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The White Space Rhetorical Analysis

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Recommended: Sociological imagination about racism

Jasper Jonosky
Analytical Reading and Writing
Professor Faunce
8 Feb. 2023
Rhetorical Analysis of The White Space
In Elijah Anderson's The White Space, he effectively demonstrates issues of systemic racism in America through multiple types of rhetoric. Anderson is a sociologist and a professor at Yale University, who wrote The White Space in 2015 to highlight the modern-day segregation of minorities, particularly black people, in American society. Clear and eloquent usage of ethos, pathos, and logos is demonstrated by Anderson to convey his argument. The White Space is enlightening and should be read by anyone pursuing a better understanding of modern-day systemic racism and the struggles minorities face navigating it.
Andersons intended …show more content…

He provides a logical outline for how racial segregation evolved over the past fifty years, which he uses as groundwork to build off and go more into depth about throughout the rest of the essay. He states that after the civil rights movement, the United States government went through a period of economic growth as well as reforms against racial segregation. This caused the black middle class to grow and spread out into predominantly white areas. The growing black middle class was met with mixed reception from white society, due to many white peoples deeply held prejudices. Anderson goes on to say black people living in these areas are now forced to navigate an environment shaped by prejudices ingrained in the majority of its inhabitants, which is essentially the thesis of the entire …show more content…

Something that's interesting about this section in particular is that it is one of the very few times Anderson uses ethos throughout the whole essay. He describes a personal account of a beautiful day when he was jogging through a majorly white town while on vacation. In the middle of his jog a red pickup truck stops on the road ahead of him and the white driver starts yelling “Go home! Go home!” at him. This account he provides is very effective in conveying that in a white space, even a black man simply going for a jog is deemed a threat until proven

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