What does it mean to be a person of color in America? What are the challenges? What are the expectations? Is race major factor in how we live in our current time or is America now 'colorblind?' Use evidence from the above documentaries as well as your own experiences to support your answer.
Option 2: Reply to a classmate's post:
Summarize the argument made in the previous post and agree or disagree with your classmate. Be specific by pointing out what you agree with or disagree with.
Then add your own response. Use evidence to support your response.
Finally, post a meaningful question to keep the conversation going.
Challenge 1: Write a memoir about your own experiences with race in America. Choose a specific a moment where you were very aware of your own race. Explode the moment in time by using narrative writing techniques: actions, internal monologue, dialogue, and imagery.
Challenge 2!! Create and post a video about your own experiences with race in America. Model your video after the above documentaries. (See Mr. Voulgarides to post your video on the blog!)
A police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old in the bathroom of the teenager’s Bronx apartment has been stripped of his gun and badge, the police commissioner said Friday, and both the commissioner and the mayor expressed concern about the circumstances of the shooting.
The commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, stopped short of declaring the shooting unjustified but said at a news conference: “At this juncture, we see an unarmed person being shot. That always concerns us.”
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a similar comment, telling reporters outside a pre-Super Bowl event on the Upper East Side, “We obviously have some real concerns, and until we know what really happened there’s not a lot else I can say.”
The commissioner’s remarks, coming less than 24 hours after the teenager, Ramarley Graham, was killed by a plainclothes narcotics officer, were a stark departure for Mr. Kelly, who rarely makes public an early assessment of a shooting.
The fatal shot came shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday. Members of the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, who had pursued Mr. Graham based on a report that he was armed, broke open the door to the second-floor apartment where he lived with his family on East 229th Street, Mr. Kelly said.
As the first officer came through, Mr. Graham emerged from the back of the apartment running toward them, then veered into the bathroom, the police said.
“Show me your hands! Show me your hands!” the officer yelled, said Mr. Kelly, who cited the account of a second officer who trailed the first officer into the apartment. The police did not release the names of any of the officers. Mr. Graham was black; the officer who shot him is white.
Inside the apartment, Mr. Kelly said, the first officer, who was in the hallway outside the bathroom, yelled, “Gun! Gun!” suggesting to the officers behind him that Mr. Graham was armed.
“The partner said he then heard a shot,” Mr. Kelly said. “It is at that point we believe the shooting officer fired once from his 9-millimeter service firearm.”
The bullet hit Mr. Graham in the upper chest, striking a lung and his aorta, killing him, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner.
Mr. Kelly added that investigators had yet to find evidence that Mr. Graham was armed. “No gun was recovered,” the commissioner said. Rather, the police said, a bag of marijuana was found in the toilet, raising the possibility that Mr. Graham bolted to the bathroom to try to dispose of it.
The shooting will be investigated by the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, and is likely to be presented to a grand jury. A key factor will be the officers’ state of mind, and whether they had reason to believe that Mr. Graham was armed.
The officer who fired the shot — a 30-year-old who has been on the force since 2008 — has not yet been interviewed by the police because of the pending criminal investigation.
The officer’s sergeant was also stripped of his gun and badge; both are now on “modified duty,” off the streets, for the time being.
“We are still evaluating the actions here,” Mr. Kelly said.
The scene outside Mr. Graham’s home on Friday was tense at times. As the police re-entered the three-family house to execute a search warrant, one bystander on the street yelled, “You killed him because he smoked weed!” Later, dozens of people began shouting toward the officers inside. “Murderers!” many yelled.
Mr. Graham’s family did not speak to reporters, but they retained a lawyer, Jeffrey L. Emdin, who said the police should never have entered the home on Thursday. “When the police are above the law, nobody is safe,” Mr. Emdin said.
Mr. Kelly, recounting Thursday’s events, said the narcotics team had been staking out a bodega at East 228th Street and White Plains Road, after the police had received reports of drug sales out front.
With two friends, Mr. Graham went into the bodega. But they left quickly, and as they did, team members who were observing the bodega radioed their colleagues that they believed one of the three — who they later learned was Mr. Graham — “was armed,” Mr. Kelly said.
The impression that Mr. Graham had a gun was reinforced as officers tracked the three men. The group next went to a home at 728 East 229th Street, where Mr. Graham was spotted leaving with what appeared to be the butt of a gun in his waistband, according to another set of radio transmissions among the narcotics team members.
