Analyse af Eric Reids artikel om Colin Kaepernick

The article” Why Colin Kaepernick and I Decided to Take a Knee” is written by Eric Reid who is a safety for the San Francisco 49ers, which is an NFL team. The article was published on sept. 25, 2017 in the New York Times. The article is about Colin Keapernick and Eric Reid standing up for a cause, which is police brutality in the United States. It is also about the consequences for these to black athletes taking a knee during the national anthem at football games.

To analyze this text I will be using the rhetorical pentagon.

So looking at the writer of this article who is Eric Reid. He is a black athlete in the NFL, today he is 28 years old and attended Louisiana State College. Throughout the text Eric Reid establishes his pathos by appealing to our emotions:

“The post on social media deeply disturbed me, but one in particular brought me to tears: the killing of Alton Sterling in my hometown Baton Rogue La. This could have happened to any of my family members who still live in the area”(ll. 9-12) – Eric Reid.

There is no doubt that Eric Reid is emotionally involved in this matter and that appeal to us as readers, that we can relate to what it must feel like knowing that someone got killed in our own neighborhood, and to make it even worse they got killed by the police who is supposed to protect us.