Genesis Duran 

Context & Exigence 

The TED talk  “Why I Keep Speaking Up Even When People Mock My Accent” by Safwat Saleem,was posted on july 7,2016 it covered the topic of racism, more specifically people of color being targeted not only because of their skin but because of the way they speak. Racism is something we the people of color have been fighting for as long as we’ve lived. 

Author 

The speaker Safwat Saleem is not only a TED talk but is an immigrant himself and he likes to bake. To add on he is also a visual artist which makes him good at impersonating people and making up his own stories. The reason Safwat spoke about this topic is because he himself was being bullied because of his accent. 

Text

This talk was spoken on and published in TED talk. Since it’s a personal talk about racism on TED talk it makes it strong because more than half of the people in the world are being targeted by racist others, so they can relate to a lot of what he is saying. 

Audience 

• People of color 
• Racist people 
• TED talkers 
• TED listeners 
• The world 

Purpose 

.By speaking up on TED talk Safwat is trying to motivate people of color who have be victims of racism to speak up just like he has. Not only that he also wants them to know that they are not the only ones and that they can overcome this challenge just like he has. 

Argument 

The topic that Safwatis speaks about is racism. His argument is that people shoulnt be targeted because of how they look or/and speak. 

Evidence 

• “We know that reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you are black. We know that professors are less likely to help females or minority students. And we know that resumes with white-sounding names get more callbacks than resumes with black sounding names”
• In 2014, only about 11 percent of the books had a character of color. And just the year before the number was 8 percent 
• Childrens are told that they can be anything,they can do anything,and yet, most stories that children of color consume are about people who are not like them.

Rhetorical Strategies 

• Statistics 
• Personal experience 
• strong topic
• Ted talk(commonly used now by this generation) 

Work Cited

saleem, safwat. “Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent.” 2016. Safwat Saleem: Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent | TED Talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/safwat_saleem_why_i_keep_speaking_up_even_when_people_mock_my_accent. Accessed 7 September 2022.