Final Paper Outline for Argumentative Essay

Argumentative Essay Outline:

Introduction:

Hook:

A river is polluted with trash and the water and air are dark grey because of the run-off chemicals from the e-waste being burned nearby because no one has use for it. This river is not part of an imaginary story from a fairytale. This river is part of our reality, caused by the impact of e-waste onto developing countries.

Background:

E-waste is electrical and electro-equipment that have been discarded. Currently, people often throw away their old appliances such as televisions, computers, wires, etc. Although when these are thrown away, recyclers are to recycle all the materials that have been used. But instead, the e-waste is send over seas to developing countries for it be recycled; where it creates negative environment impacts and allows for the discussion of developed countries for where or not, it’s racist to send it over seas to developing countries, in Asia and Africa.

-       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78

Thesis:

-The effects of violence of inefficient recycling should be re-examined by developed countries because it promotes e-waste, negative environmental impacts and environmental racism.

Developing your argument:

Claim #1: Inefficient Recycling promotes e-waste

Evidence:

a. Products created by companies are “designed for the dump” as in they are replaceable. This is due to inefficient design made by the designers of the product.

b. Recycling e-waste creates a false hope because the “recycling being done, is not efficient. The e-waste recycling is not being done in developed countries because it exposes toxics and harmful chemicals into the atmosphere to people who live close by. The e-waste instead is being sent overseas to people in developing countries ex. Qiyui China.

c. The form of recycling being done is inefficient and harmful to where people are taking apart the wires to get the metals inside and then burn the plastic. This allows for a system of buying items for a time and then throwing it away or to be “recycled” some place where it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDSWGV3jGek

- Inefficient design problems and results contributing to e-waste.

Claim #2: E-waste promotes negative environmental impacts

Evidence:

a. By burning the e-waste after retrieving the metals, it allows for CO2 to be expelled in the atmosphere and polluting the air quality, this leads to respiratory cancer in the lungs and pre-mature babies.

b. The e-waste that has no further value outside the metal or materials is easily thrown away, creating large amounts of landfills of useless piles of garbage.

c. Water pollution is extremely high, because of the CO2, mercury, and flame retarded being exposed into the water by the e-waste that was not used.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDSWGV3jGek

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tVdTBnBXw0

- This needs descriptive details on more negative environmental impacts.

Claim #3: E-waste promotes Environmental Racism

Evidence:

a. The e-waste being produced by developing countries is being sent over to developing countries, these countries are located in Asia and Africa.

b. The value of life is of lesser value in developing countries than those in developed countries. People in developing countries are worth only 1/15 the amount of a person in developed countries.

c. The placement of this e-waste causes concern whether or not if it is a cultural design problem to place waste in areas where the value of that area and the people in in are of lesser value.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78

-Race, Class and the Global Politics of Environmental Inequality by Peter Newell

-Violent Environments by Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts

-The dominant and subordinate groups on a global perspective

Refuting Opponents’ Arguments:

Opposing View #1:

E-waste is good for business; it creates jobs and income for people and profit for the company.

Refutation 1:

E-waste does impact business as it allows the general public to consume their goods, by providing jobs and income for people so they can buy their product. Although the health hazards that are happening because of the harmful materials, being used in the production and recycling process, e-waste recycling exposes people to harmful chemicals that effect their health with life long effects.

-       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78

-       Need more research on what chemicals and how they are affecting people specifically.

-        

Opposing View #2:

Why should the companies and business have to deal with it? It’s not the CEO’s or employee’s problem.

Refutation 2

While it is not the CEO’s and employees’ fault for the e-waste, it is the lack of efficient design being made to keep the products away from being thrown away so easily. By having these products being cheaply but costly made, the designers working for the companies can create more without it affecting themselves. Unless they were in the situation where it negatively affects them then they have to fix the design of the product before it becomes e-waste and becoming a part of inefficient recycling.

-       - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78

-       -Violent Environments by Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts

Conclusion:

-Inefficient recycling causes people in developed countries to depose of e-waste without it being a concern of theirs. This leads in the lack of knowledge from the developed countries, since they are creating the “designed for the dump” product and buy a new product because the old one has to be thrown away, it becomes an out of sight, out of mind. By sending e-waste overseas, it impacts people in developing countries who don’t have the means to properly recycle e-waste and allowing pollution to grow because there is no value to the materials not being used for their metals or materials.

-more information will be included from the sources mentioned below the paragraph.

Soundings Manifesto Response

Neoliberalism is a system in business where it transfers from the public sphere into a private one, which creates a sense of individualism within a global setting. But the result of this individualism is that it’s not at all individualized. The individuals become part of a class: the two classes are the dominant or oppressor group or the subordinate the oppressed group. The classes have become separated due to the ideology of the oppressor group being allowed to generate a profit and use the oppressed group in order to do so. This causes a lack of support from the oppressor group onto the oppressed because they don’t want to acknowledge what they are doing is unfair or unjust, it’s just in their mind a form of business. This results in classes becoming unequal in distribution of values and power, their income levels, the enforcement of gender roles, and authority levels that is enforced by the oppressor group onto the oppressed group.

