A Critique on Kathy Kelly’s Article: “Don’t Move”
In this article, Kathy Kelly wrote about how racial inequality and racial profiling have been very evident in today’s society. She emphasized on the recent unjust killings of innocent black lives, specifically Anton Sterling’s, and the collateral deaths caused by United States-powered drone strikes upon countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. With the support of these events, Kelly presented a problem-solution pattern of development throughout the whole text, giving the purpose of explaining an issue and proposing a solution. This is closely related to the claim of policy that Kelly portrayed in the text, which was a call to the audience of generally and ideally all ages, genders, and races “to build community by lessening inequality.” Thus, Kelly wrote about her concerns on what the people of today should do about the issue of racial inequality.
The author of this article, Kathy Kelly, is a co-coordinator of an organization called “Voices for Creative Nonviolence,” which is against the violence brought by United States-war-making. Through her active participation and association in this organization, she has written regular reports for peace and religious journals, and for websites such as CounterPunch and Common Dreams. Along with some of her essays appearing in books about the Iraq War, she has also published two books as an author of “Prisoners on Purpose: A Peacemakers Guide to Jails and Prison,” and as a co-editor of “War and Peace in the Gulf.” She continues to write essays and engage in issues relating to the Afghan and Pakistani people who are currently facing consequences from the military actions of the United States.
Since this article promoted rules to follow, it persuaded others to take the author’s perspectives, therefore using Aristotle’s various appeals. Regarding the appeals to ethics or “Ethos,” Kelly mentioned the credibility of significant personalities referred to in the text. An example to this would include, “In June 2011 CIA Director John Brennan stated there hadn’t been ‘a single collateral death’ caused by drone strikes over the previous eighteen months.” This statement described John Brennan as a CIA Director, making him reliable for the given information. Another supporting statement would be, “My friends and sometime hosts in Afghanistan, the Afghan Peace Volunteers, run a school for street kids, and a seamstress program to distribute thick blankets in the winter… They aim to put the safety of their most desperate neighbors first.” In this line, Kelly proved that the Afghan Peace Volunteers had been operating projects for quite some time, making them qualified to prioritize the needy. Regarding the appeals to emotion or “Pathos,” Kelly mostly used this type of appeal towards the end of the article when she started inviting the readers to take action against racial inequality. Examples would include, “It makes no-one safer to make our cities and the world a battlefield. The frenzied concern for our safety and comfort driving so much of our war on the Middle East has made our lives far more dangerous,” and, “We must temper selfish and unreasonable fears for our own safety with the knowledge that others also want safe and stable lives.” All of these quotable statements talked about how people should generate peace for the betterment of society through convincing them by creating emotional responses. Lastly, “Logos,” which was actually the most used appeal by, is an appeal to logic, requiring concrete facts. A number of quantitative data were presented by Kelly, but one of the significant assertions stated:
From 2009 through 2015 in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya the
U.S. admits to its drone strikes having killed between 64 and 116
civilians… With U.S. definitions of a “combatant” constantly in flux,
many of the 2,372 to 2,581 “combatants” the government reports
killed over the same period will have certainly been civilian causalities.
Actual facts were presented in this statement, persuading the readers by reason. The author’s attempt of making this article persuasive was fairly achieved through the use of all Aristotle’s appeals.
As mentioned earlier, the claim of policy was the most prominent claim in this article since this text persuaded the audience as it suggested them to “build community by lessening inequality.” The author presented two underlying major propositions throughout the whole written text. The first one being, “According to U.S. authorities, many lives of innocent people caught up in wars ‘do not matter’ provided the safety and property of the people outside, and of the people sent in to quell disorder, are rigorously protect.” This was supported by the material on the killing of Anton Sterling, particularly by the assertion, “On July 5th Baton Rouge police killed Anton Sterling, a 37-year-old Black father of five selling CDs outside of a local store, in a Louisiana parking lot.” Another strong supporting detail was the assertion about the drone strikes that murdered innocent people: “From 2009 through 2015 in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya the U.S. admits to its drone strikes having killed between 64 and 116 civilians.” Additionally, another supporting statement was:
U.S. figures do not count untold numbers of civilians learning to fear
the sky, in formerly peaceful areas, for weapons that might be fired
without warning. The drones take away the very idea of trials and
evidence, of the rule of law, making the whole world a battlefield.
