could.

Queer and gender-nonconforming Latinos who had faced discrimination in their own households could relate to that ache. So could Afro-Latinos who had once been told they didn’t “look Latino enough.” And transgender Latinas who were continuously reminded they weren’t “really Latinas,” Asian Latinos who had never been asked about their background, Cuban Americans who wanted to part ways with their family’s long history of conservatism, young Latino men who never found a voice in the criminal justice system, mamis and abuelas who wanted to pave a different path for themselves, Gen Zers who had once been ridiculed for “not speaking Spanish,” midwestern Latinos who felt completely “neglected,” Latinos in the Deep South who said they were “forgotten” by all of us, indigenous migrants whose history had been erased, and millennials in border towns and rural communities who wanted a greater platform than those typically given to those residing in the far edges of the country.

***

Media organizations and political campaigns attribute the power of Latinos to statistics. For one, they start with the fact that Latinos are the youngest demographic in the country, with an estimated 32.5 million millennials and Gen Zers across the country. Six out of ten Latinos are millennials or younger, and every single year, one million Latinos turn eighteen years old. Not only do Latino millennials have incredible political power, making up half of all eligible Latino voters, but we are also one of the country’s most valuable consumers. In the eyes of

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marketers, our youthfulness means we fit the “perfect shoppers” description. According to a Nielsen report, our buying power rose from $213 billion in 1990 to $1.5 trillion in 2018. By 2023, that number is projected to increase to $1.9 trillion. As the report notes: “Latinx consumers represent one of the most sure bets for future growth.” Additionally, we are more active online than non-Latino millennials and are also the most religious TV watchers among the millennial generation. All these numbers are certainly incredible measures, but unless we tell the stories of people’s lives, they remain nothing but digits on papers and screens.

These numbers point to a future that is being written by us, but we haven’t yet shown the full power of our numbers at the ballot box. The 2016 elections, which I saw from up close in my role as deputy director of Hispanic press in the Hillary Clinton campaign, perfectly reflected this. On Election Day, our community proved to be more asleep than awake—and it’s important to understand it wasn’t our fault. It’s the fault of the system’s inability to fully understand who we are. At a time when the majority of pollsters pointed to one of the most unprecedented turnouts in the “Latino vote,” millions of young Latinos chose to stay home—even in the face of Trump’s anti-immigrant narrative. When I look back at my time in the campaign, I have no recollections of ever publicly mentioning the words “Afro-Latinos” or “trans-Latinos”; no recollections of seeking the stories of the millennial activists on the U.S.- Mexican border or of the growing Asian Latino community; no memories of embracing the English-speaking Latinos or even paying attention to the lost Latino voices in the Midwest— red political territories we’ve at times given up on trying to win over. Words matter, and we simply didn’t have the vocabulary then to articulate how the community we thought we knew was changing in front of our eyes. So if we didn’t see them or call them by their name, why should we have expected them to vote for us?

Similarly, as I traveled the country to register young Latinos to vote ahead of the 2018 midterms, I noticed a trend that may become the Democratic Party’s worst nightmare: young Latinos are increasingly registering as Independent and nonpartisan. There were already signs of this trend as early as 2013. That year, Gallup did a survey that found that more than 50 percent of Latinos younger than thirty initially identified as “Independent.” Young Latinos were more likely to be Independent than

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older Latinos. From what I witnessed during the 2018 midterms, that trend is solidifying today. Whereas our parents have historically represented a solid voting bloc for Democrats, young Latinos are unknowingly creating a new sociopolitical force that is subtly breaking schemes. Today, it’s not enough for Democratic candidates to take the Latino vote for granted; they have to work hard to understand what is making the younger generation stray from beaten paths and from the Democratic Party. That’s why telling this story is so important, because our inability to leverage the movement thus far lies in our incapacity to verbalize the meaning of Latinx—and we must learn how to do this before it’s too late.

So far, we’ve heard only half the story. For decades, the dominant narrative has focused on the immigrant journey. What no one has been able to capture thus far is what we’ve chosen to do with the freedoms our parents and grandparents fought for; how we’ve chosen to live freely in between hybrids and mold into America while still holding on to our roots. It’s as if we’re waiting for someone to hand us a mirror so we can finally see our full reflection.

When I came out as Latinx, stepping into my identity under the umbrella of that word, it was over the phone at my abuelo Carlos’s prodding. After listening to me mention the word several times and reading some of my articles, he finally said:

“¿Pao, qué carajo es Latinx?” Pao, what the hell is Latinx? I briefly paused. I attempted to give him a scholarly definition that would satisfy him intellectually, because I knew that’s what his brain would register. But I ended up pausing again. This time longer.

I simply said: “Latinx soy yo, Abuelo.” I’m Latinx, Grandfather.

I felt nervous but liberated when I said this. I felt as if I were coming out for the first time to him. I followed up: “I believe Latinx stands for all the people in the Latino community who have ever felt left out, Abuelo . That ‘x’ is simply an invitation for every one of those people that can’t fit into one identity, for people that want to challenge norms, or

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for those that simply want to reimagine themselves. And guess what?” I said. “You’re Latinx, too!”

He laughed and then stayed silent. I wish I could have seen my grandfather’s face on the other side of the line—him in Miami, me in New York City. But I’m pretty sure that in that moment, my grandpa understood exactly what the term entailed, because my abuelo embodies the very sentiment of the term: he is a Cuban exile who reinvented himself after he escaped from Fidel Castro’s oppressive regime. When my mother and grandparents arrived in the United States after fleeing Havana, leaving behind the only land and language they knew, they had to start all over again. Once labeled as a “terrorist” by Fidel Castro my grandfather had to build a name for himself from afar. Not only did he become an avid activist against injustices but he also founded his own publishing company and became a prominent journalist, novelist, and loving dad and grandfather. Every step of the way, my grandpa Carlos was reimagining himself—defying the odds that had been stacked against him and constantly discovering the lengths freedom had to offer him. Through the years, my grandpa opened his house as a safe space for other Cuban exiles—gay men, Afro-Cubans, dissidents, single moms, sick people. People who had once been told they weren’t worthy enough by Castro had a place to be themselves under my grandpa’s roof. To me, my abuelo exemplified the term “Latinx” even before it became a word.

People may want to write the narrative of the Latinx community using terms we already know, like “Latino” or “Hispanic.” They may say that “Latinx” is insulting, unpopular, and unusable. “A butchering of the Spanish language,” they might claim. “Just liberal propaganda,” they might yell, dismissing it as a “millennial thing.” And in all of this, they may not be able to even see the beautiful complexity we hold and the understanding that this is a story about them, too —about claiming our collective belonging in this country. It is a manifestation of the rights our community has been working toward for decades.

For tips on planting naysayers, see Chapter 6 .

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Given that the country unearthed its white supremacist, anti- immigrant, and anti-Latino tendencies after the 2016 presidential election, the question may be asked, “Why call on the community to unite under a controversial banner? Why come out now as Latinx?” The answer: That election will be remembered in American history as a moment that made a lot of us lean into our Latin identity. Language evolves, and it evolves as an expression of the political time we’re in— and I believe the Latinx movement is the next step in this evolution.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Paola Ramos opens her piece with her own story and how she came to embrace the term “Latinx.” Why is this an effective way to begin her argument? What might be a more conventional “they say / I say” introduction?

2. The author spends considerable time explaining the origins of the term “Latinx” to respond to those who may dismiss the term as made-up or just “a millennial thing.” (paragraph 25) What evidence does she give to legitimize “Latinx”? What examples or sources did you find most persuasive, and why?

3. Toward the end of this reading, the author includes a naysayer argument by narrating an exchange between her and her abuelo (paragraph 20). What does he say, and how does Ramos respond to his objections? What is her tone in representing his point of view and in responding to his question? Do you think her response persuaded him? Why or why not?

4. The author asserts, “Latinx is transcending all imaginable borders” (paragraph 12). According to the author, who, beyond those who identify as queer or nonbinary, benefit from the inclusivity of the term “Latinx”?

5. Read Bryan Betancur’s piece “It’s Time to Drop ‘Latinx’,” which is included in this chapter on pages 712–17 . On what points would Ramos and Betancur agree? On what points would they disagree?

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Glossary

addendum additional material added to the end of a piece of writing, meant to clarify or supplement it

indigenize to make Indigenous

mamis mothers (Spanish)

abuelas grandmothers (Spanish)

red political territories states that vote Republican, represented by the color red, as opposed to Democratic, represented by blue

Fidel Castro Cuban revolutionary (1926–2016) who led Cuba to become the first communist state in the West; served as prime minister (1959–76) and president (1976–2008)

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It’s Time to Drop “Latinx”

BRYAN BETANCUR

* * *

BRYAN BETANCUR is an assistant professor of Spanish at Bronx Community College. His academic and freelance writing focuses on issues of identity, politics, and language in the Latino community. He earned his PhD in Hispanic Studies from Brown University. This piece was published in Inside Higher Ed in 2023.

________

I BRISTLE EVERYTIME I SEE THE WORD “Latinx.” The term has become ubiquitous, both in and out of academia: in social media, marketing materials, course titles, academic program names, job ads, etc. If we are serious about using language that promotes progressive reform, it is time to drop the term Latinx in favor of “Latine,” an ethnic identifier that fosters genuine inclusion.

I did not always hate “Latinx.” I first saw the term following the 2016 Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, Fla. The word was an alternative to the gendered “Latino/a” and was intended to create more inclusive language. In the aftermath of that hideous shooting, the increased presence of “Latinx” in news stories, academic discourse and social media seemed a laudable act of solidarity.

I know firsthand the influential power of language. The son of working-class Colombian immigrants, I grew up absorbing linguistic punches: poor Spic , coke dealer , f-ing immigrant . Words of discrimination, exclusion, ridicule. The emotional scars I carry from those experiences make me amenable to language that seeks the opposite effect: tolerance, empathy, inclusion. The apparent potential of “Latinx”

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to promote social change and grant greater linguistic visibility to women and nonbinary people inspired me to use the term.

