Summary Of Just Walk On By Brent Staples

In the 19th century, America began to distribute freedoms and rights to its multicultural population. Despite America’s new laws and anti-discriminatory prevention measures, society cannot comprehend diversity. American society continues to abide by preconceived standards created when Europeans established their home in America in the 1500s. Thus, racism is a result of society’s perception common settlers’ faces and ideas are the ideal. The unfair treatment of the different indicates their stature of not being considered individuals with distinct consciences. An accredited African American author, Brent Staples, writes about such regimens in his work, Just Walk On By, in which passers-by silently judge his character. His personal experiences

Staples begins his piece with a flashback of his personal experiences dealing with discriminatory behavior. “I was twenty-two years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago. It was in the echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into.” The establishment of a young boy, coming of age, to enter the real word creates a sense of compassion within the reader for the difficult transition between adolescence and adulthood applies to all. As a boy already facing this disturbance, the thought that Staples has to simultaneously balance biased inequity shows readers exactly how difficult certain minorities live life. The reason Staples is treated as a monstrosity can only be credited to his appearance of African American; since the woman didn’t linger in close enough proximity to develop other reasons. Representing the population, the women demonstrates the automatic fight or flight response elicited when close to minorities. Her second nature response signifies that unless minorities change their appearance they will always be judged. Their stagnant appearance is liable for the involuntary positions of oppression they are subjected into. The unattainable necessity to change his appearance elicits a sympathetic response from the reader. Staples desire of image modification becomes more relevant with his utilization of the personal pronoun ‘I’, which furthermore assigns the hopelessness he felt in the situation to the reader's sense of emotion. Interlacing emotions, the reader can comprehend Staples’ proposed solution in his state of hopelessness. The injustice of not being