Essay 2

Writing 2 Tim Fitzmaurice Essay 2 assignment Due April 25
Read the Chapters 7 & 9 in 75 Arguments that discuss issues of identity and marriage. You can include essays from other Chapters as well. No Web Sources please.
Write a four-page essay with references to at least three essays from our text. You have choices for this essay:

1. On Identity and Race: based on essays in Chapter 9.
You can discuss the situation of race and ethnicity in American culture at the present times, where “the existence of racially mixed persons challenges the long-held notions about biological, moral and social meaning of race” (428). Are we in a new phase of this discussion, beyond race? Maria Root says race and ethnicity has not disappeared:

At a personal level race is very much in the eye of the beholder; at a political level, race is in the service of economic and social privilege. Similarly, ethnic identity is relevant only in an ethnically heterogeneous environment…. Our confusion of race and ethnicity indicates that it will be difficult to abandon the smoke screen that hides our ‘caste system’ surrounding theory politics, health care, education, and other resources. (428)

The confusion does seem challenging. How has it been sorted out in your experience—or further confused. Don’t neglect the Staples’ essay and his comment about how these issues are expressed everyday in our lives.

2. On Marriage: Based on readings in Chapter 7.
Look at marriage as a feature that may shape your identity. Judy Brady says famously “who wouldn’t want a wife?” (320) Certainly people have been hobbled, exploited, by the demands of marriage. Have they been liberated by it in any way? Marriage is for some people an embattled arrangement and for some a meaningless tradition. This political tumult and cultural controversy seems relatively new, even though the problems of divorce, equality, perplexity about arranging marriages, and fidelity are very old. Maybe we are just getting to a point where we can talk about these matters with some openness.
Does the institution still have a part to play in the way we create our lives and identity? From the equal rights proposal of Stanton to Sullivan’s case for gay marriage, we can see that the institution has been used to keep people in social places. It is still a strong social force. But can the institution still function to bring fulfillment to people or is it too battered by politics and cultural forces? It is on the ballot for next fall—Should marriage be limited to man and woman? Does marriage require defining—for certain people? Should it never be “arranged” but always unfettered? Does the vow of commitment have meaning? Is divorce an “individual right” or does it have “stakeholders” (339)? What should marriage mean to us?




3. On Morality and Capitalism

Please read Milton Friedman’s essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits.” Please write a comment on the blog when you have read it. The address is timfitz.blogspot.com. Do Businesses have a duty to act morally and in fact do they have a duty to be socially responsible and invest in the community? Read our Chapter 8 and devise an essay that presents your view of capitalism and moral duty. This essay can take many directions depending on the essays that you decide to use. I want to see several quotes from different essays