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Just walk on by : black men and public space
Just walk on by : black men and public space
Effects of racial segregation
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I am choosing to write about “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Spaces by Brent Staples”. His story is one I can feel sympathy for and is relatable to many people. The prejudice black people face is one that not many others do not have to deal with. That same prejudice makes their lives harder to live, and they shouldn’t have to change the way they live to make those around them feel safer. We are all human we should not fear those who look
Staples, Brent. “Black Men and Public Space.” Reading Critically, Writing Well. Sixth edition Eds. Rise B. Axelrod and Charles R. Cooper. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. 134-136. Print.
For this activity I chose to read the book “The Last Stop on Market Street” by Matt de la Pea. The story is about a boy (CJ) and his grandmother (Nana) taking their daily Sunday bus trip across town. However, this Sunday CJ seems to be noticing the differences between himself and others on the bus. On the bus ride, CJ’s Grandmother shows him how to respectfully interact with different races of people. His grandmother also shows him to see and respect the beauty in the low-income neighborhood that they are in.
“Just Walk On By” started out as Staples’ sad life story, but turned into the story of a man who eventually came to terms with the difficulties he would deal with in his life, and he faced them with a positive attitude. “Complexion,” unfortunately, ended with Rodriguez feeling self-defeated and believing he would never find a resolution to his problem. He did not want to ignore the issue of his skin color, but let it slowly take over his life. Seeing them side-by-side, these essays start out with the same problem, but eventually go in completely different directions near the end. Staples and Rodriguez dealt with the racism and social judgment on the inside and both had radically different resolutions.
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 A Gathering of Old Men, by Ernest J. Gaines, racism plays a huge part of life in the south. When a white man is found dead; his family and friends start to gather to find the man who did this. After time these men start to drink and make a plan to kill the man; who just happened to be black. This just shows how even though the Civil was brought freedom to blacks, there is still hate towards them because of their skin color.
Minority writers like W.EB. DuBois, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Sherman Alexie, have endeavored to vocalize the unheard voices of their people through literature. Their poems, short stories and novels echo sentiments of inequalities, prejudices, and the struggles of living as a minority in America. They also courageously share their perspectives on how the conflicts between their respective native cultures and the majority shape their lives and the world around them. These authors through their stories provide deeper insights on the concept of diversity. Authors from differing minority backgrounds have shown the variety of lenses in which diversity can be viewed and understood. Their writings show the evolution of diversity through time. Although
Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or to intimidate. For Staples fear is the constant emotion rattling in his head every time he simply passes by someone. “Just Walk on By” — by Brent Staples, discusses the on going problem of being considered a possible threat to those around him. Although Staples arouses fear everywhere he steps foot, Mr. Staples also is fearful himself because of the reaction he causes due to his ethnic inheritance. He lives in a world where any black man or person of color is perceived as a imitate danger. Staples has a reason to be fearful as he is in a never ending nightmare filled with hate. The sense of fear he experiences
Throughout the United States’ history, race and racism has been a prominent part of society and unfortunately may never go away. It is important to address these issues and make them heard and to educate people. In short fiction stories, it is a common theme, especially those authored by African American writers who have had experience in society. In one particular piece of short fiction, “Recitatif”, the author Toni Morrison explores the effect, usually the theme of her stories, of race and racism using the youth during the 1960s and all the way up to the 1980s, mainly by confronting the common act of making assumptions about characters using character traits and historical events. In “Recitatif” the readers are intended to make an assumption
Racism still exists today in this day and age. African American men are particularly stereotyped to be drug dealers, criminals, and gangsters. People have there on opinion about black men, if someone is sitting in their car, and a black man walks by they’re going to lock their door, because they’re scared there going to get robed. The stereotypes about African American men are not true. There are educated African American men just like any other race. Two articles “Black Men in Public Space” and “Right Place, Wrong Face” deal with the issue of two educated African American men that get treated differently, because of the color of their skin. The articles are focused on times when both
Reading Between the World and Me gave me some level of insight as to what it means to be black. Coates described the fear of the police, the legislature, and the white that enveloped his community. He described how fear led to parents breaking children with sticks and belts until these kids shared the inherent
During English class this year, we studied and explored through literature and film, how racism and prejudice have affected and shaped our past, present and near future. Through books such as To Kill a Mockingbird, American Born Chinese, House on Mango Street and movies like White/Black, my perspective on the topic of racism opened up and changed. Before this study, I had not realized how so much of American history has been shaped by racism and prejudice and how it continues to impact present times. By reading House on Mango Street, and To Kill a Mocking Bird I was exposed to how racism impacted the lives of the characters and by reading and watching American Born Chinese, and White/Black I was made aware of how racism still occurs today. I found it shocking how serious and complex the problem of racism continues to be, and how many people are affected by it daily. An example of the media that really altered my perspective was when our class watched the documentary called White/Black. In this documentary, they found a white family and a black family willing to have makeup artists change their looks so that the white family looked like a black family and the black family, a white one. One of the requirements was that each family had to live with the other for the duration of the documentary. When the white family came into the shared house, the mother said that they should make sure they protect their personal belongings, because she feared the black family might steal them. By doing so, she revealed deep prejudices and a racist misconception that being black is associated with being a criminal. Another example was when the father of the black family, who looked “white” went into a golf store to buy shoes and play golf. Afterward he said that he was treated so differently because he appeared “white”. Both these scenes shocked me because I had never realized how large of a problem racism continues to be today and how it affects almost everyone.
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.
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).
The book, I will be writing about is The Bully by Paul Langand. I am done with the book which explains about a boy moving to California. The cover reminds me about kids fighting. I wanted to get a deep comprehension throughout the story. I choose this book for children have been facing everyday day.
In the poem “On the Subway,” written by Sharon Olds, she introduces the dissimilarities between blacks and caucasians, whom have had a complicated past with one another. In this poem, Olds reflects on the many common stereotypes that those in the black community endure, as well as emphasizing their major differences among society. The speaker of this poem presents her fear with a young African-American male who is sitting across from her on the subway. Olds uses literary devices such as tone, imagery, and similes to better understand the cultural differences between both individuals.