Rhetorical Analysis: Is The Ugly Wake Up Call America Needed

Too Familiar “Breaking News, Police Officer Kills Man!” That headline has been in the news way too often recently. In Charlottesville North Carolina, citizens are protesting the police for killing a minority man in their community. In response to this, the white citizens of Charlottesville were protesting about it. Ms. Sophia Nelson wrote an article arguing about how “Charlottesville Is the Ugly Wake-Up Call America Needed”. Inside her article, she writes that she is of African descent. Ms. Nelson argues that America needs a wake up call, and supports her argument, more or less, with tone, implicit claims, and rhetorical appeals. Tone, according to Webster’s dictionary, is “[the] style or manner of expression in speaking or writing”. Ms.
Nelson’s tone seems to be “Serious” to prove her point that things need to change. One example from in her Article that shows this is, “‘In this Country ‘American’ means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.’ -Toni Morrison”. The author, Sophia Nelson, included this quote for a reason. That reason being, to her, that America is “racist”. The author, Sophia Nelson, implies that the economy was better during the time of slavery.
This claim is shown in the text when Nelson writes, “The wealth of the southern colonies was in the billions of dollars at the height of slavery to the civil war. The author was trying to show that slaves were the number one source of revenue for most places in the colonies. This claim was not appropriate for their response because it shows that she would much rather go back to having slavery when the economy was better. Well that may sound good, the immigrants were treated much worse in the times of the colonies. That fact contradicts her original argument and makes it so here whole argument is too confusing to follow. The author appeals heavily to pathos in order to convince people that it is our responsibility to end racism in America. One phrase in the article that shows this is, “ race and racism continue to be this great nation’s birth defect: It is our weak link…” This is an example of Pathos because it appeals to mothers and/or parents who have lost/have a child with birth defects. They can relate when Sophia tells them that racism is a birth defect. Some parents may say, though, that it would be rude to compare this to a birth defect. Some birth defects are deadly, and racism, most of the time, is not
lethal. Ms. Sophia A. Nelson shows that America needs to change its habits by using tone, implicit claims, and pathos. The author uses tone to show that things need to change. Also, she uses the implicit claim of going back to slavery to better the economy. Finally, she uses pathos to persuade mothers and/or parents to give her support and back her opinion. So whether or not you agree with Ms. Nelson or not, she does have some pretty convincing tools to try and get her support.