It is clear that different protests emply different appeals. The appeals are one of the following three: ethos, logos, or pathos. Now I'm not going to debate that one is more effective than another, because that is simply relative to the situation and the audience.
The past weeks reading shows multiple examples of appeals through logos, pathos, and ethos. In particular, the Stokely Carmicheal speech at the University of California at Berkeley uses strong appeals to emotion and feeling. The speech is lengthy but effective for his audience, who he so bluntly describes as "the white ghetto of the West."
Carmicheal points out that white supremacy is the idea "that white people can give anybody their freedom." Carmicheal continues, "a man is born free. You can enslave him after he is born free. And that is what this country does." Now Carmicheal is completely correct in his statement, it is logical (falling under the logos appeal). However, Carmicheal moves on to further his argument using a more emotional arguement.
Carmicheal uses the Vietnam war (an already controversial and emotionaly charged issue at the time) to further his emotional argument supporting the oppression of blacks. He describes the people fighting in the war as "black mercenaries," those creating a sense of division among the whites and blacks. He makes it sound as though the black troops are not fighting as Americans but simply being used by the Americans.... These are harsh ideas, and surprisingly enough actually results in applause.
Carmicheal makes statements that invoke strong sense of duty for whites when he repeats the "racism must die." He also creates a sense of duty for the black community when he claims that "black people must be seen in positions of power, doing and articulating for themselves." This appeals to the sense of ethos, or personal responsibility.
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4 comments:
I agree with what you said that the appeal used to make a point depends on the situation. For example, if you are trying to arouse others to feel the same way you do, the pathos appeal would be best. Therefore, I think you are right when you say that the type of appeal that is most effective depends on the situation under which it is being used.
I liked how you put yourself in the time period of Carmicheal by saying that the Vietname war was used to create emotional support (pathos). It struckme as such a true statement, because I feel that sometimes people tend to forget the emotion of older wars; they fall into a "history" and that makes them so disconnected from emotion, almost like they are a story.
I didn't realize that Carmichael created tension between blacks and whites when he called black soldiers in Vietnam "black mercenaries." It was a great way to use the language to provoke emotion and response in his audience. I also agree that he mainly uses Vietnam as a catalyst to get the crowd going. After all, his issue is civil rights and racism, not the ethics of war.
Laura,
You are right the main issue of the speech is civil rights, I realize this. I merely wanted to show one example, among many, of Carmicheal's appeal to emotion.
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