REREADING AMERICA Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and
Writing
ELEVENTH EDITION
EDITED BY
Gary Colombo
Emeritus—Los Angeles City College
Robert Cullen
Emeritus—San Jose State University
Bonnie Lisle
University of California, Los Angeles
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PREFACE FOR INSTRUCTORS ABOUT REREADING AMERICA Designed for first-year writing and critical thinking courses,
Rereading America anthologizes a diverse set of readings
focused on the myths that dominate U.S. culture. This central
theme brings together thought-provoking selections on a broad
range of topics — family, education, technology, success,
gender, and race — topics that raise controversial issues
meaningful to college students of all backgrounds. We’ve drawn
these readings from many sources, both within the academy
and outside of it; the selections are both multicultural and
cross-curricular and thus represent an unusual variety of
voices, styles, and subjects.
The readings in this book speak directly to students’
experiences and concerns. Every college student has had some
brush with prejudice, and most have something to say about
education, the family, or the gender stereotypes they see in
films and on television. The issues raised here help students
link their personal experiences with broader cultural
perspectives and lead them to analyze, or “read,” the cultural
forces that have shaped and continue to shape their lives. By
linking the personal and the cultural, students begin to
recognize that they are not academic outsiders — they too have
knowledge, assumptions, and intellectual frameworks that give
them authority in academic culture. Connecting personal
knowledge and academic discourse helps students see that they
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are able to think, speak, and write academically and that they
don’t have to absorb passively what the “experts” say.
FEATURES OF THE ELEVENTH EDITION
A Cultural Approach to Critical Thinking Like its predecessors, the eleventh edition of Rereading
America is committed to the premise that learning to think
critically means learning to identify and see beyond dominant
cultural myths — collective and often unconsciously held beliefs
that influence our thinking, reading, and writing. Instead of
treating cultural diversity as just another topic to be studied or
“appreciated,” Rereading America encourages students to
grapple with the real differences in perspective that arise in a
pluralistic society like ours. This method helps students to
break through conventional assumptions and patterns of
thought that hinder fresh critical responses and inhibit
dialogue. It helps them recognize that even the most apparently
“natural” fact or obvious idea results from a process of social
construction. And it helps them to develop the intellectual
independence essential to critical thinking, reading, and
writing.
Timely New Readings To keep Rereading America up to date, we’ve worked hard to
bring you the best new voices speaking on issues of race,
gender, class, family, education, and technological progress. As
in past editions, we’ve retained old favorites like Gary Soto,
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Stephanie Coontz, John Taylor Gatto, Mike Rose, Sherry Turkle,
Barbara Ehrenreich, Jamaica Kincaid, Jean Kilbourne, Rebecca
Solnit, Sherman Alexie, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. But you’ll also
find a host of new selections by authors such as Amy Ellis Nutt,
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Peggy Orenstein, Yuval Noah Harari,
Jean M. Twenge, Ellen K. Pao, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Marc
Lamont Hill, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, and José Orduña. And like
earlier versions, this edition of Rereading America includes a
healthy mix of personal and academic writing, representing a
wide variety of genres, styles, and rhetorical strategies.
Visual Portfolios In addition to frontispieces and cartoons, we’ve included a
Visual Portfolio of myth-related images in every chapter of
Rereading America. These collections of photographs invite
students to examine how visual “texts” are constructed and
how, like written texts, they are susceptible to multiple readings
and rereadings. Each portfolio is accompanied by a series of
questions that encourage critical analysis and connect portfolio
images to ideas and themes in chapter reading selections. As in
earlier editions, the visual frontispieces that open each chapter
are integrated into the prereading assignments found in the
chapter introductions. The cartoons, offered as a bit of comic
relief and as opportunities for visual thinking, are paired with
appropriate readings throughout the text.
