In The Norton Field Guide pages 809-830 you will read four different argument essays, and on pages 998-1006 you will read two different mixed genre essays that include ideas that could be framed as ar
Page 809 to 830.
ALEX WEISS
Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Virtual Stealing?
Alex Weiss was a student at Arizona State University when he wrote this essay as a blog post for his Work and Play in Contemporary Fiction/Digital Narrative class. The online magazine Slate published it in 2012 in a section titled Future Tense, a partnership among Slate, Arizona State, and the New America Foundation. The purpose of this partnership, as noted by Future Tense, is to explore “how emerging tech- nologies will change the way we live.”
The massively multiplayer online video game RuneScape was the site Thea of a “virtual theft.”
Last week, the Dutch Supreme Court made a curious ruling: it con- victed a teenage gamer of stealing something that doesn’t exist. The defendant stole two virtual items while playing RuneScape, a free mas- sively multiplayer online (MMO) video game. According to the Associated Press, the defendant’s attorney argued that the stolen amulet and shield “were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value.” The court, however, disagreed, ruling that the time the thirteen-year-old victim spent in the game trying to earn the objects gave them value.
As a reformed online-gaming thief, this ruling makes no sense to me. It places too much value on the time people spend playing video games. Video games are not work or investments for which people should be compensated; they are escapism.
During my disappointing teenage years, I played an MMO set in space- capitalist hell titled EVE Online. EVE is the rat race imploded upon itself, a game that brings out the worst of its subscribers’ humanity. In EVE, players can spend months working toward a goal, anything from starting a small in-game business to the production of a massive ship that requires billions of EVE’s in-game currency and months of man-hours. These projects may seem foolish to those outside of the gaming world, but they represent a great deal to their creators. And these hopes and dreams can be destroyed rapidly by another player who just wants to be a jerk. That's the whole point, actually.
EVE is one of the few MMOs that encourage players to use real money to purchase in-game currency, called isk, which in turn is used to build highly desirable objects in the virtual world. It is also the only game that actively allows thievery in the context of the game world. In fact, player sat- isfaction in EVE is based on taking chances and risking everything you've spent time building up. For instance, as Kotaku details, in 2010 pirates destroyed a ship that another player had filled with six years' worth of in-game subscription renewals. At the time, the six years' worth of play was valued at more than one thousand dollars in real money through EVE's rather complicated financial system.
A few years ago, I could have been one of those pirates. In EVE, I enjoyed messing with people, making fake investments, engaging in corpo- ration thievery, and even having an extended e-relationship with someone who thought I was a girl. I'd join corporations, running rainmaker scame by convincing the leadership that an antagonistic group was out to destroy everything we had built. Sometimes I even hired decoys to disrupt our sup- ply lines just enough 50 that the monetary loss got their attention. After receiving the "bribe" money, they'd go away while I reaped the rewards of a now-trustworthy member of the target organization. After I had taken all I needed to take, I either blocked them or kept their enraged messages for posterity.
RuneScape, the game the Dutch minor was playing, is a bit different from both EVE, whose point is to engage in Bernie Madoff-esque shenani- gans, and the more well-known World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has a very strict policy against scamming, thievery, and even harsh language; violators can be banned, and victims' lost goods are refunded. The devel- opers of RuneScape, however, didn't explicitly state that the thief couldn't do what he did, nor did they refund the victim his item. So here, we have a real-world court attempting to punish someone for behavior permitted within the realm. The real and virtual laws conflict, and it seems unfair to penalize the teenager for this. Reportedly, the player also beat up his victim, for which he should, of course, be punished. But attempting to bring real-world law into virtual realms-and putting monetary value on time spent immersed in a virtual world seems dangerous.
