Cultural Baggage Rhetorical Analysis Essay

799 Words2 Pages

Amanda Whitlock
Rhetorical Analysis
English 1102
17 September 2015
“Cultural Baggage” Analysis Everyone has an ethnic background, whether it is Chinese or European, we all come from somewhere. Barbara Ehrenreich has come to the conclusion in her article “Cultural Baggage” that the race and religion of our ancestors should not be what defines us. While she agrees that everyone has different roots, she shows the reader that you do not have to be defined by your roots and that the traditions do not have to be followed. Ehrenreich accomplishes her goal in explaining why we should have the race of “none” by establishing credibility when she talks about how her own family has not followed the traditions of their ancestors and some of the social …show more content…

The author proves that there are families that do not follow these traditions and do not follow their races’ traditions. The author also appeals to emotion by talking about a time when she had her family participate in a Passover seder that she had put together where she talked about Egypt and how it relates to our social issues in today’s world. “But the kids insisted on buttering their matzohs and snickering through my talk. ‘Give me a break, Mom,’ the older one said. ‘You don’t even believe in God’” (39). Her children wanted nothing to do with their heritage and what the people of their race would do on a regular basis. They had also never seen their grandparents practice this type of religious tradition. To the author’s main point, just because they are Jewish does mean that they identify with and practice their Jewish heritage. The author also uses an anecdote at the beginning of her article to help bring people in by talking about how she was talking to a friend who was telling the author all about how she knew where she came from and she knew what her ancestor did thousands of years before this time. The author was then asked by her friend what her ethnic background was, and she said

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