Focus on Struggle and Resistance Most multicultural readers approach diversity in one of two
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ways: either they adopt a pluralist approach and conceive of
American society as a kind of salad bowl of cultures or, in
response to worries about the lack of “objectivity” in the
multicultural curriculum, they take what might be called the
“talk show” approach and present American culture as a series
of pro-and-con debates on a number of social issues. The
eleventh edition of Rereading America, like its predecessors,
follows neither of these approaches. Pluralist readers, we feel,
make a promise that’s impossible to keep: no single text, and no
single course, can do justice to the many complex cultures that
inhabit the United States. Thus the materials selected for
Rereading America aren’t meant to offer a taste of what “family”
means for Native Americans or the flavor of gender relations
among immigrants. Instead, we’ve included materials like
excerpts from Sheryll Cashin’s Loving: Interracial Intimacy in
America and the Threat to White Supremacy or Ta-Nehisi
Coates’s “The Case for Reparations” because they offer us fresh
critical perspectives on the common myths that shape our
ideas, values, and beliefs. Rather than seeing this anthology as a
mosaic or kaleidoscope of cultural fragments that combine to
form a beautiful picture, it’s more accurate to think of
Rereading America as a handbook that helps students explore
the ways that the dominant culture shapes their ideas, values,
and beliefs.
This notion of cultural dominance is studiously avoided in
most multicultural anthologies. “Salad bowl” readers generally
sidestep the issue of cultural dynamics: intent on celebrating
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America’s cultural diversity, they offer a relatively static picture
of a nation fragmented into a kind of cultural archipelago. “Talk
show” readers admit the idea of conflict, but they distort the
reality of cultural dynamics by presenting cultural conflicts as a
matter of rational — and equally balanced — debate. All of the
materials anthologized in Rereading America address the
cultural struggles that animate American society — the tensions
that result from the expectations established by our dominant
cultural myths and the diverse realities that these myths often
contradict.
Extensive Apparatus Rereading America offers a wealth of features to help students
hone their analytic abilities and to aid instructors as they plan
class discussions, critical thinking activities, and writing
assignments. These include:
A Comprehensive Introductory Essay The book begins with a comprehensive essay, “Thinking Critically, Challenging Cultural Myths,” that introduces students to the relationships among thinking, cultural diversity, and the notion of dominant cultural myths, and that shows how such myths can influence their academic performance. We’ve also included a section devoted to active reading, which offers suggestions for prereading, prewriting, note taking, text marking, and keeping a reading journal. Another section helps students work with the many visual images included in the book.
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“Fast Facts” Begin Each Chapter Several provocative statistics before each chapter introduction provide context for students and prompt discussion. For example, “Following the 2016 presidential election, 64% of Americans said that fake news stories online had left the nation confused about basic facts. However, 84% also feel either ‘very confident’ or ‘somewhat confident’ that they can recognize fake news when they see it.”
Detailed Chapter Introductions An introductory essay at the beginning of each chapter offers students a thorough overview of each cultural myth, placing it in historical context, raising some of the chapter’s central questions, and orienting students to the chapter’s internal structure.
Prereading Activities Following each chapter introduction you’ll find prereading activities designed to encourage students to reflect on what they already know about the cultural myth in question. Often connected to the images that open every chapter, these prereading activities help students to engage the topic even before they begin to read.
Questions to Stimulate Critical Thinking Three groups of questions following each selection encourage students to consider the reading carefully in several contexts: “Engaging the Text” focuses on close reading of the selection itself; “Exploring Connections” puts the selection into dialogue with other selections throughout the book; “Extending the Critical Context” invites students to connect the ideas they read about here with sources of knowledge outside the anthology, including library and Internet
12
research, personal experience, interviews, ethnographic- style observations, and so forth. As in past editions, we’ve included a number of questions linking readings with contemporary television shows and feature films for instructors who want to address the interplay of cultural myths and the mass media. Also as in past editions, we’ve included a number of questions focusing on writers’ rhetorical and stylistic strategies. Identified as “Thinking Rhetorically” for easy reference, these questions typically appear as the final item under “Engaging the Text.”
