online+discussion

====The online discussion portion of this unit is meant to develop critical thinking skills about various readings and other media discussed in this course. This should be a platform that students can respond to each others comments and questions. ====

Possible beginning questions for discussion [|nicenet.net] or other platform:
//**Bad Boys**//, by Ann Arnett Ferguson: []


 * 1) What does it mean to hear adults say that you are bound for jail and to understand that the future predicted for you is “doing time” inside prison walls?
 * 2) Do you think that children like ten-year-old Lamar are innocent victims of arbitrary acts?
 * 3) Do you have a detention experience such as those described as being sent to the “Punishing Room”? If yes/no do you think that this is an effective form of discipline? Is there a “hidden curriculum” in the use of this form of discipline?
 * 4) How does Ferguson demonstrate in Bad Boys that society sets up black males for failure and incarceration? What are specific examples of discriminatory treatment?

//Invisible// Man, by Ralph Ellison: [| http://reading-group-center.knopfdoubleday.com/2010/01/09/invisible-man-reading-group-guide/] []


 * 1) One drawback of invisibility is that “you ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world” [p. 4]. How does the narrator try to prove that he exists?
 * 2) How does the narrator’s briefcase encapsulate his history? Consider the contents of the briefcase. Consider also the dream that he has about the briefcase after the “battle royal.” How does the briefcase relate to the narrator’s position as a fugitive? What might the briefcase tell us about the narrator’s identity?
 * 3) What is the significance of the grandfather’s deathbed speech [p.16]? Whom or what has he betrayed?
 * 4) The “battle royal” sequence portrays black men fighting each other for the entertainment of whites. Does Ellison ever portray similar combats between blacks and whites? To what end?
 * 5) Are there similarities in the way that the narrator is treated at the battle royal and in the way that Mr. __#|Norton__ is treated in the Golden Day? What are the differences between the two situations? Why is the narrator such a threat to Dr. Bledsoe?
 * 6) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Compare and contrast the ideologies of the Brotherhood and the __#|college__. How does each ideology breed blindness and invisibility? What conflicts do they cause for the narrator?
 * 7) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">What black men does the protagonist choose as mentors or role models? Do they prove to be any more trustworthy than his white “benefactors”? What about those figures whose authority and advice the narrator rejects—for example, the vet in The Golden Day and the separatist Ras the Exhorter? What characters in Invisible Man, if any, represent sources of moral authority and stability?
 * 8) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">What makes Ellison’s narrator invisible? What is the relationship between his invisibility and other people’s blindness—both involuntary and willful? Is the protagonist’s invisibility due solely to his skin color? Is it only the novel’s white characters who refuse to see him?
 * 9) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Why might Tod Clifton have left the Brotherhood to peddle demeaning dancing Sambo dolls? What does the narrator mean when he says: “It was as though he [Clifton] had chosen…to fall outside of history”? What does the extended metaphor of dolls (the Sambo doll, for example) mean? What do they say about the power of racial stereotypes? How would you describe Ellison’s vision of history and the role that African-Americans play within it?
 * 10) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">What is the [|relationship] between individual identity and community identity? Is it possible to remain true to both? Must the two always conflict? How does the narrator fail or succeed to assert his individuality amid communities such as __#|the college__, the Brotherhood, and Harlem?