ipl-logo

Rhetorical Analysis Of The Age Of White Guilt By Shirley Lee

1900 Words8 Pages

White-collar crimes like what happened to Shirley Lee are prevalent today. Many view white-collar crime as less threatening than typical blue-collar crime (i.e. robberies). Both crimes however, affect society in a negative way. White-collar crimes cause more direct financial harm than blue-collar crimes. Blue-collar criminals cause more physical harm and for that reason are often perused and punished more rigorously. Both crimes have significant emotional implications and should both be treated and prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law. The emotional trauma for someone being a victim of a blue-collar crime like robbery can seem more traumatic, than having been a victim of a white-collar crime like embezzlement. Though it may seem like …show more content…

“The greatest problem in coming from an oppressed group is the power the oppressor has over your group. The second greatest problem is the power your group has over you” (Steele 36). By using parallelism Steele can take a hold of the reader’s attention and really make them think about what he just said. By building his credibility in the early stages of his essay, Steele can appeal to ethos. By doing so, he proves to his audience that he truly knows and understands the topic of white guilt, and that he has placed himself in the shoes of others. By opening his essay with an anecdote, Steele is personally relating his personal life with the subject of his essay which causes his credibility to increase in the eyes of the reader and it also appeals to pathos. “Did he again need… to be out from under the impossible demands of a symbiotically defined black identity, to breathe on his own?” (Steele 40). By using this rhetorical question, Steele can engage the reader and have them think about what exactly Baldwin did. The diction that is used throughout The Age of White Guilt gives the audience a look at the kind of person Steele is. From his style of writing, one can assume that he is a smart black intellectual, giving him the ability to relate to more than just blacks. At the same time, Steele also makes himself seem pretentious and a bit stuck up at times. This would be a turn off for his black audience because at certain point in the essay such as when he talks about how blacks are wrong; many readers would not agree with the claims that Steele makes such as “...greatest miscalculation in black American history. Others had oppressed us, but this was to be the first “fall” to come by our own hand. We allowed ourselves to see a greater power in America’s

Show More
Related

  • Rational Choice Theory: Understanding White Collar Crime

    110 Words  | 1 Pages

    A white collar crime is committed to make profits, they are not the acts of madmen or irrational people. They are rational acts that often require planning and careful

    Read More

  • Analysis Of More Than 20 Fraudulent State Id's Found During White Collar Crime

    1427 Words  | 6 Pages

    interviews, assessments, and questionnaires), to gain insight of their 369 Terra Haute, Indiana prison inmates sample. Based on their findings, it is argued that white collar criminals do make rational decisions such as weighing the risks-and-rewards, but it is done so differently than criminals who commit other crimes (Stadler and Benson 2012). This is significant because it provides a criminal-type comparison to answer the research question. To elaborate, scholars would explain white collar criminals to possess a different type of rational thinking when compared to offenders of other

    Read More

  • Comparing Sonny's Blues, The Rockpile, And The Outing

    2094 Words  | 9 Pages

    This despair is what makes the people who they are, the persecution of their race and daily hardships. Baldwin uses the hardships of his life and his community's lives through the characters in his stories. Every man, woman, and child have different challenges in life which create the person they are and who they will be. The cruel time period, 1920s, the people of black communities lived through is what made them the who they

    Read More

  • Down At The Cross Baldwin Analysis

    916 Words  | 4 Pages

    “My Dungeon Shook” is a intellectual essay that Baldwin writes to his nephew which expresses how whites obliterated psychological and spiritual values of all African American people. His primary focus is to notify his nephew about the discriminatory and maltreatment his nephew will encounter living in America. Not only is Baldwin informing his nephew the harsh and unpleasant truths of being a black man, but Baldwin wants him to to know how to manage being an outsider even when he’s restrained to find his true persona. Baldwin uses the nephew’s dad as an example of how he became an indignant irritable man (Baldwin 21). Baldwin assumes that if his nephew can convert this contradiction into a constructive use, different results will transpire

    Read More

  • White Collar Crime Rational Choice Theory

    1831 Words  | 8 Pages

    CHOICES “White collar crime” refers to those offenses that are anticipated to generate fiscal gain using some form of dishonesty. This type of crime is usually committed by people in the commercial world who, as a result of their employment position, are able to get a hold of large amounts of other people’s money. “White collar crime” does not involve forceful, drug-related, or blatantly illicit activities. In fact, perpetrators are typically involved in otherwise lawful industries and may hold respectable positions in the community prior to the discovery of their fraudulent schemes. The slogan “white collar crime” was made up in 1939 by Edwin Sutherland during a dialog which he gave to the American Sociological Society.