Engaging with the Text
1. The THESIS of Alex Weiss's argument is "Video games are not work or investments for which people should be compensated; they are escapism." What REASONS and EVIDENCE does he offer to support this thesis? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
2. At the end of his essay, Weiss writes that "attempting to bring real- world law into virtual realms-and putting monetary value on time spent immersed in a virtual world seems dangerous." Given the rul- ing in the case at the Dutch Supreme Court, what policies and issues
SHAYNA COOK
Poor Shaming-But This Time in the School Cafeteria
Shayna Cook is the senior manager of Early Learning Systems at the Bainum Family Foundation, where she works on programs to support children, families, and early childhood educators. Cook is a former pre-K and third-grade teacher, and, more recently, a policy analyst in early childhood education at New America, a think tank and civic platform. Her writing has appeared in Education Week, Slate, Washington Monthly, and New America Weekly, where this essay was published in May 2017.
Tew Mexico State Senator Michael Padilla recently ended a common N practice that he was subject to in school: "lunch shaming." When he was young, Senator Padilla didn't have enough money to pay for his school Junch. This meant that in order to get a hot meal, he had to pay off his "debt" to the school by helping with janitorial duties, like mopping the cafeteria floors. The experience stayed with him, and his bill to end lunch shaming was signed into law by Republican Governor Susana Martinez.
Of course, Senator Padilla's story is not an isolated one. Lunch shaming happens across the country, and it takes many forms. Some students are stamped on their forearms with a message for their parents saying "lunch money," others have their hot lunch thrown out in front of them, and still others are given cheese sandwiches while their paying classmates have US Department of Agriculture-approved hot lunches.
But whatever form it takes, this shaming (and the National School Lunch Program in general, given the FDA's relaxed new stance on school nutrition) has recently been thrust into the spotlight-and other states would be wise to take a cue from New Mexico's lunchroom pivot in the months ahead.
New Mexico's bill, cited as the first of its kind, bans any practice that publicly identifies or stigmatizes students for being unable to pay for lunch and it makes sure students receive a healthy lunch, regardless of their ability to pay. Though New Mexico represents a small share of the federal National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which operates in over 100,000 schools nationwide and costs over 10 billion dollars a year, it has become a leading example of how to deal with the challenges of administering a massive public program at the state level in an equitable and humane way.
Part of the reason for the high cost of the NSLP is that it provides free and reduced meals for students living in poverty. But enrollment in free and reduced meal programs isn't generally automatic, and some of the roughly 48 percent of students who qualify may not actually receive these benefits. Or put another way, some of the students who have been subject to lunch-shaming practices live in economic circumstances that mean their parents are genuinely unable to afford putting food in their children's mouths at lunchtime.
But the consequences of this shaming follow students outside of the cafeteria.
Eteriacs liken lunch-shaming practices to bullying, Rogi Banks, a How ard University doctoral candidate and student leader for the National Asso- ciation of School Psychology, explained the following to us in an email: “Lunch shaming’ can easily become an acceptable form of school-wide bullying…. School psychologists spend a lot of time working witooleide ers and administrators to minimize the prevalence of bullying with teach- dents. Adults may also need support in understanding the role they play in this phenomenon Bullying can have long-lasting the role they as increased anxiety, sadness, and physical health complaints. It makes sense, then, that lunch shaming, as a form of school-sanctioned bullying, could do the same.
Shaming students for unpaid debt at school also has damning paral- Jels to punitive practices that low-income adults face when they are unable to pay minor debts. As the nation was recently reminded in the wake of investigations into policing and municipal court practices in Ferguson, Mis- souri, the use of debtors prisons is still alive and well in America. Ferguson residents (as a DOJ report and numerous other investigations by both news organizations and legal services organizations allege) have routinely been slapped with arrest, jail time, and compounded debt when they are unable to pay such minor municipal fees as parking tickets.
When students are made to clean the cafeteria as punishment for being unable to pay for lunch, you don’t have to read between the lines to see early traces of the same system that disproportionately punishes low-income and historically disadvantaged adults for minor debt.
