Homework 1
This assignment, like all others, must be turned in by using Blackboard and is due by the 9:40 AM the day of class. For blackboard help, see handouts |
| BE
SURE TO FOLLOW THE FILE-NAMING CONVENTIONS FOR THIS COURSE (5% penalty
if you do not). All files should be saved on your computer as: your last name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the first two letters of your first name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the assignment number. So if a student named Saddam Hussein were to submit assignment number 1, the file name would be: hussein_sa_1.doc |
Don't stop until you see "end of assignment"
Making
& Supporting Logical Arguments
Much of this class will be focused on a central skill of both college
and workplace writing: making an argument.
More immediately, you will be using the skills you learn here for the rest of the semester -- so it makes sense to devote the time to mastering them now.
An argument generally involves three elements.
1. The Claim -- What you want your readers to believe; the "point" you hope to persuade your reader of
2. The Evidence -- What you will use to support the claim; your "proof" -- often a direct or indirect quotation from a text, but sometimes a statistic or the like
3. The Warrant -- A general principle that explains why you think your evidence is relevant to your claim
You
might want to think of making a point with evidence in a paper as
a conversation with a friend in which you attempt to persuade that
friend of a particular perspective.
Listed below are the questions your friend might ask as you tried
to make your argument, followed by the element described above that
would answer your friend's questions:
| QUESTION |
ELEMENT |
| What are you trying to demonstrate? | CLAIM |
| What proof do you have? | EVIDENCE |
| Why do you think that your proof is relevant to your claim? | WARRANT |
You must always state both your claim and your supporting evidence explicitly; one without the other is either pointless evidence or an ungrounded opinion. Taking a fairly straightforward example:
" (claim) I know it rained last night because (evidence) the streets are wet ."
| It rained last night | <--> |
the streets are wet |
It would be difficult to take issue with this claim-evidence relationship.
But
most evidence-claim relationships are not so simple.
They require an additional element: a
warrant.
A warrant is a general principal that
serves as a bridge between your claim and your evidence -- it explains
how your evidence is both accurate and relevant to your claim. If
one claims, say:
"(claim) The emancipation of Russian peasants was merely symbolic because (evidence) it didn't improve the material conditions of their daily lives."
the reader might ask:
"Even if I grant that your evidence regarding the quality of life for Russian peasants did not improve, why should that lead me to believe your claim that their emancipation was merely symbolic?"
This
questions underscores that even if both your claim
and your evidence are entirely accurate,
it is possible to make a weak argument.
You must explain why the evidence you
are presenting supports the claim you
are making. In short, you need to establish a warrant
between your claim and your evidence
In this example, the warrant might be:
"Whenever a political action fails to improve the lives of those it is alleged to help, we judge that reform to have been only symbolic."
"The emancipation of Russian peasants was merely symbolic because it didn't improve the material conditions of their daily lives. Whenever a political action fails to improve the lives of those it was supposed to help, we judge that reform to have been only symbolic rather than substantial."
