Rhet Analysis of Race

I was thinking about the different arguments that go along with rhetoric, primarily ethos-- and how it connects to the concept of race. I gave a presentation yesterday to my class on race itself, and came across a thought or two:

*Ethos and race: Race can either give you instant credibility or instant rejection. Ie. if a professor who teaches the German language gets up in front of class and was actually born and raised in Germany, that right there will give a certain amount of credibility to their name, even if their parents only spoke English and they went to an all-English school. If a hearing teacher gets up in front of a sign language class, they've already lost credibility with the Deaf community because they are not Deaf. Granted, they may have been a CODA or have a deaf spouse, but until those details are discovered, people will act based on their assumptions. (I know the Deaf are not usually recognized as a "race", but culturally, it has the same implications, and they're their own minority.)

*People will give more credibility to a news broadcast saying it's searching for "an islamic militant" with a picture of a guy with a black beard and native dress than a picture of a very white american in a button-up shirt with scholarly-looking glasses.

*People will give more credibility to leaders who are like them, or at least fit in the group; ie. a black leader would hold more sway in a black-rights movement gathering than a Chinese man.

It's funny how we put so much stock in appearances, and ignore the finer details... People are very funny creatures.

Fwee Wite

...Oy. My 2nd english paper. After my teacher explained to us that low grades are really not a bad thing, (sounds weird, I know, but you had to hear her entire spiel. Makes sense through speech,) I feel better about it, but I was at least hoping to have improved, if at least slightly, with my second paper. What's buggy is that I arranged my paper, took my time with it, sorted out all my arguments, wrote for my audience, and felt so good about it, and then I find out it's just as "bad" as the first paper I wrote that I had hurriedly put together because I still didn't know what I was doing. Add to that the fact that I got my paper back on one of the worst mornings of the week where I was already spazzing and stressed, and I was not a happy camper.

I admit, seeing a big blue C+ on my paper was not terribly encouraging, and I still have that perfectionist's complex that I grew up with. (The one I learned from coming home with a report card with all A's, and one A-, and getting asked, "Why wasn't this an A?") I worry doubly about it because I'm trying to keep this scholarship I worked so freakishly hard to get, and waited for for so long, and an overall low grade in my classes would kill me. I'm putting myself through school, and though I don't mind working, it's way stressful. I went broke one semester, and it scared me. ('course, that was paying for two schools' tuition and books, traveling between them and cost of living and all that jazz...) I'm also taking a rather uninteresting theory class that I'm not particularly fond of that I hope won't turn out badly, because it would do the same sort of damage.
/end vent.

Okay. I write that not for any "oh, you poor thing" sympathy, but kinda to get it out of my head, and to tell myself that it's not the end of the world if I get a C+ on one paper (well, two now, but, spppt.) I know why it makes me nervous, and that means I can address it and not send myself into a conniption. [Because conniptions are bad.]