James entices his article to individuals that believe racism no longer exists. He creates a top ten list entailing things we see, hear, and sometimes encounter every day, yet overlooked, is racism in a modernized form. He starts out building his ethos implying that he has written many other top ten articles, but this one stands out more because racist have “placed their program on remote control” after convincing many people that racism isn’t no longer alive. Even though he gives ten, I will only analyze the ones that were appealing to me, as a reader.
Number one, Drugs and guns in the Black community, James recognizes that weapons and illegal drugs are always someway and somehow dropped into the black community, whereas it would be hard to find such things in non-black neighborhoods such as Beverly Hills or California. Once I read that, in the back of my mind I said, ‘hey, that is true because sad to say, if someone was asked a question such as which city has the most crime: Detroit or Illinois?... In seconds, they would pick Detroit because of stereotyped and terrifying images of the city which is kind of ironic due to the predominant race being African American.’ Even though James makes a strong point there, I believe he could have found more evidence to back up his most important claim, the first one! He could have mentioned something like how our government neglects certain communities and gives more attention to others, then giving the reasons behind that and etcetera. That could have made his argument stronger and definitely more appealing. James number three: Evaporation of after school programs and number four: More prisons/Less gang prevention I found interrelated.
In number three on his list, he implies that scholarship programs and other types of financial aid for poor blacks are under attack leading to few black men in college while number four is suggesting that racism is seen in more prisons and less gang preventions, as a result, leaving more black women and men in prison. The connection I see between the two is: maybe more black people are in prison because of fewer after school programs; with black communities, of course being mainly black, I’m sure it’s easy to manipulate their own kind and living under the same circumstances, into forming gangs. I can understand why James separated the two numbers in a sense, but to push for more reasoning in his argument, they could have been combined. I found number seven on his list to be quite interesting.
Diminishing of slavery's modern impact/Embellishment of other peoples' oppression. James makes a good point behind that claim. He recognizes that cultures such as the Armenians and the Jews have times when they revisit their past horrors with annual commemorations and remembering the Holocaust, but blacks are always urged to forget about slavery. I never thought of it that way and I don’t think too many others have either. He really appealed to his audience there.
While reading this article, I was wondering who is the guy and how is he coming up with such claims- did he research, was it just something on his mind, or did he just feel the need to make a top ten list on something. Weirdly, once I was done reading his article, it was a lot more stronger to me because noted at the end of the article was that Darryl James is a syndicated columnist and the author of three books and won a non- fiction award for one. With this being the first time for me reading this article and maybe the first for many other people, he should have established that part of his ethos somewhere in the beginning of his argument. Still, James brought up very strong claims in his list that I felt were interesting and eye- opening to read yet, I do think more reasoning could have been added to make his argument stronger. After all, you can’t be too hard on an article that’s created as a top ten list!
author of article: Darryl James
Resources:
http://www.blacknla.com/news/Articles/DJ10Racism.asp
No comments:
Post a Comment