To be sure, school nutrition departments are responsible for keeping to a balanced budget, and this is hardly an easy task-some 76 percent of school districts had unpaid debt from school lunches at the end of the 2014-2015 school year. But as a recent New York Times article points out, school nutrition directors have other options at their disposal to ensure a balanced budget, such as using revenue from other, non-subsidized caf- eteria sales. Regardless, schools should cut students out of the process and work with parents directly to resolve any unpaid cafeteria debts. New Mexico's new law specifically requires this, and it lays out a clear blueprint for resolving debt issues with parents.
But what else can schools do? For students whose debt remains unpaid because of dificulty accessing free lunch programs, school districts can beca reconsider their strategy for targeting free and reduced lunch access, including implementing automatic sign-up, applying for community eli gibility, or even providing universal free meals to ensure free meals reach gibery student who needs them. For instance, New Mexico's law works to provide easier enrollment in the national free and reduced lunch program, particularly for children experiencing homelessness.
"A 6-year-old maybe up to about an 11- or a 12-year-old, a 14-year- old, they have no power to fix this issue," State Senator Padilla said in an interview with NPR. "I don't know why we're punishing them. So this [law) prohibits that... and it focuses more on the child's well-being rather than the debt itself."
Texas and California have already followed New Mexico's lead-both states have introduced legislation to ban the practice of lunch shaming. But having just a handful of states take action isn't enough to extinguish the problem. If other states are serious about ending practices that shame chil- dren for living in poverty, they, too, should implement a similar prohibition.
Engaging with the Text
1. What claim is at the heart of Shayna Cook's argument? Is her posi- tion CLEAR AND ARGUABLE? Why or why not?
2. In what ways does Cook establish a TRUSTWORTHY TONE? How does she make it clear that she has extensive knowledge of her subject?
3. A successful argument considers OTHER POSITIONS and opposing views. Does Cook offer any counterarguments to her position? How effectively does she acknowledge-and then refute-opposing views?
4. Cook's argument focuses on lunch shaming, but there are other kinds of "poor shaming" that occur in schools today. Do you think the gov ernment has a responsibility to pass laws to try to end such practices? Why or why not?
Black Mamas' Lives Matter The Severe Racial Disparity in Maternal Mortality Rates
Jada Jones is majoring in psychology at Tulane University, and she plans to attend graduate school to pursue a PhD in psychology. She hopes to have a career as a clinical health psychologist. This essay, which she wrote in Professor Matthew Griffin's English 1010 class, won the Purvis E. Boyette Memorial Award, a first-year essay prize at Tulane. The in- text documentation and works-cited list follow ML.A guidelines. As you read, notice how Jones appeals to readers' values.
Pet tears glide down the man's cheeks as he calms the screams of his W daughter's voice. The father curls his daughter closer into his arms and kisses her forehead as she begins to fall asleep. From a bystander's perspective, this might be viewed as a common exchange between a father and daughter, but this is no ordinary scenario. In the hospital's waiting room, the father paces, and tears continue to fall down his cheeks as he sways his sleeping daughter side to side in his arms. To an outsider, it might look as if the father is crying tears of joy because of the birth of his first child. Unfortunately, his tears are tears of sadness, because his wife, who is African American, has just become another statistic. The father is weeping, because ten minutes ago he has received the news that his wife died after she gave birth to their daughter, Hope.
The United States is a powerful industrialized nation with the funds to provide adequate care to expecting mothers; many individuals would assume that the United States falls within the top twenty developed nations with the lowest maternal mortality rates. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The United States has a higher maternal mortality rate than many other industrialized countries. What's even more surprising is the fact that the number of maternal deaths in the United States has only increased over the years. According to Dr. Mary-Ann Etiebet, the execu tive director of a program that aims to reduce maternal mortality all over the world, "The United States is ranked 46th when it comes to maternal mortality. That’s behind countries like Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan” (qtd. In “Keeping”). The reality of this statement should sound alarming, because “[i]n the U.S., at least two pregnant and/or delivering women die per day. The ‘near deaths’ amount to 60,000 a year” (“Keeping”).
