Introduction

In my ePortfolio, I use different menus to organize the work I’ve completed in my English 130 course. I have my blog posts displayed on the opening page because they represent my progress throughout the semester. As I continued to learn in class and respond to certain prompts and articles, I improved my ability to not only summarize, but also annalyze text that I wouldn’t otherwise find interesting enough to ponder analytically.

Without question, I would consider my inquiry paper to be my best piece of work in my portfolio. It was one of the last assignments we had and I feel very proud of it. I did research for this paper that really interested me and I believe it proved so in my writing.

As a writer, I’ve learned so many things about myself in just one semester. I’ve learned that I respond to most articles and I write essays or blog posts in a very analytical way. Rather than summarizing, I really like to take what I read and respond to it how I understand it. In my opinion, I think I’ve gotten better at this over the semester.

 

Inquiry Abstract

In my inquiry research paper, I will be doing my best to answer these two questions: Does white guilt promote systematic racism? And are white liberals at fault for perpetuating racism? In my attempt to answer these, I will bring in articles that use perspectives coming from conservatives, liberals, white people, black people, etc. One article I will place a lot of my focus on will be one called “White Guilt is actually White Narcissism.” This article has several valid points that I would love to include in my paper. For example, it is impossible for white people not to be racist or subconsciously racist because there is no way for us to empathize with people who have constantly been oppressed by society.

She concludes this article by explaining that if white people accepted that we are not inherently bad, but we have absorbed a racist ideology from a racist system against our will at a young age. If white people understood this, maybe we wouldn’t be so quick to excessively place shame on racists. And we place all this shame on racists because we are deeply afraid of being called racists ourselves, “it is much more important that you are able to fix your own problematic behavior than it is for you to identify it in others.”

Something that I feel I will have a difficult time with is talking about the other side. I feel that I may need peers to help me with explaining why some people don’t believe that white guilt exists or believe that the phrase “All lives matter” makes more sense than “Black lives matter.” In essence, I am planning on stating that the reason why white people are unaware of white guilt is because they have been so privileged and sheltered that they haven’t seen enough of the other side to accept it.

 

“White Narcissism” Summary

Since the topic I chose revolves around the concept of white guilt, I want to research all perspectives. I plan on using opinions from conservatives, liberals, white people, black people, etc. The article I chose to write my summary on for this blog post happens to be one in which I mostly agree with although the author seems to be a liberal extremist based on the way she stated her observations and opinions.

The article is titled “White Guilt is actually White Narcissism.” She explains narcissistic behavior as someone who acts in a positive way in order to maintain a high self image. When it comes to white guilt, she basically means that white people (specifically white liberals) are secretly afraid that they are racist due to their upbringing, so they act in many ways to counter this and convince themselves they aren’t racist. She states that narcissism, while it may motivate good behavior, is primarily done out of suppressing subconscious racist behavior.

The author of this article simply claims that it is impossible for white people not to be racist or subconsciously racist because there is no way for us to empathize with people who have constantly been oppressed by society.

She concludes this article by explaining that if white people accepted that we are not inherently bad, but we have absorbed a racist ideology from a racist system against our will at a young age. If white people understood this, maybe we wouldn’t be so quick to excessively place shame on racists. And we place all this shame on racists because we are deeply afraid of being called racists ourselves, “it is much more important that you are able to fix your own problematic behavior than it is for you to identify it in others.”

Though this article came from a woman with extreme views that some people may find offensive, I think it will provide an interesting perspective that will go well with my research on white guilt.

ePortfolio Analysis

My major is communications design, specifically graphic design. I decided I wanted to take on this major after being encouraged by my aunt who is the national graphic designer for the well-known surf company, Rip Curl. She saw that I was passionate about art and asked me if I ever thought about graphic design, which I had, and I love it now that I’ve started taking actual classes for it. I’ve even began building a portfolio of my own to help me land jobs after college, I hope to show in my portfolio that I have not only made progress but that I have a wide variety of good work.

It was easy to find a lot of good eportfolios on my major because anyone going into graphic design will need to have an eportfolio for where ever they decide to go weather it is creating logos for companies, designing prints on clothing, animation, video game design, and the list goes on.

When looking for eportfolios, I found a vast variety of examples due to the fact that all portfolios can be different based on where the artist chooses to take their career. One of my favorite portfolios was one by a man named Peter Komier, who did a lot work with logos and designs that would look good on clothing and swimwear. It was awesome how he used his own art to design the home page where you can choose to look at his variety of art, ranging from logos to illustrations to advertisements.

