User:Kari.Harper/Choose an Article

Article Selection
Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

Option 1

 * Article title: History of African American Education
 * History of African-American education:
 * Article Evaluation:Lead Section:
 * The lead section is direct and to the point. It discusses the overarching theme of the piece, highlighting "Black schools" and why the information is relevant. Something interesting is the box in the lead section discussing this as a part of the series on African Americans- one of the chapters is called "Sports". This might be oversensitivity, but I think better wording could be "Participation in American Sports". Otherwise, this paints a clear picture of the historical injustices of education.
 * Content
 * As a whole, the article serves its purpose in outlining the general information regarding African-American education. There are mentions of the creation of HBCUs and links to a page that discusses the history of HBCUs, but I do think it warrants its own section in this article- even a brief synopsis of other research. I'm thinking back to the lead section in that it mentions how this article has to do with post-emancipation, and even the history of Spelman College is directly tied to post-emancipation era schooling and what content was taught to Black people.
 * I also noticed there is no reference to the school-to-prison pipeline. Some may see this as detracting from the topic, but I think it's crucial to discuss the carceral nature of schooling for Black children.
 * Tone and Balance:
 * The tone and balance abide by Wikipedia guidelines and I don't see any major issues. There are a few moments of language/vocab. usage that I could nitpick about- using "enslaved people" or "the enslaved" as opposed to "slaves". But that is more of a newer adoption into discussing chattel slavery.
 * Organization and Writing Quality:
 * I wouldn't change anything in terms of organization and the writing quality is easy to follow and understand.
 * Images/Media:
 * I would only add more images of HBCUs or institutions when Black people became teachers- there's only one picture in this article and it is an illustration of a white woman looking over a group of Black children in a classroom.
 * Talk Page Discussion:
 * This is an article that has received a lot of edits over the years, more specifically in October 2023. This was to add extra information for "black schools" by linking it to another page.
 * Overall Impressions::Status- ? class Strengths: The article is informative, mostly unbiased, and provides a good history on the History of African American Education in America. Improvements: This article can be improved by adding a new lens to viewing education as it often times sets students up to be property of the state.  Completeness: I would call this semi-developed.


 * Sources:Lots of solid resources and a decent further reading section.