If this statistic still doesn’t astound you, consider the following fact: “Black women are three to four times more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women” (“Black Women’s Maternal Health”). Currently in the United States, there is an ongoing maternal death epidemic, but what’s even worse are the research studies that show a large disparity in the maternal mortality rates between Black women and White women. One journalist writes that “[a]ccording to the CDC, from 2011-2013, black women experienced roughly 43.5 deaths per 100,000 live births on average, compared to 12.7 deaths for white mothers” (Lockhart). Since then, this racial disparity has continued to increase. As a result, many Black women are pointlessly losing their lives due to the inher- ent racism embedded deep within the medical care system and medical experts’ failure to immediately act on and listen to Black women’s medi- cal concerns. To decrease the large gap in maternal deaths between these two groups, there needs to be more attention brought to this maternal epidemic, increased advocacy for the reformation of the US health care system, and the creation of incentive programs to give Black mothers the necessary tools to have a healthy pregnancy.
Research studies from university departments such as the Depart- ment of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have shown an increasing gap in maternal deaths between Black women and White women. In the past, some experts have specu- lated that the discrepancy stems from factors other than race, such as socioeconomic status, education, age, and other conditional factors, but research has shown that these factors can’t fully explain the discrepancy. In a report published by the Center for American Progress, Cristina Novoa and Jamila Taylor note:
Most research on health disparities in maternal and infant mortal- ity focus on African American women’s greater exposure to risk factors around the time of pregnancy, including poverty and low socioeconomic status; limited access to prenatal care; and poor physical and mental health. Although African American women are more likely than non-Hispanic white women to experience these interrelated risk factors, research shows that this greater likelihood does not fully account for the racial gap in outcomes.
Moreover, studies have been conducted to prove that when factors such Moreovne, education, and age were controlled for, there was still a large disparity in maternal deaths between Black women and White women. Novoa and Taylor write:
Numerous studies show that after controlling for education and socioeconomic status, African American women remain at higher risk for maternal and infant mortality. Indeed, one study showed that after controlling for income; gestational age, and maternal age and health status, the odds of dying from pregnancy or delivery complications were almost three times higher for African Ameri- can women than they were for non-Hispanic white women.
Many studies have been conducted to understand why the racial dis- parity in maternal deaths has continued to increase if factors such as income status, age, and education are not the primary causes. In the United States, Black women are facing not only structural racism within society in general, but also institutional racism in the health care industry-health clinics often fail to provide Black women with the access to maternity education programs and the high-quality prenatal care that White women are given when they go to similar or better health facilities. This form of institutional racism stems from the fact that many health professionals have their own discriminatory biases toward minorities, and so, as a result, clinics fail to administer the same standard of care to a pregnant Black woman as they would to a White woman.
This kind of institutional discrimination in the health care system causes Black mothers to face high levels of stress. In fact, "an issue brief published by the Center for American Progress suggests that stress induced by racial discrimination plays a significant role in the high rates of black women's maternal mortality. This trend remains consistent across all edu- cation levels and socioeconomic statuses" (Pierre). Black mothers from var ious socioeconomic and academic backgrounds are visiting well-operated hospitals to seek counsel and to voice their medical concerns, but their complaints of pain or other symptoms are being ignored. Instead, Black women are often dismissed after going through hours of labor and pain without being provided adequate medical attention.
Because health care facilities are administering low-quality care to Black women, many feel as if their pregnancy is less important and that their medical needs are not being taken seriously. P. R. Lockhart gives two examples of implicit bias: "The young Florida mother-to-be whose breath- ing problems were blamed on obesity when in fact her lungs were filling with fluid and her heart was failing. The Arizona mother whose anesthe siologist assumed she smoked marijuana because of the way she did her hair." These examples represent a few Black women whose complaints of pain or other symptoms were ignored, with fatal or near-fatal results.
