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:

In the story Brent talked about walking by cars and he could hear them lock their doors.

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

of.
My dad once said “It is the racism that is drilled in our heads that it prevents us from moving forward.” He is a therapist that works with kids and adults that are going through different problems in theirs lives like drug use, or if a child is being taken away from their parents because of trouble with the law, etc. One time my father took one of his clients, who was a black teenager, to McDonalds to get them something to eat and didn’t think anything of it. The next day we were all at home and the doorbell rang. At the door was a policeman asking for my father. When he was at McDonalds with his client someone thought something was suspicious, so my father had to pull out all of the paperwork so the officer knew everything was okay. I don’t know what made the person think something was suspicious but I have a feeling their attention was caught because the teen and my father were different races. We assume too much that we know what's going on, like when the white woman assume Brent was a mugger or a threat to her.
Brent said “I now take precautions to make myself less threatening.” I have never had to be in a situation where I have had to do that especially because of my height, being shorter I look like even less of a threat. I don’t think a person should have to take precautions to be less threatening, but it does help the situation in most cases. The only other solution I can think of is for the person who is uneasy to take steps to counteract the fear, but I know people are raised to be cautious in these types of situations so there is nothing they can really do.
Lots of the views Brent expressed I agreed with because in my family we talk a lot about racial issues because of my dad’s job and the value of the worth of all people my parents have passed on to my siblings and I. My parents have never wanted to be in danger but they have never wanted us to be so sheltered that we avoid contact or judge people as well.
In our class discussion over this passage many of the girls kept saying that Brent was wrong for assuming the white woman was scared because he was black, and that it would be the same for any race. I have to disagree with them. It may not have all been because of race but I have no doubt that her level of fear was higher because of his difference in skin color to her. I do not believe we should say or act like we are colorblind. It is something that we need to acknowledge and accept instead of assuming we know what the other person is like and then avoiding contact with them.