Let's take a look at another fairly simple example from the world of sports:
claim |
|
evidence |
Jordan was selected as the greatest basketball player of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated magazine |
warrant |
Since professional basketball has only been played in the 20th century, and since no basketball player was rated higher than Jordan in the survey, Jordan must be the greatest player who ever lived. |
Let's look at an example from your reading for this week -- we will focus on the text in blue:
Most experts maintain that the relationship between race and violence has to do with social conditions such as poverty and unemployment. For example, unemployed people are more likely to engage in crime, and some experts warn that the current economic crisis might already be contributing to an increase in domestic violence and to the recent spate of suicidal shooting sprees.[11] However, the connection between crime and fluctuations in the labor market over longer periods of time is not clear. While most studies suggest that rising unemployment leads to an increase in property crimes, it seems to have a much smaller effect on violent crime.[12] A few highly publicized tragedies notwithstanding, most violent crimes may be committed by a group of people who would be unemployed in any labor market.[13]
|
Notice how this paragraph uses claim/evidence/warrant elements to make its point perusasively:
| element | text | comment |
| CLAIM: | What most studies do find, however, is that violent crime is strongly associated with the activity of illegal drug markets, which tend to thrive in black neighborhoods | Notice the use of a transition (however) to explain the logical relationship to the paragraph before the passage |
| EVIDENCE | A 1988 study of homicide in New York found that 40 percent were associated with drug trade–related disputes, mostly among black men.. | Here, the author has employed indirect quotation (defined here) and provided a citation in the form of a footnote |
| WARRANT | So while whites and blacks may use drugs with equal frequency, blacks are more likely to be involved in the highly lucrative and dangerous business of packaging, distributing, and marketing them | The warrant
does NOT simply
restate the evidence, it explains how the evidence is relevant
to the claim. Moreover, it also connects the evidence back to
the larger point of the essay here (see in the original):
When it comes to homicide, which is the most accurately measured crime of all, the data are clear: blacks are seven times more likely to be offenders and six times more likely to be victims than whites. This cannot be explained by discrimination in arrests and sentencing alone. What would explain it? |
Let's look at an example of a point supported by a quotation that might have come from a student paper.
| Need More Examples? |
| here is a chart of several arguments with claim/evidence/warrant structures. If you are confused, concrete -- but simple -- examples can sometimes help |
If I wanted to argue that Gandhi thought modern Western civilization
was corrupt specifically because of its promotion of material greed,
I might write the following:
(CLAIM) Gandhi sees modern civilization as a threat to the Indian people because it promotes an endless cycle of selfish want. (EVIDENCE) He says, "the railways, machineries and the corresponding increase of indulgent habits are the true badges of slavery of the Indian people" (p. 118). In Gandhi’s mind, such things are unnecessary because happiness -- he asserts -- is "largely a mental condition" (p. 123). (WARRANT) For Gandhi, accordingly, if acquiring material goods will not make us happier, then the money and energy we devote to do so should be considered a form of slavery.
Some things to
note about the paragraph:
1) Note that in the sentences with quoted material, I use an introductory phrase such as "he says," or "he asserts" to introduce the quotation. The quotation is, therefore, part of my own sentence. Again, a quotation must always form part of your own sentence. It cannot stand alone.
2) MOST
IMPORTANTLY, note that the last sentence
explains and interprets the quoted material in the context of my claim
that I wish to support. This last sentence does NOT
merely repeat the claim;
instead it interprets
the evidence
and demonstrates how it is relevant to the claim.
3) If you want to see yet another example from a student paper, click here. If you would like to see several examples in the context of a paper along with detailed explanations, click here.
Exercise A:
Read this passage from an article by Sasha Abramsky on America's prison system.
Horror stories have led to calls for longer prison sentences, for the abolition of parole, and for the increasingly punitive treatment of prisoners. The politics of opinion-poll populism has encouraged elected and corrections officials to build isolation units, put more prisons on "lockdown" status (in which prisoners are kept in their cells about twenty-three hours a day), abolish grants that allowed prisoners to study toward diplomas and degrees, and generally make life inside as miserable as possible. Marc Mauer, the assistant director of the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., says, "Fifty years ago rehabilitation was a primary goal of the system." Nowadays it's not. "The situation we're in now is completely unprecedented," Mauer says. "The number going through the system dwarfs that in any other period in U.S. history and virtually in any other country as well." In 1986, according to figures published in the Survey of State Prison Inmates (1991), 175,662 people were serving sentences of more than ten years; five years later 306,006 were serving such sentences. People haven't become more antisocial; their infractions and bad habits are just being punished more ruthlessly. Crime, however, is a complex issue, and responses to it that might instinctively seem sensible, or simply satisfying, may prove deeply counterproductive.
2
Questions for Exercise A:
1) Abramsky uses both direct and indirect quotations.
Identify one example for each from Abramsky's text. If you are uncertain
of the distinction between direct and indirect quotations, see here.
(Remember as you write papers in college, that even
indirect
quotations require citations.)