Two officers wearing raid jackets and bullet-resistant vests emerged from a van and yelled, “Police! Stop! Don’t move!” said Mr. Kelly, citing the account of a civilian witness.
But Mr. Graham made it to his home at 749 East 229th Street, and the front door locked, stymieing officers who were pursuing him with their guns drawn. Another tenant, Gene Davis, 60, said he saw the officers rushing through the outside gate before they reached the door. They yelled at him: “Don’t move! Get back!”
Eventually, a man alerted by the commotion let the sergeant in a back door and told him that Mr. Graham lived on the second floor. The officers then spread out: One stayed on the ground floor; the sergeant stayed on the stairs; and two lead officers went to the apartment and knocked. When no one answered, they “broke open” the door, Mr. Kelly said.
Precisely what happened in the bathroom seconds later is not clear. On Thursday night, the police said Mr. Graham had tussled with an officer, but on Friday, Mr. Kelly said there did not appear to be any evidence of a struggle.
“We don’t believe there was contact,” he said.
The officer yelled, “Gun! Gun!” and then fired, Mr. Kelly said.
The teenager’s grandmother Patricia Hartley was in the hallway. Paulet Minzie, the landlady, who lives on the third floor, said she heard the grandmother shouting at the police: “Why you hitting me? Why you hitting me?”
Mr. Graham’s 6-year-old brother was also screaming, Ms. Minzie said. “He said, ‘They killed my brother!’ ” she related.
Mr. Kelly repeatedly sought to solace Mr. Graham’s mother and grandmother. “Any mother, any parent is going to be terribly affected,” he said. “It is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, is to lose a child, and we certainly sympathize with the family.”
The fatal shooting comes amid an unusually violent period for the police. Officer Peter J. Figoski was fatally shot on Dec. 12 while responding to a report of a robbery in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.
Last month, the police in Brooklyn fatally shot an armed man who they mistakenly believed was a robber but was a resident of a house where a home invasion was occurring, and, two weeks later, a carjacking suspect.
And this week, Officer Kevin Brennan was seriously wounded when he was shot in the head after chasing an armed man into a building in Brooklyn.
“These things seem to come in clumps sometimes,” Mr. Kelly said. “Sometimes you see a cluster of them. Generally speaking, I’d say there’s no connectivity.”
Option 1: Was the officer justified to shoot because he saw a gun? Why or why not? What role does race play, if any, in this case? Explain and use specific evidence to support your response.
Option 2: Reply to a classmate's post:
Summarize the argument made in the previous post and agree or disagree with your classmate. Be specific by pointing out what you agree with or disagree with.
Then add your own response. Use evidence to support your response.
Finally, post a meaningful question to keep the conversation going.
Option 3: In Twelve Angry Men we discussed the role personal bias plays in the American Judicial System. What role does bias play in our everyday lives? In American Society? Give specific examples to support your response.
Junot Díaz talks books, high school, and heart break
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
from Manhattan Times
Story by Sherry Mazzocchi
Rosanna Cuevas, of northern Manhattan, was one of about 200 people who crowded into the Gregorio Luperon High School to hear Junot Díaz speak this past Fri., Jan. 27th.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was in town for a Family Literacy Day event.
The afternoon forum, organized by civic group Acción Comunitaria La Aurora, Teatro Las Tablas, Word Up Bookstore, The Manhattan Times and The Bronx Free Press, also featured free books provided by Barnes and Noble.
Cuevas brought her daughter, Rossaura, 9, hoping the talk would inspire a love of literature.
And much of what Díaz spoke about was directed at parents such as Cuevas.
If you are here with children, he told the audience, then you believe in the power of reading. His parents, he explained, would tell him that education was a wonderful thing, but they didn't act on that idea.
When caught reading books, his mother instead told him to go out and play.
Díaz said that no one knows what a child will eventually become—and they shouldn't be judged quickly. Instead, Díaz said it's better to keep ideas about your children flexible and not label them.
During his high school senior year, Díaz was absent 130 days. He had a GPA of 1.7. But his mother never called him stupid or told him he would end up in prison.
Instead, she kept saying, "This kid is going to be brilliant."
Because she never condemned him for not doing well in school, Díaz said that created a space for him to change and become an academic and a writer.
When a teacher in the audience asked him what would have motivated him—and children like him—to come to school, the answer was revealing.
"Remember that person that you loved the most and who absolutely broke your heart?" he asked. "And remember how useful and productive you were the six months after your heart was broken?"
