Essay about A Talk To Teachers; Rhetorical Analysis

4. By showing his firsthand experience of the visible contrast between uptown and downtown – the “white world” where garbage is collecged, the ownership and pride those who live downtown experience as opposed to the vision of the housing projects in paragraph 5 – Baldwin convinces the audience further that he knows what he is talking about. His vivid imagery appeals to the listeners’senses. Baldwin deepens his credibility with his audience of teachers as a person who has lived through this disparity, and he enables them to see and to feel the shocking difference between the ghetto and the white neighborhood through his eyes.

There are some things to what Baldwin said that aren't very accurate. By this I mean that some of the thought he expressed aren't relevant to our society today. This essay was written in the fifty's, a lot of chaos and anarchy was prevalent. This being said, it makes sense that Baldwin wrote: "American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to the state in which black men do not exist…people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction." (pg 101). The point I'm trying to make is that Baldwin was in a more violent mind state toward American life at this time. The Civil Right Movement slowly started in 1955 then gained speed with Rosa parks and what really sparked the movement came from one speech. Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech in

James Baldwin was an African American author who grew up in Harlem. In his “Talk to Teachers”, he discusses how society connects to education. He shows that society shapes a child’s education by conditioning and telling them how to view their place in life. According to Baldwin, society shows that there are unfair rules and regulations in a country that is supposed to believe and practice freedom. When the child grows up, they will realize that they do not have equal opportunities as other children and will then question their own identities. To fix these contradictions, Baldwin believes education should “create the ability to look at the world for himself.” He also believed that a child should “examine everything in order to achieve change and a sense of their own identity.”

Hatred for white society was a strong theme among the African American community during the 1950s. These emotions were conveyed through different platforms of the time, ranging from art and music, to articles and books. But James Baldwin, a popular African American writer during this time period, does not obsess over this subject that was so passionately conveyed by so many people like him. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his story of his childhood as well as his early adulthood to illustrate the destructive nature of the African Americans society’s hatred for white society in the very well known essay, “Notes of a Native Son.”

James Baldwin wrote a letter addressed to his African-American nephew about his nephew’s role in American society. Baldwin explains to his nephew how he will struggle in society and about his father's struggles and how his own struggles are something he is born with solely because of his skin color. Baldwin sums up his nephew struggles by saying “The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence”(7). Baldwin is telling his nephew that the main problem in America

The text continues with Baldwin warning his nephew about the struggle he is going to endure for just being born black and nothing else. Also telling him that he must survive for his children and his children’s children. He warns him, telling him that this country will set him up for failure and that they will try to control where he could go, what he could do, and how he could do it. He continues to articulate that he must stay true to himself because no matter how much he tries to resemble white people they will never accept him. He later states how corrupt the white mind is, for example, he says, “They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for so many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they

Baldwin, however, describes his father as being a very black-like “African tribal chieftain” (64) who was proud of his heritage despite the chains it locked upon him. He is shown to be one with good intentions, but one who never achieved the positive outcome intended. His ultimate downfall was his paranoia such that “the disease of his mind allowed the disease of his body to destroy him” (66). Baldwin relates the story of a white teacher with good intentions and his father’s objection to her involvement in their lives because of his lack of trust for any white woman. His father’s paranoia even extended to Baldwin’s white high school friends. These friends, although they could be kind, “would do anything to keep a Negro down” (68), and they believed that the “best thing to do was to have as little to do with them as possible” (68). Thus, Baldwin leaves the reader with the image of his father as an unreasonable man who struggled to blockade white America from his life and the lives of his children to the greatest extent of his power. Baldwin then turns his story to focus on his own experience in the world his father loathed and on his realization that he was very much like his father.

