Based on the evaluation criteria handout, I believe an A paper would be one where the author establishes a clear message, portrays that message as well as the direction of the paper in the thesis, and putting credible sources into conversation with the ideas and message at work. The author successfully does this through the paper and makes his message known that racial injustice still occurs in society. He also includes an evolving theses statement, “Yet, while many school and city officials in Eustis feel that they are creating and maintaining an impartial public space, the institutions for which they work may actually still be perpetuating an environment of racial injustice” (1). His thesis statement lets readers clearly know the topic of this paper is institutionalized racism and the remainder of the paper is going to about how it is and in what ways institutionalized racism exists.
The author also did well to remove bias from the paper. It was only after I finished reading the paper I realized I couldn’t really detect any bias from the author. There was a good use of information from both primary and secondary research throughout the paper. The primary research consisted of interviews that gave light to certain perceptions of problems or lack of. Which was then followed up by secondary research that strengthened the claims of the author’s inquiry topic. The author was able to provide statistics as well as testimonials to back up his claims about Eustis town schools, which added to his credibility and only boosted his ethos throughout the paper.
I enjoyed the paper very much and was successful in getting me to think about this topic. However, I found that the author did work through his point he did have a position towards proving institutionalized racism existed and presented facts and numbers that aided his cause. Some transitions were also not as strong or smooth as they could have been but not enough to affect the grade. This research paper had a clear message that was represented throughout the paper with well-presented quotations backing up the author’s claims.