Thesis statement:

Neoliberalism is the result of the individualism in the market.

1.     Who are the individuals?

2.     What is the ideology behind the individualism in the market?

3.     What is the result of individualism in the market?

Oppressor groups and oppressed group help enforce the ideology of neoliberalism in the market.

1.     What are the results of being in the oppressor or oppressed groups?

2.     How do they enforce the ideology of neoliberalism? Is this bad or good?

3.     How is this created?

Neoliberalism is the result of individualism in the market that is enforced by the oppressed and oppressor groups created by individuals, that result in the unequal distribution of power and values, the unequal income levels, the enforcement of gender roles and authority levels that keep the neoliberalism unjust.

1.     Why should the person reading this care?

2.     Why are oppressed and oppressor groups still in neoliberalism?

3.     Why is neoliberalism unjust when it should be equal for everyone?

All information is from these readings, I do not own anything:

https://cs2367-08-au15.wikispaces.com/file/view/NLmanifestoframingstatement.pdf/561691223/NLmanifestoframingstatement.pdf

https://cs2367-08-au15.wikispaces.com/file/view/CLASSManifesto_class_and_generation.pdf/561691201/CLASSManifesto_class_and_generation.pdf

https://cs2367-08-au15.wikispaces.com/file/view/GENDERmanifesto_gender_revolution.pdf/561691207/GENDERmanifesto_gender_revolution.pdf

Toxic Masculinity Response

Masculinity is defined by many ideals in many different societies but the general definition is: “possession of the qualities traditionally associated with men” (1). These are usually assumed to be strong, the protector, the provider, tall, etc. Although due to these stereotypical ideas of what a man should be, that leaves very little room towards expanding the viewpoint of what a man could be. This is because society views any man who is not any one of those ideals as a non-manly or for a lack of better terms, unnatural. Which would cause the man to change his appearance/traits to fit in. This leads into a discussion about toxic masculinity because it is defined as “the socially-constructed attitudes that describe the masculine gender role as violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth.” (2) Men are taught from a young age to be a man, that means to follow the social norm that has been laid out for them. Just like how the subordinate group is taught to be subordinate, the dominant group is taught to be dominant. The dominant group would be the white, heterosexual, Christian, male, middle-class to upper class, etc. and whereas the subordinate group would be females, gays, lesbians, trans-genders, immigrants, etc. So using this example, a man is taught that it is his natural right to be dominant, that is he given all these benefits and rights just because he was born male.

This has negative impacts on them because when a person growing up with this ideology, they feel that they don’t have to work hard to achieve something and that everything will be laid out for them. Examples of this would be a white man would get hired but easier than an Indian woman would. Another would be a man who demands that a woman should be willing to have sex with him because it’s his right to do so. The list goes on and on. But the problem with this; is that it’s not how reality works. Reality is where people have to given a fair advantage no matter who they are rather than what sex they are. When people give men the advantage in life because that is what they are expected to do based on social norm, and this doesn’t just happen with white males. An example of this would be in China where girls are of lesser value than the boys and are given away for adoption because the families in China want a boy because of the one-child policy that limits the children they can have and also their ideology is that boys are of greater value. The impacts that toxic masculinity has left on society is that people have become so used to the idea that men are expected to act, think and feel a certain way that is damaging to them and the people around them. People can’t let this continue because it makes subordinate groups feel that they aren’t worth of equal value to men.

But the next question that we should ask ourselves is there a way we can redefine masculinity? Yes, we can redefine it because since modern society is reaching its stage where subordinate groups are gaining their rights to equal wages, same rights and privileges as the dominant group; the definition of masculinity is changing as well. People are realizing that with the technology and the media spreading the way that it is now, it’s becoming much more easier to access to these topics and learn about what people have to say about them. Although this does cause problems because with everyone saying their opinions it becomes hard to focus on whom to pay attention to. How does the audience know if what they are saying is the right thing? We can’t. We can only look at what is given to us and develop our own ideals and this says the same thing regarding masculinity because when people are developing their ideas, they can influence the reader’s. They may not change them completely but they can think about what the author is saying and then turn it into what they want to place upon their own children. That’s why it’s so important to change masculinity because if people stick to the old fashion ways that men should behave, think, dress in a certain way, there’s not room to change for the future which is saying that, society is harming men by not giving them the chance to develop their own sense of being and instead forced to listen to society and the ways it is telling men to act and behave.

