Analyse af Baratunde Thurstons TED Talk om racisme

Do you ever think about how people perceive you? maybe not… But if you think about it, you can’t help but observe and maybe even judge a person as soon as you meet them or hear a description of them. In this case Baratunde Thurston, a black activist and comedian, has made a TEDtalk called ‘’How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time’’ in 2019 about how we keep judging each other, based on the color of our skin. Thurston describes white supremacy, and how he has experienced the abuse of power between white people and people of color. He talks about how he doesn’t want people of color to live in fear of what might happen. But who needs to do something in this case? The system? Blacks? Whites? Or everyone as individuals?

Thurston uses humor and irony in his speech. Humor makes people listen, it makes a serious topic seem less dangerous to talk about. At the same time humor provokes people, which he intends to do. It confuses people, when you laugh about serious topics, which is why Thurston catches the crowd’s attention with this speech. The speech gets personal perspective since he doesn’t use a particularly formal language. Thurston uses both ethos, logos, and pathos. He himself is a black person, and that makes him able to talk from his own experiences, using ethos. For example, he says: ‘’ I went to the right schools, I'm semi famous, mostly happy, meditate twice a day, and yet, I walk around in fear, because I know that someone seeing me as a threat can become a threat to my life, and I am tired. I am tired of carrying this invisible burden of other people's fear’’(15:23-16:00). Here he talks about how, even though he is a successful black man he still has to live in fear. He must fear the consequences it can give, if someone sees him as a threat. In this quote he also uses pathos, both to scare people of what could eventually happen to him and lots of other people, but also to get some sort of sympathy from people.