Drafting The Annotations

MLA Citation:

Mansoor, Sanya. “How to Help Black Lives Matter Movement, Protesters.” Time, Time, 9 June 2020, time.com/5849721/how-to-help-black-lives-matter-protests/. 

Summary:

In this article Sanya Monsoor talks about what the Black Lives Matter movement is and why it’s gained so much uproar especially in 2020. She starts her article off with some background and backstory on the movement. In the article she states “As the nation reels from the police killing of George Floyd and reckons with institutional racism, many are left wondering: what can they do?” (Monsoor, 1). She goes on to give a list of ways to help support the Black Lives Matter movement which is especially important for non-Black people and non-POC’s. Monsoor lists many options of support. She talks about supporting the movement directly by donating to the Black Lives Matter movement that was founded in 2013 when the murderer of Trayvon Martin was acquitted. She says you can support by donating to bail funds to help get protestors out of jail from protesting. She also says you can help by supporting Black families struggling and grieving after the loss of their loved ones in the killings. The last option she gives is to have difficult conversations and educate yourself. The way she describes doing this is by watching documentaries and reading articles about racial injustice and BLM. She also says to call your peers and family out on racist actions and to call out racial prejudice.

Rhetorical Analysis:

This article in my opinion was a very good one because it was easy to read and comprehend which means anyone who is starting to research ways to support BLM can easy make sense of some first steps. This article very clearly puts forth the idea and their points clearly and with no bias. It’s a very a simple read but very informative which I think is perfect for a non-black person who may not know firsthand or at all what racism and racial prejudice looks and feels like. This source also provides many articles relating to the BLM movement which is so helpful I feel, because a simple few clicks bring the person reading right to more information as opposed to making the reader search it out for themselves which many people may not do.  In the article one of the points includes this quote “As many activists have pointed out, in order to make social and economic change in a society rife with institutional racism, it’s not enough to not be racist, but rather people need to be actively anti-racist.” (Monsoor, 1). This quote shows to me that this source is credible because they include an “opinion based” statement which normally would be a red flag for me but they added a link to an article about a Black activists writing and provides evidence to back up their claim. Time.com is also a well known news outlet so I wasn’t hesitant when reading it. I don’t have any questions for the author as the source was straight-forward. I think the genre choice was a great decision because it’s an informative list and not an opinionated piece.