PvF
- how the activities match Swales benchmarks for a discourse community: “a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise
this discourse criteria is up for debate in PvF because the authors of this book are maybe educated and relevant but are writing for their audience and to make money, please the Supreme Court and higher up’s, rather than do the right thing with segregation of Jim Crow Laws and separation of blacks and whites
“uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback” using Case information to provide feedback and opinion on what happened
2. how did the discourse community spread the “knowledge” they were responsible for creating? the authors of the Plessy V Ferguson book as well as the judges and others involved in the case, used their knowledge to express a one sided, bias argument. As well as used their knowledge to make money and please the people by saying what was accepted in society in the topic of races during that time period.
tmm: public speaking, publication, in classrooms
pvf: news, traditional media, enforcement of legislation, books in writing codified (code) – now online
today: professional circles
we get to read different people in different situations – precedents set and hard to overturn after set
3. I think this discourse community set the foundation for American Jim Crow laws by starting to talk about what was going on towards segregation, the problem with slavery and began with the 14th amendment
all prepped from Mirabelli’s triangle with gap:
audience, issue, writer and gap is rights and freedom, laws against segregation
knowledge vs normal- we have to take this into laws and make legislation and enforcement for anything to change
Race Amalgamation: Frederick L. Hoffman
within his paradigm different races occupied different levels on an evolutionary scale; whites highest; africans were “outcases from evolution”
book Hoffman faults the “great attempts at world bettering” that ignored studies of “racial traits and tendencies”
today scientists think Hoffman’s statistics look foolish but the scientific community did not start to move from the paradigm of scientific rascism until 1911because of the publication of the mind of primitive man
question whether crossing leads to improvement or deterioration of races, Gobineau maintains that intermixture of races leads to final extinction of civilization
nott, knox and Perrier hold that intermixtures would lead to decay, while Bodichon declares that the era of universal peace and fraternity will be realized by crossing
cross of white men and colored women is a product inferior to both parents, physically and morally
the crossing of white and colored races in this country is therefore not within the lawful bounds of marriage but outside of the pale of the moral law; an immense amount of concubinage and prostitution prevails among the colored women of the US
offspring of white men and black women are inferior of the pure black
excerpts from Provost- Marshal General:
“I believe in black far superior in physical endurance to the mulatto or yellow negro…”
TMM pages 82-92
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