Rhetorical Analysis Of The Ballot Or The Bullet

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On April 3, 1964, Malcolm X gave his famous speech called The Ballot or the Bullet at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, during a time of unrest for the African American community due to racism ("Malcolm X's The Ballot or the Bullet"). The rhetorical speech was given to unite the African Americans in their struggle against a government lead principally by whites, he did so by establishing a practical understanding of the political philosophy of Black nationalism, which is a complex set of beliefs emphasizing the need for the cultural, political, and economic separation of African Americans from the white society ("Black Nationalist Beliefs”).Throughout his speech, Malcolm X's uses pathos to elucidate his solution to racial inequality, …show more content…
He does so by placing emphasis on certain words and phrases to make the audience feel like they have been fooled and played by the government. In order to convince African Americans that their actions in this year of the ballot or the bullet really matter, he declares that the black vote put Kennedy into office as well as the current Democratic Congress, this creates a sense of pride as they begin to understand that they have more power that they thought. He uses and continually accentuates the word “You” to make each and every person listening to speech feel like he is speaking directly to them, he makes them understand that it an undeniable fact that they are one of the 22 million people affected by colonialism. He believes that they cannot and should not be called Americans if they are denied their basic human and civil rights. Malcolm takes a different approach while still using the appeal of pathos. He says, "If you don't take this kind of stand, your little children will grow up and look at you and think shame." his statement appeals emotionally to any parent or anyone hoping to one day be a parent, because nobody would want to let down child. He switches his tenses from present to future to show that he is already thinking ahead of the consequences that may occur if the people of the African American community sit back and watch their …show more content…
He states, "Uncle Sam's hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of the black man in this country." He wants the audience to understand that Uncle Sam only represents a part of the people and has no regard for the lives of black men. He is trying to get across the suffering that African Americans have been going through. as many are being drafted and made you face “80 million Chinese”, he aims to create a visual image of how the United States through war is inequitably killing a large number of black men. He also connects the issue of racial inequality to the American government’s failure to help African Americans. He begins to talk about the progress that the country had made in the past 10 years “We're not even as far up as we were in 1954. We're behind where we were in 1954. There's more segregation now than there was in 1954. There's more racial animosity, more racial hatred, more racial violence today in 1964, than there was in 1954. Where is the progress?" This tells the audience that instead of progressing, racial inequality is in fact regressing, so by showing the audience the lack of change of racial inequality over the years it encourages the audience to fight back. Malcolm X plays on the fact that human beings should be treated as equals without regards to their religion or the color of their skin. This is rhetorically astute as
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