Rhetorical Analysis Of Just Walk On By Brent Staples

Brent Staples, in the article “Just Walk On By” claims that there is a growing amount of a racist stereotype that whites, specifically white woman, have against black males. Staples supports his claims by using his own past experience evoking certain emotions of the audience. The author purpose is to retell his experiences of racism and to educate white people about what it is to be a white man, in order to really make them see how they are misjudged just by the occasion based on appearances. The author writes in a fairly calm tone towards his audience in this case, of whites of all social classes, specifically women. Staples use of pathos, diction, and ethos to effectively join his ideas to the thoughts and attitudes of his audience in his collective article.

Staples time and time again in the article jabs and strikes the reader in different ways to make the reader feel sympathetic for him. An example of this is how Staples writes his article in the first person. This is done specifically to make the audience really step into his shoes, and experience the occasion from a different point of view. “ I was twenty-two years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago. It was in the echo or that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into-- the ability to alter public space in ugly ways” (staples 1). Here in this example he throws the reader into a tone of sympathy. Influencing the audience to readily believe in point for him to educate white people about what it is to be a white man, in order to really make them see how they are misjudged just by the occasion based on