In your last paper, you looked at how rituals can construct our viewpoints. In this paper, you will bring in Andrew Solomon?

In your last paper, you looked at how rituals can construct our viewpoints. In this paper, you will bring in Andrew Solomon’s “Son” to consider how our family relationships can affect those views and our power within our communities. Using Solomon’s and Armstrong’s texts and one other work that we have read this semester, answer the following question: How might horizontal identities force people to reconsider their rituals and belief systems?

Some Questions to Consider:

Below are some further questions that may be useful to consider in generating your argument. Remember that you only need to address the above prompt in bold:

• Why do parents have difficulty accepting their children’s horizontal identities?
• How does having a child with a stigmatized identity help people to become activists?
• How can understanding one stigmatized or horizontal identity help people to see the struggles that come with other such identities?
• How does having a horizontal identity require a person to learn rituals their parents cannot teach them?
• Why might a person’s horizontal identity make them reject the rituals and beliefs they were raised with?

Questions to help with the other possible texts

Giridharadas

• Why does making members of MarketWorld think about their own family help to make them care about an issue?
• How are the solutions thought leaders peddle designed to keep MarketWorlders from making connections between lots of different groups?
• Why is it easier for a MarketWorlder to pretend they are helping by making things better for one person than to admit there is a systemic problem? How might having a child with a horizontal identity affect that?

D’Ignazio and Klein

• How does the way we present data reinforce vertical identities?
• How might data visceralization allow parents to see the perspectives of their children with horizontal identities?
• How do stereotypes limit the way that people see those they deem to be different?

Coates

• How might the American approach to politics and political rhetoric be designed to ignore horizontal identities or any kind of difference?
• How might understanding horizontal identities and coming to love their children who have those identities help people recognize white supremacy and its influence on America?
• How do the rituals related to white supremacy keep people from seeing the benefits of their children’s horizontal identities?
• Why might having one horizontal identity not guarantee that a person will be willing to see things from the point of view of a person with a different horizontal or marginalized identity?