Tariq Nasheed: Author, Film Producer, and Director Using His Work to Persuade Minds to be Different

Tariq Nasheed is a controversial author, documentary film producer and director. He can be quoted speaking on an array of issues that vary from race and intimate relations to politics. He produced the documentary film Hidden Colors in 2011, and the follow-up Hidden Colors 2: The Triumph of Melanin came after in 2012. In the follow up, Nasheed aims to inform his audience of the importance and injustices due to the melanin levels contained in Africans and African Americans with the help of fellow scholars, authors, and public speakers. According to every speaker in the first chapter of the film, melanin is an essential piece of the human and is in everything; it is quite evident that Africans and their descendants have a greater amount of melanin in their systems than other races. Through logos and pathos Nasheed attempts to connect with his audience, inform them on this “misunderstood” topic, and advocate for change. He builds his credibility and establishes it in the film, for those who might not know of him, by referencing the people he has encountered on his trips around the world in places that you would not expect to see them.
Tariq Nasheed’s use of the rhetorical strategy pathos begins by him saying that there is a war going on against “melanated” people and “we” are being attacked educationally, industrially, economically, imprisoned, and culturally. He goes on to say that Africans are underrepresented and misrepresented in media and blacks are convinced that where they are from is not beautiful. “There’s good and bad in everything, but the problem with this society is that they only want to show you the bad.” (Booker T. Coleman in the film) Nasheed’s use of pathos would be effective because he is offering an explanation for...

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... biased view. He should have gone along with what he said and broadened the people he had speaking and the ones he was trying to reach. I would conclude that this video was extremely effective to the confused, deranged, immature, and/or poorly educated. If Nasheed had attempted to appeal to a more diverse and larger audience, the film would serve more purpose. Hidden Colors 2: The Triumph of Melanin was not beneficial in helping present Tariq Nasheed’s ideas to a non-African American male audience at all. The emphasis of black power, and subliminal homophobia and sexual exclusion is not how we will become triumphant as a race. That is a recipe for failure, and the rest of the world will watch on as we continue to contribute to our own demise, but instead we must uplift our community through unity and positive steps toward progress with full acceptance of each other.