Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

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The Fourth of July for many of us today consists of fireworks, an influx of advertisements highlighted with the colors of our nation, and a constant feeling in the back of our mind of wondering if our nation is truly celebrating for free or simply the idea of. That nagging feeling was the same felt by speaker Frederick Douglass, who was important to helping a post-Civil War society open their eyes and challenge the idea of what freedom truly meant to a nation built by and on the backs of immigrants. Frederick Douglass is considered to be one of the first advocates to propose passing Constitutional amendments that would permanently change the status of African Americans in the United States, with the primary objective of focusing on demonstrating …show more content…
Faith has allowed us to weather unfair and unjust treatment and degradation from those who may have seen or previously seen us as inferior. Frederick Douglass’s counterargument to their perspective was that slavery actually went against the natural law and Christian morality that slave owners preached, and that the very arguments for the subhuman status of blacks used by slavery’s apologists to justify attempted slavery actually contradicted the Bible and were hypocritical. At first, many slave traders believed that slavery was only reserved for those who chose to not believe in the religion Christianity, however this position changed when influenced by the opportunity to make money. They began denying slaves' ability to convert to Christianity, and wrote off many African American beliefs as superstitions and primitive, and said that they lacked certain staples of customary religions, such as religious …show more content…
To be Black means that upon birth you are silently drafted into a silent psychological battle where you are constantly seen as aggressive and non-compliant because of the color of your skin, whereas many Caucasians are born with the luxury of the benefit of the doubt. According to the Pew Research Center, 84% of blacks say that black people in this country are treated less fairly than whites in dealing with the police, and three-quarters say blacks are treated less fairly in the courts. (Pew Research Center, 2016) In the modern day, when we see videos of police officers attempting to arrest a non-person of color, they are given multiple chances to surrender themselves, however, if an African American complies willingly, the officers will go to any length to attempt to justify choosing to use excessive
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Despite these exclamations of joy, a feeling of foreboding is present that should be heeded by those who have accomplished the same as Douglas. Indeed this premonition is well founded, being “fugitive[s] … in a strange land - a land” where they were “subjected to the… liability” that they could be “seized upon” by “legalized kidnappers - … [or] his fellowmen”(Douglas 19). With multiple hyphens used, Douglas makes further comparison of their fragile position in society. Greatly lengthening the sentence…

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