Rhetorical Analysis Of Just Walk On By

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“Just Walk on By” A person’s actions doesn’t reflect upon another person of the same race. Our society occasionally stereotypes both gender and race. I’ve been stereotyped by being apprised that I’ll be another hispanic teen getting pregnant. They say hispanic girls fall in love too quickly and end up getting pregnant before the age of 16. “Just Walk on By”, written by Brent Staples in the late 1900’s was intended towards a stereotype audience of African Americans being aggressors and muggers. Staples purpose is to divulge the idea, that African Americans, are all seen the same due to one black man committing a crime. “Just Walk on By”, establishes an ordinary hard working person to being stereotyped by others because of his skin color. …show more content…

Brent Staples is a great author by acknowledging how racism is still currently a problem. Everyone is viewing a whole race the same due to ones actions. He uses pathos, an emotion by how this innocent person is being characterized. The use of pathos is significant because it creates an appeal to the reader from many different aspects. Staple tries to get at an emotion of fear because he’s trying to convey how people perceived him. “thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver-black, white, male, or female-hammering down the door locks.”Fear is being drawn from this encounter with any certain driver. Staples is letting his audience realize, how society has become. Just by seeing a black, white, or hispanic person, doesn’t mean people should keep themselves a certain distance from them. That person they’re doing that to, may cause them to feel terrible because people are scared of them. Fear is something normal a person may feel, but we shouldn’t have fear towards someone because of their skin color. This quote creates the feeling of fear and he restates it by saying, “I was to become thoroughly familiar with the language of fear.” Not only does he stick to the emotion of fear when he’s trying to get the audience's attention. He also uses sarcasm and humor. He doesn’t stick to this strong emotion, he uses humor to lighten his tone towards racism. This is very effective because it makes the reader want to read the rest of it by him setting different aspects of it. Staples establishes a very strong emotion towards fear, but he then transitions to humor to let his readers know that fear doesn’t affect him because he’s not an aggressor in any way. He expresses humor to lighten up his writing, so that he doesn’t only demonstrate a dark piece of writing towards

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