Opinions and Articles

Blog #4

We come across different kinds of literature in our daily lives. Op-eds and JSTOR articles are one of the many examples of literature. Op-eds are reading that you usually find in a newspaper, a piece of literature that you may come across a lot. They are usually strong and opinionated, and are a response to a current situation. JSTORs on the other hand are academic articles that contain more research. 

When coming across the three articles that I read, the one that caught my interest the most was the article about "Viral Black Death". Overall, this article is explaining it's side on why society should watch viral videos of police brutality on black citizens of America. Kimberly Fain, a licensed attorney who teaches African American literature at Texas Southern University, wrote this article. 

I agree with Fain in her article when she explains that society should watch videos of police brutality to get another side. A lot of times, police brutality is thrown to the side because society turns to the idea that it was the black mans fault for being murdered due to their crime like behavior in the past. I agree that black people are more susceptible to being hurt by police officers due to their previous behavior, but usually the videos perceive them as simply (in Alton Sterling’s case) "selling his CDs outside a liquor store" which I believe has nothing to do with their previous crime record.

On a side note, I remember the day I watched Philandro Castilles viral video. His girlfriend Diamond Reynolds captured this video and posted it using Facebook live. In the video, right away you see Philandro Castille covered in blood due to a shot in the arm by a police officer. Reynolds explains that he was shot because he was reaching for his gun license, which was misinterpreted by the police officer as "reaching for his firearm". After watching this video, I was stunned at how a black man getting pulled over for a broken taillight gets killed. After this video went viral, many celebrities including Beyoncé, Chris Brown, and Wiz Khalifa showed their sorrows on social media about the case, which lead to many riots across America. 

In this article, the author makes herself seem believable by being extremely knowledgeable in African American History and current events. She provides hyperlinks from previous occasions such as Philandro Castiles and Alton Sterling’s videos. She also adds some history of African American lynching, and the case of Emmit Till. Being that she is an African American literature teacher, I would believe she has a lot of knowledge in this subject. Fain adds hash tags to relate to a younger audience reading this, so that they can get more involved in the social media movement against police brutality. In addition, she adds quotations from of different sides to the article. The quotations show that she is fair and objective which shows her strong use of ethos. 

Fain uses pathos in her argument by including hear wrenching videos of black citizens that were killed due to police brutality and how their family members reacted to it. This would make the reader feel a lot of emotions while reading this because they feel sorry for the victims. In addition, she uses logos by including quotations from victims and history facts to state her point. 

All in all, I really enjoyed reading this JSTOR article. See you all in class!

Vanessa Lim