Yet the term “Latinx” bothered me for reasons I was not ready to contemplate. The racist language I heard as a kid affected me well into adulthood and contributed to a long-standing struggle with impostor syndrome . I earned a doctorate from an Ivy League university and became a Spanish professor, yet I have never felt proud of my achievements. Instead, I convince myself I am an intruder in intellectual circles reserved for smarter, more capable people who are not poor, coke- dealing, f-ing immigrant Spies. If colleagues I respected—and felt inferior to—did not take issue with “Latinx,” neither would I.

But my academic job positioned me particularly well to witness what I now understand as an elitist linguistic trend. The effort to neutralize gender in Spanish did not stop at “Latinx.” The letter x soon replaced -o and -a in other words, too. Amigo (friend) became amigx, querido (dear) became queridx and so on. These new words irked me even more than “Latinx,” but, like a good impostor, I did what I thought would ingratiate me with my liberal compañerxs (colleagues).

My perspective on “Latinx” changed in 2019 when my mom, who only speaks to me in Spanish, asked me to explain the term’s significance. More accurately, she tried to reference the identifier but was unsure how to pronounce it. Her uncertainty granted me new insight into my discomfort with the term “Latinx.” I could explain gender- inclusive language to my mom but could only spell out terms like queridx, because these words cannot be pronounced in Spanish. The battle against grammatical gender was inaccessible to my mom, who did not attend college and was not about to read a jargony essay on the subject.

If this new linguistic practice did not lend itself to a simple oral explanation to my mom, it also excluded much of my family and the immigrant community in which I grew up. What’s more, the allegedly inclusive language also left out a significant portion of my students at Bronx Community College, many of whom come from backgrounds like mine. I finally understood that the knee-jerk aversion I felt toward

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“Latinx” stemmed from an unconscious recognition that this linguistic practice was not as inclusive as its many adherents, including myself, claimed.

Following that conversation, I scoured the internet for critiques of “Latinx” and found an edifying interview with Mexican linguist Concepción Company. Company asserts that using language in a manner that yields words such as amigx privileges writing over orality and excludes groups, such as some Indigenous communities, that lack formal writing systems. These populations are thus denied equal opportunity to participate in activism via language. My family, my community and my students were not the only ones left out of the Latinx conversation.

Company’s arguments unlocked an intellectual door that impostor syndrome had made me too afraid to approach. If I was to articulate an argument against “Latinx,” I needed to ignore the term’s increased presence in academia. Clearing that psychological hurdle allowed me to articulate a stance against “Latinx” and the use of x to neutralize grammatical gender. I eventually felt confident enough in my arguments to share them on social media, in the classroom and in this essay.

So what’s wrong with trends that claim to support inclusivity but are limited to writing? These practices also exclude persons with limited schooling and literacy skills. In Latin America, education and literacy gaps are most prominent in Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. In restricting these groups’ access to linguistic practices perpetuated by U.S. academics, the use of the term “Latinx” further marginalizes underrepresented populations.

Even literate persons who do not spend significant time engaged with writing (journals, books, social media, etc.) are kept out of the conversation. I think of my dad, a talented man who could build a house from the foundation up but who once told me he has never read a book from cover to cover. He, and most of the families I grew up with, are excluded from a discussion about topics as important as ethnic identity and inclusion.

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Proponents of “Latinx” downplay the problem of pronouncing words such as amigxs by noting that individuals who identify as Latinx are mostly U.S.-born and English-speaking. Fluency in Spanish certainly does not make one a more “authentic” member of the linguistically diverse communities of the Americas. However, supporting a practice because it is intelligible in English excludes monolingual Spanish speakers and people, like my mom, who have functional English ability but prefer to communicate in their native tongue.

Arguments that emphasize the use of “Latinx” among English speakers implicitly separate persons of Latin American descent into two groups: monolingual Spanish speakers and those who were born in the U.S. and primarily speak English. This de facto division runs counter to assertions that “Latinx” denotes inclusivity. Some descendants of Latin American immigrants might not feel a strong attachment to Spanish, but that does not mean the language in its spoken form ought to be dismissed. For the more than 460 million native speakers in the world, Spanish is not an abstract remnant of colonialism but a lived means of communication. Expecting a multinational ethnic group to tolerate language simply because it is acceptable to English speakers is linguistic imperialism under the guise of social progress.

The elitist and hegemonic connotations of “Latinx” became glaringly egregious to me when I came across the term “Latine,” another alternative to “Latino/a.” “Latine” also neutralizes grammatical gender but can exist in spaces outside of academic texts and tweets written and read mostly by the college educated. Spanish already contains gender- neutral words that end in -e (e.g., estudiante, or student, inteligente, or intelligent), making “Latine” a logical extension of what exists in the language.

So why do I still see “Latinx” instead of “Latine” in calls for papers, titles of conference presentations and so on? Likely because “Latine” and the related use of the letter e to neutralize grammatical gender has roots in activist circles in Latin America and Spain, and U.S. academics (politicians, the media, marketing firms, etc.) primarily value and legitimize intellectual currents that circulate in this country, to the exclusion of all others. Argentine president Alberto Fernández regularly

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includes words such as todes (instead of todos for everyone) and amigues in his speeches, evidence that these terms are accessible to Spanish speakers regardless of schooling or literacy. Meanwhile, U.S. politicians (primarily Democrats continue using “Latinx” in social media posts despite growing evidence that only a small fraction of U.S. adults who identify as Latino or Hispanic (just 3 percent) refer to themselves as Latinx, while as many as four in 10 members of this heterogenous population find the term irksome or offensive.

The question of how to identify people of Latin American ancestry is a thorny one. It has been for centuries. Some believe we should use ethnic identifiers derived from Indigenous languages, while others reject the existence of a single transnational term given the tendency of Latines to self-identify using national adjectives (Mexican, Cuban, etc.). These important discussions remind us that we must think critically, not just about the word “Latinx,” but about what we communicate when we claim to use inclusive language.

But when it comes to “Latinx” and “Latine,” the question is not a matter of personal choice, as many claim. This assertion creates a false equivalence between the terms. I use “Latine” because inclusive language should not value literacy over orality, English over Spanish, or the ivory tower over the greater community.

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Joining the Conversation

1. Bryan Betancur’s views of the term “Latinx” changed over time. What did he initially think was useful and important about the term? What evidence and experiences convinced him to change his mind?

2. In his essay, Betancur frequently references his own experiences as a son of immigrants, a student, and a scholar, as well as the experiences of his parents and students. Why do you think he chose to do this? Which personal example do you think best supports his central claim, and why?

3. Betancur explains that one problem with the term “Latinx” is that it only works in writing, as the “-x” suffix “cannot be pronounced in Spanish” (paragraph 6). Why does this matter? Because of this issue, who is not represented by the term “Latinx,” according to the author?

4. What reasons does the author give for why the term “Latine” is not more widely used in the United States as an alternative to “Latinx”? What could be another reason more people in the United States have not adopted the term “Latine”?

5. Who else, besides the individuals choosing between “Latinx,” “Latino/a,” or “Latine” as self-descriptors, should care about the author’s argument? Where in his essay does he point to the broader stakeholders for his argument?

6. In his essay in this chapter, Sean Blanda explains a game called “Controversial Opinion,” where instead of dismissing someone who holds a different view, you “ask questions about why that person feels that way” (page 637 , paragraph 1). Imagine Betancur and Paola Ramos, author of “Finding Latinx” in this chapter, decided to play “Controversial Opinion.” What questions would Betancur ask Ramos? How might she answer? What questions would Ramos ask Betancur? How would he answer?

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You can compose your response as a script, as if Betancur and Ramos were having a face-to-face conversation.

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Glossary

knee-jerk referring to a quick, reflex movement or reaction

imposter syndrome doubting one’s own abilities; feeling like a fraud

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CREDITS

* * *

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TEXT

Ben Adler: “Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right?” Grist , 2 Jun. 2016. This story was originally published by Grist. Republished by permission of Grist.

Michelle Alexander: Excerpt from The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness– Copyright © 2010, 2012 & 2020 by Michelle Alexander. Reprinted by permission of The New Press. www.thenewpress.com

Bryan Betancur: Originally published as “Why I Hate the Term ‘Latinx.’” Inside Higher Ed , 27 Dec. 2021, insidehighered.com/views/2023/01/26/why-i-hate-term-latinx-opinion. Republished by permission of the author.

Sean Blanda: “The ‘Other Side’ Is Not Dumb.” Medium , 7 Jan. 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Sylvia Matthews Burwell: Used with permission of Council on Foreign Relations, from Foreign Affairs, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, Vol. 97, No. 6, 2018; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Carole Cadwalladr: “Google, Democracy and the Truth About Internet Search.” The Guardian , 4 Dec. 2016. Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2023. Used with permission.

Nicholas Carr: Republished with permission of Dow Jones & Company, from “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds,” The Wall Street Journal, 6 Oct. 2017; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

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Alice Chen and Vivek Murthy: Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review . From “Should We Be More Optimistic About Fighting Climate Change?” by Alice Chen and Vivek Murthy, September 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Harvard Business Publishing; all rights reserved.

Anna Clark: “Why We Need to Keep the ‘Community’ in Community Colleges.” Next City , 13 Jul. 2015. Republished with permission of Next City.

Martin E. Dempsey: “90 Seconds Together.” The Atlantic , 30 May 2021, theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/national-anthem-stand- patriotism/619049. Courtesy of Atlantic Media.

Editorial Staff of The Eagle Eye : Excerpt from “Our Manifesto to Fix America’s Gun Laws.” The Guardian , 23 Mar. 2018. Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2023. Used with permission.

Christopher J. Ferguson and Patrick Markey: Excerpt from “Video Games Aren’t Addictive.” The New York Times , 2 Apr. 2017. From The New York Times. © 2017 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Used under license.

Carine M. Feyten: Used with permission of The Chronicle of Higher Education, from Feyten, Carine M. “The Boys Are Doing Just Fine.” The Chronicle of Higher Education , 13 Jul. 2022; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center Inc.

David Frum: “How Much Immigration Is Too Much?” The Atlantic , Apr. 2019, theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/david-frum-how- much-immigration-is-too-much/583252. Courtesy of Atlantic Media.

