Professional Documents
Culture Documents
English 102-11
In the United States, people will always hear about different statistics. One common statistic they
might hear about is the prison rate in America. This so called prison rate can also be looked at
as mass incarceration. Mass incarceration can be defined as the extreme rates of imprisonment
Mass Incarceration). Mass incarceration started once the thirteenth amendment was passed, to
ban all slavery. Not many people know about this phenomenon. However, those who do know
about mass incarceration, usually end up in an uproar or debate behind this topic. Many groups
such as the Black Lives Matter movement, protest against mass incarceration and the wrongful
treatment of African-Americans. In order for the information about mass incarceration to get to
the general public, people will publish articles, books, music, and even movies.
Some of these genres will incite anger or fury in their audience. The audience may even start to
feel bad for the prisoners. Two common sources that are used to spread information about mass
incarceration are the movie, Thirteenth, and the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle
Alexander. In order to compare and contrast; the rhetorical appeals, purpose, and structure of
minute documentary. In Thirteenth, the speakers were targeting the American public. The
speakers in this documentary wanted to spread awareness of how mass incarceration started and
progressed through the years. The information in Thirteenth, were typically about certain laws
that were passed over 50 years ago. A lot of these laws had effects on the black community that
were not typically discussed. Since the speakers addressing were the general public, they all used
language/words that were easy to comprehend. The only words that might have been more
The New Jim Crow has many similarities to Thirteenth when it comes to audience and purpose.
Michelle Alexander targets the American public, while her books states that its purpose is to give
America a wake up call (West. Foreword, The New Jim Crow). Due to Alexander wanting to
wake up America, she presented information about laws that were praised for the good of
America but were actually damaging to the black community. The book is six chapters long with
a section of notes at the end. The notes included the sources that Alexander used in The New Jim
Crow. Alexander also uses simplistic language and defines any legal terms that may be
misunderstood. The only difference between these two genres is that there are multiple speakers
in Thirteenth, while The New Jim Crow only had Michelle Alexander giving information.
Ethos, pathos, and logos are key aspects when it comes to rhetorical issues. Ethos, logos, and
pathos stand for: credibility of the author, the logical aspect of the paper, and the emotional
aspect. In Thirteenth, the documentary shows pathos through the images of prisons and prisoners
doing work for cooperate businesses, without getting paid. This documentary also shows the
mistreatment of African-Americans in the prison system. Each of the speakers have a profession
or career in civil rights. This makes the documentary credible/shows ethos. Logos is shown in
Thirteenth, by the speakers showing different laws and clauses within those laws.
The New Jim Crow has to show pathos in a different way, because it is a book. This book shows
pathos through its descriptive language of how the prisoners are treated in the system. Michelle
Alexander is a civil rights lawyer which makes her credible or shows ethos when it comes to
talking about mass incarceration and involuntary servitude. Lastly she shows logos just like
Thirteenth as stated before, is an hour and forty minutes long. Therefore, the speakers have a
limited amount of time to get their point across. The documentary is set up as a timeline starting
from 1865 to now. The videos and pictures that are shown throughout the movie, depict pain and
tragedy which can help the audience understand the severity of this issue.
The New Jim Crow is a short informative book. Due to the length of the book, it has a small
amount of time to display information without overwhelming the audience. The book achieves
this task by following a similar timeline as Thirteenth. Each chapter is broken up into different
Conclusion/Synthesis
In the end, Thirteenth is the better way to get information about mass incarceration out in to the
public. Thirteenth is able to use descriptive language and also display pictures/videos so that the
audience is able to see the suffering of mass incarceration. The New Jim Crow can explain this
topic, however with the lack of images, the audience is basically forced to visualize this issues
effects.
Works Cited
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness. Place of publication not identified: New Press, 2016. Print.
Thirteenth
13TH. Dir. Ava DuVernay. Perf. Melina Abdullah, Michelle Alexander, and Cory
Booker. 2016. Netflix. 7 Oct. 2016. Web. 20 Nov. 2016. <https://www.netflix.com/>.