“Further Connections” Close Each Chapter Located at the end of each chapter, these questions and assignments invite students to undertake more challenging projects related to the chapter’s theme. They often provide suggestions for additional in-depth research or activities that require community engagement.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Critical thinking is always a collaborative activity, and the kind
of critical thinking involved in the creation of a text like
Rereading America represents collegial collaboration at its very
best. Since publication of the last edition, we’ve heard from
instructors across the country who have generously offered
suggestions for new classroom activities and comments for
further refinements and improvements. Among the many
instructors who shared their insights with us as we reworked
this edition, we’d particularly like to thank James Allen, College
of DuPage; Deborah Bertsch, Columbus State Community
13
College; Ruth Blandon, East Los Angeles College; Nancy Botkin,
Indiana University South Bend; Tony Bowers, College of
DuPage; Michael Duncan, University of Houston–Downtown;
Irene Faass, Minneapolis Community and Technical College;
Rebecca Fleming, Columbus State Community College; Karen
Forgette, University of Mississippi; Melanie Gagich, Cleveland
State University; Rick Garza, Reedley College; Joshua Giorgio-
Rubin, Indiana University South Bend; Sara Heaser, University
of Wisconsin–La Crosse; Owen Kaufman, Quinebaug Valley
Community College; Julia Klimek, Coker College; David
McCracken, Coker College; Alisea McLeod, Rust College; Ilona
Missakian, Fullerton College; Stan Porter, Merced College;
Pegeen Powell, Columbia College Chicago; Edwin Sams, San
Jose State University; Jasna Shannon, Coker College; Abha
Sood, Monmouth University; Jeffrey Susla, University of
Hartford; Kerry Taylor, Anne Arundel Community College;
Bronte Wieland, Iowa State University.
For their help with the tenth edition, we’d like to thank the
following: Douglas Armendarez, East Los Angeles College; Tolu
Bamishigbin, University of California, Los Angeles; Sheena
Boran, University of Mississippi; David Bordelon, Ocean County
College; Jane Carey, Quinebaug Valley Community College;
Kirsti Cole, Minnesota State University; Rachelle Costello,
Indiana University South Bend; Virginia Crisco, California State
University, Fresno; Peter DeNegre, Tunxis Community College;
Tiffany Denman, Sacramento City College; Peter Dorman,
Central Virginia Community College; Chip Dunkin, University
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of Mississippi; Randa Elbih, Grand Valley State University;
Maria Estrada, Mt. San Antonio College; Karen Forgette,
University of Mississippi; JoAnn Foriest, Prairie State College;
Kimberly Hall, Harrisburg Area Community College; Barbara
Heifferon, Louisiana State University; Cristina Herrera,
California State University, Fresno; Robert Imbur, University of
Toledo; Danielle Lake, Grand Valley State University; Catherine
Lamas, East Los Angeles College; Danielle Muller, Los Angeles
City College; Pamela McGlynn, Southwestern College; Charlotte
Morgan, Cleveland State University; Eduardo Munoz, East Los
Angeles College; Kylie Olean, University of Hartford; Heather
Seratt, University of Houston–Downtown; Phil Wagner,
University of California, Los Angeles; Jessica Walsh, Harper
College; Vallie Watson, University of North Carolina at
Wilmington; Judith Wigdortz, Monmouth University; Mary
Williams, San Jose State University.
For their help with the ninth edition, we’d like to thank the
following: Janice Agee, Sacramento City College; Fredric J. Ball,
Southwestern College; Chantell M. Barnhill, Indiana University
South Bend; Norka Blackman-Richards, Queens College, City
University of New York; Candace Boeck, San Diego State
University; Mark Brock-Cancellieri, Stevenson University;
Audrey Cameron, North Idaho College; Catheryn Cheal,
Oakland University; Kirsti Cole, Minnesota State University,
Mankato; Sean P. Connolly, Tulane University; Jackson Connor,
Guilford College; Myrto Drizou, State University of New York at
Buffalo; David Estrada, Fullerton College; Jacquelyn Lee
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Gardner, Western Michigan University; Rochelle Gregory,
North Central Texas College; Gwyn Fallbrooke, University of
Minnesota; Philip Fishman, Barry University; Naomi E. Hahn,
Illinois College; Rick Hansen, California State University,
Fresno; Nels P. Highberg, University of Hartford; Amy Lynn
Ingalls, Three Rivers Community College; Asao B. Inoue,
California State University, Fresno; Amanda Katz, Worcester
State University; O. Brian Kaufman, Quinebaug Valley
Community College; Barbara Kilgust, Carroll University;
Carolyn Kremers, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Catherine
Lamas, East Los Angeles College; Sharon A. Lefevre,
Community College of Philadelphia; Alisea Williams McLeod,
Indiana University South Bend; Tanya Millner-Harlee,
Manchester Community College; Ilona Missakian, Rio Hondo
College; Roxanne Munch, Joliet Junior College; Katrina J.
