Civil Rights Comparison

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

ETHOS- BLACK PANTHER PARTY'S TEN POINT PLAN

When it comes to ethos, and establishing credibility this was definitely not one of the black panther party's strong points. In their ten point plan they make several demands that would benefit the millions of black Americans in the nation, which is only a minority of the nation. Because of this they are unable to establish much credibility by creating a bridge to their audience. The black panther's were mostly viewed as radical, rebellious, and a major public enemy of the American government. The black panther's ten point plan was full of seemingly ridiculous, nearly impossible to fufill demands, and their reputation for violence against any form of government authority truly distanced the party from any sense of trustworthiness or goodwill.

On the other hand the one group or audience that the black panther party's ten point plan was able to establish ethos in was the black community. The fact that the black panther's proved that they were willing to fight to death to stand up against racist police officials, created a tremendous amount of credibility for blacks in the bay area(Oakland), where the party was founded. The party went as far as arming citzens to monitor the behavior of racist cops. As an African-American citzen during the late 1960s this did nothing but create some sort of validation behind the demands made in the ten point plan, proving that if the claims in the plan were not met, action would be taken.

THOMAS OUTING

2 comments:

UnknownFebruary 26, 2015 at 6:55 AM
You bring up some very good points. I agree that the "Ten Point Plan" gave hope that if their demands weren't met that action would be taken. I also think that if nothing more the "Ten Point Plan" validated many people's beliefs so even if they weren't personally getting involved in violent protests they may have felt their concerns were at least present in the discussion.
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UnknownFebruary 26, 2015 at 3:17 PM
I think that this is a good analysis. The Black Panther Party was a force to be reckoned with at the time, but also I wonder about the stigmatizations/stereotypes that may have been associated with them and how these may have effected their extrinsic ethos.
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Critical Introduction

Mike (Intro/Ethos)

Our names are Mike, Tommy, Ian, Jack, and Noah and we are five English 101S students at the University of Maryland, College Park. We have been studying rhetoric this semester and have been slowly becoming familiar with various rhetorical appeals. Although we are not experts on rhetoric, we have enough familiarity with the appeals to expand on them. We chose the Black Panthers 10-Point Plan and a picture of Marin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington because we felt that both of these works greatly contributed to the Civil Rights Movement through completely opposite perspectives. The Black Panthers’ 1966 “10 Point Plan” radically and aggressively depicted the wants and beliefs of the Black community, while Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington addressed the Black community’s needs through eloquence, peaceful protest, and sophisticated rhetoric. The Black Panthers’ 10-Point plan was aggressive in nature, often expressing radical views. They were not necessarily bad, as many people followed the regime. Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach was obviously more peaceful and sophisticated, thus creating more of a politically correct movement.

Jack (Major argument/Stasis)

Our blog shows that the Black Panthers’ 1966 Ten Point Plan radically and aggressively depicted the wants and beliefs of the black community, while Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington addressed the black community’s needs with eloquence, peaceful protest, and sophisticated rhetoric. We compare these different approaches to the Civil Rights Movement by analyzing the ethos, pathos, and logos of each of the texts. Furthermore, we contrasted the types of audiences each text targeted and the audiences with which each text was more successful. Overall our blog analyzes and compares the effectiveness of differing approaches used by MLK and the Black Panthers.

Tommy (Kairos)

The issues represented by the texts are still very relevant today, especially considering the events of the past year such as the riots caused by the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and other similar cases. Racially charged protests are not simply a thing of the past. Determining which method of protest, whether it be a more aggressive and assertive stance of the Black Panther Party or the hope-filled non-violent stance of Dr. King, still remains a long unanswered question. Ultimately the answer probably lies in some happy medium between the two. However, we leave it up to the readers to decide which method has been more historically successful, and which approach would work better on the readers themselves.

Noah (Logos)

Our blog begins with analyses of the rhetorical situations of our texts and the major rhetorical arguments in each. We did this to introduce the texts, their backgrounds and the messages they convey to the audience. We then wrote about the rhetorical appeals used in each text to show how the authors intended to impart their arguments. Finally, we analyzed the audience that each text was designed for and the visual elements of each text. We used the analysis of the audience to show how each text was designed to target them. Overall, we introduced the texts and why they were important to get readers interested and engaged in our topic. Then we went into detail about the texts and the methods behind their reasoning and arguments to give readers insight about the texts. Lastly, we showed how the audience and visual elements of the texts further contributed to their purposes and show the impact of each text.

Ian (Pathos)

Although our blog focused on all of the appeals, we found that Dr. King and the Black Panthers especially appealed to the Pathos of their audiences. We not only wanted to examine the pathos of each text individually, but how they related to each other in a time of great social turmoil. We wanted to convey that the March on Washington was a sort of emotional high water mark of the civil rights movement; more progress towards equality was made in the coming years, but not quite to the level of expectations set in 1963. This sense of a letdown with the work of Dr. King was a strong influence in the creation of the Black Panthers. Tired of waiting, he Panthers worked to improve the lives of blacks directly rather than working for racial equality. The causation between the failures of Dr. King and the birth of the Black Panthers, especially in relation to their respective appeals to pathos, was very important, and we tried to highlight it in our blog.