Mellody Hobson's Speech Colorblind Or Color Brave

Color Blind or Color Brave?

Mellody Hobson’s speech “Colorblind or Colorbrave” about encouraging others to speak openly and courageously about race and promoting diversity in businesses uses experience, expert testimony, and logos to support her argument and persuade her audience. She begins her speech with two anecdotes: one about being the only black girl invited to a birthday party (and her realization that, “[White people] will not always treat you well.”), and another about being confused for the help at an editorial board lunch. She talks about her own experiences dealing with race while using pathos to talk about them lightheartedly and on a more personal level because she understands that race is an uncomfortable topic for some. She also uses another experience (her swimming trainer giving her breath-holding exercises to teach her to deal with her discomfort) to promote a theme in her argument. She wants to urge people to have more conversations about race, despite them being uncomfortable, because, “If we can learn to deal with our discomfort, and just relax into it, we’ll have a better life.” She presents this theme as more of a life lesson, as opposed

to a call to action, because she knows a lot of her audience does not want to feel bombarded with a race discussion.
Hobson also talks about how diversity in corporate America is lacking (“Even though white men make up just 30% percent of the U.S.

population, they hold 70% of all corporate board seats…”). She uses statistics (logos) to show how not promoting diversity directly affects businesses. She uses another statistic (“Of the Fortune 250, there are only seven CEOs that are minorities, and of the thousands of publicly traded companies today… only two are chaired by black women…”) to create a rhetorical scenario (“...Imagine if I walked you into a room and it was of a major corporation… and every single person around the boardroom was black, you would think that was weird. But if I walked you into a Fortune 500 company, and everyone around the table is a white male, when will it be that we think that’s weird

too?”).
She then later on uses expert testimony (John Skipper, head of ESPN, saying yes to diversity, making his company extremely valuable; the smallpox vaccine being created with the help of a dairy farmer) to prove that having more diverse (not just in terms of race, but educational level as well) companies leads to even more success, despite people thinking that a more diverse company means hiring people who don't know what they're doing to look more diverse.
To conclude, Hobson has a deep knowledge about her audience and how to approach them about uncomfortable topics. She knows that flat out talking about race will make the audience uncomfortable, so she eases them into the conversation by making it less of a debate and more of a personal discussion. She also makes her argument fact-driven to make them think rather than abruptly respond.