Joe Garcia: Used with permission of MIT Technology Review, from “Left Behind.” MIT Technology Review , 30 Jun. 2021, p. 18; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker: “Environmental Justice Is Only the Beginning.” High Country News , 1 Jul. 2022. Republished with permission of the

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author.

Kenneth Goldsmith: “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet.” Los Angeles Times , 12 Aug. 2016. Reprinted courtesy of Kenneth Goldsmith.

Gerald Graff: Adapted from Graff, Gerald. “Hidden Intellectualism.” Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind , Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 211–231. Copyright © 2003 Yale University. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.

Anna Romina Guevarra: “Here Come the Robot Nurses.” Boston Review , 2 Aug. 2021. Republished with permission of the author.

Eric Holder: “Making It Easier to Vote” from Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of The Vote – A History, a Crisis, a Plan by Eric Holder with Sam Koppelman, copyright © 2022 by Eric Holder, Jr. Used by permission of One World, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: “What I Know about the Ocean.” Originally published in Black Futures , edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, 2020. Republished with permission of the author.

Yascha Mounk: Republished with permission of Dow Jones & Company, from “The Everyday Patriotism of Diverse Democracies.” The

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Wall Street Journal, 15 Apr. 2022; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Chris Nowinski: Excerpt from “Youth Tackle Football Will Be Considered Unthinkable 50 Years from Now.” Vox.com , 3 Apr. 2019. htt ps://www.vox.com/2019/3/27/18174368/football-concussion-brain-injur y-cte-youth-football . Republished by permission of Vox Media, LLC.

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fenaba Addo: “Student Loan Forgiveness Critics Are Wrong about Who Benefits and Why.” Teen Vogue , 9 Sep. 2022. Republished by permission of the authors.

Andre M. Perry: “Addressing Poverty Can Heal an Increasingly Divided Country.” The Avenue , 23 Dec. 2019, brookings.edu/ blog/the- avenue/2019/12/23/poverty-in-america-is-rising-we-need-a-plan-to- fight-it/. Republished by permission of The Brookings Institution.

Paola Ramos: Introduction: Coming Out as Latinx from Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity by Paola Ramos, copyright © 2020 by Paola Ramos. Used by permission of Vintage Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Richard V. Reeves: Used with permission of The Chronicle of Higher Education, from Reeves, Richard V. “No, the Boys Are Not Doing Just Fine.” The Chronicle of Higher Education , 28 Jul. 2022; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center Inc.

Matt Ridley: “Going Nuclear.” National Review , 17 Dec. 2020, pp. 51– 53. Republished with permission of National Review.

Mike Rose: “Community College: The Great Equalizer?” Dissent , vol. 68, no. 4, 2021. © Dissent Magazine 2021. Reprinted with permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Christine Rosen: “Keep Them Offline.” National Review , 27 Jun. 2022, pp. 19–22. Republished with permission of National Review.

Elizabeth Silkes: From “Cultural Heritage Reminds Us of Our Shared Humanity. That’s Why Threats Against Them Are So Dangerous.” Time.com, January 10, 2020. Reused with permission of Elizabeth Silkes, Executive Director, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.

Lana Swartz: Used with permission of MIT Technology Review, from “In Praise of the Dollar Bill.” MIT Technology Review , 15 Apr. 2022, pp. 16–17; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Carissa Véliz: “If AI Is Predicting Your Future, Are You Still Free?” Wired , 27 Dec. 2021, wired.com/story/algorithmic-prophecies- undermine-free-will/. Carissa Véliz, Wired © Condé Nast. Republished by permission of Condé Nast.

David Wallace-Wells: “Cascades” from The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming by David Wallace-Wells, copyright © 2019 by David Wallace-Wells. Used by permission of Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Damond Williams: Republished by permission of Damond Williams.

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PHOTOGRAPHS

Chapter 20: p. 308 : Branger/Roger Viollet via Getty Images; p. 323 : Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images; p. 351 : Vivien Killilea/WireImage/Getty Images; p. 389 : Stephen Dunn/Getty Images; Chapter 21: p. 396 : Photo by MGM/Stanley Kubrick Productions/Kobal/Shutterstock; p. 408 : TikTok; p. 440 : Reuters/Joyce Zhou/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 456 : Google; p. 460 : James Leynse/Corbis Historical/Getty Images; p. 462 : Jonathan Albright; Chapter 22: p. 474 : David Grossman/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 499 : WaterFram/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 516 : Shutterstock; p. 520 : Peter Adams Photography/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 534 : Design Pics Inc/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 535 : Frank Fichtmueller/Alamy Stock Photo; Chapter 23: p. 550 : Photo illustration by Chronicle of Higher Education/peshkov/Getty Images; p. 600 : AP Photo/Seth Wenig; Chapter 24: p. 632 : Sofia Warren/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank; p. 638 : © Tom Gauld; p. 639 : Published on esquire.com on January 3, 2016; p. 654 : Ken MacKay/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 663 : Bob Kreisel/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 705 : Cara Robbins/Contour by Getty Images; About the Authors: top to bottom: Tricia Koning Photography, Tricia Koning Photography, Katheryn Wekselman, Monica Browning Photography.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

* * *

THIS BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE seen print if it weren’t for Marilyn Moller, our superb editor at Norton, and the extraordinary job she has done of inspiring, commenting on, and rewriting (and then rewriting and rewriting again) our many drafts. Our friendship with Marilyn is one of the most cherished things to have developed from this project.

We are also particularly thankful to our current Norton editor Sarah Touborg, whose exemplary counsel, criticism, and hands-on intervention shaped the changes we have made to this edition. We are grateful for Sarah’s unflagging patience with a couple of sometimes-recalcitrant authors. Editorial assistant Caroline Fairey Meese skillfully and cheerfully coordinated the many details involved in preparing our manuscript.

Our thanks go as well to Mike Wright and Roby Harrington for their encouragement and astute suggestions (and great dinners) on their annual visits to Chicago. We extend our gratitude to Melissa Atkin and Brenda Manzanedo for their superb work managing the editing and production of this edition; and to Joy Cranshaw and Juliet Godwin for their energetic work creating the many digital resources that accompany the book. We appreciate Patricia Wong’s excellent work as permissions editor and Ted Szczepanski’s management of the photos for both versions of the book.

Thanks to John Darger, our Norton representative, who offered early encouragement to write this book; to Debra Morton Hoyt and Mike Wood for their excellent work on the cover. Special thanks to Michele Dobbins, Lib Triplett, and the incomparable Norton travelers for the superb work they’ve done on behalf of our book.

We extend our deep thanks to Laura J. Panning Davies for her many contributions to this book. Laura has done excellent work on the new e-

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version of this book, on the new chapter on AI, and on theysayiblog.com . And if that weren’t enough, she has also updated the instructor’s guide for “They Say / I Say” and expertly taken on the challenging task of editing “They Say / I Say” with Readings.

Many thanks to Professor Steve Benton of East Central University, who helped us not only with the first edition of this book but also with this new sixth edition. It was Steve’s suggestion that we include the new chapter on writing about personal experiences. We only wish we’d thought of this ourselves! We also extend our thanks to those who provided in-depth reviews of the new chapter on drawing from your own experience: Lorelei Blackburn (Michigan State University), Velvet Pearson (Long Beach City College), Douglas Swartz (Indiana University Northwest), Nicole Wendt (University of Minnesota), Cameron Wilson (William Jessup University), and Lacey Wootton (American University).

We would also like to thank Katharine Nicholson Ings (Manchester University) for her work on the Appendix (“Citing What ‘They Say’ ”) as well as her superb copyediting.

A very special thanks goes to those who provided in-depth reviews of the new chapter on generative AI: Erin Ackerman (The College of New Jersey), Virginia Crisco (California State University at Fresno), Melissa Ganz (Marquette University), Terra Joseph (Rider University), Katherine Osborne (Davis & Elkins College), Tanya Rodrigues (Salem State University), and Trish Serviss (University of California at Davis).

We’re grateful to Director of the Georgetown University Writing Center, David Lipscomb, both for his clarifying suggestions on an early version of our new AI chapter and for soliciting feedback on a subsequent draft from the students in his writing courses. Thanks also to the students themselves for their invaluable responses to that draft, and finally to Georgetown student Sarah Sverdlov, to whom we give the last word of the chapter. Thanks also to our sister-in-law Carolyn Kahn Birkenstein and her colleagues at The MITRE Corporation for alllowing us to quote them on the business aspects of AI.

We are grateful to all of the instructors whose feedback was invaluable in shaping this sixth edition: Michelle Allen-Smith (Grand Rapids Community College), Valerie Ambrose (Shasta College), Stephanie Andre (Central Oregon Community College), Melissa Coss

https://www.theysayiblog.com/

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Aquino (Bronx Community College), Kim Armstrong (Metropolitan Community College), Beth Arnette Wade (Houston Community College), Gail Arnoff (John Carroll University), Sarah Baer (Moravian College), Peter Balaam (Carleton College), Molly Ball (University of Minnesota), Fredric Ball (Southwestern College), Joshua Barnes (Harrisburg Area Community College), Joshua Beall (Georgia Gwinnett College), Darlene Beaman (Lone Star College, Kingwood), Erin Beaver (Colorado Mountain College), John Bell (American River College), DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld (Fitchburg State University), Monica Berlin (Knox College), Jessica Best (SUNY Adirondack), Brittany Biesiada (Monmouth University), Karen Birt (Grace College), Lorelei Blackburn (Michigan State University), Linda Black-Ochsenein (SUNY Oswego), Jill Bonds (West Hills Community College, Coalinga), Jesup Bonnstetter (Des Moines Area Community College), Marci Bowden (Kirkwood Community College), Paula Boyd (Parkland College), Amber Braden (Ivy Tech Community College), Margaret Brockland-Nease (Georgia Southern University), Carellin Brooks (University of British Columbia), Bridgette Brown (University of Ottawa), Jacob Burg (Boston University), Jimmy Butts (Louisiana State University), Connor Byrne (University of British Columbia), Mary Callahan (Rhode Island College), Stacy Cameron (Oakton Community College), Rebecca Cash (SUNY Adirondack), Tom Cerasulo (Elms College), Wes Chapman (Illinois Wesleyan University), Rebecca Charry (Rochester Institute of Technology, Croatia), Song Chen (Bucknell University), Cheryl Christian (Virginia State University), Christopher Chrobak (California State University, Bakersfield), Fabrizio Ciccone (Brown University), Sara Cipriano (Bakersfield College), Erin Mae Clark (Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota), Aaron Clark (Dallas College Brookhaven Campus), Patrick Clauss (University of Notre Dame), Tara Coleman (LaGuardia Community College), Sarah Collins (University of Illinois, Springfield), Glenn Collins (California State University, Northridge), Chris Corning (Pierce College), Linda Cowling (North Central Missouri College), Steve Criniti (West Liberty University), Marian Crotty (Loyola University Maryland), Sharon Dansereau (Hawaii Community College), Kevin Degnan (El Camino College), Sari Delagneau (Mission Hills High School), Robert Dixon-Kolar (College of DuPage), Ashley Dycus (University of West Georgia), Susan Erdmann (University of Agder), Greg Farber (Bentley University), Kelly Fenwick (Virginia State University), Erik Fetler (Monterey Peninsula College), Ted Fitts (Boston University), Kevin Flanagan (George Mason University), Dorritta Fong

