Rhetorical Analysis Of Civil Rights Speech By Cesar Chavez

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Throughout the course of history, many people struggle to have their voices heard by the public. Considering many contributing opinions in regards to any topic, various people tend to be obstinate to accept any kind of perception from the opposing side of an argument. Through rhetoric, however, many people are willing to listen to another person’s point of view if the speaker has the ability to captivate their audience with their fluency in speech as well as relatability to attract the speaker’s audience. During the civil rights era, many people had their unique opinion on how society should act towards their own community. In this speech, Cesar Chavez explains how nonviolent practices are the best tactics to make change

Ever since they set foot in America, they sought to gain liberty and freedom by working in the fields to make a decent living in a “free land”. Through time, however, the passionate immigrants saw how bad they were treated just because they practiced a different culture than the Americans, or/and the fact that many immigrants were still communicating to others in their native language (mainy spanish). In the Civil Rights era, a time where people of different color were attempting to receive the same rights, practiced in nonviolent acts, in which these protesters were rewarded with violent punishments. Witnessing all of these horrendous acts from the white-filled society, the foreigners saw how morally unjust this system of segregation was, which made them believe that they have to attack to “fight fire with fire” to get some justice. Chavez debunks their perspective on “getting justice” by saying that if violence were to take place in this system,”then one of the two things will happen: either the violence will be escalated and there will be many injuries and perhaps deaths on both sides, or there will be total demoralization of the workers,”(Chavez, Lines 17-211) which will only show how barbaric this act will seem to everyone else. Chavez uses ethos to explain how morally unjust these acts will appear to be, which will only make the revolters look as terrible as society already placed them as. By showing his foreign audience the lack of morals behind violence, this will make the audience believe that they are no better than the cruel, prejudice society if they would react in violence. This in turn, will make the audience feel primitive and morally unintelligent for even considering violence as an action to take. Ultimately, this will force the foreigners to completely disregard violence altogether, where they