Rhetorical Analysis Of Assata Shakur's To My People

The theme of “a failure of justice” for African Americans living in the present-day United States dates

He wants his readers to imagine the pain and humiliation of the ill treatment that African Americans endure on a daily basis. King writes of vicious mobs lynching people’s mothers and fathers, policemen killing people’s brothers and sisters, a man and his wife not receiving the proper respect they deserve because of their skin color, and the notion that African Americans feel insignificant within their communities; this is why these peaceful demonstrators of whom the clergymen attack “find it difficult to wait” (King, 20). However, King believes that soon, injustice will be exposed, like “a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up” (King, 30). This vivid description helps arouse an emotional response, driving shame into the hearts of his white readers.

I commence with this anecdote for several reasons one of which is to humbly acknowledge my unique, and privileged position as a Black female scholar in the midst of a war waged against Black bodies. Another reason is to recognize police brutality as a national endemic that plagues Black communities, unveiling remnants of anti-Black racism that legitimately suppresses the lives of Blacks in America . The non-indictments in each case concerning the sanctioned murder of Black youths evoke a

Paragraph 98, as with the majority of the text, utilizes symbolism to communicate the pervasive, institutionalized nature of anti-blackness. The narrator, still recovering from attempting to deliver a speech in the style of Booker T Washington to an audience of white men while simultaneously “swallowing blood” after being forced to fight blindly against members of his own Black community, finds himself gifted a “gleaming calfskin brief case” from the local superintendent. The brief case, connotatively signifying notions of power, wealth, and corporate success, is a symbolic transition of power to the narrator by someone fully established in the position of the oppressor. However, the text characterizes this transition of power as fraudulent or superficial. First, the superintendent addresses the narrator as a “[b]oy” in a linguistic assertion of dominance and power. Continually, the superintendent implies that the brief case will only be “filled with important papers” if the narrator “[k]eeps developing as [he is].” In characterizing the narrator’s endurance and acceptance of overt anti-black violence, as well as his advocacy of the dismissive and conservative philosophies of Booker T Washington, as “developing,” the superintendent’s language symbolizes a broader desire for those in positions of power and privilege to encourage marginalized individuals to submit to systems of violence and oppression. To contextualize, the text employs the symbol of the brief case to argue that when oppressed individuals receive ‘help’ from the system, the system’s position of benefit from oppressing those individuals will ensure that that ‘help’ is never genuine nor effective.

In Chapter 1 Assata Shakur makes a profound statement and recollection of the 1970’s, a historical era in our society known for its movement against injustice, corruption, and cruel treatment of minorities by the White citizens and government in America, “the land of the free”. Non-white citizens were denied their civil and constitutional rights as being an American by a nation which glorifies itself for its equality and justice for all, under ‘one’ nation. Instead, acts of harassment, brutality, and illegal incarceration were committed, whether innocent or not. The Black Liberation Army was an organization of people who had the courage to react to the Nazism in America by revealing and voicing the truth about the ongoing malice brought

The memory of incidents such as O. J. Simpson’s high profile criminal trial, the assault of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992, and the 2009 arrest and charging of Harvard Professor Henry Gates for racial profiling still freshly linger in the minds of many Americans. The people’s perceptions of justice in these situations continue to represent how the criminal justice system is viewed in present times, and continue defining racial disparity in America (Mauer, 2011).

In “Hip Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women”, McLune addresses the influence of hip hop’s choice of words towards African American women and females. McLune’s article is written in response to Powell’s opinions in “Notes of a Hip Hop Head”, along with various other hip hop artists, that black females are the leading cause of poverty and racism why black men undertake racism and poverty, as if women do not face these struggles from day to day. McLune disagrees with this remark and states that this is just one of many excuses that men use. McLune addresses an audience that is well educated along with informed with the

She appeals to African Americans to convince them to work together because she believes that they are possible solutions that can resolve racial inequalities. She acknowledges that, “Every revolution in history has been accomplished by actions, although words are necessary … We must create shields that protect us and spears that penetrate our enemies”. The black community should protect themselves from being been brainwashed by the white man and retaliate against the oppressive system. She confronts the white man’s intolerant attitude toward the civil right movement that, “Every Time a black freedom fighter is murder or captured, the pig try to create the impression that they have quenched the movement , destroyed our forces ,and put down the black revolutionary movement.liberation army … at this time is to create good examples, to