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(Douglas College), Lindsay Foran (University of Ottawa), Ryan Fowler (Franklin & Marshall College), Nicholas Frangipane (Suffolk University), Meaghan Fritz (Northwestern University), Porscha de la Fuente (Kapi‘olani Community College), Erin Fujinami (Fresno City College), Anna Garcia (Middlesex Community College), Johnny Gilbert (University of Arkansas, Little Rock), Esther Godfrey (University of South Carolina, Upstate), Oscar Goff (St. Paul’s Episcopal School), Nancy Gold (Northern Michigan University), Teah Goldberg (Loyola Marymount University), Sarah Gottschall (Prince George’s Community College), Maura Grady (Ashland University), William Green (Douglas College), Jeremy Greenway (Huron University College at Western University), Eric Gregory (Saddleback College), Heather Greise (Allegany College of Maryland), Janet Gross (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Edythe Hampson (University of Maine), Brooke Harrison (Central Michigan University), Natalie Hewitt (Hope International University), Meagan Hoff (Collin College), Max Hohner (Eastern Washington University), Seth Holler (Evangelical Christian School), Jessica Hoover (Baker College), Salisa Hortenstine Olmsted (Lake Land College), William Howell (George Mason University), Becky Hsu (University of California, Berkeley), Jaimie Humbert (Henderson Community College), Kirsten Iden (University of South Carolina, Salkehatchie), Scott Jackshaw (Brown University), LaToya Jefferson-James (Mississippi Valley State University), Ryan Jones (Harrisburg Area Community College, York), Christine Jones (Dallas Baptist University), Geneffa Jonker (Cabrillo College), Jamie Joseph (De Anza College), Wyatt Keener (Cumberland University), Daphne Keller (Monmouth University), Sharon Kelly (Shippensburg University), Michael Kent (Riverside Community College), Swan Kim (Bronx Community College), Heather King (Ivy Tech Community College), Timothy Klitz (Washington & Jefferson College), Jan Knispel (Mid Plains Community College, Valentine), Carla Kungl (Shippensburg University), Scott Lankford (Foothill College), Victoria Large (Berklee College of Music), Haley Larson (Dakota State University), Aaron Lelito (SUNY Erie Community College), John Levine (University of California, Berkeley), Sarah Lincoln (Portland State University), Sara Lindey (Saint Vincent College), Susan Lipscomb (Houghton College), Catherine Loomis (Rochester Institute of Technology), Louise Lord (Bronx Community College), Karen Lowe (Solano Community College), Andrea Maciel (California State University, Bakersfield), Jennifer MacKenzie (Lehman College, CUNY), Janice Mann (Bucknell

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University), Rebekah Maples (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Meredith Marchioni (Alaska Pacific University), Selina Marcille (Southern New Hampshire University), Farah Marklevits (Augustana College), Megan Marshall (Marshall University), Liz Mayo (Jackson State Community College), Kate McCahill (Santa Fe Community College), Tim McCormack (John Jay College), Willis McCumber (University at Buffalo), Cynthia McKeag (Oakton Community College), Ildiko Melis (Bay Mills Community College), Mitchell Melter (New York University), Tiffany Messerschmidt (Polk State College), Jeremy Meyer (Arizona State University), Monica Miller (Middle George State University), Cara Minardi-Power (Florida Southwestern State), Evelina Miscin (Rochester Institute of Technology, Croatia), Kimberly Moekle (Loyola Marymount University), Stephen Molloy (Moravian Academy), Sharleen Mondal (Ashland University), John Nardone (Lehigh Carbon Community College), Emma Newcombe (Boston University), David Newman (University of British Columbia), Melody Niesen (Northland Pioneer College), Heidi Nobles (University of Virginia), Matt Norman (Vincennes University), Oluwatosin Ogunnika (Virginia State University), David Onofrychuk (Alaska Pacific University), Michael Opolicky (Dallas College), Amanda O’Sullivan (Community College of Denver), Dennis Pahl (LIU Post), Shelley Palmer (Wake Technical Community College), Velvet Pearson (Long Beach City College), Carolina Pelaez-Morales (Columbus State Univerisity), Jennifer Penkethman (De Anza College), Alesya Petty (San José State University), Laura Phelan (St. John Fisher College), Nicola Philpott (Champlain College Saint-Lambert), Robert Pickford (San Diego Mesa College), Meenakshi Ponnuswami (Bucknell University), Katherine Preston (Brown University), Tiffany Probasco (University of Delaware), Sarah Quirk (Waubonsee Community College), John Quirk (Brown University), Ben Railton (Fitchburg State University), Alexis Ramsey (Eckerd College), Patty Rasmussen (Big Bend Community College), Katie Rasmussen (Adrian College), Angela Rehbein (West Liberty University), Yelizaveta Renfro (Saint Mary’s College), Rachel Rinehart (Marshall University), Aaron Ritzenberg (Columbia University), Erin Rodriguez (California State University, Bakersfield), Linda Rogers (California State University, Chico), Kathy Rose (Dixie State University), Howard Rosenberg (Rowan College of South Jersey), Alison Rukavina (Langara College), Katie Sagal (Cornell College), Renee Schaller (Hunter College, CUNY), Cassandra Scherr (University at Buffalo), Mary Seel (SUNY Broome), Neil Segars (Freed-Hardeman

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University), Nicole Servino (Community College of Denver), Kayleigh Sevi (Orange Coast College), Siri Shankar (California State University, Fresno), Shantavia Shelton (Harding University), Michelle Shin (Kapi’olani Community College), John Silvestro (Slippery Rock University), Catherine Sims (Cascia Hall), Kristin Skager (De Anza College), Lisa Smith (University of Nebraska, Omaha), Amanda Smothers (Harper College), Jennie Snow (Rutgers University), Susan St John (Windward Community College), Daniel Stanford (Pitt Community College), Elizabeth Starr (Ivy Tech Community College, Bloomington), Matthew Stenson (Texas Tech University), Brian Stepanic (Newark High School), Michelle Sterling (Berklee College of Music), Carolyn Stoermer (Wright State University), Kristyn Stout (Ocean County College), Sarah Strong (University of Hartford), Trisha Stubblefield (Cottey College), Kate Sullivan (Lane Community College), Douglas Swartz (Indiana University Northwest), Nanette Tamer (Stevenson University), Jayanti Tamm (Ocean County College), Marie Taylor (Arcadia University), Anne-Marie Thomas (Austin Community College, Highland), Tiffaney Tiffin (Hope International University), Travis Timmons (Butler County Community College), Melissa Toomey (Temple University), Deborah Uman (St. John Fisher College), Peter Vahle (University of California, Berkelely), Dagmar Van Engen (Arizona State University), Mark Wagenaar (Valparaiso University), Garry Walton (Meredith College), Jayne Waterman (Ashland University), Cathy Webb (Augustana College), Karen Woods Weierman (Worcester State University), Nicole Wendt (Ubah Medical Academy), Suzanne Wielgos (College of DuPage), Katrina Wilkins (Brigham Young University), Todd Williams (Kutztown University of PA), Stephanie Williams (University of Arkansas, Little Rock), Cameron Wilson (William Jessup University), Terri Woebel (Willowbrook High School), Lacey Wootton (American University), Timothy Wutrich (Case Western Reserve University), Joanne Yantz (Colorado Mountain College), Liam Young (Vancouver Island University), Jennifer Young (Cape Fear Community College), Kelly Zepp (Community College of Denver), and Jason Ziebart (Central Carolina Community College). We owe a special debt of gratitude to Erin Ackerman for her expert contributions to the new chapter on research and for her chapter on writing in the social sciences. We also thank Chris Gillen for his chapter on writing in the sciences. Working with Erin and Chris proved to be an exhilarating experience; we learned a great deal by seeing how they applied our ideas to their disciplines.

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A very special thanks goes to those who provided in-depth reviews of the chapters on research and revising: Steven Bailey (Central Michigan University), Ana Cooke (Penn State University), Courtney Danforth (College of Southern Nevada), Africa Fine (Palm Beach State College), and Traci Klass (Palm Beach State College); and to those who provided detailed evaluations of the fourth edition: Joe Bizup (Boston University), Laura J. Panning Davies (SUNY Cortland), Karen Gocsik (University of California at San Diego), and Kelly Ritter (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign).

We owe a special thanks to our colleagues in the English department at the University of Illinois at Chicago: Mark Canuel, our former department head, for supporting our earlier efforts overseeing the university’s Writing in the Disciplines requirement; Walter Benn Michaels, another former department head; and Ann Feldman, former director of university writing programs, for encouraging us to teach first- year composition courses at UIC in which we could try out ideas and drafts of our manuscript; Tom Moss, Diane Chin, Vainis Aleksa, and Matt Pavesich, who have also been very supportive of our efforts; and Matt Oakes, our former research assistant. We are also grateful to Ann Feldman, Diane Chin, and Mark Bennett for bringing us into their graduate course on the teaching of writing; and to Lisa Freeman, John Huntington, Walter Benn Michaels, and Ralph Cintron for inviting us to present our ideas in the keynote lecture at UIC’s 2013 Composition Matters conference.