    Read More

  • How Does James Baldwin Use Ethos In A Talk To Teachers

    77 Words  | 1 Pages

    In James Baldwin’s essay, “A Talk to Teachers”, he addresses the teachers around the world. He argues that the purpose of education is to equip students with the ability to look at the world for themselves. Clearly, Baldwin’s most significant rhetorical move to persuade the reader is his use of ethos, pathos, and repetition. Throughout Baldwin’s essay, he encourages changes in education for blacks, but he does so using ethos and pathos.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of A Talk To Teachers

    676 Words  | 3 Pages

    Baldwin uses an advanced vocabulary throughout the essay, but only uses slang terms when referring to African Americans. By using phrases like “But if I was a "nigger" in your eyes”, he shows the audience what the words culturally imply such as stupidity and ignorance. Since this is

    Read More

  • Summary Of Just Walk On By Brent Staples

    756 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout his essay, Staples is able to make the audience understand what he has to deal with as a black man. Staples does this by using words and phrases such as, “...her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny” and “... I was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area…” (542). By writing and describing how he (Staples) feels, the audience is able to get an inside look into how black men are treated and better understand why society’s teachings, play a vital role in how we see each other. Staples’ powerful writing also allows the reader to take a step back and see how as a society, people make judgements on others based on appearance alone.

    Read More

  • Affirmative Action By Shelby Steele: Rhetorical Analysis

    1199 Words  | 5 Pages

    Steele begins addressing the issue by saying that “ By making black the color of preference, these mandates have re-burdened society with the very marriage of color and preference( in reverse) that we set out to eradicate.” In essence Shelby states that by allowing blacks to get a free privilege that whites do not have, the same issue that people were attempting to eradicate had just been reversed except this time in favor of African Americans. Shelby further explains that “ In integrated situations where blacks must compete with whites who may be better prepared, these explanations may quickly wear thin and expose the individual to racial as well as personal self doubt.” By using the example of college Shelby shows people that just because something is free does not mean it is beneficial in fact it may have the opposite effect it set out to achieve. At this point the audience has been made aware of a problem on several occasion and at this point in time Shelby begins to elaborate on the issue creating more intricate situations in which the free privilege will affect African Americans in the future.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The New Jim Crow

    223 Words  | 1 Pages

    The piece of writing which I felt was unsuccessful for me was the Rhetorical Analysis of an article relating to a topic from our course book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. This piece of writing was difficult for me to organize my ideas around. The article that I decided to use for my rhetorical analysis highlighted mass incarceration among African American and the effect of civil liberties being are taken away from these individuals. I had a lot of repetition because many of the examples I used demonstrated more than one type of appeal. I found myself repeating what the purpose of the example was and how it demonstrated proper use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

    Read More

  • White Collar Crime Vs Street Crime

    1315 Words  | 6 Pages

    White-collar crime is more serious than street crime because the punishment is more severe, crime is easier to detect or track, and it is more harmful. Street crime is robbery, selling drugs, and stealing cars; White-collar is identity theft, forgery, and embezzlement. Anyone can become the victims of street criminals. Most of the time these crimes happen because people are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. People see street crime more than white-collar crime because it happens in public and makes the news.

    Read More

  • A Critical Analysis Of Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

    909 Words  | 4 Pages

    One will constantly face temporary conflict throughout life, but ultimately they can overcome through a will to on and pursue what makes oneself happy. Baldwin was able to create a picture in the reader's mind due to his personal relation to his characters, he was able to understand the harsh times for an African-American male. It also reflects on the care that siblings have for one another and how even though they have good intentions, they can't always help their loved one follow a positive

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Corporate Crime And White Collar Crime

    992 Words  | 4 Pages

    Corporate crime is a form of fraud that is closely related to “white-collar crime,” which takes place in business organizations and other corporate institutions such as banks, manufacturing industries, and non-governmental organizations. Unlike organized crime which may involve illegal street activities such as kidnappings and cross-border operations like drug trafficking, corporate crime involves “clean jobs” like manipulation of accounting records by finance officers, insider trading, misappropriation of funds, tax evasion, etc. However, both forms of crime require some degree of financial, social or political influence to be successfully carried out. This is because although organized crime is not exclusive to a specific race, profession or class,  “many studies have shown that those with power, influence, and respectability in local, regional, national, or international society have tended to organize crime more successfully and securely than those without” (Woodwiss, 2001, p. 3). Further, as Edwin Sutherland (1939) once observed, corporate crime is a large-scale version of white collar crime, because it involves people of high-class society, committed in the course of their occupation.

    Read More

  • The Stranger In The Village Poem Analysis

    1412 Words  | 6 Pages

    It takes the form of various guises, however with a similar intent each time. To elaborate, Baldwin makes a hauntingly accurate statement in regards to the influence of historic events: “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” As one comes to wonder how the burdens of racial inequality appear slow to evolve permanent solutions (that have the quantity to reeducate the oppressive and free the oppressed), we might remember the tendencies of human nature in reference to past neglects. In short, the reason the African American citizen continues to feel such a slow growth of embellishment, is due to the archival power instilled, by European, and now American, culture. The dominance and simplicity of the white community fails to acknowledge the perverse nature of their ancestors by, firstly, stripping the African American of a concretely identified lineage.

    Read More

  • Organized Crime Vs White Collar Crime Essay

    1570 Words  | 7 Pages

    White collar crime is mostly done by individuals who have good high paying jobs, power players of companies, and the upper class(Peterson, 2012).However, the criminals involving organized crime are usually people who did not come from wealthy families, do not have high paying jobs in cooperation and usually on the lower end of society(Knowles,2010). Usually, the crimes committed by white-collar criminals usually continues on for many years unnoticed(Peterson, 2012). Other times white collar crimes are known by law enforcement to

    Read More

More about Rhetorical Analysis Of The Age Of White Guilt By Shirley Lee

Open Document