Kimberly Huerta
Frey
English 102-167
January 25, 2012
A Rhetorical Critique of David Brooks “People Like Us”
In David Brooks’ “People Like Us” passage on the issue of diversity, Brooks takes a personally emotional perspective of the way in which Americans don’t appreciate how diverse our nation is while “relatively homogeneous” (Brooks 136). His argument is weakened, however, through a bias and hypocrisy that his diction conveys. He claims that grouping ourselves with those who we are most alike is in our nature to, and in doing so, we separate ourselves from those who are different. Using certain statistics as evidence, Brooks points out that the social segmentation created by society will always exist. He argues that no matter where we go, we cannot find a neighborhood that is diverse in which no one is alike. Brooks utilizes the idea of human nature as support to his claim, by stating that those who come to America are naturally driven to live near those who they have the similarities as they do, whether it’d be their race, beliefs or educational level. Reasons such as racism or “psychological comfort” can aspect in this occurrence, however Brooks argues that we act this way subconsciously (Brooks 133). Brooks makes the point that we connect diversity with racial integration and that we are happiest when surrounded by the people we have most in common with. The majority of Brooks’ claim is reinforced by his utilization of his researched statistics. For instance, as he establishes the strategy of certain marketing companies that divide the nation into groups based on their lifestyle, he points out that each group has a similar or preference. One example he gives is the firm Claritas, “which breaks down the U.S. population into sixty-two psycho-demographic clusters, based on such factors as how much money people make, what they like to read and watch, and