2) Identify Abramsky's claim and his warrant
Reread the following passage from the Epstein reading you have already done, then do the exercise that follows
What accounts for the high rate of incarceration in the US, particularly of black males? Opinions vary, but for drug crimes in particular, part of the problem has to do with excessive surveillance of young black men by the police and other authorities. White youths may carry and use drugs just as often as blacks, but they seldom get caught, and if they do, they may be more likely to get off with a warning. In one recent study, 60 to 75 percent of black teenagers in Baltimore and Chicago said they were routinely harassed by the police. "Everywhere we go, we going to get stopped," said one Chicago youth. Once he was approached by detectives as he and a friend were leaving the church they regularly attended:
They was like, "Do y'all got guns?" or something. "We heard shooting on the next block, y'all match the description. Where y'all just come from?" We like, "We just come out the church, y'all done seen it." You know just, they stopping us for no reason.
While police surveillance and harassment may explain the racial discrepancy in drug-related crime, it probably explains little of the same discrepancy in violent crime. When it comes to homicide, which is the most accurately measured crime of all, the data are clear: blacks are seven times more likely to be offenders and six times more likely to be victims than whites. This cannot be explained by discrimination in arrests and sentencing alone.
Above, Epstein explains why police harassment can not explain racial discrepancies in violent crime. In this exercise, you will add an additional paragrph to Epstein's article to make an argument that Epstein might have made, but did not.
Let's look at a passage by Heather Mac Donald, a journalist, on mandatory sentencing laws; you will be taking information from this passage to write the new paragraph for Epstein's article.
| Unfair
drug policies are an equally popular explanation for black incarceration
rates...Playing a starring role in this [argument] are federal
crack penalties, the source of the greatest amount of misinformation
in the race and incarceration debate. Crack is a smokeable and
highly addictive cocaine concentrate, created by cooking powder
cocaine until it hardens into pellets called “rocks.”
Crack produces a faster—and more potent—high than
powder cocaine, and it’s easier to use, since smoking
avoids the unpleasantness of needles and is more efficient than
snorting. Under the 1986 federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act, getting
caught with five grams of crack carries a mandatory minimum
five-year sentence in federal court; to trigger the same five-year
minimum, powder-cocaine traffickers would have to get caught
with 500 grams. On average, federal crack sentences are three
to six times longer than powder sentences for equivalent amounts.
But consider the actual number of crack sellers sentenced in federal court each year. In 2006, 5,619 were tried federally, 4,495 of them black. From 1996 to 2000, the federal courts sentenced more powder traffickers (23,743) than crack traffickers (23,121). It’s going to take a lot more than 5,000 or so crack defendants a year to account for the 562,000 black prisoners in state and federal facilities at the end of 2006—or the 858,000 black prisoners in custody overall, if one includes the population of county and city jails. Nor do crack/powder disparities at the state level explain black incarceration rates: only 13 states distinguish between crack and powder sentences, and they employ much smaller sentence differentials. |
Now we are ready to take the concept from the journalist's passage above and fold it into Epstein's article.
Below, you will find the Epstein passage above with the start of a new paragraph inserted.
All the new text appears in RED.
In the text below, (TR) indicates the transitional phrase that explains the logical connection between the new paragraph and the preceding material. (CL) indicates the CLAIM of the new paragraph. YOU will write the EVIDENCE and the WARRANT. For the evidence, you will want to use a combination of a direct and an indirect quotation (If you are uncertain of the distinction between direct and indirect quotations, see here.) Your direct quotation should be now more than 10 words long. If you don't know how to reduce quotations, see here.
