FALL IN LINE: Contemporary Rhetoric

Rhetoric in popular culture is oftentimes geared towards teenagers and young adults. The message in which the rhetoric attempts to convey however depends on the context. In many songs the message may seem to be about drugs and sex, but some have deeper references such as slavery and religion. Overall, rhetoric in popular culture is formatted in a way to lend itself to hidden/subliminal messages. In today’s contemporary culture, especially in America, there is a heavy focus on “race issues.” The most prominent example of this today is the “Black Lives Matter” campaign which wishes to bring the importance of the so-called martyrs of the black society to the forefront of America.

Not only does this campaign center around rallies and riots, but the success of this movement is also achieved through other various outlets, the most recent one is the Beyonce, “Formation” video and Super Bowl performance. This song and the accompanied performance is centered around the black individual and its importance in society. When Beyonce performed at the Super Bowl her dancers were dressed in Black Panther grab which forced not only Beyonce’s fans, but other individuals in America to address the actual actions of the Black Panthers. When we look at history through the lens of white America, the good deeds performed by the Black Panthers are often suppressed. The individuals of society must find their own truths through history as well as their own truths of current society.

The media portrays individuals of color as irate and incapable of rational thought and perhaps in some cases this is true, but it is not true as a general rule. This is best explained by Rankine that “you begin to think, maybe erroneously, that this…anger is really a type of knowledge: the type that both clarifies and disappoints” (24). The media’s job is not to portray the truth, but to influence our perception of the truth. This is most effectively done through the use of effective rhetoric. While the application of rhetoric in terms of race are broad the general concept boils down to perspective.

Rhetoric in general is an instrument used to convey the general message so in terms of race it depends which race is speaking and which race is the subject of the conversation. If there is a conversation about whites from a black perspective the diction and syntactic choices are often very specific with an underlying annoyed or outraged tone. The reason for this is to portray the anger which is innate in the black body through years of conditioning and ontological damage at the hands of white individuals.