Option 2

 * Article title: Incarceration of the United States :
 * Article Evaluation:Lead Section: :The lead section is to the point, condensed, and indicative of the issues surrounding incarceration of the united states. If one were to read and want to look into incarceration for the first time, this would be a good place to start. However, the lead section is not perfect. There are numeric breakdowns of the prison population by offense, but not very much precursor on the racial demographic of the prison system. Additionally, I could also say that this article's lead section leads people to assume that youth are left out of the equation. Youth are not mentioned until much farther in the demographics section. :Content:  :There is a lot of up-to-date data in terms of adult cases in terms of the carceral system and a healthy section about the impact of having incarcerated parents on children, but startlingly little information on youth incarceration. This being said, young girls are largely left out of this article (Black girls, in particular). This is mostly where I want to do my research/try to edit the article. I want to try to add a more holistic view that shows how Black girls are being overrepresented in their demographic and how young girls in general are not often considered in discussions of policy being made. In relation, the section on education in prison is incredibly small, even in terms of adult prisons. Smaller still is the mentioning of strip searches and I think that is crucial, especially as it impacts the mental health and wellbeing of an incarcerated individual- children included.  There also is no information on abolition... maybe too inflammatory but I think it could be important to the discussion of policy/politics/and the carceral system in America. I think as a whole, this article needs to focus more on the humanistic aspect of mass incarceration.  :Tone and Balance:  :There are no issues with tone as it all reads neutrally and abides by the Wikipedia guidelines, but the criticisms could be much more expanded on as well, but I could also see to how that could get construed as political/trying to sway. But I think it could still happen.  :Sources + References:  :Lots of solid resources and a decent further reading section. I could also see myself expanding on this as well.  Organization and Writing Quality: :I wouldn't change anything in terms of organization and the writing quality is easy to follow and understand.  :Images/Media::The charts and older images seem appropriate, but I do find it quite interesting that the only picture used to discuss children impacted by incarceration was of a Black woman and a Black baby. Black people are the most overrepresented population in the carceral system, but not the most represented in prison due to sheer population numbers in the country. So I would want to look into removing that picture. The picture's title is "Grandmother and grandchild.jpg" and the caption reads: "Grandmothers are a common caregiver of children with an incarcerated parent" with the alt text: "This is an image of Cultural Fashion or Adornment from" . I'm not saying this is intentional, but this also reinforces the mammy stereotype with a Black, older woman in traditional African clothes.  :Talk Page Discussion::Most of the recent discussions taken place on the talk page are done by other students. One comment also emphasized the large emphasis on economics rather than the humanity of the issue. This would be a good comment to look into.  Overall Impressions::Status- B class  :Strengths: The article is informative, mostly unbiased, and provides a good history on the carceral system in America.  Improvements: This article can be improved by highlighting the human stories and really expanding on the issues raised in the content section. :Completeness: I would call this semi-developed. There's hardly anything with children and they are still a part of this mass incarceration system, especially when they are tried as adults and go to adult prisons.
 * Sources:Lots of solid resources and a decent further reading section. I could also see myself expanding on this as well.
 * Morris, M. W. (2016). Pushout: the criminalization of Black girls in schools. New York, The New Press.
 * this is a book published by The New Press in New York. It is well known for the research on Black girlhood and the carceral system.
 * Adams, Maria, and Daniel McCarthy. “Race and Parenting in the Context of Youth Incarceration.” Ethnic and racial studies 43.16 (2020): 175–192. Web.
 * This article could be useful to increase the knowledge presented in the youth demographics section. The article only vaguely talks about familal and neighborhood impacts and this peer-reviewed article would be very useful.
 * Robinson, B. A. (2020). The Lavender Scare in Homonormative Times: Policing, Hyper-incarceration, and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness. Gender & Society, 34(2), 210-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243220906172
 * This article is peer reviewed in a sociology journal, so it could also be a reliable source. I like how this article disucsses intersectionality and the ways that youth already have such limited access to power, but might face even more oppression or increased incarceration rates.

Option 3

 * Article title: Gender Pay Gap
 * Gender pay gap:
 * Article Evaluation:Lead Section:
 * I really appreciated this lead section. It is concise and allows the reader a brief summary of what is to come, but still provides nuance. It brings to light multiple important issues such as gender norms, welfare payments, and more, and provides brief explanations or links to other pages describing the issue in more detail. I think this lead section provides the reader with the background knowledge required to approach this topic with a multidisciplinary approach.
 * Content:
 * The content in this article remains up-to-date as the article is classified with high importance. There is a lot of important work being done here within multiple disciplines.
 * Tone and Balance:
 * The tone is something that is highly contested on the talk page. At first, I didn't really see any issue, but that was mainly due to my own inherent biases. While frustrating, I see the merit in some of the comments the wiki users are making in terms of changing the tone in certain phrases and just reporting the facts. The largest edit that would need to be made here would be the tone, balance, and word choice. I don't know if I'm the right person to do this edit because of my lack of knowledge in the realm of economics/some of the other disciplines cited where there seems to be the most contention.
 * Organization and Writing Quality:
 * The organization works and flows well, I think it's just the writing quality that needs work. You can tell when there's a shift in author who has a difference in opinion.
 * Images/Media:
 * I don't really have a comment here when it comes to the images/media as all of the images are diverse when they are pictures and include interesting + relevant graphs.
 * Talk Page Discussion:
 * This has to be the most controversial talk page I have viewed yet! The talk page here highlights a lot of discrepancies in terms of misquoting authors, misreporting facts, and trying to write a position paper rather than sticking with the intended purpose of wikipedia.
 * This page has been classified as highly important and as a 'contentious topic'.
 * Overall Impressions:
 * Status
 * C-class
 * Strengths
 * The article is informative, addresses important issues, and highlights the importance of intersectionality and interdisciplinary work. Improvements:
 * This article can be improved by a deep line by line edit being made. There is just a lot here that could be taken the wrong way and this article does a lot of important work, so I don't want that to be taken away. Completeness: I would call this semi-developed.


