Final Paper Outline

INTRO PARAGRAPH

Hook:    Why are preschool children given a gold star for sharing when adults that advocate sharing are condemned as socialists? In a nation where the key to success is “my profit”, parental lessons in sharing are all but hypocritical.

Thesis:  It is the inherent vices of capitalist society that facilitate the continued production of inequality and social difference in America. It is no wonder, then, why forces like poverty and environmental injustice are inevitable systematic outcomes.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF ARGUMENT

  1. Capitalistic ideology produces inequality and social difference.
    1. Race
    2. Class
  2. Poverty is an inevitable outcome.
    1. Capitalism requires a loser for every winner
    2. Social differences must exist to create subordination
    3. Unequal access to opportunity (from subordination) -> skewed distribution of wealth
  3. Environmental injustice is an inevitable outcome.
    1. Dominant/subordinate groups are valued in unequal ways (refer to 1.)
    2. Skewed distribution of wealth (from subordination) -> unequal access to opportunity
    3. Poorer groups are shunted to dirtier, unhealthy, hazardous areas
  • HEGELIAN DIALECTIC: “SELF” AND “OTHER”
    • Describe the dialectic
      • Conscious of a self and an other
    • Inherent binary cognition
    • People are easily categorized
      • Good, bad (friend or foe)

 

  • WHAT IS CAPITALISM
    • Marxist definition
      • Marx points to inherent inequalities (vices) and shift of all wealth (means of production) to one or few individuals/entities
      • Capitalism depends on the profits to the few “the self” while subjugating the “other”
    • This is seen in todays economy
      • ‘the 1%”
        • Large income gap
      • Increased poverty
    • Rich with political power
      • Building of policies
        • Directly fund certain outcomes (elections)
          • Place certain people in power
        • Policies with a “hands off” approach to the market / big business
      • Tax rates
        • Who pays more? Who is left with more?
          • Use specific numbers: [[Find more accurate numbers than Wikipedia for drafts]]
            • In 2013, tax rate is 0% for the 10%–15% brackets; 15% for the 25%–35% brackets; and 20% for the 39.6% bracket. (Wikipedia.org)
            • For single person:
              • Top of 15% bracket is $36,900. Person keeps 90% =$ 33,210
              • Bottom of 39.6+% bracket is $406,751. Person keeps 80% = $325400.80
            • Still unequal. Rich still rich. Poor still poor.
            • Concession: this is only the income tax on capital gain
          • Rich are still better off yet fighting for lower tax rates
        • Wealthy people protecting their “self” by subjugating the lower class “other”

 

