Historically, people of color have been targeted by society and treated with extreme violence, which has forced them to live a very demanding life. As people began to generate talk about this horrifying reality, American abolitionist Frederick Douglas took matters into his own hands. With the goal to sway his audience’s prejudice, Douglas argued to change the social norms regarding the treatment of African Americans by connecting to the listeners on a personal level. In Frederick Douglas’ popular speech, “The Church & Prejudice '', he uses rhetorical strategies, such as logos and pathos, to effectively prove the need for change surrounding African Americans' treatment. In his speech, Douglas uses logos to exhibit several inhumane ways people …show more content…
For you know God is no respecter of persons!” This made this young man feel unwanted, which caused other African Americans treated this way to avoid church overall. The audience is drawn in by this undesirable feeling they are familiar with. People believed African Americans were not important, claiming they were undeserving of respect from their peers. Douglas appeals to the audience by using the concrete fact that people want to feel respected, yet this is something African Americans did not experience. A young woman had once fallen into a spiritual trance and insisted she had gone to heaven. She was asked “if she saw any black folks in heaven? After some hesitation, the reply was, ‘Oh! I didn't go into the kitchen!’” implying people of color were only for cooking, cleaning, and doing the work. They had to stay in the kitchen just because their skin tone was different. Douglas viewed this as irrational. Hearing the disrespect people of color were receiving will persuade the audience to make a change. A young African American woman was in church and she decided to “partake of the same sacramental elements with the others'' conversely, “when the …show more content…
An awful image of people of color was implemented throughout the world, nevertheless they were seen as monsters. Children were taught "When they behave wrong, they are told, 'Black man come catch you!'” leaving them afraid. Children of a young age were not even allowed to think for themselves or make their own choices. Kids were immediately taught that people of color were scary and they were to “come catch you” if a mistake was made. Douglas knew people needed to understand what it was like to be a person of color. They experienced horrible treatment everyday. The fact children were being affected by this takes an emotional toll on the audience. It was said white people were wiser, more hardworking, and more capable. They were the superior race and that was made clear when a minister “proceeded until all the white members had been served” before moving on to the people of color. African Americans were treated as if they were unwanted, something nobody wants to feel. By introducing the effects this had on their everyday life, Douglas is creating a connection between him and his listeners. For this reason, a push for change is secured. It was said that “God made one portion of men to do the working, and another to do the thinking.” They were needed for one thing only, doing the hard work. People of color weren’t even given a chance to “do the thinking” or prove their worth. They were to do the work
Racism is one of the main subthemes that is evident throughout the book. The treatment of the African American race showed how the White race felt about the African Americans. The Whites were afraid their “blackness” would rub off on them. An example of this behavior in the book was when Hilly says, “ It’s just plain dangerous. Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do” (Stockett,10).
In conclusion, Frederick Douglass’s use of antithesis emphasizes the social difference between imperious white people to
Dallin Jones C. Ogimoto American Literature February 15, 2023 Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Appeals Fredrick Douglass was born into slavery on February 14, 1818. He later escaped slavery in 1838. Frederick Douglass is most commonly known for his narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. The purpose of this narrative was to uphold the principle of freedom as an inalienable human right and to prove how slavery was dehumanizing. Fredrick Douglass neatly uses ethos, logos, and pathos to promote his purpose, but pathos is by far the most effective due to the correlations between him and the reader.
LeAnn Snow Flesher, an Old Testament professor at American Baptist Seminary of the West lauds his theology as something open and honest protest to their white male perspective, that emphasize the cross of redemption without naming the tragedy of violence on lynching trees. (4) Critics say he developed a divisive and racist theology out of the bitterness of growing up in segregation in 1960’s. James Ellis, III, the senior pastor of a nondenominational congregation in Washington D.C. says “For Christians, white cannot be synonymous with evil nor black with good, or vice versa. That sort of rhetoric has no place in the kingdom of God.” He asserts the racial peace comes not from condemnation of whites, but from the reconciliation with God.
Frederick Douglass' first recognizes his comprehension of time, which is imperative to him. He can now recognize noteworthy occasions of his existence without referring to them as gather time or winter time. Douglass experienced class contrasts in a slave society. Thomas Auld grew up a poor kid, with very few slaves. Douglass perceives that individuals who have not beforehand possessed slaves are the most noticeably awful individuals to claim slaves.
