Ethos was also used as a means of backing up her claim and to regard her source as credible and trust worthy. Michelle Alexander uses ethos to her advantage, because of her status and credibility. She is a well-known American rights litigator and legal scholar who was praised by James Forman Jr from Yale university she was also Alexander has litigated numerous class action discrimination cases and worked on criminal justice reform issues. She is a recipient of a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship of the Open Society Institute. This enables the author to be able to effectively persuade the audience of her beliefs. It supports her objective of accentuating that the current American Justice system does indeed need reforming. This is due to her involvement with race-related issues in the past. The fact that she is also African American highlights a better perspective on the issue and allows the reader to better understand the struggle of her people through a personal experience. The use of ethos is further used with the mentioning of Martin Luther King who was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. as such “Yet as we shall see in the pages that follow, racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference, as Martin Luther King Jr. warned more than forty-five years ago.” (Alexander 12) Through her mentioning of this credible personal who was heavily