In the essay “Just Walk on by: Black Men and Public Space” Brent Staples shares his personal experiences as a young black male in the late 1900’s. He feels as if it is immensely hard to be accepted by everyone around him. Society assumes Staples to be a violent person and have a negative connotation about him because of the way he carries himself. Staples concludes that he would have to conform to the norms of society in order to feel accepted and not as an outsider due to his race. In order to feel accepted he changed certain characteristics like, the way he dressed, being calm when he was being pulled over by the police, and moving about with care and ease. These changes assured that he would no longer be looked at as a criminal. This essay is expressed with a lot of emotion and although it has much anger, a vibe of calmness is set throughout. Brent Staples does a phenomenal job opening the eyes of the outsider and reader by unmasking a racist and judgmental society through his word choice, literary devices, experiences, and emotions. A unique word choice introduces this essay, causing readers to be misguided. Staples begins by saying “My first victim was a woman…”(383). This choice of words obligated our minds to perceive this man as a criminal who was about to tell us his story. Staples allows himself to be portrayed as such a horrible person because that is exactly what people viewed him as. He uses self-blame as though he has accepted the fact of reality that he was viewed as a criminal and always will be. It seems as though he wanted to mislead us as readers so we would make the same mistake others did. A feeling of great guilt is created for judging this man that we barely knew. In such a simple way, Staples creates an ... ... middle of paper ... ...them”(386). He goes through a great ordeal to please this judgmental society that he lives in even though he owes nothing to them. Brent Staples created a perfectly structured essay that clearly unmasked a racist and judgmental society. As explained he used methods such as word choice, literary devices, many experiences of his past and pure emotion in order to place the reader in his shoes. Each method supported the main idea in, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space”, very strongly. It enhanced the way a reader should feel about prejudicial thoughts and not only did he descriptively share his story but made it so that the reader could feel a personal connection to this phenomenon. Some people would not understand or try to understand how it truly is to be judged as a black male, but Brent Staples portrays great points throughout his personal experiences.
For instance, Staples faces many stereotypes. He is a journalist who is consistently judged due to his appearance. In paragraph 1, “As I swung onto the avenue behind her, there seemed to be a discreet, uninflammatory distance between us.” Staples creates an image by describing himself as a monster but his description is based on how the outside world see him. He considers his presence a cause for altering others emotion. According to Stereotypes by Rachel E, “In the United States, some of the longest-held and potentially most detrimental stereotypes are those about African Americans.” This relates to Staples crucial journey to greatness. Staples was perceived as a mugger, a murderer, and a rapist because of his outside image and how others viewed
In his article “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space”, which first appeared in the women’s magazine Ms. Magazine and later Harpers, Brent Staples explores the discrimination he faced as a black man living in Chicago and New York. In writing this piece, Brent Staples hoped to use a combination of pathos and ethos to demonstrate to the women that read Ms. Harper’s that Staples is actually the victim when the women treat him the way they do and to get these women to view him, and other black men, differently and to make them realize that they are people too. Staples use of his ethos and pathos serve well to support his position and convince others to take a new perspective. Staples uses ethos in multiple ways
In the true crime/sociology story, “Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry” the author, Robert Sam Anson had provided an immense amount of information from reportings about Edmund Perry’s death and life before he died. Anson has developed Edmund’s character and experiences through reporting that I have related and connected to. Information reported by Anson has helped me find a deep connection towards Edmund Perry’s home environment, junior high experiences, and personality at Philips Exeter. Themes such as hopes and dreams, loyalty and betrayal, journey, and family ties are intertwined in the story and becomes blatant. The congruences between our lives have better my understanding of the story and Edmund’s life.
The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.
Brent Staples, who was a journalist for the New York Times, and studied mental philosophy at the University of the Chicago, shows the different subject positions in his published version of the “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space”, and his draft version of the “Just Walk on By”. Brent Staples wrote two different versions of the essay, but the essay’s subject position is pretty different to the reader. Also, each subject position describes the same situation quite differently by illustrating each way of looking based on dissimilar perspectives. In his published version, he describes himself as “I was twenty-two years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago”(Staples 240). Also, the published version says, “To her, the young black man—a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket—seemed menacingly close”(Staples 240).
In this essay, Dr. Brent Staples recounts his first time unintentionally scaring a young white women located in Hyde Park, Chicago. He recounts her worried posture, her hurried steps, and her repeated glances before she took off down the road. Dr. Staples, being a person of color, took slight offense to this. Before he had never really thought much about his skin color being a factor of intimidation, but rather just a piece of “normal” discrimination. It was the mid 1970’s after all, and it was no secret to anybody
People on the street do not know him except those caricatured black racial stereotype. People “snap” their books, “clutch” their bags, sees him as a carjacker, mugger, shoplifter, and drug dealer, revealing a common sense that a black man’s life is marked by prejudice and ostracism. By using metaphors, the words “score,” and “green” indicate an incorrect stereotype of black men’s relation with drugs and money. From Young’s standpoint, black men experience some degree of prejudice of being black skin men. Because as he points out, “Plainclothes/ cops follow me in stores/ asking me to holler/ if I need any help.” Plainclothes cops even pretend to be Clerks in the store, and they are so certain that he is black, looks unsettling that they even ask him to “holler” if he wants steal something, and they are ready catch him any minute. Additionally, Young writes about “Crowds gather/& wonder how/the spotlight sounds.” Here, “spotlight sounds” actually refers to the response from the narrator or black men to other’s attentions or treatments. Ironically, people do not listen to black people’s voice, and they simply judge from one’s skin
In the article, “A Letter My Son,” Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes both ethical and pathetic appeal to address his audience in a personable manner. The purpose of this article is to enlighten the audience, and in particular his son, on what it looks like, feels like, and means to be encompassed in his black body through a series of personal anecdotes and self-reflection on what it means to be black. In comparison, Coates goes a step further and analyzes how a black body moves and is perceived in a world that is centered on whiteness. This is established in the first half of the text when the author states that,“white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence,”
In this narrative essay, Brent Staples provides a personal account of his experiences as a black man in modern society. “Black Men and Public Space” acts as a journey for the readers to follow as Staples discovers the many societal biases against him, simply because of his skin color. The essay begins when Staples was twenty-two years old, walking the streets of Chicago late in the evening, and a woman responds to his presence with fear. Being a larger black man, he learned that he would be stereotyped by others around him as a “mugger, rapist, or worse” (135).