We are also especially grateful not only to Steve Benton, whom we mentioned earlier, but to Nadya Pittendrigh, who together with Steve taught a section of composition with us using an early draft of this book. We are grateful to Andy Young, a lecturer at UIC who has tested our book in his courses and who continues to give us extremely helpful feedback. And we thank Vershawn A. Young, whose work on code- meshing influenced our argument in Chapter 10 , and Hillel Crandus, who inspired the chapter on “Entering Classroom Discussions.”

We are grateful to the many colleagues and friends who’ve let us talk our ideas out with them and given extremely helpful responses. UIC’s former dean, Stanley Fish, has been central in this respect, both in personal conversations and in his incisive articles calling for greater focus on form in the teaching of writing. Our conversations with Jane

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Tompkins have also been integral to this book, as was the composition course that Jane cotaught with Gerald, titled “Can We Talk?” Lenny Davis, too, offered both intellectual insight and emotional support, as did Heather Arnet, Jennifer Ashton, Janet Atwill, Kyra Auslander, Noel Barker, Mark Bauerlein, Jim Benton, Jack Brereton, Jim Burke, Tim Cantrick, Marsha Cassidy, David Chinitz, Lisa Chinitz, Pat Chu, Harry J. Cook, Duane Davis, Bridget O’Rourke Flisk, Steve Flisk, Judy Gardiner, Howard Gardner, Rich Gelb, Gwynne Gertz, Jeff Gore, Bill Haddad, Ben Hale, Scott Hammerl, Patricia Harkin, Andy Hoberek, John Huntington, Carol Jago, Joe Janangelo, Paul Jay, David Jolliffe, Nancy Kohn, Don Lazere, Sarah Levine, Jo Liebermann, Les Lynn, Steven Mailloux, Deirdre McCloskey, Maurice J. Meilleur, Alan Meyers, Greg Meyerson, Anna Minkov, Chris Newfield, Randy Olson, Jim Phelan, Paul Psilos, Bruce Robbins, Charles Ross, Eileen Seifert, Evan Seymour, David Shumway, Herb Simons, Jim Sosnoski, Kyle Stedman, David Steiner, Harold Aram Veeser, Chuck Venegoni, Marla Weeg, Jerry Wexler, Joyce Wexler, Virginia Wexman, Jeffrey Williams, Lynn Woodbury, Art Young, Vershawn Young, and the late Wayne Booth, whose friendship we dearly miss.

We are grateful for having had the opportunity to present our ideas to a number of colleges and high schools: University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Augustana College, Brandeis University, Brigham Young University, Bryn Mawr College, California State University at Bakersfield, California State University at Northridge, University of California at Riverside, Case Western University, Central Michigan University, Clemson University, Columbia University, Community College of Philadelphia, Daemen College, Davidson College, University of Delaware, DePauw University, Drew University, Duke University, Duquesne University, Elmhurst College, Emory University, Fairfield University, Fontbonne University, Furman University, Gettysburg College, Harper College, Harvard University, Haverford College, Hawaii Office of Secondary School Curriculum Instruction, Hunter College, University of Illinois College of Medicine, Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, John Carroll University, Kansas State University, Lawrence University, the Lawrenceville School, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, MacEwan University, University of Maryland at College Park, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Memphis, Miami University, Mills College, University of Missouri at Columbia, New Trier High School, North Carolina A&T University,

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University of North Florida, Northern Michigan University, Northwestern University Division of Continuing Studies, Norwalk Community College, University of Notre Dame, Ohio State University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Oregon State University, University of Portland, Purdue University at Calumet, University of Rochester, Rockford University, St. Ambrose University, St. Andrew’s School, St. Charles High School, St. Francis University at Joliet, State University of New York at Geneseo, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Seattle University, South Elgin High School, University of South Florida, Southern Connecticut State University, University of Southern Mississippi, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Teachers College, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, University of Texas at Arlington, Tulane University, Union College, Ursinus College, Wabash College, Washington College, University of Washington, University of West Virginia at Morgantown, Western Michigan University, Westinghouse/Kenwood High Schools, Wheaton North High School, Wheaton Warrenville English Chairs, Winona State University, and the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

We particularly thank those who helped arrange these visits and discussed writing issues with us: Jeff Abernathy, Herman Asarnow, John Austin, Greg Barnheisel, John Bean, Crystal Benedicks, Joe Bizup, Sheridan Blau, Dagne Bloland, Chris Breu, Elizabeth Brockman, Mark Brouwer, Lizabeth Bryant, Joan Johnson Bube, John Caldwell, Gregory Clark, Irene Clark, Dean Philip Cohen, Cathy D’Agostino, Tom Deans, Gaurav Desai, Lisa Dresdner, Kathleen Dudden-Rowlands, Lisa Ede, Alexia Ellett, Emory Elliott, Anthony Ellis, Kim Flachmann, Ronald Fortune, Rosanna Fukuda, George Haggerty, Donald Hall, Joe Harris, Gary Hatch, Elizabeth Hatmaker, Donna Heiland, Harry Hellenbrand, Nicole Henderson, Doug Hesse, Van Hillard, Andrew Hoberek, Michael Hustedde, Sara Jameson, T. R. Johnson, David Jones, Ann Kaplan, Don Kartiganer, Linda Kinnahan, Dean Georg Kleine, Albert Labriola, Craig Lawrence, Lori Lopez, Tom Liam Lynch, Hiram Maxim, Michael Mays, Elizabeth McDermott, Thomas McFadden, Sean Meehan, Connie Mick, Robert Morace, Joseph Musser, Margaret Oakes, John O’Connor, Gary Olson, Tom Pace, Amy Pearson, Les Perelman, Jim Phelan, Emily Poe, Dominick Randolph, Clancy Ratliff, Monica Rico, Kelly Ritter, Jack Robinson, Warren Rosenberg, Laura Rosenthal, Dean Howard Ross, Deborah Rossen-Knill, Paul Schacht, Petra Schatz, Evan Seymour, Rose Shapiro, Mike Shea, Cecilia M. Shore, Erec Smith, Kelly Smith, Nancy

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Sommers, Stephen Spector, Timothy Spurgin, Ron Strickland, Marcy Taylor, Michael Theune, Trig Thoreson, Josh Toth, Judy Trost, Aiman Tulamait, Charles Tung, John Webster, Robert Weisbuch, Sandi Weisenberg, Karin Westman, Martha Woodmansee, and Lynn Worsham.

We also wish to extend particular thanks to two Chicago-area educators who have worked closely with us: Eileen Murphy of CERCA and Les Lynn, formerly of the Chicago Debate League and now director of our joint organization, Argument-Centered Education. Lastly, we wish to thank two high school teachers for their excellent and inventive adaptations of our work: Mark Gozonsky in his YouTube video clip “Building Blocks,” and Dave Stuart Jr. in his blogs, Teaching the Core and Let’s Make Teaching Better .

We would also like to express our gratitude to several people who have published interviews with us about“They Say / I Say” : Dave Stuart Jr., “A Conversation with Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein” at www.d avestuartjr.com ; Erica Meltzer, “The Critical Reader Conversation with Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein” at www.thecriticalreader.com ; Park Howell, “How the Teaching of Argument Can Save American Education” at www.businessofstory.com ; and Harold Aram Veeser, ed., in The Rebirth of American Literary Theory and Criticism: Scholars Discuss Intellectual Origins and Turning Points (2020).

For inviting us to present our ideas at their conferences, we are grateful to John Brereton and Richard Wendorf at the Boston Athenaeum; Wendy Katkin of the Reinvention Center of State University of New York at Stony Brook; Luchen Li of the Michigan English Association; Lisa Lee and Barbara Ransby of the Public Square in Chicago; Don Lazere of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville; Dennis Baron of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; Alfie Guy of Yale University; Irene Clark of the California State University of Northridge; George Crandell and Steve Hubbard, codirectors of the ACETA conference at Auburn University; Mary Beth Rose of the Humanities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Diana Smith of St. Anne’s Belfield School and the University of Virginia; Jim Maddox and Victor Luftig of the Bread Loaf School of English; Jan Fitzsimmons and Jerry Berberet of the Associated Colleges of Illinois; Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association; Les Perelman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Bruce

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Herzberg of Bentley College and Chris Gallagher of Northeastern University.

Finally, a special thank you to David Bartholomae for suggesting the phrase that became the subtitle of this book.

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APPENDIX

* * *

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CITING WHAT “THEY SAY”

This book argues that the most important move for entering academic conversations involves referring to, and, often, documenting what others say (what “they say”). And yet, documenting or citing what others say can be daunting. As even the most veteran academics will tell you, documentation is filled with seemingly countless esoteric rules for how different sources should be cited. Although this appendix does not pretend to offer an exhaustive guide to these rules (as several more comprehensive guides do), it does try to clarify several of the most basic of these rules in order to make the practice of crediting the “they says” you’re in dialogue with a little easier.

For starters, it can be helpful to note that, in the academic world, citing a “they say” is done in two parts: within the body of what you’re writing (what’s called “in-text documentation”) and in a list of your sources at the end of what you’ve written (your “Works Cited” or “References”). Depending on the documentation style you are using and the kind of source you are citing, you may need to provide parenthetical information at the end of any sentences that include material you quote, summarize, or paraphrase. This appendix offers some of the most commonly used formats or “templates” for the two most prominent academic styles, the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) and the Psychological Association of America (APA). MLA is often used in the humanities fields (English, art, music, etc.) and APA in social sciences (psychology, sociology, political science, etc.), although there are exceptions to this rule. Always check with your instructor about which documentation style to use. If you’re writing a history paper, your instructor may want you to use Chicago style, an example of which can be found in the reading by Michelle Alexander on pages 347–60 of this book.

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MLA STYLE

If you were quoting this book in MLA style and using the print copy, you might write:

As Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein put it, “To write a really good summary, you must be able to suspend your own beliefs for a time and put yourself in the shoes of someone else” (33).

Or, if you didn’t want to identify the authors right away by name, you could write:

Writing a good summary means being able to “suspend your own beliefs for a time and put yourself in the shoes of someone else” (Graff and Birkenstein 33).

