If the 21st century society were to use King as a blueprint to differentiate between a just and an unjust law, we would simply use his formula.  He theorizes in his Letter from Birmingham Jail that “A just law is a man-made code that squares with moral law, or the law of God.  An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law” (King).  This idea seems simple enough unless one has a distorted view of God’s law.  In King’s time, there were many who ascribed to the belief that God had created the white race to be superior over the black race.  Similarly, there are faction of society today, and indeed a major political party, that would claim God never intended same sex couples to be permitted the right to marry and raise a family.  Until everyone can agree to what God wants, perhaps He should be left out of the equation.  King goes on to paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas, “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.  Any law that uplifts human personality is is just.  Any law that degrades human personality  is unjust” (King).  While Aquinas likely equated eternal and natural law with divine law, we should use this metric to measure what makes a just law and a law that is unjust.  If a law is one that raises mankind and moves a society towards a future of inclusiveness, that is a just law.  If legislation seeks to revert that society back to a time where the power was more uneven than it currently is, that law is unjust.  Looking at the U.S. Constitution, the amendments almost universally created more freedoms rather than limiting freedoms.  An exception being the 18th Amendment, which was revered by the 21st Amendment.  Prohibition is a minor issue when compared to the lives of Americans but it reinforces the idea that bad or unjust laws limit liberty whereas good or just laws increase it.  

Most Americans are likely moderates in most social and political issues.  Unfortunately, moderates do not get anything, good or bad, done.  Change is not brought about by those in the middle of the road.  Therefore the activist, in his or her passion take center stage in these movements.  The theatrics of those most involved may often times ‘turn-off’ those moderates and they sit out the exchange.  This is a danger as King illustrates when he points out that the extremists become the celebrated heroes of a people, using St. Paul, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and others as examples.  He exhorts the reader to become an extremist proudly and to address “what kind of extremist will we be.  Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love?  Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be the extremists for the cause of justice” (King)?   King concludes inaction makes one an extremist for injustice.  If we look at the major social shifts in our nation's history, we can see the wisdom in his belief.  One must be bold in order to bring attention to that in our society and in ourselves that is ugly and inequitable.

Legal justice and social justice are cousins to one another.  Both descend from the same forefather, but often differ in style and timeline.  Eventually, social justice should catch up to legal justice.  Regardless, an argument that a government cannot regulate the feelings of a people is invalid, as history has shown us that social justice is borne out of a society's immersion with a marginalized group of people.  Familiarity breeds not contempt but respect and admiration. Just as this generation’s understanding and acceptance had it’s roots in the activism and extremism of the past, the action taken today ensuring that our laws are just will benefit future generations and create a more equitable society.

Works Cited |   |   |  
King, Jr., Martin Luther. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."  AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER - UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 9 Jun. 2015. <http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html>. |   |   |  

 

 

As a member of the Transcendentalist movement, Henry David Thoreau embodies the idea of the movement that we all have an innate idea of what is just and what is unjust.  In his essay Civil Disobedience, Thoreau essentially defines the movement's core beliefs.  If man is connected to the divine, we all have the ability to identify injustice at face value.  Within the text, he addresses the two clear evils of his time, war and slavery.  Early on in the essay he decries the lawful slave system and deplores the  U.S,. troops occupying a foreign nation in the conflict with Mexico.  He also even encourages insurrection, “when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize” (Thoreau).  Here are two very clear, and obviously wrong and immoral issues in the 1840’s, when Thoreau was developing his personal philosophy.  Therefore, Thoreau theorizes that an unjust law is one that reveals itself to you before you rationalize the things associated with it and that you have a duty to remove yourself from involvement with an unjust law or situation.  

In essence, Thoreau would determine if a law is unjust by determining whether or not you are gaining any benefit from the despair of another human.  It is not Thoreau' intention to devote his life to righting the world’s wrongs.  He believes  you are free to, and indeed should, pursue that which would make you happy, “It is not a man’s duty , as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly  have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.  If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders.  I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too” (Thoreau).  Thoreau’s assertion that success built upon another human’s misery is ethically failure permeates the rest of his essay.  

 

 

                       Works Cited |   |   |  
Thoreau, Henry David. "Civil Disobedience." The Thoreau Reader. .      | 2015. |   |  

The museum itself was dark and low-lit.  The floors were wide planked wooden boards and I was greeted by two subdued but friendly docents. I filled out the pre visit survey and paid the entrance fee of $3.00 (teachers reduced admission - yay)!  

I was, at the time, which was about 10:00 in the morning, the only patron in the museum. One of the docents gave me an overview of the layout of the exhibits and let me wander off to explore.  The exhibits on the main floor and the lower level were organized by geographical locations throughout the continent.  

As I looked at each of the tribes displays, the one that struck me the most was that of the native people of the southwest desert region.  When I was a child my father’s sister and her husband moved out to Flagstaff, Arizona,  She would send my sister and I gifts that were influenced by the local native american people.  We would get moccasins and blankets and little pieces of jewelry.  It was all pretty cheap knock-off pieces, as gifts for young children should bAt the museum, the other day I, for the first time, considered the implications of co-opting an entire cultures identity for what is essentially baubles and toys.  It made me sad.

The special exhibits are housed on the top floor.  There was a display on the use of Native Americans for sports teams and advertising products, including several colleges that changed their mascots around the turn of the last century and how many professional sports teams (Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins) have controversies attached to their refusal to change their mascots..   The other exhibit was focused on prominent female Native Americans.  

After I was finished looking around the museum, which took me about 45 minutes, I filled out a post survey and left the museum.  

