The New Jim Crow Rhetorical Analysis

People carry the stigma of being criminals for their entire lives. Michelle Alexander, the writer of The New Jim Crow, describes the challenges criminals face after being released from prison. In the beginning of chapter four, she argues that they were treated cruelly by society, comparing them to freed slaves during the era of emancipation. Alexander effectively makes emotional appeals, logical moves, and convincing citations to add the credibility of her argument. Moreover, she organizes the passage through connected timelines and comparisons, successfully proving that criminals today encounter tough and biased treatment from the society.

Alexander first sets up her argument through her epigraph, quoting Frederick Douglass’s statement at the National Colored Convention in 1853. The convention discussed the conditions and status of the “coloreds” and “decried the stigma of race” that the society gave to them (140). The epigraph not only adds to The New Jim Crow’s ethos as a renowned source supporting the writer’s credibility, but also transfers the persuasiveness and sympathy of Douglass’s words to the writer’s work. It evokes the audience’s feelings, driving them back

The use of simple conjunctions here such as “but” “but” “although” are serving as emotionally charged words, highlighting the difference between the two parts of life that they would have lived and the crucial facts. These followed conjunctures also multiples and enhances the mood audiences would sense when imaging the hard life toward the slaves as they never truly free. The discontinuity between what the law requires and the actual condition of slavery is then directly point out by the author as every black person was still presumed as a slave “by law”, strengthening the lack of civil rights and real freedom to