Afghan Refugees Are Not Dangerous, They’re People in Need of Help Article Analysis
The Taliban have taken over. In the month of August, the United States abruptly withdrew their troops from Afghanistan which allowed the Taliban to take over. This caused a surge in the number of refugees that wanted to flee their own country, and the once forgotten conversation of who deserves refuge resurfaced. Fortesa Latifi, the author of “Afghan Refugees Are Not Dangerous, They’re People in Need of Help'' writes about the crisis that has fallen upon the people of Afghanistan and that the people that are trying to flee are humans as well. The author also discusses that the refugees have gone through a tough time and are forced to make it through society. In this essay, I will explore how Latifi uses rhetorical appeals to make a stronger connection with the audience and is better able to make them feel more accepting of the refugees that are in need of refuge. I argue that the author did a great job in using rhetorical concepts, such as ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to the target audience and brought them to light about what is happening.
The article, “Afghan Refugees Are Not Dangerous, They’re People in Need of Help,” starts off by talking about how a refugee should be grateful to the country that took them in, it also mentions that the refugee should be self-sufficient and a good model in the capitalist system, despite the trauma that they have experienced. Next the author moves onto an example, the example was of the author and her family, the grandfather of the author Tati was jailed as a political prisoner. As the police were gathering more information to pin against Tati, he was able to send a letter to his wife to escape with the family. The author's grandmother took the opportunity to flee to America and ended up settling in Brooklyn. Next the author goes on to describe two different types of refugees, the first type of refugee is the one that is used as a good example of why refugees should be let in. She connected this refugee with her father who was a trauma surgeon. She also goes on to say that there are others in her family that have been put in jail and also have a criminal record, she said that these people can be used as an example to why some people are against the idea of letting immigrants in. This posed a question: does that make the refuge that they were given as children less worthy? Bring it back to the Afghanistan refugees, Professor Heber Gowayed said that, “the implicit assumption of these refugees is that these people are dangerous. The Ideal refugee is someone who is in need of an American savior.” After being saved they should be able to rise up and become a productive citizen, but not every refugee is going to be perfect. She finishes off the article by saying her family didn’t deserve refuge only because her father became a surgeon, but rather everyone should be given refuge whether they fit into the ideal refugee column or not.
In the article, “Afghan Refugees Are Not Dangerous, They’re People in Need of Help,” Latifi talks about how not all refugees are going to become an ideal citizen but, all should be given refuge. In this article, the author Latifi, uses the proposal argument type. Latifi proposes that, “refuge should be given to anyone who is in need of it.” Basically, Latifi believes that everyone, no matter if they become an ideal citizen or not, deserve refuge. This article was released on August 31, 2021 on Teen Vogue. Which was soon after the US pulled out of Afghanistan and the Taliban took control. The article is aimed towards the younger generation. This was showcased, after the 9/11 attacks happened, and the boy who sat next to the Latifi in school said, “I’m going to kill those towelheads.” This goes to show that the article is trying to change the view the younger generation has on refugees.
The first rhetorical appeal that was used was pathos. Pathos is not an emotion driven appeal. Rather, pathos is when the writer has a target audience and gives an example that makes the target audience feel in some way or, it could also make them feel something, which could include an emotion. Then with that example the writer makes a larger connection. That larger connection could be to what is going on right now whether it is socially, culturally, politically, etc. The author, Fortesa Latifi, wrote an article which talks about the recent problems that have risen up in Afghanistan, and how they caused an increase in the number of Afghan refugees who need a country to accept them in. This article is aimed towards an audience that would be or is against opening borders and letting immigrants into the country. Another target audience is the people who have a grudge from when the 9/11 attacks happened, which directly involved terrorists from the middle eastern countries. The trage audience is more directly shown when the author, Latifi, who is an immigrant recalled, “A kid I sat next to in English 101 said he was planning to join the army. To kill those towel heads.” Basically, Latifi is putting out the target audience that she is writing this article for. This leads into the next part of how to make the target audience feel a certain way. The author, Latifi, wants to make the target audience feel more empathetic towards the refugees and become more accepting of them. So, in the beginning of the article Latifi starts off by giving an example of her own family. Latifi’s grandfather, Tati, was under investigation and was taken by the cops, but he was given a few days to go home as they found more evidence. So, Tati told his wife, Nona, to flee. Latifi states, “ Tati told Nona to sell everything and flee with their children. On the train, she had two suitcases, one roasted chicken, a bag of chestnuts, and a gun she didn’t know how to use.” Latifi gave her own family as an example to showcase what the people that are trying to flee have to go through. When the target audience sees what Latifi’s family had to go through, they are able to connect this to themselves by seeing how it would feel to lose/leave a family member, which would make them feel more empathetic towards the refugees. When put into a larger and more recent context, the afghans that are trying to flee, due to the overtake from the terrorist group ISIS, the people that would be against the thought of letting people into their country, would be more open to let the Afghan refugees take refuge in their country.
Another rhetorical appeal the author used was ethos. Ethos is when the author uses an example to show that they are credible and that this article has some worth behind it. Ethos can be shown by experience, education, track records, etc. The first time I read the article I noticed that the name of the author was not something that you would usually see in the normal names that I have seen in America. When I started reading the article I realized that the author’s family were refugees who had fled to America. This showed that the author had ethos in her article, because the credibility came from an experience that her family had themselves. When I was reading this article I could see that the author, when she would talk about the refugees from Afghanistan, would make the target audience have more credibility behind what the author was saying because she and her family were also refugees.
The last type of rhetorical appeal that can be faintly seen in the article is logos. Logos is when the author uses facts to make a point which then can be used to appeal to the reader’s logic or reasoning. Some examples of logos would be if the author used some sort of fact, statistic, etc. In the article Latifi used logos to say that the increase in the number of refugees was due to the US pulling out troops from Afghanistan. The article was written on August 31, 2021 and a couple of weeks before that, the US troops had been withdrawn from Afghanistan. This caused an uproar and on the news you could see that the people were trying to flee the country. In the article the author writes, “20-year war.” This demonstrates the extent that the war has gone on for. This also helps enforce that the younger generation from Afghanistan have been in a war for some of their whole lives. So when there is no hope, people try to flee to somewhere that they can survive.
Within the article, Latifi uses rhetorical appeals to make the audience become more knowledgeable about what happened in Afghanistan but more importantly what the refugees go through. Latifi used pathos to make the audience feel more empathetic towards the refugees by giving her own family as an example. She also used ethos to give the article credibility. Latifi did this by using her own family as an example, which is an experience the author had, making the article feel more credible for the reader. Although logos was faintly seen, Latifi also managed to use logos by giving a statistical number. She said that the war had been going on for 20 years. This would make the reader realise that the war had been going on for longer than many of the teenagers' lives. Despite the fact that I am an immigrant, I believe that the article still does a great job of using persuasive speech to the younger generation of the things that are happening, and that everyone that is in need of refuge should be given it.
