On 12 April 1964, Malcolm X delivered his famous “Ballot or Bullet” speech to inspire Black Nationalism and urge African Americans to fight for their rights. This essay analyses the many instances of rhetorical devices used by Malcolm X in his speech.
Malcolm opens his speech with a dramatic flourish when he states that “This afternoon we want to talk about “The ballot or the bullet.” The ballot or the bullet explains itself…”. Straight away, the speaker appeals to use Pathos by homing on to the emotions of his audience. Here Malcolm is quizzically talking about the choice of the Black people to either adopt peaceful means through the electoral process or take up arms to win their rights. The emotional appeal of the opening gambit is reinforced with Logos that Malcolm uses to build his case. Malcolm employs the ‘them versus us’ logic by identifying the white man as an “enemy” who had kidnapped the Black people and brought them to America. Malcolm then goes on to build his logic by asserting that the speech is about social and political rights and not religion which he urges his audience to “Keep it between you and your God”. Here Malcolm, in a convoluted way, is using the parameter of Ethos to separate the matters of the Church from that of the State. Malcolm then raises the emotional pitch of his rhetoric by arguing that “They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you ’cause you’re black. They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim; they attack me ’cause I’m black”. Here the emotional appeal is extremely strident where Malcolm strikes at the collective feeling of persecution that the Blacks in America felt during the 1960s that it was the color of their skin that made the White people look down upon them and treat them inferior.
Malcolm then builds up the logic to say that the Government had failed the Black people and now only ‘self-help’ was possible and he brings in the imagery of Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) to reinforce the next part of his argument of fighting it out and adhere to Black nationalism to claim their equal rights. Malcolm then calls America a “hypocritical colonial power” that is yet another emotional rhetorical point as he links it with the condition of Blacks as “20th-century slaves” and “second class citizens. Malcolm’s next development takes Pathos to a fever pitch when he states that there has never been blood- less revolution and that the choice of Ballot or the Bullet existed for the Black man which the White people should understand and prevent bloodshed by giving the Black man his rights.
The entire speech is built on sweeping generalities with no specificity in the accusations. Malcolm makes the least sense or logic when he talks about the White man’s “Atomic Bomb’, which is completely out of context with the general flow of his speech. There is nothing ethical in Malcolm’s urgings in his overt and covert ‘call to arms’ though he cleverly covers up by giving a choice of either using the ‘Ballot’ or the ‘Bullet’ when he actually is exhorting the Black people to use the ‘Bullets’. In the final analysis, using Aristotelian parameters of a rhetorical speech it can be stated that the entire speech is steeped in Pathos meant to whip up sentiments, with less emphasis on Logos ad the least on Ethos.
References
X, M., & Starr, S. (2018). The ballot or the bullet. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.