The article, “Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?” by Joshua Rothman, explains that Academic writing is for educational purposes for within the classroom or niche based academic groups, not for the entertainment or consumption of the masses.  In other words, academic writing is a study or research done in writing in a variety of genres for educational purposes for a group people.   During previous college course, I have had the opportunity to create some academic writings of my own in the form of course assignments.  I found academic writing to be somewhat challenging since I would have to research several articles and/or books before forming a conclusion or general idea in order to be able to begin writing about any given subject.

Last semester most of my academic writings were about racism and white privilege in the United States, a topic that relates to all of us as we experience it in different ways.  I used other articles and rhetorical context to demonstrate my point of view.   Although I could have made many arguments from a Pathos and/or Ethos standpoint, Logos or reason were my main methods of persuasion.  The reason for this was that through my academic research to find whether white privilege existed, I found that when comparing minorities to whites in subjects like education, job opportunities or financial savings, the numbers are so shockingly drastic that, in my opinion, causes an emotional impact to the reader.  For example, in my article about white privilege I stated:

“…according to the 2011 US Census, ‘the median white household had $111,146 in wealth holdings in 2011, compared to $7,113 for the median black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household.’ (All figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and Program Participation.)  This means that people of color have 6-8 percent of the typical white household.  These figures make the gap between whites and people of color obvious in terms of economic growth and social mobility.”

As you can see, the statistics show that the disproportion between the financial savings of white household and that of a black or Latino family is just too large to disregard or not shock the reader causing an emotional response.

Aside from financial savings, without doing much research, one can find disparity in many places between minorities and whites.  Another example I pointed out in my white privilege article was that “We can also see this inequality when we look at the races of people in positions of power like a CEO or even the presidents of the United States; the majority is white. “  Without presenting statistics or additional findings, one can briefly search the top CEOs in the United States or just look at the list of US presidents and find that the majority is white.

Despite researching different topics and writing articles for my course assignments, I don’t consider myself a good academic writer.  As I mentioned before, piecing all the evidence to form a stance for an article is very challenging for me.  I find that it is more of an educational tool for me to better understand certain subjects than it will be for those reading it for their own educational appetite or research.   However, after re-reading my article on white privilege, I feel that I provided great back up information and evidence that does make it academically strong.  Perhaps with practice I will become comfortable with producing my own academic writings in order to feel as if I am informing the reader well enough to consider it “academic writing.”