Capture Rankine’s thesis from “Excerpt from Citizen” in one sentence. Discuss Rankine’s appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos and whether or not you feel her appeals were successful. Your response should be 5-7 sentences long.
6 thoughts on “Blog Post #9: Response to Excerpt from Citizen”
Comments are closed.
Rankines thesis was that America has an extreme double standard for interpreting anger from African-Americans. She uses ethos, logos, and pathos effectively. She conveys Serena’s emotions very well, and tries to invoke the same emotion in the reader. She then uses logos to argue the corruption of the situations at hand. Then, she uses ethos to give her argument credibility by comparing it to other situations.
African Americans are subjected to a certain level of aggression on the basis of their skin color and which they must repress in order to fit into society today. Rankine builds her ethos through acknowledging the severity of the problem right in front of us. She starts off talking about a youtuber who praises such anger only black people possess before really going in-depth on her findings. Using the discrimination world famous tennis player, Serena Williams, faces in a dominantly white sport adds to her use of logos. By referencing events like the Grand Slam and how Williams has always been given the shorter end of the stick when it comes to referee calls, commentary on her behavior and word choice in tense situations. Some of the examples used definitely hits a soft spot for the audience, especially when it is clearly unfair for Serena. We come to a revelation of how African Americans are still racially targeted, even for someone like Serena Williams. I liked how Rankine used facts and observations from the logos and ethos part of her argument, while simultaneously making a subtle play on pathos.
Claudia Rankine’s thesis is that black Americans are subjected to racial profiling as it pertains to anger and demonstration of this anger. Rankine suggests that anger is seen as an inherently black trait, and that society expects black people to show this anger, as it is perceived as more natural and provocative than “white anger”. Rankine uses logos through her citation of several real life examples, including a lesser known youtube artist (Hennessy Youngman) as well as a world famous athlete (Serena Williams). She uses ethos by going into great depth about specific cases in the career of Serena Williams, proving her depth of knowledge and research about the subject she is speaking on. Rankine also employs pathos through her descriptions of situations that entice the reader to side with Williams, and question the umpire’s intentions.
People of color are constantly being oppressed and treated unfairly every day and in every way. Rankine builds her ethos by using recent and relevant evidence to back up her claim. She starts by mentioning a youtuber who argues that black people should embrace their anger and use it to it to express themselves. She then uses a variety of examples of the famous Serena Williams to show the discrimination black people face on a day to day basis. The examples of Serena Williams helps the reader understand how discrimination even occurs in professional environments. The use of these examples also helps stirs up emotions of anger to the audience because of how ridiculously unfair Serena Williams was treated.
Claudia Rankine’s Thesis is that as a society we should recognize that African Americans are portrayed as having aggression and anger because of their skin color. Rankine affirms this by using a YouTube video that is meant to show how one can capitalize on the anger and rage of African Americans. She goes on to illustrate to her audience how the discrimination of Serena Williams is something the YouTube video fails to relate with, thus appealing to logos. She is able to illustrate key events and at the end connect them to the overall message of her writing. She appeals to pathos when talking about the many times Serena was hurt by the referees rules and how she was seen by society. Her knowledge and understanding of the relations of between races appeals to ethos. By formulating her thesis with the uses of ethos, logos, and pathos she is able to highlight the realities that sad reality that exists in our society.
In the “Excerpt from Citizen”, Rankine discusses on how African Americans can use their anger to their benefits, but at the same time too much of it can be viewed as insane. She effectively appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos. For ethos she starts off with crediting a Youtuber on his stance of how to become a successful black artist. Shen then dives in deeper with her stance on the problem, and uses Serena Williams to convey her point. Using Serena Williams allows her to appeal to logos because she uses accurate events that have occurred. For pathos she appeals to it by trying to make the audience sympathizes with Serena.