Kids in school are getting their hearts broken all the time, by parents, friends or just life.
"And then we expect them to be kicking a** in school," he said.
But they need time to mourn.
Díaz's father left their family the same year his older brother got cancer.
"There was no teacher in the world," said Díaz, "who was going to keep me from a dysfunctional heart break in my senior year."
But schools are like stopwatches, he said. If kids don't mend according to the school's timetable, they're labeled as "bad" students. But in reality, they are just sensitive.
"The only reason kids act tough is because they are protecting something very delicate inside. Who acts tougher than the black and Latino community? I don't know any communities who act tougher than us," he said, "besides some communities at war."
Rosanna, who arrived early and sat close to the front, said Díaz's books resonated with her, especially the themes around growing up in a poor neighborhood. Like Díaz, she is also from the Dominican Republic. She especially likes the strong female characters in his work and says they were true to life.
"He definitely portrays the Dominican immigrant community in a funny and lively way," she said. "All my friends who read the book [Oscar Wao] loved it and swear by it," she said.
Díaz was her adviser at Syracuse University.
"I thought he was a great role model," she said. "He was funny, laid back and very approachable."
Caroline Peralta, who grew up in Morris Heights in the Bronx, is an aspiring writer and also looks up to Díaz as a role model. She said that reading about the Trujillo era in Oscar Wao filled in part of her own heritage.
"My mom doesn't talk about that," she said.
The founder of Word Up bookstore, Veronica Liu, was also in the audience. She found the talk very inspiring, and said Díaz has a profound impact on the community. When she first decided to open a bookstore in the Heights, the first thing everyone mentioned was Junot Díaz and his work.
"He hasn't been to the bookstore," Liu said, "but he's kind of like a...patron saint."
Biography
Junot Diaz
(1968- )
Place was never something I took for granted, not when I had two geographies in my heart. I take special pleasure in naming things as well as I can, since all I was taught as a kid was to give things false names. Or to give them no name at all. I find these public/private discussions repressive whether they're being generated from within our community or without. How in the world can anyone form an authentic self when there are so many damn rules about how one should act in the world? Us writers, we're just throwing words up into the wind, hoping that they will carry, and someone, somewhere, sometime, will have a use for them. - Junot Diaz
Junot Díaz (born 31 December 1968 in Santo Domingo) is a contemporary Dominican-American writer and associate professor of writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to the United States with his parents at age six, settling in New Jersey. Central to Díaz's work is the duality of the immigrant experience.
Life
Díaz was born in Villa Juana, a barrio in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He was the third child in a family of five. Throughout most of his early childhood he lived with his mother and grandparents while his father worked in the United States. Díaz immigrated to Parlin, New Jersey in December, 1974, where he was re-united with his father.
He attended Kean College in Union, New Jersey for one year before transferring and ultimately completing his BA at Rutgers College in 1992, majoring in English; there he was involved in a creative-writing living-learning residence hall and in various student organizations and was exposed to the authors who would motivate him into becoming a writer: Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros. He worked his way through college: delivering pool tables, washing dishes, pumping gas and working at Raritan River Steel.
After graduating from Rutgers he was employed at Rutgers University Press as an editorial assistant. He earned his MFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1995, where he wrote most of his first collection. Díaz is active in Dominican community, the fiction editor for the Boston Review, and a founding member of the Voices of Writing Workshop, a writing workshop focused on writers of color.
Work
Junot Diaz is best known for his two major works: the short story collection Drown (1996) and the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). Both were published to critical acclaim. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker magazine which listed him as one of the 20 top writers for the 21st century. He has also been published in Story, The Paris Review, and in the anthologies Best American Short Stories four times (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), and African Voices.
En Espanol:
Junot Diaz habla sobre libros, la secunaria y el dolor en la adolescencia
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Historia y video por Sherry Mazzocchi
Fotos por Sherry Mazzocchi e Isaacc García
Junot Díaz saluda a padres y estudiantes durante un evento reciente de lectura familiar celebrado en la Escuela Secundaria Gregorio Luperón.
El foro vespertino, organizado por el grupo cívico Acción Comunitaria La Aurora, Teatro Las Tablas, Word Up Bookstore, Manhattan Times y The Bronx Free Press, presentaba también libros gratis proporcionados por Barnes & Noble.
Cuevas trajo a su hija, Rossaura de 9 años, esperando que la charla la inspiraría a amar la literatura.
Y de lo que trató Díaz, gran parte estaba dirigido a padres como Cuevas.