If you take into account the economic and racial barriers Black women face, a secondary cause for the large gap in maternal mortality rates between White women and Black women becomes clear. Some Black women do not have the financial means to access good health care or live in affluent neighborhoods. David Williams states:
In 2013, for every household income dollar earned by whites, Hispanics earned 70 cents and blacks just 59 cents. These eco- nomic disparities affect where people live, learn, work, play, and worship-and all of these factors can in turn impact health. For instance, if blacks or other nonwhites can only afford to live in poorer neighborhoods, they may face greater exposure to toxic chemicals, or have limited access to health care or healthy foods.
This wealth disparity can partly explain why Black women are vulnerable to pregnancy-related deaths and other health issues, as can a lack of access to high-quality hospitals with adequate resources. Erika Stallings writes:
Researchers have also identified a connection between racial seg- regation and the quality of care a patient receives: A black person who lives in a segregated community and undergoes surgery is more likely to do so at a hospital with higher mortality rates; facili- ties in such communities are often lacking in resources compared with those in primarily white areas.
Due to these disparities, Black women have a higher maternal mortality rate in the United States than women of any other race.
In the Unising racial disparity in mater be brought to natis a major problem in the United States that needs to be brought to national atten problelack mothers are dying during or after childbirth because of com plications that could be prevented if these women were provided with plicquate care. It is imperative that individuals and betand this tragic truth and work to decrease the gap in maternal deaths between Black women and White women in the United States. Currently, there is some work being done on this issue at the local and national levels, and “civil soci ety advocates such as Black Mamas Matter are calling for attention and action to address the unjust differences in preventable maternal mortal. Ity in the United States” (“Maternal Health”), but additional solutions are needed as well.
In order to reduce the maternal death rate of Black women, major health care reform in the United States is needed. There are other solu tions that can be implemented to decrease maternal deaths-for instance, offering alternative professional birthing services, such as doulas and mid- wives but the root cause of the increasing number of maternal deaths is the discriminatory bias that is embedded in the health care system in the United States. More programs need to be put in place to teach doctors and physicians how to provide adequate maternal care to all their patients regardless of an individual’s race or ethnic background. This solution is necessary because Black women are not receiving the same quality of care that White women are receiving, and, as a result, Black women are growing less trusting of health professionals and less willing to go to clinics because their “health struggles have been systemically minimized or dismissed, funneling them into medical facilities that are less equipped to handle their pregnancies" (Lockhart). Eradicating the discriminatory bias embed- ded in the health care system would cause women to have more trust in the health care system, would allow more women access to adequate care, and would help decrease the racial disparity in maternal mortality rates.
Page 998 to 1006.
IBRAM X. KENDI
Stamped from the Beginning The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Ibram X. Kendi is a historian and prominent antiracist scholar. He is the award-winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of eight books and the founding director of the Boston University Center for Anti- racist Research. His book The Black Campus Movement (2012) won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize, and his book Stamped from the Begin- ning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016), from which the excerpt below is taken, won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The notes are taken from the original text. Stamped from the Beginning inspired a remix for young adults entitled Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020), which Kendi coauthored with Jason Reynolds. A selection from that remix follows the essay below.
Ichard Mather and John Cotton inher- Ri ited from the English thinkers of their generation the old racist ideas that African slavery was natural and normal and holy. These racist ideas were nearly two centu- ries old when Puritans used them in the 1630s to legalize and codify New England slavery and Virginians had done the same in the 1620s. Back in 1415, Prince Henry and his brothers had convinced their father, King John of Portugal, to cap- ture the principal Muslim trading depot in the western Mediterranean: Ceuta, on the northeastern tip of Morocco. These broth- ers were envious of Muslim riches, and they sought to eliminate the Islamic mid- dleman so that they could find the south- ern source of gold and Black captives.
After the battle, Moorish prisoners left Prince Henry spellbound as they detailed trans-Saharan trade routes down into the disintegrating Mali Empire. Since Muslims still controlled these desert routes, Prince Maly decided to “seek the lands by the way of the sea.” He sought out those African lands until his death in 1460, using his position as the Grand Mas- ter of Portugal’s wealthy Military Order of Christ (successor of the Knights Templar) to draw venture capital and loyal men for his African expeditions.
