“To Kill a Mocking Bird”
Identify the author and the title of the essay, and then provide a summary of the essay’s key ideas. What are the author’s primary and secondary argumentative claims? Conclude your thesis, which may be written as one or more sentences
Gbenga Akinnagbe’s persuasive essay on racism play “To Kill a Mocking Bird” reflects on some of the discrimination the black people experience. These include false accusations of rape, the use of oppressive term nigger to distinguish blacks from whites, and the innocent black people who get killed on the streets. The story “To Kill a Mocking Bird” has been owned by the white Americans where they are the majority of the theatre attendance. Gbenga Akinnagbe, as a Black America, is aware of the sufferings which the blacks are going through in the country he terms “racist country” and finds it an opportunity to express it in the theatre with the whites as the majority audience.
The level of racism in America is a prime concern for black Americans. They no longer feel safe when on the streets where police brutality has been the order of the day. The author gives an example of a situation where a black person runs, making them guilty for an offense. The main reason for running was to save their lives because whether they run or stand firm to be innocent, the result is pre-determined; death. False accusation of rape on black America was an opportunity to discriminate the blacks. No black could afford to go to the theatre as it was only meant for the well-off white man. The whites had also owned the story; therefore, Gbenga Akinnagbe could not believe how it will be at the Broadway theatre.
The use of the word nigger was for distinguishing the blacks from the whites. The author shares that the concept was common as midday salutations, which means the name had been accepted over to refer to the black man. The black man did not know the meaning of the word, and to their dismay, they learned of the name as a derogative term. Nothing could be done, but to make the word sound good, they had to use it on themselves so that it could lose its meaning. The white man could not believe how black man adopted the name. The author was upset when white ladies approached him backstage to ask his feeling about the name nigger, which showed how worried the whites were when the black man accepted the name as any other name.
The author uses narration as the method of developing the essay. The description focuses on the experiences of the blacks and the emotional state of a white, in line with their perception of the black community. The backgrounds are well described with examples of the ways a white man discriminates against a black man. Such models are false accusation of rape, using derogative name “nigger” and killing of innocent people who never feels safe on the streets. Lastly, the use of enough reasons to validate racism as bad is used by the author is also a method of developing the argument essay.
From the concerns and examples given by the author regarding racism, the piece is persuasive as it shows the ways racism has been practiced in America. The story aimed to highlight cases of discriminating, and the author did not fall short of examples as the use of the word nigger, innocent killings, and false accusations. Clearly, it shows that the case for castigating racism is substantial and persuasive enough to the white man.