The Black Table Is Still There Rhetorical Analysis

Cause-and-Effect Analysis In his essay “The ‘Black Table’ Is Still There,” Lawrence Otis Graham revisits his junior high school several years after his departure and is appalled at the enduring existence of the all-black lunch table, which is comprised of only African-American students. His essay examines the causes of his personal shift regarding the issue and the causes as to why the black table remains. As he is growing up, Graham belongs to the single black family in an all-white neighborhood. He is the solitary black child at his school that participates in predominantly white activities and institutions. Due to the white mentality Graham acquires, he convinces himself that the black table is a rejection of whites; therefore, he deems his resolution not to sit at the black table as heroic. Because he resolves to ignore the kids at the black table, and because he retains white friends, Graham is commonly teased by black students. In response, he denounces black classmates for intentionally segregating themselves. Since a white friend instructs Graham not to attend his bar mitzvah, and after Graham experiences prejudice from whites, he begins to suppose that if he sits at the black table, he would surrender his white friends. Graham rations that sitting at the black table is an anti-white allegation, but once he

When he reflects on how misconstrued he is, and that segregation is evident throughout the lunchroom, he utilizes asyndeton while defining a list of cliques. The omission of conjunctions causes the list to seem longer, thus exhibiting that segregation is found everywhere. Graham’s employment of rhetorical questions, in union with his use of basic sentences, when he writes, “What was wrong with me? What was I afraid of?” establishes a sense of suspense and curiosity, while also allowing him to capture the audience’s attention by answering those