https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/opinion/minimum-wage-race-protests.html?smid=tw-share

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Name Professor Patrick Murphy English-1302

Date All essays for this class should have a header like the one shown here.

Victimhood: The Real Criminal On December 26, 2015, Arthur C Brooks—opinion writer for the New York

Times with a Ph.D. in public policy—wrote an article titled “The Real Victims of

Victimhood” which tackled the issue of victimhood in today’s society. Brooks glided his article along a comparison between his opinions and those of Robert Hughes’ book “Culture of Complaint,” from 1993. In his book, Hughes worried for the direction this victimhood culture would bring to his adopted country. He predicted America would further expand into a “infantilized culture” of victimhood. Brooks admits he was not convinced by the book when he initially read it. He tossed it away, saying the book was “just another apocalyptic prediction about our culture.” (Brooks). Throughout his article, however, Brooks explains why he now agrees with Hughes and gives us some new tools to recognize the victimhood culture.

Not agreeing with Hughes immediately gave Brooks some credibility. He, like

many others, didn’t think this was a real issue back in 1993. As the years went by, however, Brooks began to see the predictions ring true. This is an ethos appeal in

that Brooks shows that he has kept an open mind. He goes on to give us some

examples such as the Starbucks-Christmas incident that blew up on social media and the new campus “safe spaces” where students are protected from hate speech.

This new idea of “me against the world” is growing more and more common. It is no longer about valid argument, but about who has the right to argue.

Once he had addressed the main topic issue, he introduced some studies to help convince us logically. The first was a 2014 study in the Proceedings of the

The most important thing to do in a rhetorical analysis is to identify the article being analyzed. Here, in one sentence, the student identifies the author, title, publisher, date and the topic of the article to be analyzed.

Here the student identifies the author’s thesis— that a victimhood culture exists and it is creating problems.

Here the student identifies one of the modes of persuasion: ethos.

National Academy of Sciences which observed opposing groups and why they found it hard to agree with each other. The individuals viewed their own group’s aggressive actions as good, but the opposition’s actions as evil. He introduced a second study done in 2010 from a small group of psychologists at Stanford University. In their article titled “Victim Entitlement to Behave Selfishly” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers randomly put a single group of 104 people into two separate groups. One group wrote a short essay about a time they were bored and the other wrote a short essay about a time they felt wronged. Afterwards, the researchers asked the groups to help them with a small task. As Brooks put it, “The results were stark.” (Brooks). The researchers found that those who wrote the essay about being wronged were 26 percent less likely to help the researchers and were ranked by the researchers to be 13 percent more entitled. Brooks uses this to amplify the ridiculousness of this perspective. These people weren’t wronged during the experiment, but were simply asked to remind themselves of a time they were.

Brooks then takes a step back to address the real victims in this world:

those people who are subject to wrong doing and crimes. Brooks adds to his

credibility when he reaches out to them, saying “They deserve our empathy and require justice.” (Brooks). The issue some may have is determining if the victim is a real victim or not. Brooks gives us some helpful tools that he thinks will be useful.

He points out the desire and usage of free speech. Those who are truly in trouble will need free speech as a tool to solve their problem. These victims are in favor of its usage because they need it in order to explain themselves. The victimhood culture, on the other hand, does not like the usage of free speech. According to Brooks, victimhood culture “seeks to restrict expression in order to

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Now the student identifies examples of logos – logical appeals. Remember, logos involves facts, statistics, and examples given by experts in the subject.

Another example of an ethos appeal. Brooks shows that he is reasonable and credible by qualifying and limiting his argument. Not all people who are victims play into victimhood culture.

The beginning of this paragraph could use some work. It begins abruptly and it is not clear how this idea relates to the ideas that came previously.

protect the sensibilities of its advocates. Victimhood claims the right to say who is and is not allowed to speak.” (Brooks). This victimhood culture doesn’t want the truth to be said, because the truth can be offensive at times. Using this basis, it may be easier to extract the real victims from those of the victimhood culture.

The victimhood culture, in my eyes, is beyond saving. The victim mindset is

not new to our society but the acceptance of it is growing more with each new day.

This mindset is easy to manipulate and take advantage of. Those under this influence are not in a clear state of mind and may act upon emotion rather than reasoning. This can even negatively affect the life of those in the victimhood culture. The opinion that it hinders an individual’s capability is not only my own. In his book “Oncourse: The Remix”, psychology professor Dr. Tuesday S. Hambric explains the danger this mindset has on one’s life. Hambric himself writes “A Victim mindset life they want.” (Hambric 42). This means not only is the victimhood culture a negative experience for others, but it could also be the downfall of the victims themselves. This is the inevitable fate of those who have accepted this mindset. The culture, unfortunately, is too large to round up and educate. We can only hope some victims will seek out this knowledge for themselves.

Brook’s article was well rounded with studies and educated opinion. He

focused on logical analysis of the problem, giving little focus to emotional appeal. That decision suited this article well and won over my undecided opinion. The victimhood culture is a real and undesirable perspective. While I believe there is no fix to this topic, Brooks disagrees. He believes that this issue is still in our hands. Brooks, however, admits that it will not be easy when he says “we have a long way to go.” (Brooks).

It’s a good idea to use direct quotes when the author makes a strong or eloquent statement.

Here the student uses a signal phrase (“in my eyes,”) that signals that she is now presenting her own viewpoint on the topic. This is the “response” section of the essay. It is extremely important to signal to your reader when you are dealing with somebody else’s ideas and when you are presenting your own.

Here the student concludes the essay with a discussion of the overall persuasiveness of the article.

Overall, this student does a good job of discussing the types of persuasion used in the article. She also makes an informed and insightful response. A couple of things are missing from this analysis however. We need some discussion of the the intended audience. This could be done by thinking about the typical reader for the New York Times. The analysis could also do a better job of discussing the author, David Brooks. Brooks is a well known political “moderate.” Meaning that he often comes down somewhere in between the extremes of liberal and conservative that characterize contemporary politics. We can see in the article how Brooks establishes this independence by giving credence to opposing viewpoints.

Work Cited Brooks, Arthur C. “The Real Victims of Victimhood.” The New York Times, The New York

Times, 26 Dec. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/opinion/sunday/the-real-victims-of victimhood.html?smid=tw-share.

Hambric, Tuesday S. “Accepting Personal Responsibility.” Oncourse: The Remix, 7th ed.,

Cengage Learning, 2014, pp. 39–74.

Notice the works cited page. It includes a citation for the article being analyzed as well as a citation for the secondary source that was used.