The #Rhetoric of Waleed Aly’s “Send Forgiveness Viral”: Is Rogerian argumentation an appropriate response to racism?

Abstract In 2016, Waleed Aly, a prominent Muslim Australian academic and media personality, made an argument using the Twitter hashtag “Send Forgiveness Viral” that asked for empathy in the face of Islamophobia. While initially appealing, deeper consideration of his use of and appeal to his audience to use Rogerian strategies to combat racism presents problems. Can Rogerian argumentation strategies be utilized to combat racism? Using Aly’s #SendForgivenessViral argument as a case study, this article evaluates Rogerian argumentation and empathic response in therapeutic situations compared to arguments about discrimination, particularly those taking place through social media. While scholarly writing by Lassner (1990) and Ede (1984) is dated, they provide pertinent and influential ideas to consider. More recent scholarship used to evaluate #SendForgivenessViral includes arguments on race, rhetoric, and Twitter revolutions by Brock (2012), D’Cruz (2017), Gerbaudo (2012), Margolin (2017), and Roose (2016). Other sources will be drawn from contemporary social media responses to Aly’s segment. This article concludes that Aly’s use of Rogerian argumentation is flawed because it places the onus of combatting racism onto victims. Furthermore, Rogerian argumentation models have underlying problems with power relations.