Preserving American Freedom Response

Freedom to humans is the ability to do what one wants and when they want. But over time as humans became civilization, we learned that there is a price to be paid for this freedom as such, rules and regulations had to be put into placed to avoid to much freedom for people. But there was another problem because could one group have the same rights as another? No one knew the answer at the time until freedom to their equal rights, were fought for by the people of the social group to gain the same freedom as other groups. Freedom means different things to different people but the general idea is that all people of all races, religions, sexes, etc. are granted to do the same thing as people of the other groups without any restrictions. Throughout history it wasn’t always the case, and there are still places around the world where certain freedoms in specific groups is forbidden or restricted, such as the freedom to vote, marry the same0sex, religious freedom, etc. But why do different understandings of freedom emerge over time and what are the effects of these changes within society and are they considered to be important? Freedom has different understandings of the concept because no one can properly interpret it and as a result can lead to strong conversations over what are the boundaries to freedom.

Throughout history, freedom seems to be privileged to people who have earned it or born into it. In the United States for example, people take freedom very seriously because our ancestors had fought a war over the chance to gain their freedom from another country. Thus Americans have since become a symbol of brining justice and freedom to other countries but not always within our own country. In the 1830’s women were excluding from the freedom of voting, immigrants were granted to freedom to vote, former slaves were allowed to vote but as the expansion of freedoms were granted to white men, there were some groups that became excluded thus causing the dividing line to be drawn over race rather than class as to who can vote in this example.

Due to the strong protest in years to come from the different social groups, there caused an uprising on who can gain their freedoms or not. The women’s rights movement caused women’s suffrage in the early decades of the 1900’s; that allowed women in the US the right to vote. The civil rights movement in 1950-1960s, allowed African Americans in the U.S. to be recognized as U.S. citizens and to be granted the same rights and freedoms without racial segregation and discrimination. The most recent one was the same sex marriage ruling the US that allowed people of the same sex to get married.

But what were the effects of these changes in freedom? It allowed people who belonged to a certain group to gain more privileges and freedoms than people in other groups. The idea of dominant and subordinate groups is present throughout American history because as discussed in The Complexity of Identities by Beverly Tatum; Dominant groups in America are described as “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian and financially secure. Whereas the targeted groups are considered to be females, people of color, the LBGTQ community, other faiths, disabilities and un- financially secure, etc.” Thus by giving people of the subordinate groups the ability to have the same freedoms as people in the dominant groups allows Americans to become more free in a sense. This is very important in todays’ society to understand what exactly it took for these people in the past had to work for and struggle for in order to obtain the freedoms that others take for granted.

What Americans don’t understand is how ironic they are when it comes to freedom because in the Declaration of Independence it says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Now judging based on that quote, it says that all men are created equal but the time period was 1776 and the only men that were considered equal were: white, male, owned property, etc. This excludes all other groups from the same freedoms as the other groups, or in this context the subordinate groups from the dominant groups. Although over time, changes would be made to the Constitution and the Bill Rights over the ability for subordinate groups to be granted the same freedom as the dominant groups.

This leads to Americans to view themselves as the same as other people from other countries because even though Americans say that they expressed freedom and want to spread it, they are in turn suppressing people of their own country just the same as other countries would do their own people. So it becomes the issue over is America really spreading the freedom that it so rightfully says that it is? No, not really because over the course of history, the “dominant” Americans have suppressed the “subordinate” Americans from the same rights and freedoms that the “dominant” Americans have so easily been granted. Thus from this, one can assume that freedom doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to other people because when one groups says that they are being suppressed from another group, what they really mean is that they haven’t been granted the same rights and freedoms that the other group and is subjected to discrimination. Americans need to fix the problems that they have on the homestead first before they go to other countries and help them because how can Americans say that they express freedom when they themselves don’t in the first place to other Americans?

Documents/websites used:

https://cs2367-08-au15.wikispaces.com/file/view/Preserving%20American%20Freedom.pdf/558989901/Preserving%20American%20Freedom.pdf

https://cs2367-08-au15.wikispaces.com/file/view/05-The-Complexity-of-Identity-Beverly-Tatum.pdf/558482425/05-The-Complexity-of-Identity-Beverly-Tatum.pdf

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/

Harro Response

People face the situation of oppression, which comes from socialization. The article “The Cycle of Socialization”, Bobbie Harro comments that: “we are each born into a specific set of social identities”. Social identities are not ones that we can make, rather that they are ones that have already been made for us, as a way to separate ourselves from others via gender, race, age, sexual orientation, religion, economic class and ability/disability status. There are two groups who are known to us are the agent group, as Harro puts it, “men, white, middle- and upper-class, abled, middle-aged people, heterosexuals and gentiles” and the subordinate group, known as “women, racially oppressed groups, gay, lesbian, transgender people, disabled, Jews, elders, youth/children and people living in poverty”. (Harro 17) People are subjected to the social norms that are laid out for them to follow, and anyone who goes against it, are consider troublemakers. Most people don’t think about opposing the social norms because what’s the point? The point would be the cycle of socialization, because it is what has been taught and what is learned.  I agree with that oppression continues to exist, and that people don’t know exactly how to change it, because it is unconsciously and consciously taught to us so how can we change it? Changing the norms known to us requires people who have the same beliefs to work together to fight against the social norm. Thus by breaking the cycle of socialization, “We can change the world.” (Harro 21)