Week 12 Discussion — One Name or Many? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Hook

A name on a door tells people who belongs inside. A story told as praise can still leave people out. This week you read the 1965 law that reopened immigration, the students who coined "Asian American" in 1968, the model-minority image, refugee resettlement, and the history of Native Hawaiians from the overthrow to the apology.

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: An illustrative campus is opening a new cultural center and has to name it. One group of students proposes the Asian American Center. A second proposes the Asian American and Pacific Islander Center. A third proposes a shared building with separate, named rooms, one of them for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students. Which name or plan would you choose, and why? Use what the term Asian American was coined to do in 1968, the course rule that Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are named as their own group, and the difference between immigrant peoples and colonized or incorporated peoples, and give the strongest case for a plan you did not choose.

Option B: An illustrative hospital newsletter wants to celebrate a nurse whose family came to the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, one sponsorship at a time. The draft headline reads "A Model Family: Proof That Hard Work Is All It Takes." Can a family's success story be told without reproducing the model-minority image, and if so, how would you rewrite the headline and the first two sentences? Use the field's three-part critique (the image flattens many communities into one, hides poverty and discrimination within them, and is used to blame other groups) and what the 1965 law's preferences did, and give the strongest case for the newsletter's original framing.

There is no single right answer. A shared name can build a coalition and still blur a history, and a success story can honor a family and still carry a stereotype; where you land depends on whom you are naming and what the telling leaves out. 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 which name or plan you would choose for the center and what it does for each group of students; for Option B, say whether the story can be told without the model-minority image, and write your new headline and first two sentences.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (Asian American, Native Hawaiians, the model-minority image and its critique, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, immigrant and colonized or incorporated peoples) correctly, and name people as they most commonly name themselves.
• Give your judgment, with a reason, and give the other plan or framing its strongest case.
• 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: test a classmate's plan against a group it might leave out, offer the strongest case for the framing they did not take, or name a dated detail 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 A and would build the shared center with separate, named rooms. The shared name matters, because the term Asian American was coined in 1968 to join communities with different histories. But Native Hawaiians are not an immigrant community; they became part of the United States when it annexed their islands in 1898, so folding them under one name would blur that history. The other side has a point: one name is easier to rally around. I would still want to ask the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students what they want their room called.

Notice how it uses what the 1968 term was made to do, keeps the 1898 annexation plain, gives the other side its due, and says whose voices it would still seek. 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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