Meteig 2
Professor Green
Soheir Meteig
English 102
March 24, 2019.
Traffic Stop.
Alex Landau, an African American man, was raised by his adoptive white parents to believe that skin color didn't matter. But when Alex was pulled over by Denver police officers one night in 2009, he lost his belief in a color-blind world and nearly lost his life. Alex tells his mother, Patsy Hathaway, what happened that night and how it affects him to this day. Alex had just left his mother’s place and was out driving aside his friend Addison who happened to be white. As stated earlier a police officer stopped him for because of a traffic violation. Upon searching them, Addison’s bag of weed was found by the officers. They proceeded to assault Alex and abusing him, almost killed him because he had enquired about the legitimacy of their search by asking for a search warrant. The main idea in the video is racial discrimination in the criminal justice system and to some degree, police brutality. In this context, police brutality is a subset of racial discrimination. Racial discrimination is the unfair treatment of an individual based on their race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin. It can also occur when a policy or rule appears to treat each individual in the same manner but may have an unfair effect on more people of different race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin. Race and the criminal justice system have a very long history in the United States. From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people. Today, the US is 5% of the World population and has 25% of world prisoners. Combining the number of people in prison and jail with those under parole or probation supervision, 1 in every 31 adults, or 3.2 percent of the population is under some form of correctional control. African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated populations. African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. Together, African American and Hispanics comprise 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, 50% and one in a hundred African American women are in prison. Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).
Racial discrimination is a real problem in the United States. The video “Traffic stop” attempts to persuade the audience by using certain techniques. From my perspective, the methods that stand out are pathos and ethos.
Pathos is particularly seen in the use of animations rather that real actors. Both can be used to emotionally appeal to...
