The Reality of Life

In Rhetoric this unit, I learned about rhetorical artwork. I analyzed how a piece of artwork can challenge the status quo and provoke someone to think a certain way. For a homework assignment I analyzed the rhetorical devices of the song, Patience by Nas and Damian Marley. The message of the song is that humans must come together and make a difference in the world despite our differences and beliefs. For my 3rd action project, I had to choose a political topic I cared about and create a piece of artwork that unites people using rhetorical elements such as logos, pathos and ethos. I also started to make a song that depicted the same message, white privilege.

The topic i’ve decided to research about is white privilege. White privilege is having societal advantages that is beneficial to whites systematically,socially and economically. White privilege demeans the lives of blacks and minorities in America, for example black kids are 10 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than whites, even though white children are more likely to abuse drugs. This data exemplifies white privilege by showing that black males are stereotyped as criminals and will be stopped because of it. I decided to create a collage that depicts how white people benefit from white privilege and yet decide not to acknowledge it. I wanted to do white privilege, specifically white people recognizing their privilege.

The piece I created is called the Reality of Life, inspired by the board game Life,I decided to make a board game layout that displays how white privilege works through advancements. I used the life game title to metaphorically present the reality of how white and blacks live everyday. On the spaces there are spots that benefit the white guy(which would represent white privilege). This allows him to be much further ahead then the black guy in the game. There are more spaces that will negatively affect the black guy, that represents how hard it is for blacks to succeed at life with an oppressive system working against you. The Reality of Life unites people by accepting that white privilege is an issue that only benefits people who are white or look white. Reality of Life is an attempt to unite the black and white community by showing we all have to make it through life, but show that whites have more advantages because of their privileges.

The Reality of Life uses logos, as in facts or statistic. It also uses pathos, an appeal to emotion. There is an appeal to logos because the spaces provide facts that show how white privilege benefits only white people and demeans blacks and minorities. An example of logos in the Reality of Life is that there are higher wages for white males .Whites get paid a median of $21 per hour,while black or minority men make around $14 or $15 . Another example of logos I included was Jim Crow law. Jim crow law were laws that began in 1890, and started with the “separate but equal” way of life for African Americans. There were laws that enforced racial segregation,specifically in public places such as school, public bathrooms, threatres and neighborhoods. There is also a use of pathos in my art piece, by showing the hardships of African Americans and comparing their hardship to someone who is white life. My audience for this piece are white people who don’t recognize their privilege and ignore it because they don’t physically experience it. But this piece challenges that idea by using logos and showing that there are advantages that come with being born white. While someone black is born with years of oppression starting with their ancestors experiencing slavery to them experiencing police brutality.

The Reality of Life:

PRESENTING THE WONDERFUL, THE GREAT.... STORE IT CYCLE

In Design and Engineering this unit I learned about gear ratios, parts of a bicycle , potential energy, kinetic energy and calculating the surface area and volume of circles. The purpose of this action project is to create a bike that will benefit a certain user. I learned that bikes have gear settings that you can change depending on where you are biking. Mountain bikes are for riding on rocky roads and cruiser bikes are for leisure. For a homework assignment, I had to interview someone who biked often, and I chose to interview Kim Campos. I asked her if she could change anything about her bike what would it be, and she responded,"I would change the seat to be wider and cushioned for comfortability.” When designing a bike , I took this idea of making the seat wider into consideration. After finishing this project, I'm proud of how the bike came out. It‘s very sturdy and looks like an innovative design.

My user is a 15 year old girl named Malia, who travels 5 miles from her home to get to school.Malia's parents are going to buy her a bike because she works at the library and is going to have to do grocery shopping. She lives in Logan square and will ride on the 606 to get to school and when she gets home she will park her bike in the garage. Malia will need a bike that is comfortable, safe at night and can carry large books and grocery bags.

The Store It cycle is great and perfect for Malia because it provides comfortability,safety and storage.  I included 2 baskets, one on the back and one on the front. Both have buttons that make it close automatically and lock, which is good because our userneeds to carry books and groceries. I also included taillights and front lights in the middle of the handlebars, the front lights allow Malia to see where she is going at night, the taillights include turn signals allowing people to see her at night. Lastly, I added a wider and cushioned seat because she has to ride for a long time from school to library.She should believe in our design, because I created a design that would help and benefit her circumstances.She will gain potential energy as she is slowly riding up the hill on the 606, and when Malia rides down the hill that potential energy will transfer to kinetic because she is in motion.

Malia lives 5 miles away from school, she lives in Logan Square and travels on the 606. It takes around 30 minutes for her to get to school. To find how many miles a minute you do d/t, which is 5/30=.17 which is around 10 miles per hour. For our scale, we took the original sketch and converted that to 1inches=4inches. The wheel’s diameter is 26 inches, the radius is 13 inches and the circumference= 81.68 inches. The gear ratio is 26/12.

Rotations= distance/circumference

5/81.68=

614.455 rotations to get to school.

When trying to design a creative and innovative bike, I ran into some trouble. I overcame it by looking up different types of bikes and took the best ideas and tried to create a bike that combined off of those ideas. Sketching the idea was also difficult because it's challenging to draw something out rather than writing ideas down. I overcame this by continuing to draw out my design until the design was perfected. I built the finish product with cardboard and wooden stick by hot glueing the pieces together.


Below is a labeled sketch of the bike design:

LD,Sketch of bike,(2016)

Finished bike design:

LD,Bike Design.(2016)

Tupac Trapped in The Rhetoric of Changes

In Rhetoric, my class learned about brave people who went against the majority and spoke about what they care about. We visited Mike Pfelger for our Field Experience on the South Side of Chicago. We asked questions about how and why he challenged the status qou. An important idea that stuck with me when speaking to Mike Pfleger was that rhetoric without action is nothing, I agree with this statement because you can't make a difference without physically doing something about it. For the second action project, I had to choose a person who challenged the status qou and prove how. The purpose of this action project is to rhetorically analyze how someone challenged the status qou with a speech, a song, or video. This AP made me understand that a song can be as rhetorically effective as a speech because the artist can also convey a message with the same rhetorical techniques and devices.