These assertions show that the problem that Kelly wanted to fully portray to the audience was supported by concrete evidences of innocent people’s deaths. On the other hand, the second major proposition revealed in the last part of the text was that “people must replace battlefield with community.” This was supported by the call to “put the safety of the most desperate neighbors first” by “applying Mohandas Gandhi’s discipline…” The next supporting material was about how “people must temper selfish and unreasonable fears for their own safety with the knowledge that others also want safe and stable lives.” This was concluded by Kelly’s last sentence, “We must swear off making the world our battlefield and be appalled to hear the U.S. government seem to tell the world ‘I will kill you if you f—-ing move,” which was actually a simple and impactful call to action most readers would answer to. Basically, it was seen that Kelly made sure to explain the problem first and supporting it with evidence of actual facts before proposing a solution to it. Through this method, the article became more appealing towards the emotions of readers, and it further convinced them that there was a problem at hand and a solution that they could freely take from this article.
Positively, a number of logical fallacies were mostly avoided in this article, including reductio ad absurdum, oversimplification, appeal to tradition, equivocation, and ad hominem. However, the rest of the logical fallacies were quite observed in the text. False causality was seen in the statement, “The drones take away the very idea of trials and evidence, of the rule of law, making the whole world a battlefield.” The drones do not necessarily mean that it would be responsible for deaths of innocent people since these drones are actually powered by people, specifically Americans. Moreover, false appeal to authority was seen in quite a number of statements, but one of it was, “In June 2011 CIA Director John Brennan stated there hadn’t been a ‘single collateral death’ caused by drone strikes over the previous eighteen months.” This was considered a fallacy since just because John Brennan, a CIA director being considered as an authority, said this, does not necessarily mean that people should believe him especially since it could be false as it actually was proven in its following sentence. Furthermore, a slippery slope fallacy was seen in the assertion, “The past 15 years have institutionalized and validated the killing process. President Clinton or Trump will be able to do more of the same, as the procedures involved are ‘completely legal’ and likely soon to be authorized under an executive order.” This represented an exaggerated assumption that believed that more lives would eventually end just because the killing process had been happening for 15 years. However, like the previous fallacy, it was proven false in the next paragraph. Similar to false appeal to authority, the anonymous authority fallacy was also recognized in a number of sentences. One example of it, however, is “The officers pulled a gun out of Sterling’s pocket after they had killed him but witnesses say Sterling was not holding the gun and his hands were never near his pockets.” In order for the evidence to have been more believable, the writer should have identified who the witnesses were. Finally, the complex question type of fallacy was avoided for most parts of the test, but it was noticed in the line, “Can we ask ourselves: which has ever brought a peaceful future nearer to people in Afghan or U.S. neighborhoods- weaponized military and surveillance systems or the efforts of concerned neighbors seeking justice?” This statement showed that two points were rolled into one, namely the point of having concerned neighbors seeking justice, resulting to the second point of them bringing a peaceful future. Although these fallacies were present, most of it were still positively essential in this text as they supported propositions, making the text more convincing to the audience.
Concerning intertextuality, this text actually lacked allusions, pastiches, parodies, and sequential associations. However, the closest the text got to associating forms of intertextuality was through the use of proximal association, wherein the reader must have prior reading to understand the topic of the text. In this article, drone strikes, if not understood, should be lightly researched on. Other than that, the references that Kelly used were represented by hypertexts but were also briefly explained by her, making it understandable enough for the audience. This canceled out the necessity for the readers to further research on them. The lack of concrete intertexts, however, proved that the author wanted the text to be understandable and relevant to most readers, so they would easily be persuaded.
As for the properties of a well-written text, the overall text had good organization as the purpose was easily identified, ideas flowed in an organized manner through the assistance of transitional devices, and the text was easy to follow. Cohesion was seen through the proper connection of each sentence and the introduction of familiar information before new information. Coherence was observed as each sentence related to the main idea of the text. As for language use or word choice, the text could have improved more through avoiding contractions like “hadn’t” and abbreviations. However, this did not make much of an impact to the overall article, considering the targeted audience was ideally anyone. These were also easily canceled out by the lack of other features of informal text, the avoidance of redundancy, and the use of appropriate and correct words and strong verbs. Lastly, most of the mechanics were applied correctly. However, in “… ‘racial profiling,’ Young men…,” the author probably mistook a comma for a period. She also should not have started with a coordinator in the line, “And so it is abroad,” since this violates mechanics. Additionally, instead of consistently using the third-person perspective, Kelly started using first-person pronouns in the last three paragraphs. This could have been easily ignored, though, since this feature made the article seem more personal and persuasive towards the end.
Overall, the text, although not the best work as there were points it could have improved on, was a good composition, considering it was able to really persuade the audience to help in solving the problem of racial inequality. The claims that were made in this article were respectively based on Aristotle’s appeals, making it impactful towards the readers through the presence of credible sources, emotional connection, and logical data. Although some claims could have been improved by the cancellation of some fallacies, the composition was still credible and understandable. To conclude, the article was generally persuasive and comprehensive, making the purpose mark an established significance on the audience.
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