Martin Luther King Jr. and Ta-Nehisi Coates both use strong senses of emotion to appeal to their audiences although they use the authors do it very differently. Ta-Nehisi Coastes’ article uses emotion to verify his evidence of statements people in the community gave towards the police brutality charges, whereas Martin Luther King Jr. uses emotion to tell of his injustice from being arrested and thrown into the Birmingham city jail. Both authors use logic and reason to explain why they were writing. The article uses logic to talk about the police brutality that has been occurring in Maryland, while Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham city jail uses logic to talk about not only the injustice he has experienced but also the injustice that every African American person has experienced. As far as the authorial character goes Martin Luther King Jr. has way more authority than Ta-Nehisi Coates because he is the face of the African American Civil Rights Movement. Although Ta-Nehisi Coates presents a fairly strong argument against police brutality but Martin Luther King Jr. is a national known hero and civil rights activist, which is why he has more authority and presents a much stronger argument.
Both of the authors use a large amount of emotion in these pieces because they want to catch the reader’s attention. They want the reader to feel something is not right with all of this discrimination between races. Martin Luther King Jr. uses emotion to show his frustrations because of all of the violence and brutality and he was thrown into the Birmingham City Jail because he was using his voice to make change in society. He is tired of being labeled as the black man with few rights and wants to be known as a normal human being. Martin Luther King Jr. is a more authoritative figure than Ta-Nehisi Coates because Martin Luther King Jr. was a voice for the African American Movement. He was the voice that they had to stand up in front of the nation in order for them to change the way things have been going in America. Martin Luther King Jr. also displays a ton of emotion when he talks about his own personal experiences of this discrimination. Both men understand that fighting oppression and violence with more violence would never resolve anything it would be fighting fire with fire. They both use a nonviolent approach to help their community.
ReplyDeleteBoth the article by Ta-nehsi coates, and the letter by Martin Luther king Jr are of the same topic area but different time periods. Martin Luther King approaches the subject of why he is in Birmingham and his actions by writing a letter, of which I assume is aimed towards the people of Birmingham. In the letter, he explains how he's basically there on business and tells how the injustice we witness every day and the injustice in Birmingham is the cause of him being there. The way he speaks in the letter is with respectful, but, there is also passion and pain and anger in the letter; he talks to his audience as such a normal intellectual person. On the other hand, the article Ta-nehisi coates wrote was more aggressive in terms of the topic. In his article, he acknowledged Baltimore’s justice system while including a few specific cases; when talking about each case he asked questions and thoughts that everyone wanted to know regarding the cases. The audience of the article was basically everyone in America but was somewhat calling out the police in Baltimore. The tone was kind of respectful but aggressive and spotlighting. Both articles talked about nonviolence and the injustice among African Americans. both touched upon the subjects in different ways in the tone that they talked to their audience and the perspectives they talked about nonviolence.
ReplyDeleteI am in agreement that both readings, Nonviolence as Compliance by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail, use a strong sense of emotion to convey the point they are trying to get across by these works. Nonviolence as Compliance uses encounters of many people that have been confronted by police brutality in various situations and the examples given really impact the reader on an emotional level as the victims are described as weak and innocent. On the other hand, Martin Luther King Jr.'s writing is based on first hand experience. It is more heartfelt as he vividly describes what he's been through and what he felt while it was happening. Such is depicted by when King states, "As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us." By this single quote, King shows the reader that this has happened numerous times before and how hurt they were that it occurred again. The authority portrayed by Coates is given as he is a modern day recognized multi-award winning author and journalist. While he does show his credibility in this sense, King had a bit of a more authoritative perspective. King was an activist and a leader in the Civil Rights Movement through nonviolent action and his "I Had a Dream" speech. He was directly impacted by the segregation and discrimination going on at that time and is one of the most well-known historical figures. This allows readers to accept his writing easily because he actually experienced the discrimination and unjust acts inflicted upon African Americans, thus enhancing his credibility. Coates merely offers his perspective on how discrimination is still in practice in the 21st century. King's argument was the most strong for these reasons.
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