In 1452, Prince Henry’s nephew, King Afonso V, commissioned Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a biography of the life and slave-trading work of his “beloved uncle.” Zurara was a learned and obedient commander in Prince Henry’s Military Order of Christ. In recording and celebrating Prince Henry’s life, Zurara was also implicitly obscuring his Grand Master’s mon- etary decision to exclusively trade in African slaves. In 1453, Zurara finished the inaugural defense of African slave-trading, the first European book on Africans in the modern era. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea begins the recorded history of anti-Black racist ideas. Zurara’s inaugural racist ideas, in other words, were a product of, not a producer of, Prince Henry’s racist policies concerning African slave-trading.
The Portuguese made history as the first Europeans to sail along the Atlantic beyond the Western Sahara’s Cape Bojador in order to bring enslaved Africans back to Europe, as Zurara shared in his book. The six caravels, carrying 240 captives, arrived in Lagos, Portugal, on August 6, 1444. Prince Henry made the slave auction into a spectacle to show the Portu- guese had joined the European league of serious slave-traders of African people. For some time, the Genoese of Italy, the Catalans of northern Spain, and the Valencians of eastern Spain had been raiding the Canary Islands or purchasing African slaves from Moroccan traders. Zurara distinguished the Portuguese by framing their African slave-trading ventures as mis- sionary expeditions. Prince Henry’s competitors could not play that mind game as effectively as he did, in all likelihood because they still traded so many Eastern Europeans.2
But the market was changing. Around the time the Portuguese opened their sea route to a new slave export area, the old slave export area started to close up. In Ibn Khaldun’s day, most of the captives sold in Western Europe were Eastern Europeans who had been seized by Turkish raiders from areas around the Black Sea. So many of the seized captives were "Slavs" that the ethnic term became the root word for "slave" in most Western European languages. By the mid-1400s, Slavic communities had built forts against slave raiders, causing the supply of Slavs in Western Europe's slave market to plunge at around the same time that the supply of Africans was increasing. As a result, Western Europeans began to see the natural Slav(e) not as White, but Black.
The captives in 1444 disembarked from the ship and marched to an open space outside of the city, according to Zurara's chronicle. Prince Henry oversaw the slave auction, mounted on horseback, beaming in delight. Some of the captives were "white enough, fair to look upon, and well pro- portioned," while others were "like mulattoes," Zurara reported. Still others were "as black as Ethiops, and so ugly" that they almost appeared as visitors from Hell. The captives included people in the many shades of the Tuareg Moors as well as the dark-skinned people whom the Tuareg Moors may have enslaved. Despite their different ethnicities and skin colors, Zurara viewed them as one people one inferior people.4
Zurara made it a point to remind his readers that Prince Henry's "chief riches" in quickly seizing forty-six of the most valuable captives "lay in his own purpose; for he reflected with great pleasure upon the salvation of those souls that before were lost." In building up Prince Henry's evangeli- cal justification for enslaving Africans, Zurara reduced these captives to barbarians who desperately needed not only religious but also civil salva- tion. "They lived like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings," he wrote. What's more, "they have no knowledge of bread or wine, and they were without covering of clothes, or the lodgement of houses; and worse than all, they had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in bestial sloth." In Portugal, their lot was "quite the contrary of what it had been." Zurara imagined slavery in Portugal as an improvement over their free state in Africa.5
Zurara's narrative covered from 1434 to 1447. During that period, Zur- ara estimated, 927 enslaved Africans were brought to Portugal, "the greater part of whom were turned into the true path of salvation." Zurara failed to mention that Prince Henry received the royal fifth (quinto), or about 185 of those captives, for his immense fortune. But that was irrelevant to hi s mission, a mission he accomplished. For convincing readers, successive popes, and the reading European world that Prince Henry's Portugal did not engage in the slave trade for money, Zurara was handsomely rewarded as Portugal's chief royal chronicler, and he was given two more lucrative commanderships in the Military Order of Christ. Zurara's bosses quickly reaped returns from their slave trading. In 1466, a Czech traveler noticed that the king of Portugal was making more selling captives to foreigners "than from all the taxes levied on the entire kingdom. "6
Zurara circulated the manuscript of The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea to the royal court as well as to scholars, investors, and captains, who then read and circulated it throughout Portugal and Spain. Zurara died in Lisbon in 1474, but his ideas about slavery endured as the slave trade expanded. By the 1490s, Portuguese explorers had crept south- ward along the West African coast, rounding the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. In their growing networks of ports, agents, ships, crews, and financiers, pioneering Portuguese slave-traders and explorers circu- lated the racist ideas in Zurara's book faster and farther than the text itself had reached. The Portuguese became the primary source of knowledge on unknown Africa and the African people for the original slave-traders and enslavers in Spain, Holland, France, and England. By the time Ger- man printer Valentim Fernandes published an abridged version of Zurara's book in Lisbon in 1506, enslaved Africans and racist ideas-had arrived in the Americas."