Michelle Alexander is a professor at the Union Theological Seminary,a civil rights lawyer and advocate and writer that devotes herself to speaking out on racial injustice and that slavery hasn't actually left america or in Alexander’s words, “we have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.” Alexander's book touches a lot of subjects that have to do with America's criminal justice system, such as criticizing past President Richard Nixon's “the war on drugs”, she explains that because of this event our country has lead to mass incarceration, of those being arrested with usually black americans. Thus we have this crucial issue with racial injustice and denying our citizens basic human right by holding them in jail cells

Race has always been an issue,especially in the 1970’s, but it doesn’t help that the government adds more fuel to the fire. In 1977 during a time of social/people movements,like the Black Panthers,Black Liberation Army,etc…, an outspoken and well known Black woman named Assata Shakur was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a state trooper pulled over Shakur and other people in her car for a traffic stop, there was a shootout that left a state trooper dead. No one knows who killed the trooper, but the government convicted Assata Shakur of the first degree murder. Where she later escaped prison and fled to Cuba for political asylum. As told in her speech “To My People”, Assata Shakur ,most notably, uses allusion,metaphors, and logos to highlight the problems in “Amerikkka” surrounding race.

When talking about the perspective of Assata Shakur, we always remember her radical style. Assata felt the power of oppression when she was a child. As she narrated in her autobiography, there was a zoo near her grandparents’ home. Everyday she would beg, plead, whine and nag her grandmother to take her to the zoo. However, one day her grandmother told her that they were not allowed to enter the zoo because they were black (Shakur 27). This childhood memory left a deep impression of segregation on Assata. When discussing the origin of Assata’s radicalness, we can conclude that her childhood memory was one important reason.

The Black Lives Matter movement brought the attention that discrimination is still existing today. With people like President Obama speaking on this issue, it is easy to see that even the most powerful people have been a victim of discrimination. In 2013, Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman for being an African American boy who just looked a little too suspicious while walking home. President Obama released a statement on the matter in the Rose Garden saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” (“From Trayvon Martin to black Lives Matter”) Discrimination has always been something African Americans faced, but hearing this from the President of the united states not only awakened the African Americans’ but It sparked a movement in the nation. The hashtag “#blacklivesmatter” shortly became a trend worldwide after the Zimmerman and Trayvon case. Obama went onto say that, “There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the

“The brutality with which official would have quelled the black individual became impotent when it could not be pursued with stealth and remain unobserved. It was caught—as a fugitive from a penitentiary is often caught—in gigantic circling spotlights. It was imprisoned in a luminous glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world” – Martin Luther King (8, Kasher)

Pop culture has enlightened and exposed the world to the good, the bad, and the ugly under every circumstance, and people tend to be more provoked, influenced, and intrigued by the bad and the ugly rather than the good. One topic of pop culture that never fails to gain attention is violence in its many forms. While at a state of constant social change and adaptation, the population finds more and more disagreements on the ever-changing and conflicting views and beliefs of each individual, which can lead to violence in some, if not most cases. Hate crimes are crimes or actions motivated by certain disagreements among groups that typically involve some form of violence. This essay will discuss the violence in racial hate crimes against African Americans, because the violence in these hate crimes, both past and present, will help educate individuals about different racial perspectives on the claimed “unfair” or “unequal” treatment of the African American race compared to the treatment of whites in all aspects of society and life. In the United States, African Americans as a race haven been one of the main targets for violent racial and hate crimes. Racial violence and hate crimes against African Americans have been a part of the United States since the very beginning, with a spike in conflict around the 1960s era of the African American Civil Rights Movement, and are even portrayed now in current pop culture sources. Violence against African Americans in films like The Help (a

To begin, Shakur exposes the heinous acts that were committed by America through appealing to logos. She discloses, “They call us thieves and bandits. They say we steal. But it was not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of Africa.” The use of parallelism strengthens her argument of black people being forced into slavery. No one can deny the fact that black people were dragged to onto boats and dropped off in America. White people kidnapped them from their home continent and erased their traditions and cultures. Shakur later adds, “They call us murderers, but we did not murder Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett