Baltimore

Today during work I and my students (middle school) were talking about the Bill of Rights and why we have it. This then led us to talk about the current situation in Baltimore. As an aspiring politician, I’ve thought about the recent events that have happened this past year. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best solution to improving our world is having strong organizations and the other is time.

In “Letters from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King says that the oppressed won’t always be oppressed and eventually the oppressed will act for freedom. In the very beginning, Martin Luther King talks about the organization that he’s president of, and of other organizations that are helping in the movement. A year later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by the Johnson administration, which I think helped, but as we can see today, there still needs to be lots of improvement. This compares to Malcom Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted” because Gladwell shows that during this time period, the civil rights movement was a hierarchical institution with many groups who had leaders and a chain of command. It was because of this hierarchical structure that (at least tried to) prevents activist form acting Willy nilly and doing something that would jeopardize the movement. It was also these groups that weeded out those that were committed and willing to die to those that weren’t. To bring this to more contemporary issues, Brit Bennett in “I don’t know what to do with good white people” talks about deleting and unfriending a racist friend for a post they made, shows that doing this was a minuscule move, and proves Gladwell’s point about social media being a “weak tie” when trying to organize a group.

                When Brit Bennett wrote her article, it was over 50 years when MLK wrote his. Bennett uses her grandma as an example and MLK describes his time, shows that blacks and whites had a terrible relationship, such as using dogs against activist and police humiliating people. When Bennett talks about her conversation with her friends she says that they look for the good in people and think that white people mean well. This shows the change of mindset that people and society have gone through these past 50 years and shows that even though there are faults, the wheels of progress are slowly moving.

                Even after all of these readings and analysis, the moment with the biggest impact was today with my students. Those 7^th graders know that the death of Freddy Grey in Baltimore was wrong and they admitted it, but it shows me that this and the next generations don’t want to make the same mistakes that previous generations have made. It’s when I see this, future generations can make this a stronger and united America. 

how should we improve our world? by moving on already with life

How do we go about improving our world? Simple. CHANGE HOW WE RAISE OUR CHILDREN. Change what we teach our children. Change what our schools teach children. We can change the past believe it or not. For example, I was taught mainly through school lessons about racism. I learned about the Ku Klux Klan, I learned about slavery, I learned about the white people racism in the past… the list goes on and on. Guess what? If school never taught me that stuff, I never would have known about racism existing honestly. Maybe that is why black people are outraged at white people to the present day. Because their parents and schools raised them by teaching them about slavery and inequality in our history. I know that this is true because I am still learning about racism against black people at nineteen. We talked about it in my history class, fine arts class, political science class, and college writing class. That’s all of my classes. The repetitiveness and years of stories of slavery being imbeded into my brain and everyone else’s brain I am sure will always cause racial tension between skin colors. If we literally do not raise our kids telling horrible stories about what some white people in the past and pretend like we do not know what racism is, guess what I guarantee that no one will care anymore about racism. Our society just amps it up all the stories about racist this and racist that. We should make it a law that if you talk about old slavery stories and racist things then you get sent to prison. Just stop raising our kids based on the past. MOVE ONNNNNNNNNNNN ALREADYYYYYYYYYYYYY quit living in the past. It’s so annoying. 

Revolutions Should Be Tweeted

Malcolm Gladwell used pathos most effectively in “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”. Gladwell pulls examples from boycotts in the south to show how strong willed activists were in wanting equality. When anyone mentions activists in the sixties it usually strikes a range of emotions. Using this example in the beginning and throughout the reading, sets the tone for the whole thing. In between the passages of activists in the sixties, Gladwell includes recent activist actions with the help of the internet, with Iran, Moldova, the P.L.O., the Darfur campaigns, and the case of the stolen phone, establishing “distinction between traditional activism and its online variant”. Adding traditional activism Gladwell also mentions the Red Brigades, Afghanistan, and East Germany. The inclusion of all these places and events are necessary pathos for him. All these events, old and recent, spark feelings of pride, fear, happiness, and everything in between. The wide range of locations are used to make it more relatable and close to home. The older generations could relate to the older activist movements, because they themselves could have experienced it or had friends and family involved. The more recent movements, the “online” ones, were more relatable to me because I was raised in the age of technology.. Especially the passage of Sameer Bhatia. The fact that he couldn’t find bone marrow and people from all over the world sought out to contribute. Without social media, the man could have died. Having really simple and fast ways of helping can really make a difference in anyone’s life. This is backed up by all the different campaigns on social media to help those in need. Ultimately Gladwell uses pathos throughout the reading to prove the revolution will not be tweeted. However, I saw this reading and took it as that even though times are changing and technology is evolving, the revolution will be tweeted and will help in the end. Documenting things online will only help spread awareness and reinforcements to the cause.

Tweeting the revolution

The idea reading, written by Malcolm Gladwell, was an interesting and relatable piece that I enjoyed. The author did a very good job of utilizing all three types of the rhetoric triangle in his piece, however if I had to say which he used best I would say logos. He uses ethos in the piece when discussing the many books, articles, periodicals, etc. written about this topic, which adds credibility to him as an author. It allows us as readers to believe he has done sufficient research to know what he is talking about and it only helps his topic to be more interesting with other opinions to compare and contrast. He also uses a good amount of pathos in his diction when discussing his own view about high-risk ties and how he claims that the social media ties we create are “weak”. By using these wordings he portrays to us how insufficient social media is compared to the real thing, and that we as a society should recognize that our efforts are basically nothing in comparison to the effort of the past generations, they had to get out of the house and spend time and effort to actually show genuine care and we as the lazy generation just have to like a post or retweet a hash tag. But I believe the best-used rhetoric in this piece is the logical aspect of it. By using ethos and pathos to spark our interests and add credibility he is able to appeal to our logic by pointing out how little of a difference we actually make in comparison. It is shown in the writing as if the quicker awareness and adaptability only can cause smaller weaker changes, and he uses this to lead into that if it came to issues involving danger or structure this will not be enough. Which I believe to make sense as a conclusion, he is right because if the like, retweet, or repost came with a chance of being in legal trouble or being assaulted physically by opposition I can guarantee not nearly as many people would be “involved”. The weak ties he speaks about are not enough to start a revolution, even though they can help spread awareness. If we as countries are participating in another revolution, more effort must be made as we follow the precedents of those who protested before us.

Tweeting The Revolution

            This story is primarily pathos just within its nature. This subject is a highly emotional one that connects deeply with most. Black people are reminded of what their relatives went through. White people are reminded of what their relatives did. For both it already causes a great deal of emotion just thinking about the subject. Mr. Gladwell mentions “when ten thousand protestors took to the streets in Moldava.” A person fighting for his or her rights brings a sense of patriotic pride to those of us that have them. We generally want everyone to be able to have the same amount of freedom that we are so lucky to have. Later he mentions “that Al Qaeda was ‘eating our lunch on the Internet.’” This again brings up a sensitive subject in the hearts of many Americans. This terrorist group brought one of the biggest national disasters that this country has ever seen. For ten years, and hopefully for many more we remember the terrible things that happened on that day. The Klu Klux Klan is mentioned and a story is told about three young boys trying to help out that were kidnapped and killed, again trying to bring up emotions from the reader in order to pull them closer to siding with him. This author I believe is trying to push people to actually do something. “But it (Donating Bone Marrow) doesn’t involve financial or personal risk; it doesn’t mean spending a summer being chased by armed men in pickup trucks.” They (evangelists of social media) seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that singing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same snse as sitting at a segregated lunch counter.”

Should we Tweet the Revolution?

In his essay, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, Malcolm Gladwell talks about social media platforms and how they influence masses of people. Even though social media platforms can cause massive change, Gladwell says that social media wouldn’t have been successful in the civil rights movement, as compared to the example that he gives about donating bone marrow.

                Out of the 3 different appeals that we learned (Logos, Pathos, and Ethos), I think that Gladwell has good ethos when he’s writing this essay. Ethos is the author’s appeal and how we see him and I think that Gladwell does a good job doing that. On page 312, we see a little short biography of Malcom Gladwell where it says that he’s a writer for the New Yorker, has written 3 books, and was one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. Just within these few sentences we see that he’s very accomplished and successful.

                Outside of this short paragraph, Gladwell uses Ethos, right at the start by giving a historical example of the Woolworth’s sit-in. Besides the Woolworth’s sit-in, Gladwell also cites multiple writers and scholars throughout his essay. One of the first people that Gladwell cites is Golnaz Esfandiari from Foreign Policy, where she stated that despite what some say, there was not a twitter revolution during the 2009 Iranian presidential election. This contributes to his argument because Gladwell believes that social media platforms don’t really contribute to revolutions of this scale, while Esfandiari says that since many Americans were the ones tweeting it didn’t really make a difference in Iran.

                Gladwell cites another source that helps build his ethos. Gladwell cites Doug McAdam on page 318, where McAdam brings up the “Strong-tie” concept that was prevalent during the civil rights movement. This was because activist had strong personal connections to the civil rights movement, as opposed to today’s social media platforms where people’s online friends can closely resemble acquaintances in real life. This contributes to his ethos because it shows that this strengthens his argument by saying that social media would not work in a civil rights movement type of revolution.

                In the 3^rd and last part where I think Gladwell builds his ethos is when he shows that social media can make a difference, when he uses the example from The Dragonfly Effect about the bone marrow transplant on page 320. Gladwell says that because there were low stakes in what was being asked of the people on social media (bone marrow testing) more people participated and spread the message to all of their followers. This helps because this example is not a “strong-tie” like the civil rights movement, but a “weak tie” movement, which is what Gladwell believes that social media was made for.

                Overall, Gladwell has good ethos in this essay because he constantly brings up different examples to support his argument from different sources to show that he is knowledgeable in the subject.

Ally's choice and Being a More perfect Union

I personally found “Ally’s choice” to be very interesting. I just had never heard of a story like this, it was so different. It just made me realized how people everywhere go through different experiences. Basically, Ally has black and white in her blood. She started off as a child being characterized as black because that is what her mother wanted Ally and her sister to be, even though they could pass as white. Her and her sister were bullied for being black all through middle school but as Ally went on to high school she wanted to change that. Since she could pass as white she did a few more things to change the way she looked and started hanging out with a older crowd, saying she was white and lying about her family being black. She and her friends would pick on her sister being black. This is how they grew up. Although they care for each other there will always be this memory separating the sisters from each other. It’s sad how Ally would chose popularity over family. I find this story to be credible just because of the reputation of where Ally and her family were raised. Racism seemed to be an issue. I believe Ally is knowledgeable because this was her past. Only she can take credit for what happened. Although I feel she didn't make the wisest decisions, I can understand her doing things to fit in high school. You can tell Ally came off harsh and only wanted to do things to help herself but you have to remember this was high school. High school is all about fitting in and being with the right crowd. Her and her sister lived two different lives so Ally didn't seem as emotional as her sister because she had a good young life and her sister didn't.
As for “Being a More Perfect Union”, I found the author to be more knowledgeable than Ally just because he seemed of higher power considering he was in politics, therefore making him more credible. His story had to deal with his church and where him and his family came from. He had black and white in his family as well but it never seemed to be good enough. He was either too black or too white. This wasn't good for him just because he was in politics and he needed people's votes. Him and his priest were different people. Although He believed in his priest and they were close, he still didn't agree with his priest politically. They were both black but saw racism differently. This just seems like a common thing. I could see others relating to this because everyone has different opinions and it's very rare that someone would agree with another person completely. I felt the author was kind and even the priest was kind but they both just had different lives and experiences.