  • CAPITALISM PRODUCES RACIAL DIFFERENCE
    • Racial differences and inequalities are a production of capitalistic ideology.
      • Spell out “racism” -> “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior” (google.com)
    • Hegel’s dialectic – inherent human need to produce a self and an other
      • Dominant group as self
      • Minority groups as other
    • Capitalism refers to a ‘‘system which favors the existence of capitalists.’’ (Clarke 22).
      • System favors one group over another
      • Replace capitalists with another dominant group: white people
    • Building of policies
      • Dictate certain outcomes (elections)
        • Only white people can run for offices
        • Only white people can vote
      • Dominant group holds power since the arrival of white people
        • Invariably, white group protects ”self” by subjugating black “other”
          • Laws/policies
            • Blacks are 2/3 of a person
          • People specifically excluded from benefits
            • Literacy tests. (this only hurts black people with lesser education)
          • Capitalism breeds racial difference
            • Similar ideology: just change certain words
            • Capitalistic mindset of building profit (benefit for self)
            • We do the same for racial issues by which the whites are able to control the outcomes
  • CAPITALISM PRODUCES ECONOMIC DIFFERENCE
    • Economic differences and inequalities are a production of capitalistic ideology.
      • Spell out “neoliberalism” = American version of capitalism -> “neoliberalism insists that rationality, individuality, and self-interest guide all actions. In fact, neoliberalism often views itself as a global social science capable of explaining all human behavior since all behavior is thought to be directed by logical, individualistic, and selfish goals.” (Candace Smith 2)
    • Hegel’s dialectic – inherent human need to produce a self and an other
      • Dominant group as self
      • Minority groups as other
    • Capitalism (neoliberalism) refers to a ‘‘system which favors the existence of capitalists.’’ (Clarke 22).
      • System favors one group over another
    • Building of policies
      • Dictate certain outcomes (elections)
        • Place certain people in power
          • Corporate funding
            • Superpacs are legal
          • Owners of media
            • Decide what topics are discussed (Fox)
          • Policies with a “hands off” approach to the market / big business
            • Fossil fuel industry
            • “Let’s Move” Campaign by Michelle Obama
          • Dominant group holds power
            • Invariably, wealthy group protects ”self” by subjugating poor “other”
              • People specifically excluded from benefits
                • Privatized schools/colleges
              • Unpaid Internships
              • Individual withdrawing $20 must pay a $3 fee at an ATM for their own dollars.
                • This effects lower class and upper class differently.
              • Capitalism breeds economic difference
                • Foundation/requirement of capitalism: competition = winners/losers are inherent.
                • Capitalistic mindset of building individualized profit
  • POVERTY IS AN INEVITABLE SYSTEMIC OUTCOME
    • Poverty is an inevitable systemic outcome of the capitalist society.
      • Class discrepancy
        • To fund the 1%, some people must live with close to nothing.
      • People born into lower classes will continue to have lower opportunity. People born into higher classes have more opportunities.
        • Show statistics
        • Common sense: we don’t even look the homeless in the eye.
      • Certain groups are inherently subjugated
        • Black people
        • Poor people
          • Due to capitalist system described above, neither group has the power on their own to overcome their circumstance.
            • Laws
            • Opportunities
            • Representation
          • No incentive to help the poor
            • Policies to help lower class hinder upper class
              • Higher taxes
              • Obamacare criticized as “socialist”
                • Therefore bad?
              • Poverty is an inevitable, necessary systemic outcome to the capitalist society.
  • ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE IS AN INEVITABLE SYSTEMIC OUTCOME
    • Environmental injustice is an inevitable systemic outcome of capitalist society.
    • Certain groups are inherently subjugated in capitalism
      • Poor people
        • Due to capitalist system described above, neither group has the power on their own to overcome their circumstance.
          • Reference above paragraph
        • Minority groups
          • Generally less wealth (not in dominant white group with policy assistance)
          • Can’t afford nicer homes
            • Must live in worse homes
              • Worse neighbourhoods
              • “hood”, “slum”, “ghetto”, “low income housing”
            • These areas are not well kept
              • City money better spent on nicer white areas
                • Downtowns, suburbs
              • “Can a bridge be racist?”
            • Subordinate groups living in toxic areas
              • Can’t afford to move
                • Can’t afford to leave region in disaster
                  • Plant explosion
                • Cost effective
                  • E-waste to Asia
                  • Outsourcing low wage jobs
                • No incentive to help these people
                  • Policies to help lower class hinder upper class
                    • Cost effective
                      • Expensive to pay for healthcare
                      • Cleaning up own mess
                      • Lose trillions of dollars not to use the fossil fuel reserves
                    • Capitalism! Neoliberalism! -> no market interference
                  • Environmental injustice is an inevitable, necessary systemic outcome to the capitalist society.

CONCLUSION

Restate Thesis

General overview of argument process

  • Capitalism is inherently unequal
    • Allows for production of racism
    • Allows for the production of class polarization
  • Large instances of poverty are inevitable and can be expected to increase
  • Large instances of environmental injustice are inevitable and can be expected to increase as more and more people find their way to the lower pole

Final posit: There must be a better alternative to capitalism.

REFERENCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States [what is the current tax rate in America]

Soundings Manifesto Thesis

American identity relies on the dogmatic perception of individualism as the most important value. In order to be successful, one must work hard and pull his or herself up by the bootstraps to the top. Failure, therefore, is perceived to be a result of one’s laziness or incompetence. This ideology provides a sturdy foundation for the tangible inequalities in America today. Essentially, the American idea of individualism allows any failure or inequality a person experiences to be internalized as a result of his or her own actions. Because the inequalities are not outwardly expressed, income, class, race, gender, sexuality, and many other echelons of inequality go unquestioned. According to individualism, lower status is achieved through personal failures, not the failures of the system by which one inhabits.

American reverence of individualism causes deeply internalized modes of inequality that are prevalent and unquestioned.

  •             Not specific to a single idea
  •             What are the modes? Choose only one to focus on.
  •             Many possible focal points to argue.

The reverence of individualism in America creates a society of people that internalize the inequalities they experience as inherent properties.

  •             On its own, not totally true
  •             Word choice makes the argument focus vague.
  •             Neutral argument. Not clear why this matters.

The reverence of individualism in America facilitates the internalization of inequality as the fault of only the individual, instead of the system by which one inhabits.