"Si está usted aquí acompañado de niños", le dijo él a la audiencia, "entonces usted cree en el poder de la lectura". Sus padres, según explicó, le decían que la educación era algo maravilloso, pero no tomaron acción sobre esa idea.
En su lugar, cuando su madre le atrapaba leyendo libros, lo mandaba a jugar.
Díaz dijo que nadie sabe en que se convertirá un niño eventualmente—y no deberían ser juzgados con rapidez. En su lugar, Díaz dijo que es mejor mantener flexibles las ideas sobre sus hijos y no poner etiquetas.
Durante su último año de secundaria, Díaz estuvo ausente por 130 días. Tenía un GPA de 1.7. Pero su madre nunca lo llamó estúpido o le dijo que terminaría en la prisión.
En su lugar, ella se mantuvo diciendo, "Este muchacho va a ser brillante".
Dice Díaz, dado el que ella nunca lo condenó por su falta de rendimiento en la escuela, creó un espacio para que el cambiara y se convirtiera en académico y escritor.
Cuando un maestro en el auditorio le preguntó qué le habría motivado—y a niños como el—para ir a la escuela, la respuesta fue reveladora.
"Preguntó, ¿recuerda a esa persona a quien usted amó más y quien destrozó su corazón totalmente? "Y recuerda, ¿cuan útil y productivo era usted seis meses después de que le destrozaran el corazón"?
En la escuela, a los chicos les destrozan el corazón a cada rato -- padres, amigos o simplemente la vida.
"Y entonces esperamos que den de patadas en la escuela", dijo él.
Pero necesitan tiempo para lamentarse.
El padre de Díaz abandonó a la familia el mismo año en que su hermano mayor tuvo cáncer.
"No había maestro en el mundo", dijo Díaz, "que impidiera un corazón destrozado y funcionando mal en mi último año de secundaria."
Pero las escuelas son como cronómetros, dijo. Si los chicos no se enmiendan de conformidad con el programa de la escuela, se les tilda de "mal" estudiante. Pero en realidad, solamente son sensibles.
"La única razón por la cual los chicos actúan con rudeza es porque están protegiendo algo muy delicado por dentro. ¿Quién actúa
con más rudeza que la comunidad negra y latina? No conozco a comunidad alguna que actúe con mas rudeza que nosotros", dijo él, "excepto algunas comunidades que están en guerra."
Rosanna, quien llegó temprano y se sentó al frente, dijo que ella se identificaba con los libros de Díaz, especialmente los temas de crecer en un vecindario pobre. Al igual que Díaz, ella proviene también de la Republica Dominicana. Especialmente, le gustan los carácteres femeninos fuertes en el trabajo de Díaz y dice que eran muy reales.
"Definitivamente el caracteriza a la comunidad dominicana inmigrante de una manera muy chistosa y vívida", "Todas mis amistades que leen el libro [Oscar Wao] les ha encantado y juran por él", dijo ella.
Díaz fue su consejero en Syracuse University.
"Yo pensé que él era un gran ejemplo a seguir", menciona. "El era chistoso, tranquilo y muy asequible".
Caroline Peralta, quien creció en Morris Heights en el Bronx, aspira a ser escritora y se fija también en Díaz como ejemplo a seguir. Indicó que para ella, leer sobre la era de Trujillo en Oscar Wao documentó en parte sobre su propia herencia.
"Mi madre no habla sobre eso", siguió comentando.
Veronica Liu, fundadora de la librería Word Up también estuvo presente en el auditorio. Ella encontró la charla muy inspiradora, dijo que Díaz tiene un impacto profundo en la comunidad. Cuando ella decidió abrir una librería en El Alto, lo primero que todo el mundo le mencionó fue a Junot Díaz y su obra.
"El nunca ha estado en la librería", dijo Liu, "pero él es una especie de...santo patrón".
Response Questions: Choose one of the following options for your response:
Option 1: What expectations do parents set for you as a person and/or as a student? What expectations do teachers and school set for you? Friends? Society? Do you ever feel pressured to be a certain way? Is there 'flexibility' to be who you want to be or do all the social pressures shape who we become? Explain and use specific real-world examples and evidence to support your response. Option 2: Reply to a classmate's post:
Summarize the argument made in the previous post and agree or disagree with your classmate. Be specific by pointing out what you agree with or disagree with.
Then add your own response. Use evidence to support your response.
Finally, post a meaningful question to keep the conversation going.
