Week 11 Discussion — Two Papers and the Words We Use — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A birth certificate says who someone is. A letter of apology from a government says what was done to them. This week you read exclusion, citizenship by birth and by naturalization, Executive Order 9066, Korematsu v. United States (1944), and redress, and you read the archive's E7 excerpt beside the dated record.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 apologized and paid 20,000 dollars to each surviving person who had been incarcerated. In the archive's E7 excerpt (illustrative), a retired teacher says each parent received a letter of apology and the payment, and the mother kept the letter in the same drawer as her birth certificate, saying the two papers together "finally told the whole story." Which part of the 1988 law did more to make amends, the apology or the payment, and what did each one leave undone? Use redress, incarceration, and citizenship by birth, and give the other part its strongest case.

Option B: This course says "incarceration" and "forced removal" in its own voice, while the government's words at the time were "internment" and "evacuation", and the federal commission that found in 1983 that the order was shaped by "race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership" still carried "Relocation and Internment" in its own name. When a museum label or a study guide quotes a 1940s government document that uses the old words, should it keep them in quotation marks, replace them, or both? Use incarceration, internment, and forced removal, say what each choice shows and hides, and give the other choice its strongest case.

There is no single right answer. An apology and a payment do different work, and a word can be both a record of its time and a problem for ours; pick the option you care about, and show us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Working on your own: this version of the discussion is written entirely from your own reasoning, in your own words.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether the apology or the 20,000-dollar payment did more to make amends, and what each left undone; for Option B, say whether a label should keep the government's old words in quotation marks, replace them, or both.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (redress, incarceration, internment, forced removal, citizenship by birth) correctly.
• Give your judgment, with a reason, and give the other part or the other choice its strongest case.
• State documented history plainly: exclusion, forced removal, and incarceration are facts, not "both sides" questions.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: point out what a classmate's chosen part of the law or word choice leaves out, offer the strongest case for the view they did not take, or name a dated event from this week that supports or complicates their reading. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option B and would keep the old words in quotation marks beside the course's words. A label that says the government called it "evacuation" shows how a forced removal was described at the time, and the word "incarceration" beside it shows what happened to people who were mostly citizens. The other side has a point: quoting the old words can let them sound neutral. I would still check how the 1983 commission's report itself explains the words in its own title.

Notice how it names what each choice shows and hides, keeps the history plain, gives the other side its due, and says what it would still check. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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