Rhetorical Analysis of Salil Dudani’s TED Talk “How Jails Extort the Poor”

Legal Activists Salil Dudani, in their TED Talk video titled “How Jails Extort the Poor” (April 2016), argues that America’s legal system is built to take advantage of the poor. He supports his claims through personal experiences and statistical evidence. Dudani establishes an

empathetic, but friendly tone with the audience. He appeals to a pathos and logos with his narrative approach in his argument. His intended audience is activists and anyone willing to hear his plea. Dudani’s mission is to persuade and inform the general public, Through his rhetorical narrative about the financial prejudices taking place in America and how poor Americans are affected by them. His rhetorical strategies are effective in persuading his audience to think of jail

in different terms and question our policies for bail, fines, and fees.
One of Dudani’s most effective methods of presenting his evidence appeals to Pathos. He

uses a story of his own personal experience with law enforcement as his opening argument. In his story he describes a very casual day of him leaving his internship at the Public Defender Service of Washington DC, when he is wrongfully stopped, searched and accused of being a terrorist. He said, “About a dozen police officers then gathered near us. All of them had hand guns and assault rifles. They rifled through my backpack. They patted me down. They took pictures of me spread on the police car, and they laughed.” The empathetic image and tone he

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was able to create from this story was enough to gain the commitment and undivided attention from his audience for the rest of his argument. He shows the audience an image of him the day he was wrongfully stopped and searched. He says, “If I were to describe myself I think I would say something like, 19 year old, Indian male, bright T-shirt, wearing glasses.” He compares it to the police reports where they say, “middle eastern male with a backpack.” They described him with words such as lurking, nefarious, and terrorist. He does this to show he was profiled by the police. He wants the audience to feel sympathy for him so he can help them imagine how much worse it could have been if he were poor.

Due to todays policy of bail, fines, and fees; pending trial is not based on how dangerous you are or how big of a threat you are to the public. Pending trial is based on affluence, whether or not you can afford to pay fines, fees, and bail. Three out of five people in prison are being detained because they can’t afford bail. Dudani mentions Bill Cosby, he had a one million dollar bail; he wrote a check and was set free the same day. He then refers to a woman by the name of Sandra Bland saying, “ The Sandra Bland who died in jail was only there because her family couldn’t afford five hundred dollars.” He does this to show you the difference in affluence and the difference titles. Bill Cosby is known as a famous actor while Sandra receives the titles criminal and inmate because she couldn’t afford bail. He believes it is better to be a an affluent person suspected of trying to blow up a police station, then it is to be poor suspected of much less. He does a very good job of keeping the empathetic tone he created at the beginning of his argument. He uses facts and statistics to support the claims he derived from his stories. To show common ground with the people being wrongfully prisoned and the people in the audience he asks, “how many of you have ever had a parking ticket in your life?” Everyone in the audience

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laughed and a majority of them raised their hands. He then asks, “But what would happen if you couldn’t afford the amount on the ticket?” Under federal and state laws if you fail to pay a parking ticket, a warrant for your arrest is issued. If you couldn’t afford the ticket I doubt you can afford to pay bail. Just like that he has placed you in the shoes of a poor person being detained for being poor.

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Works Cited

Dudani, Salil. https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/speakers/400418/Salil-Dudani
Meggitt, Jane. “Lower, Middle, and upperclass income levels”https://finance.zacks.com/lower-

middle-upper-class-income-levels-9877.html