 * Sources
 * There are 192 sources in this article and they are relevant to the topic at hand as well as other links and relevant reading. Some of the critiques of the sources are valid in that there is often little counter-narrative addressed.

Option 4

 * Article title: Black Women in American Politics
 * Black women in American politics
 * Article Evaluation:Lead Section:
 * The lead section is decent. It does address the main points of the page and outlines how the historical legacy of Black women in American politics is important. However, there are many places where a citation could have been used or at least a page linked to a subject. The lead section assumes the reader already has a solid background in Black feminist thought, which might not be the case.
 * Content:
 * I was honestly impressed by the content in this Wikipedia article. I did not expect to see misogynoir mentioned at all. However, this was not a perfect article by any means, even in the usage and application of misogynoir. At some point in the article, they started mentioning Barack Obama and the birtherism claims- this has nothing to do with misogynoir. Additionally, there is no discussion of colorism, also a huge part of misogynoir. In the section discussing organizations Black women have participated in, the Black Panther Party was not mentioned at all. The Party in Oakland had a Black Woman as chairwoman when Chairman Huey Newton was arrested- Elaine Brown. The women of the Black Panther Party are largely why there was the success of programs like Free Breakfast for Children and other community organizing. The Black Panther Party was only really mentioned one time about the "controversial" Assata Shakur.
 * Tone and Balance + Organization/Writing Quality:
 * I can see where some of the authors tried to intentionally capitalize the letter B in "black" when referring to Black women and Black people, however, this was inconsistent. There are inconsistencies even in the lead section with this. The organization flows in a historical narrative, but some of the writing quality ebbs and flows, leaving out important details that might be in fear of straying from the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia.
 * Images/Media:
 * The images provided don't really contribute anything new other than to show some Black women in American politics. Some charts demonstrating statistical discrimination would be impactful here.
 * Talk Page Discussion:
 * While recognized as an important topic, this page has not seen any edits since 2022.
 * Overall Impressions:
 * Class
 * Start class
 * Strengths
 * Brings to light much-needed information about Black women's participation in the political system.
 * Weaknesses
 * Does not go beyond basic recognition of issues and lacks nuance.
 * Limited graphs and statistics where there are plenty that could be used here.
 * Sources
 * There are almost 200 sources and some extra readings provided, but there is definitely a lack of utilizing data from said sources.
 * There are almost 200 sources and some extra readings provided, but there is definitely a lack of utilizing data from said sources.

Option 5

 * Article title: Affirmative Action :Affirmative action
 * Article Evaluation:Lead Section:
 * This has to be one of the more developed lead sections I have read for the possible articles. The only critique I have is that it might almost be too descriptive for the lead section. However, this topic has a lot of nuance and requires extra background and definitions. It is clear in that it is discussing affirmative action at the international scale, not just in the United States, as well.
 * Content:
 * This article covers a wide range of topics in how affirmative action impacts people in the policy realm. Something I appreciate is the acknowledgment of non-Western countries being highlighted as well.
 * Something else that I found interesting is that this article covers affirmative action all over the world, but only has one paragraph on how it impacts women.
 * Tone and Balance + Organization and Writing Quality:
 * This article definitely struggles with tone. More than once, Wikipedia has flags on the page asking for Wikipedia users to assist in editing the page due to a debate-sounding addition or their being a non-encyclopedia style writing.
 * In terms of the organization and writing quality, I think it's interesting how women are mentioned once in the first paragraph and never really emphasized again throughout the article. This leads the reader to believe this is only a small piece to affirmative action. Images/media
 * No images or media are used to describe the quantitative data in this article, which I find to be highly problematic.
 * Talk Page Discussion:
 * The talk page has been largely censured and moved to the archives. This is largely due to people making arguments with each other in the talk section and violating Wikipedia rules.
 * Overall Impressions:
 * Class:
 * Level 5 Vital Article
 * C-class
 * Strengths:
 * In-depth information is given about affirmative action as it pertains to race.
 * Weaknesses:
 * Has a poorly developed section on women and affirmative action
 * Does not address the research done by showing quant data via chart
 * Too inflammatory in language, even in talk section.


 * Sources:In depth, but I don't know if some of the sources are given their due diligence.