Away By Brent Staples Summary

Brief Summary: Brent Staples is a six foot black man, who has had multiple encounters and instances where he was looked at as a threat without even doing anything. He is an avid night walker and one night he was walking a distance behind a white woman. When she looked back at Brent she had a very worried face and began to pick up her pace until she was running away from him and finally disappeared. He goes over what it felt and feels like to be looked and be able to “alter public space in ugly ways”, even when you can’t imagine yourself doing anything of the sort to harm anyone. He talks about cars locking their doors when he walks by and the occasional “unpleasantries” with people like policeman who are supposed to stop nastiness before it happens, even when he hasn’t done anything. Brent still loves walking the streets at night, but he knows that people will fear him and be uneasy when they see him walking the streets in the dark. He has had to take precautions and change certain things about himself to prevent the tensions in the interactions he has at day and night. He does things like change his walking pattern so people don’t think he is following them and late at night when people seem uneasy he whistles classical music, because no mugger would be whistling Beethoven.

Response to Content:

When I was little there were times where my mom would go into the grocery store and my siblings and I would stay in the car. I don’t remember only locking it when a black person walked by, but I do remember when I would see someone coming I would quickly lock the door and then act like I didn’t see the person. I feel bad for doing that now, but when I was that age I didn’t care I had an automatic fear trigger that went on in those moments. Racism undoubtedly still exists in society today and it’s something we should be ashamed