Hi there! Thank you, loyal readers, for opening this week’s edition of The Highlighter. Today you’ll read articles on the cloning of dogs in South Korea, the scarcity of water in Mexico City, the pedagogy of whiteness in Advanced Placement, and the interminable incarceration of the Black Panthers.
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The Big, Controversial Business of Dog Cloning
Twenty years after Dolly the Sheep became the first-ever cloned mammal, most Americans still oppose cloning animals. But then Barbra Streisand changed everything. For just $50,000, you too can replace your beloved Fluffy with an exact replica. Scrape off some DNA from your deceased pet’s skin, and in about five months, your grief has turned to joy. What could be wrong with that? (19 min)
Water is so scarce in Iztapalapa, a poor neighborhood in Mexico City, that residents rely on pipas, or water trucks, to sustain their daily lives. But water delivery is sporadic, leaving Norma Calderón and other women to prod drivers and protest the government to secure water for their community. In a city that’s sinking rapidly (24 feet in the last century) due to climate change and population growth, the outlook is grim. (9 min)
The Pedagogy of Whiteness: AP World History and AP English Literature
If you teach English or social studies, or if you question the role of Advanced Placement courses in our schools, this article is for you. Teacher Arthur Chiaravalli argues that by emphasizing a “neutral, objective approach to knowing,” and by undervaluing a critical interrogation of texts, AP “sets up a hierarchy that normalizes and privileges whiteness.” For more on the politics of AP, see Issue #111. (16 min)
After 46 Years in Prison, Will the Black Panthers Ever Be Set Free?
A former member of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army, an underground black nationalist revolutionary organization, Jalil Muntaqim has served 46 years in prison for the murder of two police officers in 1971. Despite expressing remorse for the crime, Mr. Muntaqim has been denied parole eight times, mainly because he refuses to renounce his politics. (20 min)
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