In Brent Staples’ "Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space," Staples describes the issues, stereotypes, and criticisms he faces being a black man in public surroundings. Staples initiates his perspective by introducing the audience in to thinking he is committing a crime, but eventually reveals how the actions taken towards him are because of the fear linked to his labelled stereotypes of being rapists, gangsters and muggers. Staples continues to unfold the audience from a 20 year old experience and sheds light onto how regardless of proving his survival compared to the other stereotypical blacks with his education levels and work ethics being in the modern era, he is still in the same plight. Although Staples relates such burdens through his personal experiences rather than directly revealing the psychological impacts such actions have upon African Americans with research, he effectively uses emotion to explain the social effects and challenges they have faced to avoid causing a ruckus with the “white American” world while keeping his reference up to date and accordingly to his history.
In “Black Men in Public Spaces” the author talks about multiply situation where he was treated different for being an African American. Staples said,” I entered a jewelry store on the city’s affluent near North side. The proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash” (161.) Then there is “Right Place, Wrong Face, which is focused on and African American man that is wrongly accused of a crime because of his race. White said, “I was searched, stripped of my backpack, put on my knees, handcuffed, and told to be quieted when I tried to ask questions” (229.) The two articles have many similarities. Both articles have two educated African America men who get treated different because of their race. Staples and White both have situations where they are being stereotyped by society because there black
In the short essay, “Black Men in Public Space” written by Brent Staples, discusses his own experiences on how he is stereotyped because he is an African American and looks intimidated in “public places” (Staples 225). Staples, an intelligent man that is a graduate student at University of Chicago. Due to his skin complexity, he is not treated fairly and always being discriminated against. On one of his usual nightly walks he encountered a white woman. She took a couple glances at him and soon began to walk faster and avoided him that night. He decided to change his appearance so others would not be frightened by his skin color. He changed the way he looked and walked. Staples dressed sophisticated to look more professional so no one would expect him to be a mugger. Whistling classical music was referred to the “cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country”(Staples 226). The cowbell is used to protect hikers from bears. But in Staples case, it was to not be stereotyped and show that he is harmless. The general purpose of Staples essay was to inform the readers that stereotypes could affect African Americans and any other races.
There are many ways to decide what makes a man guilty. In an ethical sense, there is more to guilt than just committing the crime. In Charles Brockden Browns’ Wieland, the reader is presented with a moral dilemma: is Theodore Wieland guilty of murdering his wife and children, even though he claims that the command came from God, or is Carwin guilty because of his history of using persuasive voices, even though his role in the Wieland family’s murder is questionable? To answer these questions, one must consider what determines guilt, such as responsibility, motives, consequences, and the act itself. No matter which view is taken on what determines a man’s guilt, it can be concluded that Wieland bears the fault in the murder of Catharine Wieland and her children.
As a literal deathbed revelation, William Wilson begins the short story by informing the readers about the end of his own personal struggle by introducing and immediately acknowledging his guilt and inevitable death, directly foreshadowing the protagonist’s eventual downward spiral into vice. The exhortative and confession-like nature of the opening piece stems from the liberal use of the first person pronoun “I”, combined with legal and crime related jargon such as, “ crime”, “guilt”, and “victim” found on page 1. Poe infuses this meticulous word choice into the concretization of abstract ideas where the protagonist’s “virtue dropped bodily as a mantle” (Poe 1), leading him to cloak his “nakedness in triple guilt” (Poe 1). In these two examples, not only are virtue and guilt transformed into physical clothing that can be worn by the narrator, but the reader is also introduced to the protagonist’s propensity to externalize the internal, hinting at the inevitable conclusion and revelation that the second William Wilson is not truly a physical being, but the manifestation of something
While we work to change the tolerance in America, the prejudice response of perceiving black men as criminals, is still a regular occurance. In his essay, “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Ability to Alter Public Space” Ms. Magazine, 1986, Brent Staples analyzes the effects he has on those around him and expresses his feelings about being able to “alter public places in ugly ways” (Staples 1). Staples purpose is to magnify the ongoing prejudices happening to black men as they are often stereotyped as a threat. He hopes to changing the view of others by describing how black men are made to feel because of these unjust views. He supports his position by using strong imagery as he chronicles