Kiara Dinkens

English 102-11

Professor Joy McDonald

February 12, 2017

Genre Analysis: Mass Incarceration

In the United States, people will always hear about different statistics. One common statistic they

might hear about is the prison rate in America. This so called prison rate can also be looked at

as mass incarceration. Mass incarceration can be defined as the extreme rates of imprisonment

with the concentration of imprisonment among young, African-American men (Wildeman.

Mass Incarceration). Mass incarceration started once the thirteenth amendment was passed, to

ban all slavery. Not many people know about this phenomenon. However, those who do know

about mass incarceration, usually end up in an uproar or debate behind this topic. Many groups

such as the Black Lives Matter movement, protest against mass incarceration and the wrongful

treatment of African-Americans. In order for the information about mass incarceration to get to

the general public, people will publish articles, books, music, and even movies.

Some of these genres will incite anger or fury in their audience. The audience may even start to

feel bad for the prisoners. Two common sources that are used to spread information about mass

incarceration are the movie, Thirteenth, and the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle

Alexander. In order to compare and contrast; the rhetorical appeals, purpose, and structure of

each source will help people analyze these two genres.

Audience and Purpose

Audience and purpose are very important parts of genre analysis. Thirteenth is an hour and forty

minute documentary. In Thirteenth, the speakers were targeting the American public. The

speakers in this documentary wanted to spread awareness of how mass incarceration started and

progressed through the years. The information in Thirteenth, were typically about certain laws

that were passed over 50 years ago. A lot of these laws had effects on the black community that

were not typically discussed. Since the speakers addressing were the general public, they all used

language/words that were easy to comprehend. The only words that might have been more

complex were legal terms, which the speakers would define.

The New Jim Crow has many similarities to Thirteenth when it comes to audience and purpose.

Michelle Alexander targets the American public, while her books states that its purpose is to give

America a wake up call (West. Foreword, The New Jim Crow). Due to Alexander wanting to

wake up America, she presented information about laws that were praised for the good of

America but were actually damaging to the black community. The book is six chapters long with

a section of notes at the end. The notes included the sources that Alexander used in The New Jim

Crow. Alexander also uses simplistic language and defines any legal terms that may be

misunderstood. The only difference between these two genres is that there are multiple speakers

in Thirteenth, while The New Jim Crow only had Michelle Alexander giving information.

Rhetorical Issues: Ethos, Pathos and Logos

Ethos, pathos, and logos are key aspects when it comes to rhetorical issues. Ethos, logos, and

pathos stand for: credibility of the author, the logical aspect of the paper, and the emotional

aspect. In Thirteenth, the documentary shows pathos through the images of prisons and prisoners

doing work for cooperate businesses, without getting paid. This documentary also shows the

mistreatment of African-Americans in the prison system. Each of the speakers have a profession
or career in civil rights. This makes the documentary credible/shows ethos. Logos is shown in

Thirteenth, by the speakers showing different laws and clauses within those laws.

The New Jim Crow has to show pathos in a different way, because it is a book. This book shows

pathos through its descriptive language of how the prisoners are treated in the system. Michelle

Alexander is a civil rights lawyer which makes her credible or shows ethos when it comes to

talking about mass incarceration and involuntary servitude. Lastly she shows logos just like

Thirteenth by explaining laws and how these laws are enforced.

Structure and Delivery

Thirteenth as stated before, is an hour and forty minutes long. Therefore, the speakers have a

limited amount of time to get their point across. The documentary is set up as a timeline starting

from 1865 to now. The videos and pictures that are shown throughout the movie, depict pain and

tragedy which can help the audience understand the severity of this issue.

The New Jim Crow is a short informative book. Due to the length of the book, it has a small

amount of time to display information without overwhelming the audience. The book achieves

this task by following a similar timeline as Thirteenth. Each chapter is broken up into different

sections with each title in bold.

Conclusion/Synthesis

In the end, Thirteenth is the better way to get information about mass incarceration out in to the

public. Thirteenth is able to use descriptive language and also display pictures/videos so that the

audience is able to see the suffering of mass incarceration. The New Jim Crow can explain this

topic, however with the lack of images, the audience is basically forced to visualize this issues

effects.
 Works Cited
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness. Place of publication not identified: New Press, 2016. Print.

Thirteenth
13TH. Dir. Ava DuVernay. Perf. Melina Abdullah, Michelle Alexander, and Cory
Booker. 2016. Netflix. 7 Oct. 2016. Web. 20 Nov. 2016. <https://www.netflix.com/>.

Mass Incarceration by Christopher Wildeman

Wildeman, Christopher. "Mass Incarceration." Mass Incarceration - Criminology -
Oxford Bibliographies. N.p., 06 Jan. 2017. Web. 09 Feb. 2017.
<http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-
9780195396607-0033.xml>.