  •             Concise with clear position taken
  •             Various forms of inequality to discuss
  •             Arguable
  •             True statement on its own

Toxic Masculinity

To be a man in America lends itself to extraordinary privileges, resources, and thus, responsibilities. Identifying as a male in America implies the conformity to that of the archetypical “man”. From birth, men are socialized to embody this idealized identity. According to Chauncey DeVega in her article on salon.com, his identity, known as toxic masculinity, “is a performance that emphasizes violence, control over others, sexual aggression and a lack of emotion and vulnerability” (DeVega).

Toxic masculinity creates a problem as not all men conform to this role and are therefore ostracized into subordinated social groups. As an American man, I too have been socialized into this role. However, I am also a gay man that, almost by definition, does not fit neatly into this paradigm. I therefore exist as both a stereotype and a subordinate which creates a chronic conflict. The toxic masculinity I subconsciously uphold has caused tremendous physical and mental turmoil throughout my life. Masculinity, therefore, needs to be redefined to prevent such unrest.

Toxic masculinity exhibits itself physically in terrible harmful ways for both the man himself and the person he interacts with. As a man, I was socialized into embodying a dominant, strong, powerful persona. Consequently, the ways in which I project my identity outward mirror these attributes. I remember when I was small(er) as a child getting yelled at by my father. I couldn’t say what exactly began the argument, but I distinctly recall the authority in his shouts as his fist connected with my left ear and the word “faggot” ringing in my right. This instant describes perfectly all that is wrong with male America and fits DeVega’s definition of toxic masculinity all too well. This instant taught me what I needed to do to function successfully in my family, and thus as a person. I learned to be aggressive, authoritative, straight, and powerful. My dad that day showed little remorse for his violent tantrum and I quickly learned that my own emotion growing up was of little value to my great role model of a father. Regardless of the fact that I was beginning to acknowledge my identity as a gay man, I learned that he could not exist over the guy I was being taught to embody. The problem I encountered thereafter was that essentially two men exist in my mind. To this day, I struggle balancing the cold, domineering masculine man with the gentler, emotional guy I should have been.

The mental turmoils I’d experienced from my socialization are a direct result of the toxic masculinity I was brought up in. Over the years, I learned to have a great sense of entitlement to the things in my environment that “no” was essentially a foreign concept. I tailored my appearance to look put together and more muscular, and was essentially rewarded with more sexual partners and relationships. The rejections, however, struck me harder than they should have. In all reality, it is safe to assume that most people are probably not going to be interested in me physically or romantically. Yet somehow that thought eluded me for years. The rejections ruined my ego and damaged my self-esteem greatly. Looking back, it is easy to see this internalized entitlement so clearly. Over the years, I had been socialized by family members, friends, etc that I deserved great and beautiful things and that I deserved to have power over my life (ie. my surroundings and environment). As I mentioned previously, I had learned to be authoritative and powerful through my experiences in my youth. These easily translate into my entitlement as a male and thus a cause of great angst at such trivial circumstances when I did not receive whatever it is I wanted.

Recreating a concept that has been taught to me over the entirety of my life will take conscious effort. To do this and to redefine masculinity requires the awareness that its current state has large fallacies. To me, the greatest of these fallacies is that the toxic masculinity I subconsciously uphold has caused tremendous physical and mental turmoil throughout my life. It would therefore be foolish of me to remain ignorant to the societal constructs that perpetuate this type of cognition. Even though it will require effort to change the idea of masculinity I’ve held throughout my life, it is completely necessary. The only way this concept will ever change is by inspiring action and awareness one individual at a time.

DeVega, Chauncey. “The Plague of Angry White Men: How Racism, Gun Culture & Toxic Masculinity Are Poisoning America.” Saloncom RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.

American Freedom

This concept of freedom has been so ingrained into American minds that some even choose to go to combat in war in its name. It has the grand title of our most recent war in Iraq. The Statue of Lady Liberty is a landmark entirely dedicated to the idea. It is even used as justification for private and legal action in modern times.

Eric Foner, in his essay “Preserving American Freedom”, declares that despite “or perhaps because of, its very ubiquity, freedom has never been a fixed category or concept” (Foner 1). The simplistic articulation of this rather obvious observation is bluntly astonishing.  While many Americans believe the definition of “freedom” is perceived to be concrete, its definition changes with its context. In fact, according to Foner, the idea of freedom has always been changing due to the time of its usage. This proves to be a great problem in today’s society as many Americans are taught to idolize the inalterable idea of freedom to be a cornerstone of our nation and our existence. It is important to understand the variability of the term and to realize that the inconsistencies in its usage help shape many of the conflicts in America.