If you’re quoting from an online source with no page numbers, such as the ebook version of this text, then no number is needed in your parenthetical reference. But if the source has chapters, as the ebook does, you would use the abbreviation “ch.” in your parenthetical reference: (Graff and Birkenstein, ch. 1).

At the end of your essay, your works-cited list would give readers publication details about the book, formatted in this way:

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing . W. W. Norton, 2024.

To see an example of MLA style that uses a variety of sources, see student writer Kelly Coryell’s essay “All Words Matter: The Manipulation behind ‘All Lives Matter,’ ” found on pages 689–98 .

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APA STYLE

When you’re writing using APA style, you may do more summarizing or paraphrasing of your sources than quoting them directly. But if you were quoting this book’s authors in APA style, you would use their last names as well as the date in the signal phrase:

Graff and Birkenstein (2024) assert, “To write a really good summary, you must be able to suspend your own beliefs for a time and put yourself in the shoes of someone else” (p. 33).

Or, if you didn’t want to identify the authors right away by name, you could cite them this way, using an ampersand (&) instead of “and” between their names:

Writing a good summary means being able to “suspend your own beliefs for a time and put yourself in the shoes of someone else” (Graff & Birkenstein, 2024, p. 33).

And your reference list would give readers publication details about the book, formatted in this way:

Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2024). “They say / I say”: The moves that matter in academic writing . W. W. Norton.

To see an example of APA style that uses a variety of sources, see student writer Yael Lenga’s essay “Disability in Higher Education: Building Access and Building Futures” on pages 566–76 .

And to get more help with both styles, watch the videos on Using Signal Phrases and Understanding In-Text Documentation at digital.wwnorton.com/theysay6.

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WHEN YOUR “THEY SAY” ISN’T HUMAN

If you are quoting from or incorporating any text or data that you’ve created through a generative artificial intelligence tool, like ChatGPT , you will need to document it. Tools such as ChatGPT generate a response to being asked a question, such as “How do I write a summary of a text?” And because generative AI tools generate a different response each time, even when being asked the same question, each instance must be documented.

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MLA STYLE

To quote part of a large language model’s response to your question in MLA style, you would include an abbreviated form of the question you asked after the quotation, and formatted as follows:

When asked how to summarize a text, ChatGPT provided an eight- point response, including “Read the text carefully and identify the main ideas and key points” (“How do I write a summary?”).

If you wanted to quote a description or paraphrase of ChatGPT ’s response, you would also include an abbreviated form of the question you asked after the description or paraphrase. The format should look as follows:

When asked how to summarize a text, ChatGPT provided an eight- point response (“How do I write a summary?”).

Your works-cited list would give readers details about the question you asked, starting with the full phrasing, followed by the title of the AI tool, the version, the publisher, the date you asked the question, and the URL, formatted as follows:

“How do I write a summary of a text?” ChatGPT , 3 May version, OpenAI, 8 May 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.

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APA STYLE

If you were citing a quotation from ChatGPT ’s response to your question in APA style, and incorporating the author into your prose, you would, in the signal phrase, include OpenAI as the author followed by the year of the version you used, formatted as follows:

When prompted by “How do I write a summary of a text?” OpenAI (2023) provided an eight-point response, including “Read the text carefully and identify the main ideas and key points.”

If you do not mention the author in your passage, you would follow the quotation, description, or paraphrase with a reference to OpenAI as the author and the year of the version of it you used, formatted as follows:

When prompted with “How do I write a summary of a text?” the ChatGPT -generated text provided an eight-point response (OpenAI, 2023).

And your reference list would begin with the author, followed by the year of the version you used, the name of the model, the version, any additional description in brackets, and the URL, formatted as follows:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (May 3 version) [Large language model]. h ttps://chatopenai.com/chat

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LINKING TO WHAT “THEY SAY”

What if all your sources are online? An easy way of giving your readers instant access to what “they say” is to use hyperlinks. Anything with a URL can be linked to—blog posts, articles, social media posts, and so forth. Readers can click on the words to which you’ve attached links and be taken directly to those pages, as we can see in the following example:

In the US, participating in youth sports is expensive and time- consuming. As writer Jill Filipovic explains, kids from wealthier families can join costly club travel teams, but because of a lack of funding in poorer communities, there are fewer options for low-cost recreational leagues and school-sponsored sports. In this essay , she makes a case that this growing divide in youth sports compounds other systemic inequities in US society.

By including a link to Filipovic’s website and to the article being summarized, the writer gives her readers direct access to the relevant sources she used. But in most academic writing, linking doesn’t relieve writers of the need to introduce and frame what others say, so here are a few templates for framing a link:

◼ As X mentions in this article , “__________. ”

◼ In making this comment , X warns that __________.

◼ Economists often assume that __________; however, new research by X suggests __________.

Linking does create some efficiencies and allow us to connect texts and ideas in ways we couldn’t before. But whatever your format, and however limited your space, in academic and professional writing too, if you want others to listen to what you say, you need to provide them with access in some form to your sources—i.e., to what others you’re in dialogue with say.

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INDEX OF TEMPLATES

* * *

865

LISTEN BEFORE YOU LEAP (p. 10 )

◼ While I understand the impulse to __________, my own view is __________.

◼ While I agree with X that __________, I cannot accept her overall conclusion that __________.

◼ While X argues __________, and I argue __________, in a way we’re both right.

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THE TEMPLATE OF TEMPLATES (p. 11 )

◼ In recent discussions of __________, a controversial issue has been whether __________. On the one hand, some argue that __________. From this perspective, __________. On the other hand, however, others argue that __________. In the words of __________, one of this view’s main proponents, “__________. ” According to this view, __________. In sum, then, the issue is whether __________ or __________.

867

INTRODUCING WHAT “THEY SAY” (p. 23 )

◼ A number of __________ have recently suggested that __________.

◼ It has become common today to dismiss __________ .

◼ In their recent work, Y and Z have offered harsh critiques of __________ for __________.

868

INTRODUCING “STANDARD VIEWS” (pp. 23–24 )

◼ Americans have always believed that __________ .

◼ Conventional wisdom has it that __________ .

◼ Common sense seems to dictate that __________ .

◼ The standard way of thinking about topic X has it that __________ .

◼ It is often said that __________ .

◼ My whole life I have heard it said that __________ .

◼ You would think that __________ .

◼ Many people assume that __________ .

869

MAKING WHAT “THEY SAY” SOMETHING YOU SAY

(pp. 24–25 )

◼ I’ve always believed that __________ .

◼ When I was a child, I used to think that __________ .

◼ Although I should know better by now, I cannot help thinking that __________ .

◼ At the same time that I believe __________, I also believe __________.

870

INTRODUCING SOMETHING IMPLIED OR ASSUMED (p. 25 )

◼ Although none of them have ever said so directly, my teachers have often given me the impression that __________ .

◼ One implication of X’s treatment of __________ is that __________.

◼ Although X does not say so directly, she apparently assumes that __________ .

◼ While they rarely admit as much, __________ often take for granted that __________.

871

INTRODUCING AN ONGOING DEBATE (pp. 26–28 )

◼ In conclusion, then, as I suggested earlier, defenders of __________ can’t have it both ways. Their assertion that __________ is contradicted by their claim that __________.

872

CAPTURING AUTHORIAL ACTION (pp. 43–44 )

◼ X acknowledges that __________ .

◼ X agrees that __________ .

◼ X argues that __________ .

◼ X believes that __________ .

◼ X celebrates the fact that __________ .

◼ X claims that __________ .

◼ X complains that __________ .

◼ X concedes that __________ .

◼ X demonstrates that __________ .

◼ X denies/does not deny that __________ .

◼ X deplores the tendency to __________ .

◼ X emphasizes that __________ .

◼ X insists that __________ .

◼ X observes that __________ .

◼ X questions whether __________ .

◼ X refutes the claim that __________ .

◼ X reminds us that __________ .

◼ X reports that __________ .

◼ X suggests that __________ .

873

◼ X urges us to __________ .

874

INTRODUCING QUOTATIONS (p. 51 )

◼ X states, “__________. ”

◼ As the prominent philosopher X puts it, “__________. ”

◼ According to X, “__________. ”

◼ X himself writes, “__________. ”

◼ In her book, __________, X maintains that “__________. ”

◼ Writing in the journal __________, X complains that “__________. ”

◼ In X’s view, “__________. ”

◼ X agrees when she writes, “__________. ”

◼ X disagrees when he writes, “__________. ”

◼ X complicates matters further when he writes, “__________. ”

875

EXPLAINING QUOTATIONS (p. 52 )

◼ Basically, X is warning __________ .

◼ In other words, X believes __________ .

◼ In making this comment, X urges us to __________ .

◼ X is corroborating the age-old adage that __________ .

◼ X’s point is that __________ .

◼ The essence of X’s argument is that __________ .

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DISAGREEING, WITH REASONS (p. 64 )

◼ X is mistaken because she overlooks __________ .

◼ X’s claim that __________ rests upon the questionable assumption that __________.

◼ I disagree with X’s view that __________ because, as recent research has shown, __________.

◼ X contradicts herself / can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, she argues __________. On the other hand, she also says __________.

◼ By focusing on __________, X overlooks the deeper problem of __________.

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AGREEING (pp. 66–68 )

◼ I agree that __________ because my experience __________ confirms it.

◼ X surely is right about __________ because, as she may not be aware, recent studies have shown that __________.

◼ X’s theory of __________ is extremely useful because it sheds insight on the difficult problem of __________.

◼ Those unfamiliar with this school of thought may be interested to know that it basically boils down to __________ .

◼ I agree that __________, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe __________.

◼ If group X is right that __________, as I think they are, then we need to reassess the popular assumption that __________.

878

AGREEING AND DISAGREEING SIMULTANEOUSLY

(pp. 70–71 )

◼ Yes, it’s true that __________. But __________.

◼ I’m of two minds about X’s claim that __________. On the one hand, X seems right that __________. On the other hand, X seems wrong to suggest __________.

◼ Although I [must] question some of X’s assumptions, I fully endorse the most important part of their argument: their conclusion that __________ .

◼ Although I have no problem with X’s claim that __________, I strongly disagree with their main conclusion that __________.

