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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ■ Don’t Understand the Protests? 115

Unifying Don’t Understand the Protests? What You’re Rhetorical Effects of
Idea Seeing Is People Pushed to the Edge Choices Choices PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
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racial So, maybe the black community’s main concern parallel creates a contrast
justice right now isn’t whether protesters are standing structure/ between the
three or six feet apart or whether a few desperate repetition perceived problems
to the real issue:
souls steal some T-shirts or even set a police station racism
on fire, but whether their sons, husbands, brothers
and fathers will be murdered by cops or wannabe
cops just for going on a walk, a jog, a drive. Or
whether being black means sheltering at home
for the rest of their lives because the racism virus
infecting the country is more deadly than COVID-19.

What you should see when you see black
protesters in the age of Trump and coronavirus
is people pushed to the edge, not because they
want bars and nail salons open, but because
they want to live. To breathe.

racial Worst of all, is that we are expected to justify emotional appeal —
justice our outraged behavior every time the cauldron value of life explains
bubbles over. Almost 70 years ago, Langston the reaction of the
Hughes asked in his poem “Harlem”: “What Black community
happens to a dream deferred? / . . . Maybe it references Black
artists to connect
sags / like a heavy load. / Or does it explode?” allusions with the audience

racial Fifty years ago, Marvin Gaye sang in “Inner City parallel emphasizes the
justice Blues”: “Make me wanna holler / The way they structure evidence that Black
do my life.” And today, despite the impassioned voices are silenced
speeches of well-meaning leaders, white and black,
they want to silence our voice, steal our breath.

So what you see when you see black protesters juxtaposition contrasts those
depends on whether you’re living in that burning living the problem to
building or watching it on TV with a bowl of corn those watching the
problem
chips in your lap waiting for NCIS to start.

racial What I want to see is not a rush to judgment, thesis call to action
justice but a rush to justice.

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