What connects Nanapush and Pauline through the novel is Fleur, who is the above mentioned Lulu’s mother.  Fleur is, as Pauline imagine her, an animal in human skin.  Whereas Nanapush sees Fleur as a broken child in need of protection.  Fleur is neither of these things and is instead a strong, independent woman who survived the starvation and tuberculosis deaths of her parents and siblings in a bitter winter.  Her sufficiency is intimidating to many of her own people, who gossip about the relationship she has with Misshepeshu, the water monster that lives at the bottom of the lake.

Fleur is the foil to Pauline as their lives are linked through family ties but they are two side of the same woman coin.  Where Fleur is self-sufficient, Pauline is dependent on first her family, then her employer and finally the church to provide for her well-being  They of course must fall for the same man, Eli Kashpaw, the young and handsome hunter.  Eli, of course, falls in love with Fleur, who doesn’t need a man.  Pauline grows more and more obsessed with Eli, more so after his wedding to Fleur.  Her surrogate seduction of Eli is somewhat beyond Eli’s control but it sets in motion much of the destruction of Eli’s young family.  

The white-owned logging company is a looming presence in the novel.  While the young priest spends his life ministering to the residents of the reservation, he does do his best to keep the outside world at bay.  Eventually, with the help of the government, the logging company advances onto reservation land.  This impotence on the part of Father Damian is to show the individual white man’s inability to stand up to progress as well.  Even though the logging company eventually moves through their land, Fleur’s elaborate revenge/trick illustrates the sense of humor the tribe tries so desperately to hold onto as a lifeline.  

Ultimately, the novel is an examination of those people who were torn between their own culture and the dominating conquering culture.  The strength lies in the females in this novel and the two major female figures are representative of the polar opposites.  Where Fleur is earthy and sensual, Pauline is flighty and repressed.  Fleur has a healthy attitude towards sex whereas sex contributes to her downfall.  Pauline, of course, becomes the one to lean into the white culture as she is already have in there genetically.

Historically, the novel touches on such real events as the brutal winter of 1912 in which several Native Americans succumbed to starvation and disease.  The story is, in part, an example of some of the ramifications from the Dawes Act.  The intention of this act was to divvy up reservation land and allow Native Americans to purchase said parcels.  The goal of this was to encourage individual ownership of lands.  The Native people, however, were not culturally equipped to work within a structured landowning society.  Once placed on individual tracts of lands, many Natives were unable to pay taxes on the land at which point it was forfeited to the government.  This attempt at encouraging Indians to assimilate to white culture lead to more disintegration of the tribe.  Just as Pauline and her obsession to assimilate to white culture ultimately destroys her.  The Dawes Act was never intended to be cruel, just like the Catholic church and its attempt at proselytizing was born out of good intentions they both lead to another betrayal of an innocent people.

Dr. Pincham

EDCU 449

28 June 2017

 

 

Local Resource Lesson Plan 

 

Objective(s):    

 

SWBAT to convey BAT assess a piece of art or marketing component and identify which of the rhetorics are being employed in the piece.

                        

SWBAT argue their understanding of a complex issue through an initial response  and later examine and revise their understanding of said issue.

 

SWBAT Create a piece of art or marketing component that satirizes/mocks the practice of using a cultural group for marketing pieces.

 

CCSS:

 

W 9-10.1.  Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

W 9-10.4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

W 9-10.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

W 9-10.7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

RI. 9-10.1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

RI 9-10.6. Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

RI 9-10.7Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.

 

 

 

Essential Questions:

 

Is it okay for a sports team or a product to use a people’s culture or identity to sell/market said team or product?

 

Related galleries:

The exhibit will be on display at Evanston's Civic Center’s second floor gallery through September 2017. The exhibit dispels stereotypes identified through surveys and interviews with American Indian and Canadian First Nations peoples. The results identified the top ten stereotypes and misconceptions that Native People felt most impacted their lives. Some of the topics include mascots, casinos, and contemporary treaty rights issues. 

 

 

Grade/Subject:  English Grade 10

 

Pre-Visit Activity:  In looking at the essential question, what is your initial feeling?  Create a Spark post and link it to the following Padlet .   Must be between 7-10 words.  The following day review the padlet and respond to this discussion board.  As always, you must respond to one person you agree with and one that you don’t.

 

Pre-Visit Research and Discussion:   THINK/PAIR/SHARE 

In nine groups (usually of 3).  Each group will examine a section of this article on the NCAA’s response to this controversy.  They will share out a 2 minute synopsis of their section in class.

 

During Museum Visit:  IMPORTANT –PLEASE BE SURE TO HAVE YOUR CHARGED CHROMEBOOK WITH YOU.

Exhibit is on second floor.  Choose one example.  Spend 10 minutes researching that image and the controversy around it.  You must write two responses.  One agrees with those who want to keep the image and one response in which you agree with those who want to get rid of it.  Be sure to use (and identify) ethos, pathos and logos in both responses.  These should be ion a google doc that is shared with me and added to your google file.  Be sure to include an image of your chosen piece.

 

Post-Museum Activity:

Finally, I’d like for you to create a marketing campaign in which you use your cultural identity to sell a product or represent a sports team/college team/high school team.  

For example: I might have a pasty freckled white girl with red hair selling sun block.

Or

I might create an image of the University of South Carolina Red Headed Scottish Actors.

It is a somewhat silly assignment that you will be writing a reflection on so please put some thought into this.  

IMAGES ARE REQUIRED

 

 

 

 

Assessment:

                Please write a two page reflective response to this lesson.  Refer back to the essential question and examine how your initial response may have changed.  Also reflect on how you’d feel if your campaign was everywhere and a part of mainstream media.