Possible Research Topics

When thinking about ideas I wanted to write about for this upcoming research essay, I thought about a lot of topics that I definitely had strong opinions on and are also controversial in society. For example, I contemplated writing about gun control, feminism, and affirmative action, all very political topics because that is something I’ve always taken a strong interest in. Though these topics are all right up my alley, if I were to write an essay on one of them, it would most likely be repetitive and boring due to the fact that I take one solid opinion for each subject. With gun control, feminism, and affirmative action, I would continue to restate the same opinions over and over again and it would be difficult for me to open up my mind to other sides and opinions.

After realizing all this, I tried thinking about topics that didn’t have to do with politics because I seemed to stand strongly on one side of each issue when I would rather find a topic that I am on the fence about and need to go into more depth about it. I attempted to find topics that had nothing to do with politics and more to do with what I find interesting and important in my life. For example, I used to love theatre, so I would write about the importance of theatre to society. I am also majoring in graphic design, so I thought maybe I could write about that and how it works. I do find these topics extremely interesting, however, I wasn’t sure about how much information I could write without my paper becoming boring.

During spring break, I took a break thinking about what my topic would be. One day, I was talking to my friend and his mom, and she brought up the topic of white guilt and how it almosts promotes racism and that whole situation has been getting worse because white guilt exists. I thought this was so interesting and controversial and political and social all at once and I decided to write my paper about that. I still haven’t decided what my question will be but I do have ideas in my head.

Literacy Narrative Reflection

My literacy narrative is where I plan to touch on why writing and english is important in my life. I mainly account my respect and slightly recent appreciation for this subject to my favorite english teacher I had during my junior and senior years of high school. The intentions I have for the purpose of this narrative are to give the reader a background of who I am as a writer, and more importantly, how my views on english have changed in a period of two years.

The best aspect in my opinion in my literacy narrative is when I compare my feelings for writing and literature between the two different high schools that I attended. I believe that that is extremely important to my story and my narrative would not make much sense without it.

My hopes are that the reader will take from my narrative that I am just beginning to enjoy this subject. I haven’t had as much practice as someone who has enjoyed all four years of their high school english classes. I plan on revising not only my narrative, but my entire wordpress as well. I would like to view my work at the end of this semester and see a noticeable difference between the start and the end of the semester.

It was an interesting experience writing this literacy narrative. I realized that when I think about why I enjoy writing and literature, it helps me appreciate and feel more confident in my skills and creativity.

Analyzing Our Literacies

In analyzing our literacies, we collected all of our data and organized it into two pie charts: one representing a week day and the other representing a day of the weekend. Our percentages and data came out kind of awkward due to the fact that all of the members in our group had read a completely different amount. For example, we had one group member who claimed to have spent fifteen hours playing video games, while another spent twelve hours on social media. Our pie charts ended up being a lot different from other groups because these group members either brought our data way up or way down.

On the weekend, most of us spent only about an hour or so on reading articles, doing homework, and reading everyday signs. Its the time spent on social media and video games that we all varied. For social media, one person spent up to twelve hours, while another group member literally spent no time on social media, and the other two group members only spent about two hours. As for video games, one group member played video games for fifteen hours while the other three members didn’t play at all.

Personally, I spent about two hours reading on social media each day, I only did about an hour of homework, I read a book for twenty minutes, I read four articles making that about 45 minutes, throughout both days I read signs for an estimated time of about 40 minutes, and I watched two episodes of Netflix per day making that about three and a half hours. I read a lot more than I thought I would, in fact, the majority of my day involves reading/writing. I can’t imagine being illiterate, there’s absolutely no way I would be able to function on my own.

Response to Our Semi-Literate Youth

I found it interesting that in this article they found in their research that though our generation has become more literate because of technology, we lack writing skills due to our informal way of communicating with each other. Because of technology and social media, the literacy rate has grown immensely. We need to read constantly especially if we are trying to communicate with other people.

With that, the mistakes we make as writers aren’t very different than the mistakes older generations have made. In fact, we make the same amount of mistakes as older generations, but the mistakes we make are different than they used to be. I thought it was interesting that older generations struggled so much with spelling with our youth never had to put much thought into it because we have the luxury of spell check.

While it is true that the literacy rate has grown exponentially throughout the world, it seems obvious that our youth should be reading more books. In my opinion, I don’t necessarily believe this is the case. Yes, our generation has a lot more literate people, but I feel like with the use of cell phones and constant scrolling through social media, people would rather look through a screen than flip through pages of a book in their spare time. If I were to ask a group of people my age how often they read books compared to the amount of time they spend on social media, I’m sure most would agree that social media is the more popular way we spend our time.

 

 

Quick Write Revision

My greatest strength as a writer in my opinion is my skills with analyzing and responding to texts. I often throw more of my focus into the material I am reading and I respond in d…

Source: Quick Write Revision