Racism was a huge problem that started slavery, causing the civil war. Not, only- but also, The enslaved people were constantly disrespected in the south and would get beaten if they didn’t live up to the southern standards. When Frederick Douglas wrote “all men are created equal,” equally important, He wanted to challenge the reader’s beliefs of what “All men are created equal” means. Subsequently, He tries to challenge this by discussing his experiences as an enslaved person. With the purpose of,
To support his thesis, Douglass uses appeal to logos, ethos, and pathos. He first introduces logos appeals when he explains how statistically a white man gets away with the same
No one enjoys the feeling of being discriminated, insulted, being made the punchline of the joke. Imagine walking into a café in the 1960s, and you had to sit in your segregated area, in the dirty unpleasant back corner of the café. Then while you try to enjoy a nice drink after being served last, people approach you – they start calling you names, making insensitive jokes about you, then they squirt tomato sauce on your face, sprinkle salt in your hair and spit on you all for no logical reason – yet if you retaliate in anyway then you could be fined or even jailed for abuse. How do you think you would react? This is what life was like for African-Americans in the mid-20th century, ‘in which the Negro was forced patiently to submit to insult, injustice and exploitation’.
They should have been able to acquire the same rights that white people had. Unfortunately these rights were taken from them and instead African Americans were treated with discrimination and harassment instead. Baldwin is able to use this information as a way to connect to the empathy of white Americans and attempt for them to understand how cruel they have been to African Americans. Furthermore, Baldwin shares his experience on his conversations with other Civil Rights Activists , one man states that “The white man sure is the devil. He proves that by his own actions” (Baldwin 65).
He expresses the suffering of the African American community as “harried by day and haunted by night” and “living at tiptoe stance.” King vividly depicts the circumstances that African Americans live under as their past lives as slaves continue to haunt them. They live cautiously because of segregation. He does this to gain the sympathy of the clergymen by helping them understand the pain that they endured. King uses a “degenerating sense of “nobodiness” and an ”ominous cloud of inferiority” to convey the loss of self-worth because of segregation.
"There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States." Frederick Douglass, who was a former slave, spoke in front of many crowds of people surrounding the topic of slavery. He spoke about how terrible and embarrassed we should be because the United States was the last country to give up using African Americans as slaves. Douglass used ethos pathos and logos all throughout his speech, and it caught the attention of everyone it that audience. Frederick Douglass spoke in front of a crowd of people on the fourth of July gathering, about freedom and the rights of the whites.
Group Essay on Frederick Douglass “That this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system”, and that Frederick Douglass does in his eponymous autobiography. Douglass throws light by dispelling the myths of the slave system, which received support from all parts of society. To dispel these myths Douglass begins to construct an argument composed around a series of rhetorical appeals and devices. Douglass illustrates that slavery is dehumanizing, corrupting, and promotes Christian hypocrisy. Using telling details, Douglass describes the dehumanizing effects of the slave system which condones the treatment of human beings as property.
On July 5th 1852 Fredrick Douglass gave a speech to the anti-slavery society to show that all men and woman are equal no matter what. Douglass uses ethos, pathos, and logos in his speech to make look reasonable. Douglass demonstrates ethos by speaking in first person that of which he had experience slavery: "I was born amid such sights and scenes"(Douglass 4). When Douglass spoke these words to the society, they knew of his personal knowledge and was able to depend on him has a reliable source of information. The anti-slavery society listening to his every word, considering that Douglass spoke with integrity, knowledge and emotions.
By giving this example, Douglass stresses the moral failings of the white girl, which appeals to the audiences’ sense of morality and incites feelings of resentment towards the hypocritical members of the church. Returning back to his experience as a slave, Douglass shares how he used to “attend a Methodist church, in which [his] master was a class leader;” and how “[his master] would talk most sanctimoniously about the dear Redeemer, pray at morning . . . noon . . . and night,” but could still “lash up [Douglass’s] cousin by [his master’s] two thumbs” to the point where “[his brother’s] blood streamed to the ground.”
Douglass shows us an example of religious irony when he explains how his county views the murder of any colored person. In chapter four, Douglass states, “that killing a slave or any colored person , in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community,” (Douglass 34) The religious irony is shown here because the South has always been known as the ‘Bible belt’ and yet these actions were accepted, and even