Racial injustice is like a cigarette. Abusing the person who is smoking as well as afflicting pain onto all other beings in the area. The only people who are benefitting are the people dishing out the cigarettes like the people who are holding the slaves. Racial injustice and slavery is wrong and Banneker pinpoints this argument through allusion, emotional expressions, and ethos.
Banneker used the rhetorical strategy allusion to argue against slavery. In the article, Banneker quotes the Declaration of Independence. This is significant because Banneker is writing to Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence so Banneker is turning Jefferson’s work against him to prove him point. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,