Rhetorical Analysis Of Exile By Benjamin Saenz

Benjamin A. Saenz, in “Exile: El Paso, Texas,” illustrates, by means of anecdotes and narrative from his individual experiences, that to be profiled and identified by the color of your skin as a possible illegal immigrant is flippant, demeaning, and misguided. Through his experiences, being profiled in El Paso, a border town to Mexico, Saenz illustrates that looking Hispanic does not deem someone an illegal, does not categorize someone as a criminal, does not demand for a Hispanic to be profiled, interrogated, beaten and discarded. Saenz, in describing his experiences, attempts to illuminate to his audience that profiling creates an environment of paranoia in populations of people that are possibly of an immigrant descent. Saenz’s audience is the greater American public, those who know nothing of the Hispanic-American’s endeavors in the United States, who stereotype and racially profile all Hispanics living near the border as illegal immigrants that do not belong. The United States public, by doing so, effectively jilts American citizens of Hispanic
By using the pronoun “I” and other first person pronouns Saenz is able to proffer himself a credibility that he would not possess if he were to introduce his topic in a third person narrative. By using “I” in sentences such as, “Sons of bitches, I whispered, pretty soon I’ll have to carry a passport in my own neighborhood… I wasn’t angry—not at first,” Saenz is able illustrate his own personal thoughts in a more direct manner (Saenz 280). In doing so, Saenz establishes himself as an individual with unique life experience to understand the intricacies of being profiled for the color of one’s skin, thereby, allowing him to possess an ethos, a credibility he would not manage in another narrative point of