(#7) DQs on Lyndon B Johnson

Please answer the following questions after reading and listening to Lyndon B Johnson's speech "We Shall Overcome."

1. Why did President Johnson believe the right to vote is the most important civil right? 
2. Explain the significance of why Johnson uses the phrase, "We Shall Overcome." Identify the ways in which President Johnson established his credibility to speak on civil rights? Do you find such explications of credibility persuasive? Why or why not? 
3. How did President Johnson use history in “We Shall Overcome?” What lessons did he try to teach from U.S. history? Are such lessons still relevant today? 
4. Do President Johnson’s appeals to the American Promise seem outmoded today? Would Americans in the twenty-first century be responsive to such a narrative? If not, why not? If so, on what subject(s)? 
5. One could argue that the Johnson speech was far more efficacious in bringing about change in civil rights because it was made by a powerful white president and was the prelude to the 1964 Civil Rights Acts. Do you agree? Why or why not? 
6. The Web site for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs contains a transcript of President Johnson’s speech as one of its “Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy” (http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/demo.htm) as well as list of readings for citizens of other countries interested in learning about American history. Why might the State Department have included Johnson’s speech? What does one learn about U.S. democracy by reading Johnson’s speech?

(#6) DQs on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Please answer the following questions after reading and listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech "I Have A Dream."

1. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech compares the situation of African-Americans in 1863 to their situation in 1963. What are the differences? What are the similarities? 
2. King refers to a check or a promissory note that was given to African-Americans. What is that promissory note? How does he develop the check image? 
3. King’s speech is a call to action. To what kind of action? What do African-Americans want? Significantly, what kind of action does he warn against? Why? 
4. The most quoted sentences of this speech repeat the phrase “I have a dream.” What are the elements of that dream? How does it relate to the “American Dream”? 
5. King takes the phrase “let freedom ring” from the patriotic song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Why is this important? How does he expand on this phrase? 
6. How does King tie this phrase to the words of an “old Negro spiritual”? Why is this significant? 
7. King was a Southern Baptist minister. What aspects, themes, images of his speech might be representative of Southern religious sermons?
8. Of what aspects of American culture is King’s speech critical? 
9. Did the speech lead to transformations in American culture? Explain your answer.

(#5) DQs on Malcolm X

Please answer the following questions after reading and listening to Malcolm X's speech "The Ballot or the Bullet."

1. Malcolm X calls himself a “Black Nationalist.” What does this mean? List a few of the characteristics of this ideology. 
2. Why is Malcolm X so skeptical about whether white politicians and white liberals can be trusted to help the cause of Black Americans?
3. Is Malcolm X advocating for violence or is he merely predicting it, should voting rights not be successfully implemented? 
4. Consider the following passage from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Does Malcolm X agree with this passage? Explain your answer.
5. Consider the following statements, and then determine which one most accurately summarizes Malcolm X’s thesis in his speech: (a) Whites have systematically exploited and duped Blacks throughout American history; therefore, Blacks should use either the ballot or the bullet to organize and overthrow this system of exploitation. The goal of this political revolution should be a free society that genuinely protects everyone’s rights. (b) Whites have already organized themselves as a “nation” or race that merely looks out for its own interests; rather than integrate into this organization, Blacks must do the same things in their own community by maintaining separate political and economic institutions.

Notes on Lachmann

This upcoming Tuesday, we will review Lachmann's text "Graffiti as Career and Ideology." Be sure to have read the entire twenty-one page article before our next class meeting. Pay attention to the following notes and questions as you read, for they will help inform your comprehension of the material. These bullet points do not need to be answered formally.  We will merely use them to guide our discussion of the text in class.

• How can graffiti be considered a cultural artifact? How does labeling graffiti as such help us understand its historical and/or contemporary cultural meaning and value? 
• Lachmann (1988) stated that his study was predominantly concerned with "understanding how the content of graffiti is formed and transformed by graffiti writers' social interactions with their audience" (p. 1). Why and how does audience factor so heavily into the overall acceptance, acknowledgement, and meaning of graffiti?
• The fact that "graffiti writers are involved simultaneously in an art world and a deviant subculture" could relate to the concept of the double-consciousness as coined by W.E.B. DuBois (Lachmann, 1988, p. 203). DuBois described this as a "sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness." How might this concept apply to graffiti writers?
• Closely read the passage on page 231 that begins with "By examining the content..." and that ends on page 232 with "...T-shirts, or coffee mugs" (Lachmann, 1988). Identify key terms and the passage's overall significance to the text's thesis, argument, and investigation of graffiti culture.
• Examine the concept of hegemony as defined by Hall on page 231, then offer your own definition of this latent, yet powerful social and cultural and ideological force. Provide one example of hegemonic forces that you can identify from your own experiences.     
• Why do gang's hire graffiti writers? What are the benefits and pitfalls writers experience as a result of their involvement with New York City gangs?
• The education of novice graffiti writers is extremely vital to their eventual development into maturity. How does the mentor-apprentice relationship help create and reinforce social hierarchies within this subculture? How might an analysis of the internal hierarchy of graffiti reveal a mimesis of or resistance to the various hierarchies (e.g., economic class, ethnic group, gender roles and norms) of dominant culture?
• Why do writers give up graffiti? When does this typically occur according to the text? What is the "dilemma of their [graffiti writers'] own making?" (Lachmann, 1988, p. 237f). Do you feel that this "drop-out" trend has changed since this article was published in 1988? Explain your position.
• In what ways is graffiti linked to criminal activity? What are the misnomers regarding linkages between crime and graffiti, especially as revealed by a NYC district attorney (cf. p. 236).
• How have police been successful in disrupting groups of graffiti writers? What is the greatest threat police pose to writers? 
• Explain how a "tag" solidifies and strengthens self-identity.
• Analyze the differences in geographic location between taggers vs. muralists. Consider, especially, the rise and fall of "writer's corners" and "crews" in NYC and the contributions of these "spaces" to the artistic world of graffiti. How did these corners protect the subculture? What happened when these corners were fragmented and eventually destroyed?  
• Graffiti muralists experienced two waves of art gallery attention, in late 1972 and in 1980. Analyze how by "packaging" graffiti into gallery spaces, this art form was co-opted "into the dominant art world" and therefore rendered a commercial and social commodity (Lachmann, 1988, p. 246).

Notes on Wasik

Recall that we will review Wasik's text "My Crowd" this upcoming Tuesday. Please reread the article and pay attention to the following notes and questions. These do not need to be answered formally. We will use them to guide our discussion of the text in class.

Also, note that there is a typo on the Rubric for Paper One, which misspells Wasik incorrectly as Watsik. There is no letter "t" in this author's last name.

• What is the concept of deindividuation and how does it apply to groups, mobs, and the loss of individual identity?
• Explain why Wasik chooses the hipster generation as a "mercurial" example of this concept of deindividuation.
• Which MOB was your personal favorite? Why. 
• Explain what the significance is behind Bill's claim that his occupation is within the culture industry.
• Why is boredom a principle trait of mobsters, especially in the media's portrayal of them?
• Describe the social experiments and artistic theories of Stanley Milgram. How are his ideas important to contemporary flash mobs? 
• How and why did the flash mob "die" when it was co-opted by consumer capitalism?  
• At the heart of Milgram's and Wasik's experiments is the question of conformity, control, and the malleable freedom of human nature. Examine your own sense of conformity. What do you conform to? How and why or why not?