879

SIGNALING WHO IS SAYING WHAT (pp. 78–79 )

◼ Although X makes the best possible case for __________, __________.

◼ My view, however, contrary to what X has argued, is that __________ .

◼ Adding to X’s argument, I would point out that __________ .

◼ According to both X and Y, __________ .

◼ Politicians, X argues, should __________ .

◼ Most athletes will tell you that __________ .

◼ X is right that __________ .

◼ The evidence shows that __________ .

◼ X’s assertion that __________ does not fit the facts.

◼ Anyone familiar with __________ should agree that __________.

◼ Yet __________ are real, and are arguably the most significant factor in __________.

880

EMBEDDING VOICE MARKERS (p. 81 )

◼ X overlooks what I consider an important point about __________ .

◼ My own view is that what X insists is a __________ is in fact a __________.

◼ I wholeheartedly endorse what X calls __________ .

◼ These conclusions, which X discusses in __________, add weight to the argument that __________.

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ENTERTAINING OBJECTIONS (p. 88 )

◼ As I write this, I can hear the reaction of some skeptics to many of the proposals in this essay: It’s all fine and well for __________. But what about __________?

◼ Yet some may challenge my view on the grounds that __________ .

◼ Yet some readers may challenge my view by insisting that __________ .

◼ Of course, many will probably disagree on the grounds that __________ .

882

NAMING YOUR NAYSAYERS (pp. 89–90 )

◼ Here many __________ would probably object that __________.

◼ But __________ would certainly take issue with the argument that __________.

◼ __________, of course, may want to question whether __________.

◼ Nevertheless, both followers and critics of __________ will probably suggest otherwise and argue that __________.

◼ Although not all __________ think alike, some of them will probably dispute my claim that __________ .

◼ __________ are so diverse in their views that it’s hard to generalize about them, but some are likely to object on the grounds that __________.

883

INTRODUCING OBJECTIONS INFORMALLY (pp. 90–91 )

◼ But is my proposal realistic? What are the chances of its actually being adopted?

◼ Yet is it necessarily true that __________? Is it always the case, as I have been suggesting, that __________?

◼ However, does the evidence I’ve cited prove conclusively that __________ ?

◼ “Impossible,” some will say. “You must be reading the research selectively.”

884

MAKING CONCESSIONS WHILE STILL STANDING YOUR GROUND

(p. 94 )

◼ Although I grant that __________, I still maintain that __________.

◼ Proponents of X are right to argue that __________. But they exaggerate when they claim that __________.

◼ While it is true that __________, it does not necessarily follow that __________.

◼ On the one hand, I agree with X that __________. But on the other hand, I still insist that __________.

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USING STORIES TO DRAMATIZE YOUR “THEY SAY” AND “I SAY” (pp. 102–109 )

◼ Many often worry that __________. But the other night I __________.

◼ There was once a time when I was passionately committed to the idea that __________. I remember encountering a __________ one day and thinking __________. Now, however, having __________, I have come to realize __________.

◼ I tell this story because it shows __________ .

◼ Lest anyone read this story as evidence that __________, I would point out that __________.

◼ A central lesson of my English course last semester was that __________. But author X, whom we are reading in this history course, suggests __________. My own opinion is that __________ has the better argument, largely because __________.

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INDICATING WHO CARES (pp. 115–116 )

◼ __________ used to think __________. But recently [or within the past few decades] __________ suggests that __________.

◼ These findings challenge the work of earlier researchers, who tended to assume that __________ .

◼ Recent studies like these shed new light on __________, which previous studies had not addressed.

◼ But a new body of research shows that fat cells are far more complex and that __________ .

◼ If sports enthusiasts stopped to think about it, many of them might simply assume that the most successful athletes __________. However, new research shows __________.

◼ These findings challenge neoliberals’ common assumptions that __________ .

◼ At first glance, teenagers appear to __________. But on closer inspection __________.

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ESTABLISHING WHY YOUR CLAIMS MATTER (pp. 118–119 )

◼ X matters / is important because __________ .

◼ Although X may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial in terms of today’s concern over __________ .

◼ Ultimately, what is at stake here is __________ .

◼ These findings have important consequences for the broader domain of __________ .

◼ If we are right about __________, then major consequences follow for __________.

◼ These conclusions / This discovery will have significant applications in __________ as well as in __________.

◼ Although X may seem of concern to only a small group of __________, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about __________.

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COMMONLY USED TRANSITIONS (pp. 127–128 )

also

and

besides

furthermore

in addition

in fact

indeed

moreover

so too

ELABORATION

actually

by extension

in other words

in short

that is

to put it another way

to put it bluntly

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to put it succinctly

ultimately

EXAMPLE

after all

as an illustration

consider

for example

for instance

specifically

to take a case in point

CAUSE AND EFFECT

accordingly

as a result

consequently

hence

since

then

therefore

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thus

COMPARISON

along the same lines

in the same way

likewise

similarly

CONTRAST

although

but

by contrast

conversely

despite

even though

however

in contrast

nevertheless

nonetheless

on the contrary

on the other hand

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regardless

whereas

while

yet

CONCESSION

admittedly

although it is true

granted

naturally

of course

to be sure

CONCLUSION

as a result

consequently

hence

in conclusion

in short

in sum

therefore

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thus

to sum up

to summarize

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TRANSLATION RECIPES (p. 143 )

◼ Scholar X argues, “__________. ” In other words, __________.

◼ Essentially, X argues __________ .

◼ X’s point, succinctly put, is that __________ .

◼ Plainly put, __________ .

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ADDING METACOMMENTARY (pp. 157–162 )

◼ In other words, __________ .

◼ What __________ really means by this is __________.

◼ My point is not __________, but __________.

◼ Ultimately, my goal is to demonstrate that __________ .

◼ In other words, __________ .

◼ To put it another way, __________ .

◼ What X is saying here is that __________ .

◼ Chapter 2 explores __________, while Chapter 3 examines __________.

◼ Having just argued that __________, let us now turn our attention to __________.

◼ For example, __________ .

◼ __________, for instance, demonstrates __________.

◼ Consider __________, for example.

◼ To take a case in point, __________ .

◼ Even more important, __________ .

◼ But above all, __________ .

◼ Incidentally, as we will briefly note, __________ .

◼ Just as important, __________ .

◼ Equally, __________ .

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◼ Finally, __________ .

◼ Although some readers may object that __________, I would answer that __________.

◼ In sum, then, __________ .

◼ My conclusion, then, is that __________ .

◼ In short, __________ .

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DEVELOPING GOOD RESEARCH QUESTIONS (p. 208 )

◼ Why did X happen? Was it, as __________ argues, because of __________ or, as __________ contends, because of __________?

◼ What should we do about X? Should we __________, as __________ urges, or __________, as __________ argues?

◼ Is X as harmful as __________ insists, or does it have benefits, as __________ claims?

◼ Is it true, as some assert, that __________ ?

◼ What is the relationship between __________ and __________? Is it X, as most assume, or could it be Y, as one source suggests?

◼ X argues __________. In my experience, however, __________.

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LET ONE GOOD SOURCE LEAD TO ANOTHER (p. 211 )

◼ X is far too pessimistic in her prediction that __________ .

◼ Authors X and Y focus on the wrong issue. The issue is not __________ but __________.

◼ I agree with X in her critique of the view that __________, but __________.

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STARTING WITH WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT A LITERARY WORK

(p. 236 )

◼ Critic X complains that author Y’s story is compromised by his __________. While there’s some truth to this critique, I argue that critic X overlooks __________.

◼ According to critic A, novel X suggests __________. I agree, but would add that __________.

◼ Several members of our class have suggested that the final message of play X is __________. I agree up to a point, but I still think that __________.

◼ It might be said that poem Y is chiefly about __________. But the problem with this reading, in my view, is __________.

◼ Though religious readers might be tempted to analyze poem X as a parable about __________, a closer examination suggests that the poem is in fact about __________.

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RESPONDING TO OTHER INTERPRETATIONS OF A LITERARY WORK

(p. 241 )

◼ It might be argued that in the clash between character X and Y in play Z, the author wants us to favor character Y, since she is presented as the play’s heroine. I contend, however, that __________ .

◼ Several critics seem to assume that poem X endorses the values of __________ represented by the image of __________ over those of __________ represented by the image of __________. I agree, but with the following caveat: __________.

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SHOWING EVIDENCE WHEN WRITING ABOUT A LITERARY WORK

(p. 246 )

◼ Although some might read the metaphor of __________ in this poem as evidence that, for author X, __________, I see it as __________.

◼ Some might claim that evidence X suggests __________, but I argue that, on the contrary, it suggests __________.

◼ I agree with my classmate __________ that the image of __________ in novel Y is evidence of __________. Unlike __________, however, I think __________.

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EXPLAIN WHAT THE DATA MEAN (p. 261 )

◼ Our data support / confirm / verify the work of X by showing that __________.

◼ By demonstrating __________, X’s work extends the findings of Y.

◼ The results of X contradict / refute Y’s conclusion that __________.

◼ X’s findings call into question the widely accepted theory that __________ .

◼ Our data are consistent with X’s hypothesis that __________.

902

EXPLAINING AN EXPERIMENTAL RESULT (p. 264 )

◼ One explanation for X’s finding of __________ is that __________. An alternative explanation is __________.

◼ The difference between __________ and __________ is probably due to __________.

903

INTRODUCING GAPS IN THE EXISTING RESEARCH (p. 279 )

◼ Studies of X have indicated __________. It is not clear, however, that this conclusion applies to __________.

◼ __________ often take for granted that __________. Few have investigated this assumption, however.

◼ X’s work tells us a great deal about __________. Can this work be generalized to __________?

◼ Our understanding of __________ remains incomplete because previous work has not examined __________.

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HELP ME UNDERSTAND (p. 300 )

◼ When asked why __________, ChatGPT responded, “__________. ”

◼ What does X mean when she writes, “__________? ” In making this claim, is X being sincere or sarcastic?

◼ X often uses the term __________. What does it mean?

◼ X’s argument is that __________. Please identify another writer who names X and either critiques or builds on X’s perspective.

