Critical Introduction

Hello, and welcome to our blog! We are undergraduate students at the University of Maryland studying rhetoric in our English 101S class. The College Park Scholars program is a diligent program that we are all involved in, and we all have been selected to be in. As students studying rhetoric, it was important that we chose a topic for our project on something that was prevalent in history, and still is today. We all gathered together because we have a collective interest in police brutality and the protests associated with it, especially the present day Black Lives Matter movement.

We decided to choose two photos as our pieces of rhetoric because we believe that it truly captures the moment and emotions expressed, which words cannot represent. Our first photo is from the 1960s, highlighting a protest after an incident of police brutality. The photo was taken during the Watts Riots where people were demonstrating their frustration with institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system. Our second text is of a woman participating in a protest spreading awareness of the Black Lives Matter Movement. This is after many instances where police have purposefully targeted African Americans. The photos from the 1960s Watts Riots and present day Black Lives Matter movement demonstrate different, but equally effective ways African Americans protest institutionalized racism.

This is relevant to readers because instances of police brutality can be seen very frequently in communities around the country. Once it happens, social media tends to spread it around the whole country as well, making it inevitable to see. This discussion is timely because we are currently amidst the Black Lives Matter movement, and police brutality is still a major social injustice in our society. We expect the readers to gain a better understanding of why protests are happening and how important it is to bring awareness to this issue. We hope that it will also inspire the reader to join in and voice their opinion against this injustice.

In terms of the methodology of the blog, we picked a more random approach. We do not believe that the order in which the rhetorical appeals are presented in made a difference in this situation. We did, however, talk about all the appeals for the picture from the 1960s first, and then the picture from present day after. We did this because we felt that it would make better sense to know all about the first picture in order to better compare it to the second. This helped prove our major argument because it gave the reader the ability to see the similarities and differences of the pictures when learning about one and then the other.

We believe that the work we have done deserves to be cared about because police brutality is a perfect example of institutionalized racism, which is wrong on many different levels. Our society should be a just one where everyone are treated as equals. Protesting and speaking out about this problem is a great way to be a catalyst to end this injustice. We need to all come together in order to bring about this change because many voices are better than one.