Reflective Essay – Civil Rights and the American Government
Objectives:
The goal of this assignment is to become familiar with the history of civil rights for various minority groups and the struggle to obtain them within the United States. This essay will evaluate your ability to research outside material and reflection the history of one of the major minority groups in the US, including women, Black Americans, Latin and Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Americans with Disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community. Overall, you will also indicate what you have learned about in the context of the historical development of civil rights as tied to a specific branch of the American Government, and what this may mean for us in the 21st Century.
But please note that if you completed the required research for the Civil Rights Research Forum, then you are not required to complete any additional research. This is a chance, then, to present what you learned and reflect on your discussion with your classmates.
You will be graded by how well you follow the guidelines and answer the questions within each of the sections. The Assignment Details below apply to all sections. Points can be lost in any of the sections below that do not meet the appropriate assignment details.
Assignment Details:
Length 4-5 paragraphs
12pt font, Times New Roman, Helvetica (11pts), Calibri (11pts)
Double Spaced
Clean and correct grammar, syntax, punctuation, etc.
Hint: Use active language, and avoid passive language when possible. Passivity makes your writing more convoluted.
Citations:
Include your textbook and one outside source.
Cite consistently and correctly! You should cite every time you reference work that comes from the textbook or your outside research, even if you are not quoting directly. The pieces you would not cite are your own thoughts and reflection.
Note: However, you can use / copy and paste any writing that you did (that was your own) from the forum assignment. Much of this information should be useful in getting started on your introductory paragraph, as well as providing additional details for those body paragraphs that reflect on what you’ve learned.
Citation Style: APA : https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.htmlLinks to an external site.
For the purposes of this assignment this will apply to the in-text citations and bibliography. You do not need to create a separate title page or abstract.
In-text citations should be included every time you quote directly, paraphrase, reference material from elsewhere, or provide information that is not common knowledge on your topic. The in-text citation should come immediately after any sentence that uses someone else’s words or ideas, whether you quote directly or summarize the ideas in your own words. The citation should include (Author, Year, page number).
Example: According to Jones (1998), “students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time” (p. 199).
For our textbook it looks like this: The two main sides in the debate over whether to ratify the Constitution were known as the Federalists and the Antifederalists (Krutz & Waskiewicz 2021, p. 46).
Directions:
Choose one of the major minority groups in the US to focus your analysis on from Chapter 4 or Chapter 5: women, Black Americans, Latin and Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Americans with Disabilities, and the LGBTQ community
Next, return to the chapters in the textbook and find a major event, course case, bill / law, or other form of political action or interest group that impacted the chosen minority community, e.g. Civil Rights Act of 1964, equal rights amendment (ERA), The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), 1973 Rehabilitation Act.
You cannot choose the 14th Amendment (since you’ve already written on it), but you can choose another act, court case, amendment, group, etc. that we learned about during that unit.
Research and find a journal article, a news story, information from an interest group, information from an informative or government website, or any other credible source that discusses your chosen political action/ event/ interest group. The library or Google Scholar are good places to search for this information.
Reflective Essay Template
Although the purpose of the reflective essay is different from that of an argumentative essay, you will want to make sure to include a strong thesis and organize the paper with 4-5 paragraphs, of at least 4-5 sentences, that seek to elaborate further on your original thesis. The thesis should be the last part of your introductory paragraph.
Introduction
Include a “hook”: give a quick preview of the most exciting part of the story or something that you found was the most important about this process.
Introduce us to the major minority group you researched and the political event/ issue/ group you completed further research on.
Thesis Statement: Overview your general reflection on how you would describe the relationship between the American Government and civil rights historically and what you think this means for us in the 21st century.
Body Paragraph 1
Include further details from your minority group, the political event/ issue/ group, and the branch of government that this implicates. You should cite what you learned from your research, as well as how this extends information from what we learned from the textbook: both should be cited.
Body Paragraph 2
Reflect on the experience of discussing and analyzing the history of civil rights in the class. What were some major highlights from the forum indicated by other students that you can connect to your own case study, i.e. were there interesting points, questions, reflections that made you think critically about your own subject?
(Optional) Body Paragraph 3
You might use this paragraph, as needed, to reflect on any additional component of this process or assignment that is not covered in any of the above paragraphs or conclusion. If you have a specific personal experience with your subject matter, you might include that discussion in this paragraph, for example.
Conclusion:
Finally conclude with what you have learned in the context of the historical development of civil rights as tied to your specific case study, and what this may mean for us in the 21st Century.
Overall impact/ lesson learned.
