Lvl 8: Op-Eds

          For this assignment I tried to find three different op-eds that have a similar topic. These three are all related to racism and political correctness, which are and have been a hot topic of debate for a long, long time. 

          O'Neill's article in the Los Angeles Times, "The Trouble with 'racial Awareness' on Campus" talked about his recent trip to UC Irvine, where he found students to be "obsessed" with racial identities, and in a way oppressed and silenced all opposing voices. He claims that these campus movements are pessimistic in that they believe full integration of all races to be futile. He is very clear on his stance, and although I do not agree with his opinion and think that he has completely missed the point, his writing is effective in that I understand where he is coming from and his ideas are conveyed clearly. Since it is written about a hot topic, and he uses quite a lot of examples, the piece is fairly interesting and probably won't put readers to sleep. 

          Ziyad's article in the Guardian, "America Isn't More Racist. It's Just Shouting It Instead of Whispering" talks about the recent "rise" in racial tensions in America. Ziyad claims that there isn't actually a "rise", because racial tensions have always existed, but recently people of color have chose to no longer be silenced and actively speak out on it. Organizations like Black Lives Matter have chosen to raise their voices so that other people in America can no longer pretend to not see the issues in plain sight and try to make a change. I agree with Ziyad's opinion, but I do feel in comparison to O'Neill's article, he has less real life examples and statistics to back up his claims. He does have a strong opinion that persists throughout the entire article, however, but perhaps more conservative leaning readers wouldn't be easily convinced by his words. The article is short and to the point, so it should be considered an effective op-ed. 

          Last but not least, Edsall's op-ed in The New York Times, "Trump, Obama and the Assault on Political Correctness", seemed to focus on political correctness through the attitudes and speeches given by current Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump and President Obama. There are a lot of examples and quotes used throughout the article, however I find that Edsall seems to only use the quotes without futher analysis of his own, and concluded the article with comments on the chances of Donald Trump winning. Through analysis of the word choices Edsall made, I believe that he has a more liberal stance regarding the topic of political correctness, but I was not entirely sure. Despite the array of quotes Edsall chose to use, I found this op-ed to be less effective compared to O'Neill's and Ziyad's, because I couldn't clearly know his attitude and stance on the issue he wrote on; in fact at some point I was not even entirely sure if Edsall was writing about political correctness or trying to comment on the politics of Donald Trump. In the Writer's Handbook, the chapter on op-eds state that op-eds should try to convince readers to side with the author, but I do not think Edsall did a good job on that. 

Works Cited 
Edsall, Thomas B. "Trump, Obama and the Assault on Political Correctness." The New
          York Times. The New York Times, 23 Dec. 2015. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

O'Neill, Brendan. "The Trouble with 'racial Awareness' on Campus." Los Angeles Times. 
          Los Angeles Times, 5 Feb. 2016. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.
Ziyad, Hari. "America Isn't More Racist. It's Just Shouting It Instead of Whispering | Hari
          Ziyad." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 05 Feb. 2016. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.