In today’s society, “freedom” is often tossed around as a generic term despite its various implications. People use freedom to describe economic independence, religious tolerance or acceptance, the removal of oneself from a situation, or even a confidence to behave in a certain manner, among others. For many, the terms freedom and liberty are perceived to be inalterable, yet with so many potential meanings, freedom becomes an ever-increasing abstract that is so devoutly upheld.

Foner, in his essay, talks about initial conceptions of the terms freedom and liberty. Initially, he says, North American colonists brought the idea of freedom over with them with the understanding that in the New World, they would be granted certain privileges. “To them, freedom was not a single idea but a collection of distinct rights and privileges that depended on one’s nationality and social status” (Foner 2). Even this early definition implies a certain set of flawed inconsistencies when generalizing to a population. If the privileges are dependent on nationality and social status, it must not then be true and enforced for all members of the general public. From this, it is inevitable that conflicts over what freedom actually means inevitably arise.

In the early years of America, the freedom to life, liberty, and property were not inherent to all Americans. In fact, the opposite was true in many cases as a large number were enslaved. The right to vote was inclusive only to men that could be considered citizens at the time (which also changed over time). Further examples of discrepancies in inherent freedoms include the relocation of Native Americans, the production of Japanese Internment Camps, and rights to the wealthy vs rights to the poor. Interestingly enough, all of these examples have since changed or dissolved over time.

The differences in the implications of “freedom” largely depends on who declares it. Historically, the definition of freedom has been set to reinforce or disempower a certain nationalized set of ideas. Freedom in America’s early years was defined to gather support of the other white property owners in order to build a stable group of colonies. Freedoms conveniently ignored other groups with little political power as those groups do not fit into the agenda of the nation. For instance, women’s suffrage was not recognized for years as its nonexistence served a purpose in maintaining the social hierarchical structure. Even in modern times, the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center was declared to be an attack on freedom itself and the freedoms of Americans. For this, there was support to go to a much needed war for American politics. Much of American foreign policy is based around the idea that America is “spreading freedom” to underdeveloped countries with different ideology.

America is described as “the land of the free” with a government designed by and for the people. The question remains: who are the people? Historically, the government and the freedoms thereby enforced are limited to the inclusion of the people in power. Only those that further national agenda have the freedoms we all claim to have achieved. With this, the terms and inclusions change as quickly as the agenda does.

Eric Foner concludes his essay stating “debates over [freedom’s] meaning will undoubtedly continue, and new definitions will emerge to meet the exigencies of the twenty-first-century world, a globalized era in which conversations about freedom and its meaning are likely to involve all mankind” (Foner 17). As the world progresses toward a globalized state, it will become impossible to leave out groups of individuals. Because of this, the definition of freedom will inevitably alter as well, and new conflicts must arise with the revision of the current freedom in vogue.

Harro Response

Bobbie Harro’s short essay entitled “The Cycle of Socialization” is an easily understood piece that outlines, in a general sense, the concept of systemic socialization.

In the essay, Harro initially targets the variety of institutions as the perpetrators of this cycle of cultural oppression. These institutions, he claims, socialize us into “ascribed” identities with “no effort or decision or choice of our own” and therefore there is “no reason to blame each other or hold each other responsible for the identities we have” (Harro 16). He spends much of the beginning of his essay arguing the extent to which the individual is victimized in the system and how our identities are shaped and determined by the variety of dominant and/or subordinate groups we may be inherently born into.

Further into the article, Harro acknowledges this inevitable systemic socialization yet points his finger also at the individual as a guilty party. He argues that despite the rules of dominant society, it is the individual’s duty to educate his or her self on the subject. Only then may real social critique emerge and rebellious groups may form to disempower this system and reject the “fear and insecurity that we have been taught” (Harro 20).

I stand by every word Harro articulates in this piece. To blame the individual for holding his or her beliefs is a groundless scapegoat to minimize the issue at hand. The truth is that systemic socialization is a real, influential phenomenon. However, the acknowledgement of such and the conscious, informed rejection of these assumed socialized behaviors is the only way to break it down. Harro says “our silence is consent” (Harro 20). This simple sentence needs to be the motto of the entire population. Our silence grants authority the assumed permission it needs to define our lives for us.