Need help with rewriting paper based on professor feedback.
Paper Guidelines
Your paper must have a thesis statement! This means that you are making a claim or taking a position that you will defend in an argument with reasons. I’ve included a model for writing an argument after the suggested prompts.
Choose one of the prompts below, or you may choose another topic of interest to you that relates to the material we have been reading and discussing, which must be approved by me before you begin writing. You must use the authors from the course as your primary resources, though you may include other sources if you know of or find something that pertains to your argument. All outside sources must be legitimate, peer-reviewed sources, as they cannot be Wikipedia, pundits, or opinion articles that don’t present arguments or don’t use factual information. Be sure to use citations!
Suggested Prompts
Prompt 2: Is violence ever justified in order to bring about a more just society?
Be sure to include:
– How do various authors/speakers from the course try to make distinctions between kinds of violence?
– How do they distinguish between justified or unjustified violence?
Model for an Argument
No single structure fits all written arguments. However, most college courses require something akin to this basic structure and consist of the following elements. Below is a basic outline for an argumentative or persuasive essay.
I. Introductory Paragraph
A. Your introductory paragraph sets the stage or the context of the position for which you are arguing. Primarily, it should set forth the question or problem for which you will provide an answer with your thesis and argument. It should not contain irrelevant biographical or historical information.
B. Your thesis: provides your claim (what you are arguing for) and the reasons for your position on an issue.
1. states what your position on an issue is
2. usually appears at the end of the introduction in short essays (10-12 pages or less)
3. should be clearly stated and often contains emphatic language (“I argue”). You’re trying to convince your reader that your position is the correct position.
II. Body paragraphs
A. If you will be criticizing a particular author’s arguments or ideas and/or using an author(s) argument(s) or ideas to make your own argument, they should be clearly and precisely explained first, each with their own paragraph or two.
1. It shouldn’t be overly detailed as to take up the most space of your paper.
2. It should include a fair and accurate account of their argument/ideas that are necessary for the reader to understand in order for you to make your point.
B. Your argument comes next. Think of your thesis as a table and you have to build the legs for it to stand on. You need to have clear reasons why your position is the right position.
1. Divide each of your main reasons into separate topics, each with their own paragraph. Use each paragraph to clarify and explain that particular topic, which together forms one reason why you have come to your conclusion (your thesis).
2. Since you have already explained the other authors to which you will refer, you can point back to them now without having to explain their thought again. You can state that X’s position was incorrect because…; or Y’s position demonstrates how X’s argument was incomplete
3. You can also bring in brief reference to other authors without having had to explain their entire argument, as long as what you are referring to makes a clear point that doesn’t require detailed explanation to understand
4. It should not consist of opinion or relativism. Your belief or preference for a position is not a reason for someone to agree with you.
III. Conclusion: for shorter papers, the conclusion is often a restatement of the introduction, stating why this matter was important and the position you argued. Unless you’re writing a very long paper, it isn’t really necessary to have a very long conclusion.
Consistency is key. Make sure you maintain the same position throughout your paper. Don’t change positions or change topics halfway through. Each paragraph should have a main idea or topic sentence and each topic should refer back to your introduction. It either explains the issue, explains the authors you need to make your argument or whom you are arguing against, or it gives a clear reason for why you hold the position you do.
Proofread! Make sure it says what you mean it so say. Read it out loud or use the read aloud on Word to have it read your paper for you. Is it clear? Will your reader be confused or will they understand your point?
FEEDBACK RECEIVED :
So, you have a clear thesis and good points about violence. Quite a lot of the intro especially reads very similar to the AI generated responses for that question, making really generalized and broad claims about different forms of violence that have not been discussed in class, though they could be analyzed through the texts will careful readings. It’s then going to be necessary for you to demonstrate those claims through accurate use of the texts, otherwise it undermines your argument to have those claims but not demonstrate them through textual support that connects to your own thesis. Also, that many approaches to understanding violence is quite a lot to tackle in one essay.
That being said, there are some inaccurate and unclear explanations of most of the texts used in the rest of the essay.
For example, Davis was not at all saying that the use of violence to resist oppression would only make matters worse. She was actually arguing quite the opposite, that even when Black people resist legally, they get criminalized, and that when Black people engaged in revolutionary violence in ways like slave revolts, it never gets celebrated in the same way as white revolutionary violence, even though it played a critical role in bringing about the abolition movement. She doesn’t think anyone in our country has democratic control, and that white, American concepts of rights and democracy are inherently connected to the undemocratic and racist structure of capitalism. The Dorlin text and Bacon’s Rebellion are also incompletely or inaccurately referenced.
Perhaps most problematic for me is that you seem to understand the Black Revolution as a violent movement that is the reason why racial justice was not achieved. But when that author (who is MLK) was talking about the black revolution being called a myth because things didn’t improve but got worse, he was talking about the Civil Rights Movement. After the CRM, white people still hadn’t actually implemented any positive changes for racial justice, many CRM leaders had been murdered and their killers unpunished. Poverty had worsened and segregation was still a huge problem. So King was saying that white people’s failures to actually fulfill their promises were the reason why urban rebellions occurred. It’s essentially white people’s fault that Black Americans got so angry and fed up that they started destroying things. The movement and the rebellions that followed unfulfilled promises are NOT the cause of racial division, but the result OF racial oppression.
And more so, you seem to imply that the white police and white mobs who acted violently against peaceful protestors are part of the violence in pursuit of justice. The vast majority of the CRM was incredibly peaceful and nonviolent, and THEY were the ones being targeted with terrible violence. That abuse being televised and printed in newspapers was part of the reason why so many supported the CRM. They could finally see the violence Black people had to face. And the CRM did have some achievements, it’s just that, as King said, “the absence of brutality is not the same as justice.” You detail the unjust laws and violence that Black Americans faced throughout history as if that violence was directed towards justice. The question is asking is violence is ever okay to use when resisting the kind of injustice you detail in that history. The violence we see in oppression is not the same thing as the violence people engage in to try to end oppression, is it? DO people have a right to fight to protect their lives, to free themselves from slavery, to fend off a white mob? Is the violence they use in real events of self-defense equivalent to the violence they are defending against?
You can certainly still make your argument that violence is not a justified means to bring about a just society, but you need to accurately discuss the arguments around it and make clear distinctions between the violence OF oppression and brutality and the violence of RESISTANCE to that oppression and brutality, as well as distinctions between violence that targets property and violence that targets people. As it is, the essay kind of reads as arguing that all forms of violence are equivalent in their wrongness, and also as if oppressed and brutalized people who fight back against their oppressors are the ones causing racial division and preventing the realization of justice. It lays the blame for the continuation of injustice on the people who suffer from it the most.