Pelow, Kent State University; M. Karen Powers, Kent State
University at Tuscarawas; Kevin Quirk, DePaul University; Alex
Reid, State University of New York at Buffalo; Brad C. Southard,
Appalachian State University; Terry Spaise, University of
California, Riverside; Sarah Stanley, University of Alaska
Fairbanks.
We are also grateful to those reviewers who helped shape
previous editions.
As always, we’d also like to thank all the kind folks at
Bedford/St. Martin’s, who do their best to make the effort of
producing a book like this a genuine pleasure. We’re especially
16
grateful to Edwin Hill, Leasa Burton, and John Sullivan. We
thank Cara Kaufman, our editor, whose patience and
professionalism have helped us immensely throughout the
development of this new edition. We also want to thank Pamela
Lawson, who served as content project manager; Lumina
Datamatics, Inc., who managed copyediting and composition;
William Boardman, who produced our new cover; Mark
Schaefer, for clearing text permissions; Candice Cheesman and
Krystyna Borgen, for researching and tracking down art; and
editorial assistant William Hwang who helped out with many of
the hundreds of details that go into a project such as this.
Finally, we’d like to acknowledge our spouses, Elena Barcia, Liz
Silver, and Roy Weitz, for their love and support.
Gary Colombo
Robert Cullen
Bonnie Lisle
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CONTENTS PREFACE FOR INSTRUCTORS
INTRODUCTION: Thinking Critically, Challenging Cultural Myths
1 HARMONY AT HOME
Myths of Family
LOOKING FOR WORK, GARY SOTO
“For weeks I had drunk Kool-Aid and watched morning reruns of Father Knows Best, whose family was so uncomplicated in its routine that I very much wanted to imitate it. The first step was to get my brother and sister to wear shoes at dinner.”
WHAT WE REALLY MISS ABOUT THE 1950s, STEPHANIE COONTZ
“What most people really feel nostalgic about . . . is the belief that the 1950s provided a more family-friendly economic and social environment, an easier climate in which to keep kids on the straight and narrow, and above all, a greater feeling of hope for a family’s long-term future, especially for its young.”
THE COLOR OF FAMILY TIES: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND EXTENDED FAMILY INVOLVEMENT, NAOMI GERSTEL AND NATALIA SARKISIAN
“Marriage actually diminishes ties to kin.”
WHEN SHOULD A CHILD BE TAKEN FROM HIS PARENTS?, LARISSA MACFARQUHAR
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“When a child has been left alone because his mother can’t afford childcare and has to go to work, is that poverty or neglect?”
VISUAL PORTFOLIO READING IMAGES OF AMERICAN
FAMILIES
FROM BECOMING NICOLE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY, AMY ELLIS NUTT
“I am the proud father of identical twins. One is a boy and one is a girl.”
FROM LOVING: INTERRACIAL INTIMACY IN AMERICA AND THE THREAT TO WHITE SUPREMACY, SHERYLL CASHIN
“White people who have an intimate relationship with a person of color, particularly a black person, can lose the luxury of racial blindness . . . and gain something tragic, yet real.”
FROM BEYOND MONOGAMY: POLYAMORY AND THE FUTURE OF POLYQUEER SEXUALITIES, MIMI SCHIPPERS
“What if having more than one long-term partner was available to wives as well as husbands, and tolerated or even expected across and within all races and classes?”
2 LEARNING POWER
The Myth of Education and Empowerment
AGAINST SCHOOL, JOHN TAYLOR GATTO
“School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children.”
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“I JUST WANNA BE AVERAGE,” MIKE ROSE
“I was placed in the vocational track, a euphemism for the bottom level. Neither I nor my parents realized what this meant.”
FROM SOCIAL CLASS AND THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF WORK, JEAN ANYON
“Public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes.”
CHOOSING A SCHOOL FOR MY DAUGHTER IN A SEGREGATED CITY, NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES
“Legally and culturally, we’ve come to accept segregation once again. Today, across the country, black children are more segregated than they have been at any point in nearly half a century.”
VISUAL PORTFOLIO READING IMAGES OF EDUCATION
AND EMPOWERMENT
EDUCATION: ATTENTIONAL DISARRAY, SHERRY TURKLE
“Other generations passed notes, doodled, or zoned out. [Oliver’s] generation can send texts and go to Facebook. He calls his generation ‘lucky’: ‘We have the awesome new power to erase boredom.’”