| What
accounts for the high rate of incarceration in the US, particularly
of black males? Opinions vary, but for drug crimes in particular,
part of the problem has to do with excessive surveillance
of young black men by the police and other authorities. White
youths may carry and use drugs just as often as blacks, but
they seldom get caught, and if they do, they may be more likely
to get off with a warning. In one recent study, 60 to 75 percent
of black teenagers in Baltimore and Chicago said they were
routinely harassed by the police. "Everywhere we go,
we going to get stopped," said one Chicago youth. Once
he was approached by detectives as he and a friend were leaving
the church they regularly attended: Nor can police surveillance and harassment explain the discrepancy in violent crime. When it comes to homicide, which is the most accurately measured crime of all, the data are clear: blacks are seven times more likely to be offenders and six times more likely to be victims than whites. This cannot be explained by discrimination in arrests and sentencing alone. |
SO, now write the new paragraph that Epstein might have written. Again: YOU will write the EVIDENCE and the WARRANT. For the evidence, you will want to use a combination of a direct and an indirect quotation (If you are uncertain of the distinction between direct and indirect quotations, see here.) Your direct quotation should be now more than 10 words long. If you don't know how to reduce quotations, see here.
At times, The Wire likens the drug trade to other enterprises that are legal; other times the show draws a number of comparison between drug trafficking and legal businesses by highlighting the violence that accompanies the trade. When The Wire makes such comparisons, it echoes the arguments of Epstein from this week's reading:
| What most studies do find, however, is that violent crime is strongly associated with the activity of illegal drug markets, which tend to thrive in black neighborhoods.[14] A 1988 study of homicide in New York found that 40 percent were associated with drug trade–related disputes, mostly among black men.[15] So while whites and blacks may use drugs with equal frequency, blacks are more likely to be involved in the highly lucrative and dangerous business of packaging, distributing, and marketing them. The drug trade is violent because when disputes arise over prices, turf, or customers, there are no peaceful means of resolving them. Adversaries battle out such conflicts with weapons instead of lawyers. It is probably no coincidence that murder rates doubled during Prohibition in the 1920s, and fell sharply with the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933. Similarly, murder rates doubled again during the "crack epidemic" in the 1970s and 1980s, when the drug trade became more lucrative and competitive, and more dangerous. |
In
this exercise, you will write a cl/ev/wa paragraph that uses
evidence from either episode1 or 2 (or both) to demonstrate how The
Wire illustrates Epstein's arguments above.
You may want way to begin your paragraph with a claim on the order
of:
| The Wire illustrates Epstein's arguments for [insert your reason here, keeping in mind EVIDENCE is NOT part of your claim] |
Then, find evidence to support the claim in the form of DIRECT quotations of 10 words or less from the episodes.
BE SURE TO INCLUDE A WARRANT THAT EXPLAINS HOW AND WHY YOUR EVIDENCE MAKES YOUR POINT. PARAGRAPHS THAT CONTAIN NO WARRANT, OR A WARRANT THAT MERELY REPEATS THE EVIDENCE (OR THE CLAIM) WILL GET NO CREDIT. Be sure to put a (CL) before your claim, (EV) before your evidence and (WA) before your warrant.
The links below allow you to chart a variety of crimes and arrests in the Baltimore area.
Crimes other than homicides and arrests
Using the charts and focussing on 2008 looking at
(A) Homicides (B) Shooting (C) Arrests, what patterns can
you find regarding:
1) The geographic distribution of these crimes/arrests? Pay particular attention to the neighborhoods of "Little Italy" and "Inner Harbor." How do these neighborhoods compare to other neighborhoods?
2) Patterns regarding the age, race, and gender of the homicide victims? (click on the "pins" to get the information)
Write
up your conclusions in a paragraph.
Exercise
E
Character Journal
From the choices below, pick 1 character from "the Law"
and 1 character from "the Street" options below-- if you
need help with the characters, see viewing
guide (but notice not all characters on the viewing guide are
available for the "journaling"
Then following the directions here,
write about the two characters you have chosen.
| Street | Law |
| D'Angelo Barksdale | Detective Shakima "Kima" Greggs |
| Preston "Bodie" Broadus | Officer (later, Sgt.) Thomas "Herc" Hauk |
| Bubbles | Colonel Cedric Daniels |
| Weebay | Officer (later, Sgt.) Ellis Carver |
"END
OF ASSIGNMENT"