One Identity: No More Straight White Christian Guys To Kick Around Anymore By Ken Herman

“Council’s Politics Loses One Identity; No More Straight White Christian Guys to Kick Around Anymore” is an opinion piece by Ken Herman, written about the city council of Austin, Texas. Ken Herman directly writes to his audience that we are a nation where “identity politics” plays a very “important role at the ballot box” (Herman, E1). He claims that there is only one “non-Hispanic white male Christian heterosexual” who has a seat in the city council of Austin, but he recently got fired by losing Jimmy Flannigan who is gay. Herman reports his opinion that he is not against having a diverse city council, yet he agrees strongly with the people who voted for these chair members.
Herman’s tone is strong and powerful; this leads to the appeal of pathos. Pathos is generally known as the emotion and imagination of a writing piece. With the author’s tone, it leads to causing a reaction from the audience. It causes the audience to think ahead and they either agree or disagree. Some stronger than others of course. The part of the writing that results in emotions is the very last paragraph. Herman writes that Austin, Texas is starting a new year of people having to accept others for who they are – especially people with this kind of authority. He also writes that it was the people’s choice to vote for

This leads to the idea of Ethos. He pulls up statistics of the population of Austin and states that “34 percent are Hispanic, 7 percent are African-American, and 6 percent are Asian” (Herman, E1). This really shows who the people are of Austin are and how this resulted in a diverse city council. Herman included things that people have said as well. This includes what Symone Sanders, “former spokeswoman for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign,” “’In my opinion, we don’t need white people leading the Democratic Party right now” (Herman, E1). This shows Herman’s