The New Jim Crow Rhetorical Analysis

People carry the stigma of being criminals for their entire lives. Michelle Alexander, the writer of The New Jim Crow, describes the challenges criminals face after being released from prison. In the beginning of chapter four, she argues that they were treated cruelly by society, comparing them to freed slaves during the era of emancipation. Alexander effectively makes emotional appeals, logical moves, and convincing citations to add the credibility of her argument. Moreover, she organizes the passage through connected timelines and comparisons, successfully proving that criminals today encounter tough and biased treatment from the society.

Alexander first sets up her argument through her epigraph, quoting Frederick Douglass’s statement at the National Colored Convention in 1853. The convention discussed the conditions and status of the “coloreds” and “decried the stigma of race” that the society gave to them (140). The epigraph not only adds to The New Jim Crow’s ethos as a renowned source supporting the writer’s credibility, but also transfers the persuasiveness and sympathy of Douglass’s words to the writer’s work. It evokes the audience’s feelings, driving them back

to the mid-nineteenth century when people were fighting for justice and equality. The first sentence in the epigraph, “a heavy and cruel hand has been laid upon us,” explains where the title of the chapter “The Cruel Hand” is from and builds the conversation. (qtd. in 140) In addition, it increases the audience’s curiosity about what exactly the cruel hand is and how the topic matters to “us”, thus pushes them to continue reading and focusing.
The writer begins the first sentence of her work by introducing Fredrick Douglass’s involvement and the convention. This description connects the title, the epigraph and text that she wants to illustrate, emphasizing her point as condemning the bias and advances her credibility and ethos. Audience would shift their attention from the compassion of the convention to the issue of bias itself when following the first sentence.
Throughout her piece, Alexander uses a lot of comparisons in parallel structures to reinforce the injustice and memory of audiences. She continues the discussion about the outcomes of the convention as follows:
Northern emancipation was complete, but freedom remained elusive. Black were finally freed from the formal control of their owners, but they were not full citizens… Although Northern slavery had been abolished, every black person was still presumed a slave—by law—and could not testify or introduce evidence in court. (140)
This comparison appeals to logos in a negative direction that what people would logically assume after the completion of emancipation are totally different from the real situation.

The use of simple conjunctions here such as “but” “but” “although” are serving as emotionally charged words, highlighting the difference between the two parts of life that they would have lived and the crucial facts. These followed conjunctures also multiples and enhances the mood audiences would sense when imaging the hard life toward the slaves as they never truly free. The discontinuity between what the law requires and the actual condition of slavery is then directly point out by the author as every black person was still presumed as a slave “by law”, strengthening the lack of civil rights and real freedom to

slaves.
Besides the comparison between emancipation and freedom of slaves, Alexander uses the same effective elements when demonstrating the conditions of criminals today and their life after free from prisons. It appeals to pathos that emotionally directing readers to her claims that the discrimination on criminals are so common and brutal through imagining their own encounter of some daily and necessity issues as “job applications” “rental agreement” “loan applications” “forms for welfare benefits” “school applications” and “petitions for license”. (141) It is so different for non-criminals and people who have a record to handle the same and necessary things, that all audiences would feel a sense of empathy from the reading and think about the brutality.
The use of analogy and sentence structure that accord to timelines throughout the reading advances in pathos and logos at the same time. The following passage is presented by the analogy of criminals and with another paralleled comparison about how the society treated these people:
“When we say someone was ‘treated like a criminal’, what we mean to say is that he or she was treated as less than human, like a shameful creature. Less than human Hundreds of years ago, our nation put those considered less than human in shackles; less than one hundred years ago, we relegate them to the other side of the town; today we put them in cages.” (141)
The description of criminals as less than human and shameful creature serves as evidence of emotional appeals, influencing and invoking the audience’s sympathy toward these people. The differences of treatment have been depicted from long ago to present, with situations become worse and worse: first they were just unconcerned by society, then people wanted to ignore them, and now, we limit and control their lives.
And the whole passage has been organized with the same structure as the cited sentence above. When discussing about the stigma of race in 1853, people have the ideas and hopes to challenge the status quo and pursue justice. And then the outcome as emancipation, is somehow a success, only until it has been put into effect that we see it as not that effective. But now, it is the society that forcing and promoting the injustice to our lives again.
Along with strong appeal to ethos and pathos through detailed description and comparison, the writer successfully direct readers to her argument as criminals are standing harsh and cruel lives. The applying of structure by timeline made the whole passage with rigorous logics, precisely ordering every detail to shape the claim effectively and persuasively. Alexander uses the same strategies and structure throughout the entire book not only to present the facts but also persuade audiences with her claims.