BLURRED LINES, TAKE TWO, PEGGY ORENSTEIN
“A paramedic who responded to some UC Berkeley calls . . . told a reporter that he had personally stopped a group of these top-tier college boys as they dragged an
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unconscious girl out of a party. . . . ‘Who knows what their intentions were?’ the paramedic mused.”
CITY OF BROKEN DREAMS, SARA GOLDRICK-RAB
“‘Money has a lot to do with stress. . . . People obviously start thinking, should I just stop going to school? This is a lot of money I’m paying for classes, I shouldn’t be here.’”
3 THE WILD WIRED WEST
Myths of Progress on the Tech Frontier
OUR FUTURE SELVES, ERIC SCHMIDT AND JARED COHEN
“Soon everyone on Earth will be connected. With five billion more people set to join the virtual world, the boom in digital connectivity will bring gains in productivity, health, education, quality of life and myriad other avenues in the physical world.”
HAS THE SMARTPHONE DESTROYED A GENERATION?, JEAN M. TWENGE
“There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives — and making them seriously unhappy.”
LET’S GET LOST, KENNETH GOLDSMITH
“I think it’s time to drop the simplistic guilt about wasting time on the Internet and instead begin to explore — and perhaps even celebrate — the complex possibilities that lay before us.”
ZOË AND THE TROLLS, NOREEN MALONE
“Gamergaters had not only created a whole new set of
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celebrities, like [Milo] Yiannopoulos and [Mike] Cernovich; it had solidified their methods . . . and their grudges had calcified into a worldview.”
TWITTER AND WHITE SUPREMACY, A LOVE STORY, JESSIE DANIELS
“On Twitter, Trump and white supremacists are in a racists-loving-each-other-feedback-loop through retweets while they simultaneously use the platform to bully, harass, and threaten black women, Jews, and anyone else who opposes them.”
VISUAL PORTFOLIO READING IMAGES OF WIRED
CULTURE
HOW WE SOLD OUR SOULS — AND MORE — TO THE INTERNET GIANTS, BRUCE SCHNEIER
“It’s the location of your phone, who you’re talking to and what you’re saying, what you’re searching and writing. . . . Corporations gather, store, and analyze this data, often without our consent. . . . We may not like to admit it, but we are under mass surveillance.”
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR JOB TO A ROBOT — AND SOONER THAN YOU THINK, KEVIN DRUM
“No matter what job you name, robots will be able to do it. They will manufacture themselves, program themselves, and manage themselves. If you don’t appreciate this, then you don’t appreciate what’s barreling toward us.”
BIG DATA, GOOGLE, AND THE END OF FREE WILL, YUVAL
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NOAH HARARI
“Proponents of the Dataist worldview perceive the entire universe as a flow of data . . . and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data- processing system — and then merge into it.”
4 MONEY AND SUCCESS
The Myth of Individual Opportunity
CLASS IN AMERICA, GREGORY MANTSIOS
“From cradle to grave, class position has a significant impact on our well-being.”
SERVING IN FLORIDA, BARBARA EHRENREICH
“I had gone into this venture in the spirit of science, to test a mathematical proposition, but somewhere along the line, in the tunnel vision imposed by long shifts and relentless concentration, it became a test of myself, and clearly I have failed.”
FROM A TANGLE OF PATHOLOGY TO A RACE-FAIR AMERICA, ALAN AJA, DANIEL BUSTILLO, WILLIAM DARITY JR., AND DARRICK HAMILTON
“What explains the marked and persistent racial gaps in employment and wealth? Is discrimination genuinely of only marginal importance in America today?”
FROM HOW THE OTHER HALF BANKS, MEHRSA BARADARAN
“Approximately 70 million Americans do not have a bank account or access to traditional financial services. That is more people than live in California, New York, and
26
Maryland combined.”
VISUAL PORTFOLIO READING IMAGES OF INDIVIDUAL
OPPORTUNITY
FRAMING CLASS, VICARIOUS LIVING, AND CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION, DIANA KENDALL
“The poor do not fare well on television entertainment shows, where writers typically represent them with one- dimensional, bedraggled characters standing on a street corner holding cardboard signs that read ‘Need money for food.’”