Notes
1. P. E. Russell, Prince Henry "the Navigator": A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 6.
2. Ibid., 249, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Charles Raymond Beazley, and Edgar Prestage, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, 2 vols. (Lon-
don: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1896), 1, 6, 7, 29. 3. William McKee Evans, Open Wound: The Long View of Race in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 17-18.
4. Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 22-23.
JASON REYNOLDS AND IBRAM X. KENDI
Stamped
Racism, Antiracism, and You
Jason Reynolds is an award-winning author of novels and poetry for young-adult and middle-grade audiences. His first novel, When I Was the Greatest (2014), won the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award for New Talent, and his novel As Brave As You (2016) won the 2016 Kirkus Prize. His book Long Way Down (2017), a novel in verse, was a Newbery Honor book, a Printz Honor book, and an Edgar Award Win ner for Best Young Adult Fiction, among other honors. He coauthored the remix Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020) with Ibram X Kendi. (See p. 998 for more information on Ibram X. Kendi as a historian and leading antiracist scholar.)
o where do we start? We might as well just jump in and begin with Sch the world's first racist. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, How could anyone know who the world's first racist was? Or you're thinking, Yeah, tell us so we can find out where he lives. Well, he's dead. Been dead for six hundred years. Thankfully. And before I tell you about him, I have to give you a little context.
Europe. That's where we are. Where he was. As I'm sure you've learned by now, the Europeans (Italians, Portuguese, Span- ish, Dutch, French, British) were conquer- ing everyone, because if there's one thing all history books do say, it's that Europe- ans conquered the majority of the world. The year is 1415, and Prince Henry (there's always a Prince Henry) convinced his father, King John of Portugal, to basically pull a caper and capture the main Muslim trading depot on the northeast. en tip of Morocco. Why? Simple. Prince Henry was jealous. The Muslims had riches, and if Prince Henry could get the Muslims out of the way, then those riches and resources could be easily accessed. Stolen. A jack move. A robbery. Plain and simple. The take, a bountiful supply of gold. And Africans. That's right, the Portuguese were capturing Moorish people, who would become prisoners of war in a war the Moors hadn't planned on fighting but had to, to survive. And by prisoners, I mean property. Human property.
But neither Prince Henry nor King John of Portugal was given the title World's First Racist, because the truth is, capturing people wasn't an unusual thing back then. Just a fact of life. That illustrious moniker would go to a man named neither Henry nor John but something way more awe- some, who did something not awesome at all-Gomes Eanes de Zurara. Zurara, which sounds like a cheerleader chant, did just that. Cheerleaded? Cheerled? Whatever. He was a cheerleader. Kind of. Not the kind who roots for a team and pumps up a crowd, but he was a man who made sure the team he played for was represented and heralded as great. He made sure Prince Henry was looked at as a brilliant quarterback making ingenious plays, and that every touchdown was the mark of a superior player. How did Zurara do this? Through literature. Storytelling.
