TOW #16 – The Color of Water by James McBride (IRB)

James McBride continues his endeavor to reveal the proof in which love triumphs all divisions formed as a result of societal prejudice in America. He finds that, especially through religion, love can overcome all of these boundaries if one allows it. As a person with a mixed family, he mainly reaches out to other similar families in order to spread this message.

His mother, Ruth McBride knew her first future husband long before she came to marry him. They spent a long fourteen years together, those years being the happiest Mrs. McBride had ever been as they symbolized her beginning before Dennis passed away due to cancer. The grief that followed was harsh, almost as harsh as the grief following her mother’s death, but she was able to remarry again to Andrew McBride. Her second husband, like the first, also died of cancer, but the two left a large impact on her life, mostly from Dennis. His family, for example, bypassed this issue of race in the form of unconditional love, and although her pale skin initially shocked them, she was still accepted as one of their own nonetheless. This pure form of kindness embedded itself into her being, and she carried it on with her as she raised all twelve children.

This second half of the book is where James McBride’s sense of identity really starts to come together as something more than just the color of his skin, and in a final section of the book, one that was added in commemoration of its ten-year anniversary, he addresses his point head on. He compares the strength of love to the impossible, stating, “The plain truth is that you’d have an easier time standing in the middle of the Mississippi and requesting that it flow backward than to expect people of different races and backgrounds to stop loving each other[…]” (McBride 292-293). His use of the words “plain truth” acts to solidify his argument as undeniable: that the bonds formed through love cannot simply be weakened because of race, religion, or identity, and the line did not fail to stick out for me. The placement of it, after the entire story, after even the Epilogue, only seems more convincing for the reader after being given first and second-hand evidence of the argument holding true to its claims. Despite all the struggles James McBride’s family went through, his mother still held them all together on her own through sheer willpower and love, and she refused to allow apparently simple issues such as race deter her by much. By sharing their life story, despite it being one among many others similar, McBride was able to prove himself that love was fully capable of transcending all differences.

TOW #15 – “How MLK can get you out of your ‘Trump Slump’” by John Blake

             starts with identification. Blake targets his audience with an opening consisting of a question in order to pull in those he aims to reassure with his article. By asking if his audience is currently enduring one or more of the three distinct issues provided, he narrows down and essentially announces who the writing is for before even going into the article itself. He determines that target audience to being going through a ‘Trump Slump’, an essentially despondent and long-lasting phase caused as a result of the election, and his work is attempting to become a means to get the audience out of it through the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.

Blake breaks down his article into three parts: MLK’s true objective, his resilience, and his action. He reminds his audience that Trump is neither our future nor is he the worst event to occur in history. He reminds his audience that Trump supporters should not all be dubbed as racists, and to disassociate from them would be dishonoring the spirit of King. He reminds his audience that MLK never gave in to the disasters, and there were quite a lot of them, and so we should not give in either.

His use of the word “dishonoring” is what initially sticks out to me in the introduction. As a person of color and someone who is indeed going through what was labelled to be a ‘Trump Slump’, disconnecting myself from any and all people who happen to support Trump at all, I was almost surprised to receive that sort of response to my behavior. This is how it most likely was for others in my similar state of mind, and it prompts the reader to keep reading to figure out what we are doing wrong with what seemed to be the logical course of action.

Blake builds his credibility through his comparisons to historical events, exposing the parts that occurred behind the scenes of the victories of MLK, the parts that included the defeats and disasters of the Civil Rights Movement as well as MLK’s true personality as one for African Americans as well as poor white workers. He takes the extent of just how terrible Trump’s presidency should seem to us and puts it into perspective using the past, reminding us of how people have gotten through tough times before through sheer willpower, and his argument is only backed up by outside support. Rev. William Barber, a leader of Moral Mondays which is a movement inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., also agreed with Blake’s reassuring argument. "It's not worse than slavery, Jim Crow. It's not the first time that America has elected a racist president in terms of policy. Trump's election is as American as apple pie," Barber had said in response to hearing Trump’s election to be the worst thing in history. The logical reasoning and expert testimony overall helped to convince and thus calm some of my nerves over Trump’s soon-to-be presidency.

TOW #14 – “News is Bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier” by Rolf Dobelli (Written Text)

          First published in an essay, The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions, TheGuardian uploaded an excerpt of the nonfiction by Rolf Dobelli, a Swiss author and businessman. The article explains that the obsession over news is unhealthy and unnecessary, so those who find themselves addicted to reading the news every day should cut their ties with the habit. It has become apparent that, as the internet only grows more widespread and popular among the masses, Dobelli notices a group who cannot seem to stop browsing through all the flashy headlines. He recognizes the negative outcomes of this detrimental behavior, and identifies each one while explaining why this should directly attribute to changing his audience’s mind about reading up on the news so often.

          The structure is simple and straight to the point. Dobelli makes his argument seem so as well with the way he bolds each reason as a header and compacts the effect into what can only be a single short paragraph in order to argue why consistently reading the news is unhealthy. He includes himself in the audience, implying that this pertains to everyone as well as the author with his use of “we”, “us”, and “our”, and it makes his argument more believable when he attempts to bring the target audience into it at the conclusion of each reason. The method attempts to eliminate the barrier between the argument and the reader, letting the audience know that what he says does not count them as a special exception.

          His use of examples and personal experience is what drives his arguments, and in many of these reasons he gives some sort of anecdote to emphasize his claim for less news consumption as well as put the various ideas in perspective. Although each of these anecdotes are effective in immediately making a point for his target audience, the lack of expert testimony throughout the excerpt does not boost his credibility much as someone who wants to seem like he knows what he is talking about. He does, however, personally claim to have experienced what his audience may be currently experiencing, and with that given connection, the expert testimony may not be needed so much for persuading their minds.