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Just Walk On By Ethos Pathos Logos

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Impoverished, Imprisoned, Ignominious A Black man on the side of the street. A poor drug-dealing teenager. An immigrant. These are just a few of the types of people that white society dreads. As a result of this fear they have been opressed and uneducated for far too long. Through the usage of rhetorical devices, Freedom Writers and Just Walk On By: Black Men and Public Space are connected through their themes of racial prejudice, struggle, and stigma, and adress the issues opressed racial minorities have to put up with. The education system works against the poor, as well as minorities. It a system which is meant to keep the lower-class from succeeding, as seen in Freedom Writers. Through the usage of logos, the film displays the harsh ways …show more content…

In Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space Brent Staples provides examples of how racial stigmas have affected his life through the usage of ethos. He recounts on many experiences he has had walking down the street, circumstantially near white women, who run from him in fear of being attacked, (Staples 383). Simply due to the color of his skin others viewed him in a different light. The ethos used allows us to see that Staples is, in fact, an educated, college student, not a dangerous criminal, lurking the streets to prey on young caucasian …show more content…

Before Mrs Grewell opened the students eyes to the wonders of empathy they automatically saw each other in a negative light based on skin color alone. After her lessons began to sink in, they began to connect to each other and find that racial separation would only lead to hatred and more violence. This theme of racial violence, translated in Just Walk on By affirms that a by product of racial stigma is that black men are more subject to criminal punishment because of societal expectations placed upon them. In both pieces, there is a general lesson stating that if your expectations are for someone to fail, or commit crimes, they will meet or even exceed those expectations unless shown another path. Unless society changes its view or expectation of black men, the impoverished, and failing students with harsh backgrounds, the white and wealthy will continue to

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