Third Reading

The New Jim Crow is a very powerful, persuasive, and thought-provoking novel. The facts and passages have frankly shocked me, and are very empowering and insightful. Michelle Alexander seamlessly weaves together facts, anecdotes, and argument/opinion pieces to thoroughly develop her argument, and it's very convincing. Part of the reason that this book is so powerful is not only because it's argument is strong and valid (in my opinion), but also because of the way she writes it. She very thoughtfully uses various rhetorical strategies and appeals in order to make her argument as effective as possible.

Overall, the way she structures the book contributes to its argument's effectiveness. Typically she starts a chapter with an overview of the topics that lay out what will be proven in the following chapter. The chapters are strategically organized and all have one central theme which makes the book comprehensive and easy to follow. After she provides the layout of the entire chapter, she moves into subsections that prove the overall theme of the chapter, which itself proves her thesis.

Her typical formula for most of the chapters is as follows:

1. Introduce the topic and lay out what she's going to prove
2. Create subsections
3. Within subsection...
1. Give an overview of the issue
2. Provide evidence and statistics
3. Add in anecdotes, stories, and examples
4. Argument
5. Tie to thesis/topic of chapter
6. Transition to next subsection
4. Recap the chapter
5. Show how it proves her thesis

At the start of her sub-sections within chapters, she often opens with a little bit of background on the topic. After she does this, she often opens with specific cases or events that defined the way we practice law now. For example, on pg 119 she begins the subsection "In Defense of the All-White Jury" by citing Batson v. Kentucky and Swain v. Alabama, which were both defining cases in the development of how the courts treated racial discrimination on juries. By opening with more informational things she develops a sense of ethos by demonstrating her knowledge on the topic as well as informing the reader about how laws came to be and showing how they are now. This helps further her purpose by appealing to logos and ethos and coupling it with more argument and pathos later in the chapter.

Often after she gives some background information she will provide shocking statistics in order to appeal to logos. She uses countless statistics in this book not only because they're good statistics that help prove her point, but also because it makes very strong appeals to logos. It also helps greatly in establishing her ethos because it shows that there is actually evidence to these arguments she's making. Not only is there evidence, but these statistics are also usually from well-known or government-run sources that she often mentions by name in order to increase her credibility.

Some examples of these shocking statistics are "African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of all juvenile arrests, 35 percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58 percent of youth admitted to state adult prison" (pg 118) and "defendants charged with killing white victims received the death penalty eleven times more often than defendants charged with killing black victims" (pg 110). Another example is "A survey was conducted in 1995 asking the following question: 'Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?' The startling results were published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education. Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups" (pg 106).

These examples show how she uses very shocking statistics, studies, and examples in order to prove her point. It would not be enough to just say that African-Americans are at a disadvantage in our criminal justice system, she actually proves it step-by-step and shows credible evidence to support her claims. In the second example, you can also see how she establishes some ethos by saying where the study was published (which is in a credible source). These statistics, as well as passages that describe various laws, events, and cases that occurred (which are too long to quote here for your sake), are extremely important in developing her argument because they prove that her argument is valid and not just shallow claims.

Logos is often very prevalent throughout her book and is probably the main basis for her argument, which is why I'll focus more on pathos appeals that are more subtle and less obvious to spot. She not only gives overviews of case laws and shocking statistics in order to prove her point, she also makes some appeals to pathos. She often does this by providing individual stories or accounts of certain people in order to give a face to a statistic. This is extremely important in her argument because however solid her logos is, often what sticks out to me, and I assume many other readers, are the stories of individual people. She does this quite frequently.

One of the strongest examples of pathos in the use of a specific story is when she starts out the third chapter by describing what happened to Emma Faye Stewart. She says, "Imagine you are Erma Faye Steward, a thirty-year-old, single African American mother of two who was arrested as part of a drug sweep in Hearne, Texas. All but one of the people arrested were African American. You are innocent. After a week in jail, you have no one to care for your two small children and are eager to get home. Your court-appointed attorney urges you to plead guilty to a drug distribution charge, saying the prosecutor has offered probation. You refuse, steadfastly proclaiming your innocence. Finally, after almost a month in jail, you decide to plead guilty so you can return home to your children. Unwilling to risk a trial and years of imprisonment, you are sentenced to ten years probation and ordered to pay $1,000 in fines, as well as court and probation costs. You are also now branded a drug felon. You are no longer eligible for food stamps; you may be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least twelve years, and you are about to be evicted from public housing. Once homeless, your children will be taken from you and put in foster care" (pg 97).

This quote gives the example of how sometimes she'll balance out her statistics with actual cases and stories to show the real effects of these discriminatory practices and laws. However, this example is unique from many of them partially because it comes at the beginning of a chapter, but also because she actually uses many pathos appeals that aren't typically present at other parts of the book so far. The task that she gives to imagine yourself as Erma Faye Stewart automatically makes readers sympathetic to her cause because they're putting themselves in her shoes, which is a major goal of Alexander's in writing this book; to get people to think about how this is affecting so many African-American people. The specific use of the word "you" is furthering this purpose by not just having readers imagine themselves in her situation, but constantly framing it as though you are the one going through this traumatic experience caused by our corrupt drug systems. The repetition of her children and her age, as well as stating her entire name (including the middle name) are meant to humanize this situation and draw more sympathy from the readers about the issues she's discussing. Overall, this is a very strong use of pathos, and it is used very well to further her purpose.

