Wesley Bentley

Mr. Manning

English 1301-29

November 16, 2011

The Liberal View

The Nation is a magazine based out of New York that writes about many different things such as music, arts, and politics. It is a very Liberal, or left wing, magazine that asserts its opinion very strongly through almost every article it writes. “The Border Patrol State” is an article written by Leslie Marie Silko about New Mexico and the border patrol problems that occur among many other topics that also include racial profiling or discrimination. The article “The Border Patrol State” will effectively persuade the target audience of The Nation because they both express the same views and have the same general audience. The article written by Silko expresses her views and a couple anecdotes that show what happened to her and a friend while on a road trip in the middle of New Mexico, far away from any border what so ever. She was stopped by the Border Patrol for a border check and then treated very rudely and suspiciously for no reason. They were asked if the were “looking for any trouble” even though they had done nothing wrong (Silko 1). She was randomly searched by the Border Patrol dog, which didn’t respect its owners because they didn’t treat it well. Luckily the dog and she made a secret connection with each other and the dog didn’t rat her out for having some medical marijuana in her possession. Somehow they made a bond with one another because they have both been abused by the Border Patrol in some form or another. The dog and her made a such a connection that you could feel the emotion between them, even though they just met. The pathos between them was very strong and kept the two as one. She talks about how she was racially profiled because she is Native American and that they thought she may have been doing something suspicious or illegal. The reason this would apply to the audience of The Nation is because a huge thing for liberals is civil rights for every type of person. They believe that all people should get equal rights and that all discrimination should be gone. According to StudentNewsDaily.com in an article called Conservative VS. Liberal Beliefs, “[Liberals believe that] it is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect the civil liberties and individual and human rights”. This fits because Silko is talking about racial profiling and how it affected her trip and how she views the border patrol now. Yes the liberal view is equality for all through the involvement of the government, but when is too much involvement? Later on in the article, she starts to elaborate on the war back in the late1800’s and early 1900’s between the Native Americans and the White men that were settling the land. This kind of came out of no where to me and almost wasn’t relevant at first. Then I re-read the whole article with the thought of racial discrimination in the back of my mind the whole time. As I read on and on through her anecdotes and stories containing bits and pieces of racism, it all made sense. All her stories made sense because that was the one thing that brought them all together, racial profiling. It all made sense now. Her logical appeal was the race card. She was able to pull it in many different circumstances and use it to her advantage to get her point across. All of her examples bring the whole article together as one big example to me. She was able to use many different stories and anecdotes to prove that racial profiling does exist and that this would appeal to audiences like the one for The Nation. Her use of pathos was very convincing when talking about her and the dog and that was the first thing that caught my eye, she really was scared. She bled her emotions on the paper when writing that paragraph and I feel like that was perfect to catch the attention of readers of The Nation.