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There was a bully on our block on the walk home, always present even when
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I couldn’t see him. And every day, the ten minutes between the school parking lot and my
grandmother’s yard were full of anxiety.
Notice all of the details of the house, the physical and emotional descriptions of his fear.
At places like this, his essay probably feels more like a narrative than an argumentative
piece because of all of the details he includes. But it is the inclusion of these personal
experiences that gives this piece its power. When he switches soon after to make the
Changing the World
comparison between this bully and white supremacy, the reader is ready to follow him
because we have made an emotional connection with him.
Sadly, many of his readers have probably directly suffered bullying or know
someone who has, so his appeal to pathos here is extraordinarily effective. But the
inclusion of his personal experience does more than just appeal emotionally, it also
helps to establish his ethos, his position of authority on this topic because he has
directly experienced the bullying that he uses to help the reader recognize the
similarities to the power of white supremacy.
Personal experience, as you may remember from the Skill Workshop (pp. 4-10),
can take a number of different forms:

1. Descriptions of a specific eve nt or incident that happened directly to you.
2. Descriptions of an event that you witnessed or heard about happening to someone
else that you know and trust.
3. Ideas that you have gained from your general experiences based on your race,
gender, age, ethnicity, participation in particular groups, and so on.
4. Feelings that you have about a topic, rooted in a specific incident or experience.

activity Developing Personal Experience as Evidence

After considering how Mckesson successfully incorporates his story into his argument,
try to do the same by settling on a specific experience or two that might be relevant to
the claim that you wrote earlier in this workshop.
1. Choose one or two of those experiences and share them with a partner, who will
listen closely as you describe your experiences and will help you to clarify and
deepen your own understanding by asking questions like the following:
• What specific details do you remember of the setting or other people?
• What emotions were you feeling at the time?
• What did you learn from this experience?
• How does this experience relate to the claim you are trying to prove?
2. After discussing your experiences with a partner, write out one or two of those
experiences with as much detail and description as you can. Be sure that the story
you are writing is relevant to the claim you are hoping to prove.

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