Although examples of pathos are often somewhat rare in this novel, sometimes the way she words things and the diction, or word choice uses elicit a certain emotional response from readers in a subtle way that she hopes to get. Although the clear pathos-appeals like the one above are certainly effective, sometimes a lot of the pathos appeals she makes are very subtle but still influence readers' thinking and emotions nonetheless. For example, on pg 11 she says "...The Court's opinion was driven by a desire to immunize the entire criminal justice system from claims of racial bias...the court states that discretion plays a necessary role in the implementation of the criminal justice system and that discrimination is an inevitable by-product of discretion. Racial discrimination, the Court seemed to suggest, was something that simply must be tolerated in the criminal justice system, provided no one admits to racial bias." This passage shows how the way she words certain things, even while she's providing background and logos appeals often leads readers to a certain emotion or conclusion. In this case, the feelings I got after reading it were outrage because of how she points out the hypocrisy and illogical, immoral thinking of the Court in their decision to grant police departments a lot of discretion. By calling racial discrimination an "inevitable byproduct" of discretion and saying that it's simply something to be "tolerated", she's clearly trying to evoke emotions from her readers of outrage and anger at the way the courts accept and tolerate this tragic issues, and point out how flawed their thinking is.

Another important rhetorical strategy she uses is diction. Throughout the entire book, she has framed the discrimination and racial bias and corruption in laws similar to a war. She does this subtly throughout the book, but through specific word choice, you can see that she's clearly emphasizing the War on drugs. She does this in order to emphasize that there are actually casualties and people that die or at least lose major parts of their lives due to this racial discrimination. If she referred to it simply as discrimination it would lose a lot of its effect because people often assume it doesn't really matter or affect people that much, but by comparing it to a war, she evokes a certain emotional response that wouldn't be present otherwise. By comparing it to a war she also emphasizes how important it is and how it needs to be discussed more often, which is another theme of the book.

She often uses a metaphor of these laws being similar to a war, for example on page 125 she says "The militarized nature of law enforcement in Ghetto communities has inspired rap artists and black youth to refer to the police presence in black communities as 'The Occupation.' In these occupied territories, many black youth automatically 'assume the position' when a patrol car pulls up, knowing full well that they will be detained and frisked no matter what." This is a more obvious comparison to a war, but on page 133 she says "Not only do police discriminate in their determinations regarding where to wage the war, but they also discriminate in their judgments regarding whom to target outside of the ghetto's invisible walls." These specific words bring to mind a war-like atmosphere in our countries ghettos, which is exactly what she hopes to accomplish.

Another strong appeal to pathos that she makes is by using imagery. Her main use of imagery is when she discusses the Stop and Frisk laws and how African-Americans react to it. On page 125 she says "Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago, reports that his students frequently express shock and dismay when they venture into those communities for the first time...One student reported...'Each time we drove into a public housing project and stopped the car, every young black man in the area would almost reflexively place his hands up against the car and spread his legs to be searched. And the officers would search them." This passage clearly creates an image in readers' minds that shows, sometimes more effectively than the statistics about Stop and Frisk policies, how damaging and normalized it's become for black Americans to have to deal with being searched.

Another example of this imagery on the same topic is on page 134-135 when Alexander describes Stop and Frisk laws by saying "Often the stops included searches for illegal drugs or guns-searches that frequently required people to lie face down on the pavement or stand spread-eagled against a wall while police officers aggressively groped all over their bodies while bystanders watched or walked by." This quote clearly is supposed to create a horrifying image in readers' minds that will show how humiliating and demoralizing this tactic is on so many African-Americans. Statistics are one thing, but thinking about this image made me feel sick to think about all the people that frequently have to do this just because of their race. Even within this passage she also demonstrates strategic use of diction by saying "aggressively groped" which leads the leader to the conclusion that these tactics are immoral and harmful to blacks.

Although overall I would say that this is a logos-dominating piece, she still gives very strong pathos appeals, although they're sometimes harder to spot than logos ones. Even the decision to use fewer pathos-appeals makes a lot of sense if we think about her argument. She's discussing a potentially emotionally-charged topic here, which if she comes across as too emotional or pathos based without evidence to back up her claim, she will be easily dismissed. The use of logos appeals almost builds her ethos in a way because it shows that she is educated, informed, and provides countless facts to support her arguments that few would find fault in. She typically adds pathos appeals at the end of paragraphs after she's introduced her overview and logos appeals which again, makes a lot of sense. I have a feeling that the end of the book will be more focused on pathos, but right now her job is to literally prove to the readers that there is a racial caste system within America, which is no small task. In order to actually prove this to a lot of skeptics, she needs to have solid evidence, which is why she focuses mostly on logos appeals, although there are certainly some good pathos ones as well.

This section was also extremely good, and I think that I actually liked the fact that there were more pathos appeals in this section than there were in the last section I read. She finds a unique balance of appeals and techniques that I don't always even recognize until further consideration, which is highly effective for her because she's subliminally convincing her audience without being totally overt about the tactics she's using to do so. Her writing is so well organized, coherent, and strategic, and I absolutely love reading it. I can't wait to keep reading, and my anticipation for the end is only growing!