Rules?

Over the course of the semester, we’ve seen various ways in which African American Christians have used resources within Christianity to resist white supremacy. But the readings from Malcolm X and Nakia Brown represent something quite different: African Americans whose resistance to white supremacy took the form of rejecting Christianity and embracing instead one of the religious traditions that had been practiced among the peoples who were taken from Africa to America as slaves, centuries ago. In Malcolm X’s case, that religion was Islam; in Nakia Brown’s case, it’s Yoruba religion as she encountered it in Cuba. Why did Malcolm X favor Islam over Christianity? Why does Brown favor Yoruba religion over Christianity? Clarify, for each author, how their embrace of that religion serves, in their eyes, as a way to reject or push back against white supremacy.

Reading AssAssignment has two components: (1) a short paper (2–2½ pages) written on a prompt specific to that set of readings, and (2) an accompanying cover memo, in which you reflect on the process of writing the short paper.

Tips for the short paper

• Format your paper as in the sample I’ve provided via a link at the top of this page: 1-page margins, double-spaced throughout, with four lines of identifying information on the top of the first page.
• Write from the outsider’s position. Matter-of-factly describe the authors’ religious views. Avoid language that would imply either agreement or disagreement.
• Use a “formally conversational” tone—the way you would talk if you were giving an oral presentation to the top bosses at work, people you needed to impress. Don’t try to write something that sounds like an article in a scholarly journal (that would be too formal), but don’t use overly informal language either (words like “okay” or “kids”).
• Assume your reader knows the course readings. You don’t need to introduce the readings to me as if I’ve never heard of these texts or authors.
• Consider skipping the introduction and conclusion. Because this is such a short paper, you don’t have space to waste. It’s fine to just dive right into answering the questions in the prompt, without any lead-in.
• Provide paragraph breaks and transitions. Readers will usually expect a transition between two paragraphs to come at the beginning of the second paragraph, not at the end of the first.
• Clearly explain and richly flesh out your ideas with details from the reading, as much as the 2½-page limit allows.
• You don’t need in-text citations or a bibliography, since there are no page numbers on the readings and since I already know what the readings are. (You will need a bibliography for your Mini-Research Project, because that’s a different kind of assignment.
• Edit carefully! Ask someone who will give you frank feedback to let you know if there are any places in the paper where they found your language hard to understand.

Tips for the cover memo

• Use the cover memo to create a positive first impression and to tell me about the process of writing the short paper. You don’t need to address all of the following points in your cover memo, but these are the kinds of things I’m interested in knowing:
• What difficulties or challenges did you encounter as you wrote the short paper, and how did you tackle those challenges?
• What do you feel are the strengths of this paper? On the other hand, what about this paper do you worry might not might my expectations?
• Did you do things in this paper in response to someone’s feedback? That might be feedback I gave you on an earlier assignment, feedback you’ve received from teachers in the past, or feedback you received from someone who reviewed a draft of this paper.