The essays we read for this unit explored ideas about critical thinking, justice, moral responsibility, and resistance. For this assignment, you will select 2-3 of the readings (hooks, Wheatley, King, Sue, Lorde, Baldwin, and Chomsky) and use evidence from them to write a multi-paragraph essay that argues your position on one of the questions below.
1. In “Willing to Be Disturbed,” Margaret Wheatley asserts, “Change always starts with confusion: cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for the new” (2). Examine one or more of the readings that challenges a commonly held idea (for example, an idea about immigration, knowledge, racism, language, or justice). What perspective does the author present, and how does it challenge common understandings of this issue?
2. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. writes, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (1). He also argues that “human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability” (5). Use at least one additional reading to explore these ideas. If change requires action, to what extent are individuals responsible for taking action to promote justice?
3. Audre Lorde writes that “the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger” (42). However, she also claims “that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength” (Lorde 42). Why does Lorde believe it is so important to be vocal, and to what extent do you agree?