◼ When I asserted that __________ in a recent essay, my instructor wrote in the margin, “Surely, many would disagree,” and I’ve been struggling to figure out how to respond. Can you help me identify how others might disagree with my claim?

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INDEX OF AUTHORS AND TITLES

* * *

Addo, Fenaba, 625

Addressing Poverty Can Heal an Increasingly Divided Country, 684

Adler, Ben, 487

Alexander, Michelle, 347

All Words Matter: The Manipulation behind “All Lives Matter,” 689

American Democracy: One Person, One Vote?, 340

Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast, 487

Barnes, Emma, 479

Betancur, Bryan, 712

Blanda, Sean, 637

The Boys Are Doing Just Fine, 556

Brooks, David, 653

Burwell, Sylvia Mathews, 578

Cadwalladr, Carole, 454

Carr, Nicholas, 418

Chen, Alice, 514

Clark, Anna, 599

906

Community College: The Great Equalizer?, 589

Coryell, Kelly, 689

Dempsey, Martin E., 388

Disability in Higher Education: Building Access and Building Futures, 566

Doucette, Luticha, 373

Environmental Justice Is Only the Beginning, 540

The Everyday Patriotism of Diverse Democracies, 644

The Fast and the Fashionable: How Your Closet Contributes to a Global Crisis, 479

Feyten, Carine M., 556

Finding Latinx, 700

Frum, David, 674

Garcia, Joe, 435

Generation Stress: The Mental Health Crisis on Campus, 578

Gilio-Whitaker, Dina, 540

Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet, 401

Going Nuclear, 525

Goldsmith, Kenneth, 401

Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search, 454

Graff, Gerald, 606

Guevarra, Anna Romina, 439

907

Here Come the Robot Nurses, 439

Hidden Intellectualism, 606

Holder, Eric, 328

How Much Immigration Is Too Much? The Wrong Debate, 674

How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds, 418

If AI Is Predicting Your Future, Are You Still Free?, 380

If You’re in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives, 373

In Praise of the Dollar Bill, 449

It’s Time to Drop “Latinx,” 712

Jobs, Crime, and Culture: The Threats That Aren’t, 658

Johnson, Ayana Elizabeth, 495

Keep Them Offline, 406

Left Behind, 435

The Left Needs Free Speech, 322

Lehman, Charles Fain, 614

Lenga, Yael, 566

Malik, Nesrine, 313

Mauna Kea: The Fight to Preserve Culture, 531

Mehta, Suketu, 658

Mounk, Yascha, 644

Murthy, Vivek, 514

908

The Myth of the Free Speech Crisis, 313

The New Jim Crow, 347

90 Seconds Together, 388

No, the Boys Are Not Doing Just Fine, 561

Opoku-Agyeman, Anna Gifty, 625

The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb, 637

Our Unfinished March, 328

Perry, Andre M., 684

Pfaff, John, 362

Pollitt, Katha, 322

Ramos, Paola, 700

Reeves, Richard V., 561

A Response to the “Standard Story” about US Incarceration Rates, 362

Ridley, Matt, 525

Roe Butt, Cy Borg, Ann Droid: Hint, They’re Not Taking Your Job, 224

Rose, Mike, 589

Rosen, Christine, 406

Should We Be More Optimistic about Fighting Climate Change?, 514

Sivendra, Arthi, 340

Smith, Jason, 224

Social Media: The Screen, the Brain, and Human Nature, 428

909

Student Loan Forgiveness Critics Are Wrong about Who Benefits and Why, 625

The Student Loan Trap: When Debt Delays Life, 614

Swartz, Lana, 449

The Triumph of the Ukrainian Idea, 653

The Uninhabitable Earth, 505

Véliz, Carissa, 380

Vinh, Justin, 428

Wallace-Wells, David, 505

What I Know about the Ocean, 495

Why We Need to Keep the “Community” in Community Colleges, 599

Wightman, Sandis Edward Waialae, 531

910

About the Authors

GERALD GRAFF , Emeritus Professor of English and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the 2008 President of the Modern Language Association of America, has had a major impact on teachers through such books as Professing Literature: An Institutional History, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, and Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. The Common Core State Standards for K–12 cite his work on the importance of argument literacy for college and career readiness. CATHY BIRKENSTEIN , a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has published essays on writing, most recently in College English, and, with Gerald, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, and College Composition and Communication. She and Gerald have given over a hundred lectures and workshops at colleges, conferences, and high schools—and are at present working on a book contending that our currently confusing school and

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college curriculum needs to be clarified by making the practice of argument the common thread across all disciplines.

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LAURA J. PANNING DAVIES, who coedited the readings in this book, is professor of English and associate director of Writing Programs at SUNY Cortland. Her research, focused on writing program administration and student composing processes, has been published in Composition Studies, Composition Forum, and WPA: Writing Program Administration. She teaches courses in first-year writing, writing pedagogy, public rhetoric, and technical writing. She’s been the editor of the blog for “They Say / I Say” for the past several years, the author of the Instructor's Manual, and is a frequent speaker in Norton's professional development programs.

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RUSSEL DURST, who coedited the readings in this book, is a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches courses in composition, writing pedagogy and research, English linguistics, and the Hebrew Bible as literature. A past president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, he is the author of several books,

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including Collision Course: Conflict, Negotiation, and Learning in College Composition .

COVER
PUBLISHER’S NOTICE
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT THE NEW EDITION OF “THEY SAY / I SAY”
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO A COLLEAGUE ABOUT “THEY SAY / I SAY”?
HALF-TITLE PAGE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
PREFACE: Demystifying Academic Conversation
HALF-TITLE PAGE
INTRODUCTION: Entering the Conversation
ONE “THEY SAY”: Starting with What Others Are Saying
TWO “HER POINT IS”: The Art of Summarizing
THREE “AS HE HIMSELF PUTS IT”: The Art of Quoting
FOUR “YES / NO / OK, BUT”: Three Ways to Respond
FIVE “AND YET”: Distinguishing What You Say from What They Say
SIX “SKEPTICS MAY OBJECT”: Planting a Naysayer in Your Text
SEVEN “IN MY EXPERIENCE”: Using Personal Stories to Energize Your Argument
EIGHT “SO WHAT? WHO CARES?”: Saying Why It Matters
NINE “AS A RESULT”: Connecting the Parts
TEN “YOU MEAN I CAN JUST SAY IT THAT WAY?”: Academic Writing Doesn’t Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice
ELEVEN “BUT DON’T GET ME WRONG”: The Art of Metacommentary
TWELVE “WHAT I REALLY WANT TO SAY IS”: Revising Substantially
THIRTEEN “I TAKE YOUR POINT”: Entering Class Discussions
FOURTEEN “WHAT’S MOTIVATING THIS WRITER?”: Reading for the Conversation
FIFTEEN “BUT AS SEVERAL SOURCES SUGGEST”: Research as Conversation
SIXTEEN “ON CLOSER EXAMINATION”: Entering Conversations about Literature
SEVENTEEN “THE DATA SUGGEST”: Writing in the Sciences
EIGHTEEN “ANALYZE THIS”: Writing in the Social Sciences
NINETEEN “HELP ME UNDERSTAND. . .”: When Your “They Say” Is a Bot
TWENTY: “WHO DECIDES WHAT FREEDOM IS?”
Nesrine Malik, The Myth of the Free Speech Crisis
Katha Pollitt, The Left Needs Free Speech
Eric Holder, Our Unfinished March
Arthi Sivendra, American Democracy: One Person, One Vote?
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
John Pfaff, A Response to the “Standard Story” about US Incarceration Rates
Luticha Doucette, If You’re in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives
Carissa Véliz, If AI Is Predicting Your Future, Are You Still Free?
Martin E. Dempsey, 90 Seconds Together
TWENTY-ONE: “HOW IS TECHNOLOGY CHANGING US?”
Kenneth Goldsmith, Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet
Christine Rosen, Keep Them Offline
Nicholas Carr, How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds
Justin Vinh, Social Media: The Screen, the Brain, and Human Nature
Joe Garcia, Left Behind: Internet Access for People behind Bars
Anna Romina Guevarra, Here Come the Robot Nurses
Lana Swartz, In Praise of the Dollar Bill
Carole Cadwalladr, Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search
TWENTY-TWO: “WHY CARE ABOUT THE PLANET?”
Emma Barnes, The Fast and the Fashionable: How Your Closet Contributes to a Global Crisis
Ben Adler, Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, What I Know about the Ocean
David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth
Alice Chen and Vivek Murthy, Should We Be More Optimistic about Fighting Climate Change?
Matt Ridley, Going Nuclear
Sandis Edward Waialae Wightman, Mauna Kea: The Fight to Preserve Culture
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Environmental Justice Is Only the Beginning
TWENTY-THREE: “WHAT’S COLLEGE FOR?”
Carine M. Feyten, The Boys Are Doing Just Fine
Richard V. Reeves, No, the Boys Are Not Doing Just Fine
Yael Lenga, Disability in Higher Education: Building Access and Building Futures
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Generation Stress: The Mental Health Crisis on Campus
Mike Rose, Community College: The Great Equalizer?
Anna Clark, Why We Need to Keep the “Community” in Community Colleges
Gerald Graff, Hidden Intellectualism
Charles Fain Lehman, The Student Loan Trap: When Debt Delays Life
Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fenaba Addo, Student Loan Forgiveness Critics Are Wrong about Who Benefits and Why
TWENTY-FOUR: “HOW CAN WE BRIDGE THE DIFFERENCES THAT DIVIDE US?”
Sean Blanda, The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb
Yascha Mounk, The Everyday Patriotism of Diverse Democracies
David Brooks, The Triumph of the Ukrainian Idea
Suketu Mehta, Jobs, Crime, and Culture: The Threats That Aren’t
David Frum, How Much Immigration Is Too Much? The Wrong Debate
Andre M. Perry, Addressing Poverty Can Heal an Increasingly Divided Country
Kelly Coryell, All Words Matter: The Manipulation behind “All Lives Matter”
Paola Ramos, Finding Latinx
Bryan Betancur, It’s Time to Drop “Latinx”
CREDITS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
APPENDIX
INDEX OF TEMPLATES
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
ABOUT THE AUTHORS