Since my inquiry-based research essay was on the topic of the racial wealth gap, and this time I want my audience to be the US government, the genre that I am considering using is a political cartoon. I want this cartoon to show how much laws and policies that the US government has passed since the beginning of American history that oppressed black Americans in accumulating their wealth. I intend on using the rhetorical strategy of pathos so I feel like the genre of a political cartoon is the best way to approach my audience because a visual representation of the racial wealth gap is a powerful form of impacting the audience. They can see how much of the policies they’ve pasted have contributed to the racial wealth gap without them just reading pages of historical policies, which can be boring. It is also a way to capture everything in history in one picture/drawing. In my political cartoon, I want to have white men (representing the government), labeled with the different policies such as redlining, slavery, etc., somehow asserting their dominance over a black man, and it could be them just sitting on top of him or pushing him down.

Another type of genre I would use if the political cartoon genre doesn’t work out is a poster. In the poster, I can include a visual aid, bullet points the laws and policies that the government passed, and directly raise questions to my audience. Overall, I hope that whichever visual genre I intend on using will let the US government be aware of the negative impact they’ve had on the current racial wealth gap and that the issue needs to be resolved.

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