He wrote the story, a biography of the life and slave trading of Prince Henry. Zurara was an obedient commander in Prince Henry's Military Order of Christ and would eventually complete his book, which would become the first defense of African slave trading. It was called The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. In it, Zurara bragged about the Portuguese being early in bringing enslaved Africans from the Western Sahara Cape, and spoke about owning humans as if they were exclusive pairs of sneak- ers. Again, this was common. But he upped the brag by also explaining what made Portugal different from their European neighbors in terms of slave trading. The Portuguese now saw enslaving people as missionary work. A mission from God to help civilize and Christianize the African "savages." At least, that's what Zurara claimed. And the reason this was a one-up on his competitors, the Spanish and Italians, was because they were still enslav- ing eastern Europeans, as in White people (not called White people back
Ace, his trick shot, was that the Portuguese had enslaved Africans (of all shades, by the way) supposedly for the purpose of saving then). Zurara’s their wretched souls.
Ezurara made Prince Henry out to be some kind of youth minister canvassing the street, doing community work, when what Prince Henry realy was, was more of a gangster. More of a shakedown man, a kidnap per getting a commission for bringing the king captives. Prince kidnaps cut like a as a equaling money, money, mone, Henry’s it was always framed as a noble cause, thanks to Zurara, who whough paid for his pen. Seems like Zurara was just a liar, right? A fiction writer? So what makes him the world’s first racist? Well, Zurara was the first person to write about and defend Black human ownership, and this single document began the recorded history of anti-Black racist ideas. You know how the kings are always attached to where they rule? Like, King John of Portugal? Well, if Gomes Eanes de Zurara was the king of anything (which he wasn’t), he would’ve been King Gomes of Racism.
Zurara’s book, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, was a hit. And you know what hits do-they spread. Like a pop song that everyone claims to hate, but everyone knows the words to, and then sud- denly no one hates the song anymore, and instead it becomes an anthem. Zurara’s book became an anthem. A song sung all across Europe as the pri- mary source of knowledge on unknown Africa and African peoples for the original slave traders and enslavers in Spain, Holland, France, and England.
Zurara depicted Africans as savage animals that needed taming. This depiction over time would even begin to convince some African people that they were inferior, like al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, a well-educated Moroccan who was on a diplomatic journey along the Mediterranean Sea when he was captured and enslaved. He was eventu- ally freed by Pope Leo X, who converted him to Christianity, renamed him Johannes Leo (he later became known as Leo Africanus, or Leo the African), and possibly commissioned him to write a survey of Africa. And in that survey, Africanus echoed Zurara’s sentiments of Africans, his own people. He said they were hypersexual savages, making him the first known Afri- can racist. When I was growing up, we called this “drinking the Kool-Aid” or “selling out.” Either way, Zurara’s documentation of the racist idea that Africans needed slavery in order to be fed and taught Jesus, and that it was all ordained by God, began to seep in and stick to the European cul tural psyche. And a few hundred years later, this idea would eventually reach America.
Engaging with the Text
1. COMPARE AND CONTRAST the original excerpt from Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America with this excerpt from the remix, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. Identify two features that these works share and two features that they do not share.
2. One key feature of a remix is a CONNECTION TO THE ORIGINAL SUBJECT. Here, the connection between the original and the remix is fairly obvious they tell the same story, in different ways, about the origins of the racist ideas that eventually led to slavery in the United States. Why do you think the authors chose to do a remix of the origi nal? What is gained in the remix? What is lost?
3. How would you describe the tone of this remix? Is the tone appropri ate for Reynolds and Kendi's AUDIENCE? Why or why not? What other tone might they have tried? Do you think a different tone would have been as effective?
4. Both the original and the remix use the same MEDIUM-they are both excerpts from print books. What would have to change if the remix were a video or a podcast? What medium do you think you would find most compelling? Why?
5. For Writing. Create a new remix of the two excerpts above in a differ- ent medium. Consider your intended audience as well as the PURPOSE of your remix. What are you able to convey more persuasively in the new medium? What, if anything, gets lost?
