Jason Whitlock

Jason Whitlock's article this week was about the tragic death of Sean Taylor, how hip hop culture is primarily responsible for his death, and how black on black targeting needs to stop. He says that until young African American men realize that "there's always someone ready to tell you you're selling out" the cycle will keep repeating.

At first I was very shocked by this article because I didn't know the race of the author, but after talking with another student about it I understand his point of view. Although I'm a typical white young woman and I'm not very educated in African American culture, I think Whitlock gives a very good argument. I especially liked the comparisons to the 1950s through out his article.

The example of parallelism I thought was best used was "blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever". This strengthens the article because it reveals the finger pointing aspect of all societies. By using parallelism he gets his point across by showing there's only one thing they can blame this on, and it's themselves. I think it's a very powerful and discreet way of making his point.