By admin<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

Richard Newman’s arguments for how a culture of print, especially pamphleteering, allowed the oppressed black minority to have access to the public sphere, were for the most part, presented without bias. He discusses with neutral language how print \u201callowed black views to be heard while also forcing white society at large to reconsider its justification of bondage\u201d (182). However, I stumbled over his choice of words near the beginning of the article, when he introduces the concept of the public sphere. He claims that the print sphere offered room for black views, and that \u201cSouthern legislators and politicians discovered this unpleasant fact in 1830\u2033 (181).<\/p>\n

I tripped over the choice of the word \u201cunpleasant\u201d in describing the opportunity for black expression. When I re-read the sentence, I understood that Newman means that to the aforementioned white political elite, this was an unpleasant reality. However, he does not make this context clear in the construction of the sentence. Instead, the adjective is simply thrown in, as though it were Newman’s personal opinion that this opportunity was unpleasant. Considering that the framing of history is almost as important to an argument as the facts presented, this is an unfortunate mistake. A reader might even mistake this shakily constructed sentence as a slip that reveals bias of the author.<\/p>\n

Continuing in the vein of diction, I also stumbled over another word Newman chooses when discussing pamphleteers, essayists, and public speakers. Newman writes that if blacks were refused the vote or could not effect change with their sparse votes, \u201cthey would nonetheless inject their views into the wider arena of debate over slavery and race,\u201d presumably through the distribution of print media. Newman continues that \u201cin doing so, black activists would demolish racial stereotypes\u201d (183). I found the choice of the word \u201cdemolish\u201d to be ill-advised. Though the actions of the activists would most likely challenge racial stereotypes, I think it is clear overstatement to claim that they were demolished. This implies that they were destroyed completely. Once again, Newman would be wise to choose his words more carefully to ensure that his framing of the arguments is fair and does not throw his authority into question.<\/p>\n

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By admin Richard Newman’s arguments for how a culture of print, especially pamphleteering, allowed the oppressed black minority to have access to the public sphere, were for the most part, presented without bias. He discusses with neutral language how print \u201callowed black views to be heard while also forcing white society at large to reconsider […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}