Rhetorical Analysis Of Just Walk On By

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s varies surveys on the discrimination of blacks, hispanics and whites, it appears that black people face the more discrimination in daily life, media, and representation in society than other ethnicities. In Brent Staples’ “Just Walk on By” he focuses on how that discrimination has affected him personally. He also talks about the various stereotypes and how people react to seeing him. Through Staples’ article he creates a persona that invokes compassion in the audience. He wants readers to understand his life and how he was treated, but on the other hand he doesn’t only focus on himself. He exhibits an understanding of different scenarios and dangers people face. Staples is able to convey a message, that people don’t always fit the stereotypes society gives them, by using Pathos to show his comprehension to the audience and he uses diction to help the audience get a better grasp on how discrimination looks from two points of view.

This sentence presents Staples use of pathos and his ability to invoke pity in his audience. This sentence shows how the way he is seen in public is not something he chose, it was his inheritance. On the contrary, Staples was also able to invoke another emotion, compassion. Staples used other points of view to show his understanding that there are monsters in the world. “I understand, of course, that the danger they perceive is not a hallucination” (543). The compassion Staples uses in his writing counterbalance his pity, this way of writing not only creates an emotional message about discrimination, it presents both sides of the spectrum. By using pathos to invoke pity and show compassion, Staples is able to bring various social views to