From the moment James Baldwin was born up until his father’s death, it was crystal clear that the two did not see eye to eye, much more like bumped heads. Baldwin often stated how he had grown to hate this man he called a father who was described as a cruel and arbitrary menace from not just individuals in his neighborhood, but his very own children as well. As the story progresses, Baldwin’s boiled up hate and ordeals of bigotry in his new hometown gradually began to affect not only his mindset, but his attitude towards individuals around him. With the use of rhetorical strategies, Baldwin is able to characterize his father with persuasive appeals, express their complex relationship with tone, and depict the connection between both him and

In James Baldwin’s collection of essays, The Fire Next Time, he discusses a range of topics stemming from the ultimate point that despite current implications and present maltreatment of African Americans in America, White Americans are not the only ones who contribute to the inferiority of Blacks. It is a collective action problem that has to be realized on both sides of this issue. In order for the nation to move on as a whole and get somewhere past this, Blacks and Whites have to work together in an attempt to realize that the past is a determinant of the future and shapes who we are as a people, and in order for equality to transform from a state of mind to a physical concept practiced by all, African Americans have to first accept their past in order to look to the future. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “[n]o one can make you feel inferior without your consent” and these words ring true in reference to the oppression of African Americans by White Americans as displayed in The Fire Next Time.

      Lack of education made it hard for Baldwin to fathom reality, his innocence became ignorance, and it was not until he was placed in the “read world” that he saw what caused his father to be so bitter for so many years. The discrimination he was faced with made him “colder and more murderous than ever.” (p.58) He was no longer naïve, and he carried hatred in his heart.

As a collection of major essays in which Baldwin covered, he was able to express himself as giving the point of a view as a Negro. Yet, his subjects are “less concrete, less clearly defined” for those of the white majority as an audience. Baldwin covers the first hand experience of the Black Muslim movement, but gives no background as to those who are trying to comprehend the information thrown to them. Baldwin brings in the discrimination of the figures who brought negative impact, but more damage

The 1940’s were a cimmerian time for everyone in the United States. Town streets all across the country would be filled with riots, shootings, and overall injustices. Those with colored skin were forced to live as though they were subordinate to people with white skin. Among those cities was that of Harlem, New York, where James Baldwin, an African American writer of American prose, was born and raised. In an excerpt from “Notes of a Native Son,” James Baldwin uses asyndeton, motifs, and powerful syntax to merge personal and political events in order to help represent the changes in racism in the United States.

James Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, and social critic. In the article ''If Black English Isn't a language then tell me what is?'' James Baldwin's asserts an argument as how Language is like the ID of people, it can identify, as well as define people. Due to the characteristics it has it can be defined as a persuasive essay. It attempts to persuade the readers to be on the writer's side, or accept their point of view. The article is about the history of black slavery will always be a boundary between black and white people, as it can never be forgotten. This significant essay was written in the 1970s. It talks about how language is not merely used for communication, it can be used to classify people with different social backgrounds and class. He used examples like how people in England talk make sense to their own people and not everyone else to demonstrate his thought of why Black English is not recognized as a real language. The reason is that Black English is creation of the black diaspora. In addition, he thinks that white man never meant to teach the Blacks English, the sole purpose of it was for the blacks to understand with the white people are saying so they can serve the white people. That is also the reason why he thinks black child are lost is that children can't be taught by people who despise them. I find it to be an interesting idea. He talked about the origin of black people going back to slavery. The inability to interact with each other made them create black English. Which was their own means of communication. I think that this article has a lot to say about the impact that language has on African American people and his positive approach is supported with strong historical evidence, and the authors anger behind this writing makes it stronger. However, the assumption about education makes the article weak.

Jensen (2005), argues how people have a discriminating inclination on how they see history. When history is being used to make an ostentatious gesture of the past, it becomes vital. Jensen, (2005) also refers to the “new White People’s Burden,” (p. 93) as they understand that they are the problem and need to face what reality really means, and act based on that understanding. In essence, Baldwin wanted to help his nephew survive as a black man in America, with a more sympathetic concept of racial tautness.

James Baldwin is an exceptionally writer who tested the water with writing. He was a writer who was not afraid to talk about new things that most writers of his time would not do. Most people did not know that Baldwin was actually a part of the civil rights movement. He was a writer who tried to write out and explain to the black experience to the white people. Even though he was not talking about as much as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, he was a big part of the civil rights movement. As you read this essay you will see how Baldwin became the writer that he is known to be today and also why he wrote, also learn about how he opened the door to thing that most writers of his time would not talk about.