This TED Talk is Amazing

I was really just going into this assignment looking to do the blog post and be done with it, but I was absolutely taken by this TED Talk, and I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it.

A Tale of Two Americas. And the Mini Mart Where They Collided

This TED Talk is given by Anand Giridharadas, a man with Indian immigrant parents raised in Ohio, but it is about two men from two different worlds coming together through the most unexpected circumstances. Raisuddin Bhuiyan was an Air Force officer in Bangladesh who came to America to pursue the 'American Dream'. Mark Stroman was a party man with a hard past of drug using parents who were "50 dollars short of aborting him". On September 21st, 2001, when 9/11 was fresh in everyone's heads, after shooting two other Middle Eastern workers, Stroman arrived at the Mini Mart that Raisuddin was working at, and shot him in the face. Raisuddin miraculously survived, but lost his right eye. Ten years pass, Stroman is in jail on death row, and Raisuddin has returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca, a journey required by the Islamic faith at least once in a lifetime. He returned with the intent to not only forgive Stroman for his actions, but help him get off of death row. Although his actions failed, and Stroman was killed, Raisuddin continued his journey of forgiveness by helping Stroman's eldest daughter with her drug addiction, and telling her that "although she lost a father, she gained an uncle".

While this story was the main focus of the TED Talk, the big idea behind it is that there exist in our world today two Americas. America is both the most successful country and the most unsuccessful country. There is the America that is making huge advances, and the America we don't see, full of drug abuse, homelessness, malnutrition, violence, and darkness. Using this story, Anand Giridharadas develops a compelling argument for the mending of these two worlds, as shown by the story of Raisuddin and Stroman. 

The main technique that I noticed Giridharadas using was going back and forth between stories. He started off telling the beginning of the story of the shooting itself, but right before the climax, he moves onto telling Raisuddin's background. It was of course, obvious that he was going to be shot at that point in the story, but this elaboration on his background first adds to Giridharadas's use of pathos. He automatically creates a connection between the audience and Raisuddin. He then tells the story of the shooting, and its aftermath, and then jumps to telling his own background, before getting back to the story 10 years later. While this jumping back and forth could be confusing, I think that it really help to build the story from all angles. The use of pathos is also very clear through the story itself. By touching on the darker sides of society that we generally try to forget, it brings reality closer and makes people want to take action. Giridharadas's only use of logos throughout the whole speech was at the end when he used the statistic of how there are 65 million American's with criminal records. 

My favorite part of the TED Talk however, was the coming together of all of Giridhardas's points to come to the conclusion of the existence of the two Americas, and how we as a country are both successful and unsuccessful. He uses very powerful analogies, such as how our life expectancy rates are going down, yet we have the newest and most efficient hospitals being built. 

The one that hit closest to home was when he used the example of a person with a completely healthy body having a stroke, and all of the sudden losing the use of their entire right side. I have experienced this first hand as my grandmother had a stroke, and can still walk, thankfully, however she is unable to move her left arm, she walks with a limp, and she has to receive treatments on her face to help with the nerves there because they have a harder time working than those on her right side. She is the perfect example of how these two Americas can collide to make an even greater one with a lot of hard work. My Nonni is one of the strongest people I have ever met, and she has worked so hard to get where she is now. She lives alone, as my grandfather died about a decade after her stroke, she refuses to even use a handicap spot when parking, and she does PT once a week to continue practicing her motor skills on her left side. While she was once a perfectly healthy body hit by a stroke as Giridharadas compares to America, she has rebuilt herself to be stronger than before, just as Giridharadas hopes America can do. 

Overall I immensely enjoyed this TED Talk, and I would highly recommend it, as he is a very easy speaker to watch, with an absolutely amazing story with a deeper and more important meaning.