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This argument is rather well written, using a great deal of logic in his arguments as well as a great deal of support by making reference to many reliable statistics. He also appeals emotionally to the sympathy of the reader by discussing the many people who die of cancer and AIDs who must go without pain medication extracted from opiates. He also helps prove his point with the argument that the current status quo on the fight against the Opiate trade is not working. He illustrates that even though the trade is banned, people continue to trade and make use of the opiates. In doing this, the author makes it more clear to the reader that change is not necessary and makes it harder for the reader to remain indifferent by portraying doing nothing as the opposite side to his argument. The author is logical throughout the argument and his points make sense and are well structured. 

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Yoshino declares that the mainstream is a myth because in reality, he believes, there is no social norm that everyone can match themselves to. He believes that every individual person has their own individual qualities and that because of this, there is no standard that can fairly describe more than a very small group of people. He states that even the white man, who appears to satisfy the typical American in every way, has his own personal differences that would separate him from the mainstream, regardless of his familiar appearance. Yoshino is very persuasive because he uses quite a few examples and represents ideas and views already understood by many of us. I would represent the mainstream in America as a white able-bodied male or female who understands and matches with the rest of society. This of course is more of an average because it never actually occurs perfectly. 

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Life in the North is quite shy of the expectations that Linda had for it. When she came to the North she expected to find a land in which blacks and whites were treated fairly and equally, but she instead finds that while the slavery is gone, the racial inequality and prejudice is clearly still present. This is illustrated very visibly when she goes to buy a train ticket. Although Linda has the money to pay for a first class ticket, she is barred from buying one by the person who sells them due to the color of her skin. She also learns that in the North she is not truly free. Once the fugitive slave act had been passed, her master had the right to come into free states to reclaim her as his slave, causing her emotional burden and insecurity inherent of being a fugitive until she was purchased for $300. 

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In this reading, I found it particularly moving when linda describes the reaction of the white population to the Turner Rebellion. She mentions the cruelty and mistreatment of both the slaves by the slave owners and later moves on to describe how blacks as a race were treated in the South. She then also mentions the slaveless white farmers, and though without any slaves of their own, in many instances they are more cruel to the slaves than the masters are. She then goes to use more graphic imagery to ensure a greater emotional attachment to the slaves. After she had described the punishments of innocent men based on race and class using graphic terms like "the blood stood... at their feet," I deeply sympathized with the blacks she was referring to, and I felt that she was successful in her rhetorical plot. 

Slave

It is very important that this tale is not fiction because fiction provides a reader with the ability to escape from the concerns and sympathy that they might feel for the slave girl through the idea that it never happened. Even though the reader might understand that there have been worse times in slave history, making a book like this fiction would ruin its credibility and tarnish its purpose. Any person who was truly emotionally moved by this book would naturally begin to attack its credibility. They would rather tell themselves that it does not occur, never occurred, and that they have no obligation to sacrifice themselves to ensure that this does not happen. When the book is not fiction, the reader no longer has that option of escape. Instead, the reader must accept every word that is stated as truth, and they are forced to understand that this actually happened. Although it may be painful for them, in order for them to learn the truth of slavery and fulfill the purpose of the book, it is vital that they read the book as if it were real and absorb every blow to the main character as if it were to themselves. if this does not happen, the reader can ignore what they are hearing and continue living in their fantasy world in which such things do not exist. 

Election

As I was watching the election with relentless vigor, I began to slowly contemplate the various proceedings of the election. It seemed rather peculiar to me that the John McCain was perceived through the vantage point of his similarity to both his predecessor and to the lack success of previous tactics employed rather than to his new ideas and an analytically based view of what impact they would potentially have. I found this rather unsettling, and the magnitude of the effect that the  general public on this idea further led to my disbelief. Instead of postulating the candidates by perceived value, the public fled from tragic circumstances of the current economy by embracing the opposite. These actions were not manifested through logic, but through fear. In essence, I concluded, the people must not only have developed the belief that the presidential power is absolute, but also that the few similarities between McCain and the previous president will undoubtedly yield a similar result. This however is the likely irreparable nature of humanity: judging others by a compilation of similarities to others they have encountered. When an individual encounters another, often, even if only subconsciously, that person will recognize that individual through similarities to those they have met or heard of, establishing the basis for many common prejudices, including racism. This idea does not only apply to humanity however, but seems to be present in all animals. Such is illustrated through the example of an abused dog I confronted in my childhood. When I approached the animal out of curiosity, it growled at me. Upon my asking the female owner quickly retold the life of the poor animal.This dog was blind in one eye and had been frequently been beaten badly by a male who was known to wear a baseball cap. Over and over the dog had been beaten. Eventually, the abused animal hated the bitter owner and did all it could to avoid him. Presently, she told me, although the dog had not been exposed to any further violence, the dog instantly bears great resentment toward all males and even greater so to those who are wearing baseball caps. The dog can smell, she says. The dog knows his previous owner is gone and that those approaching are clearly separate entities, but the dog still bears the fear and resentment toward males and caps due to the one experience with his owner, who exhibited both of these traits. It is clear through analysis that it is in our nature to relate people through similarities such as the dog did with his abuser. It is my fear that the election exploited this instinctive response at the expense of John McCain.

Racism

Coming from a school which had no diversity, I honestly have never had a racial encounter worth mentioning. I have, however, seen a bit of racism take place. Once when I was in a car, one of my friends parents was angry that he had just been cut off by a man on a bike. After he had come to a screeching halt, out of anger, he shouted that he should slam on the brakes whenever he sees a black person on the side of the road. This is the end of my story, and it is the most racism I have ever witnessed in my life. It seemed interesting that he blamed the fact that he was cut off on the fact that the guy riding the bike was black. It seems that this is the easiest way to do things. 

While I hate to appear a liar, I have never personally been openly racist. While I have sometimes made jokes about various races and made jokes about how ridiculous it is to be absurdly racist, I never feel like I have discriminated. This is most likely because I never met anyone of a different race other than Sonia before coming to University. 

Parillo discusses the socialization process in a way that illustrates its power over the youngest generation of society. He states that prejudice, an idea in which one person has a predisposed position on a person before meeting them, is spawned in a child simply from the ideas of their parents and peers. This occurs because when a person is born, they have no opinion of what the world is or how it works. They then are ready to accept the ideas of any person who they come into contact with, and with no developed sense of right or wrong, the child naturally assumes that what they are hearing is right. Sometimes the children know exactly what they are doing, blatantly disregarding others whom they have been taught to avoid and other times, the child may not even know that they have developed these ideas until they start to naturally drift away from social whom they have developed a natural fear of. He ultimately believes that the prejudice that we see in the world would not exist if it were not for the existing prejudice that contaminates the minds of children in their youth, and that the bad character that exists in the world is a product of misled role models and imperfect peers.