Brent Staples Racism

In Brent Staples essay “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space”, he tells the story of different issues such as, stereotyping, racism, and certain disapproval he faced as a black man in public spaces. He uses his own personal experiences and incidents to show this. He explains to us how extremely frustrating this is for him, especially in his line of work as a journalist, which is a predominantly white field. His audience is black men who have had similar problems and also people who do the stereotyping he is talking about. He uses plenty of literary elements to make his claim that racism is still very much alive today.

In his essay, "Black Man and Public Space," Brent Staples describes the discrimination he has had to face due to the stereotypes that go with being a black man in society. In the first paragraph, Staples recalls an instance when he was walking late at night and his appearance caused a frightening encounter amongst a young white woman. The women felt distraught by his presence and ran off thinking he was going to harm her. Staples still remembers this incident that happened more than a decade ago, proving that it still hurts and frustrates him to this day the fact that people falsely judge a person based solely on their appearance. The first paragraph draws the readers into reading more about the authors piece by expressing sympathy for the issues that people suffer due to racism. The narrator is not a dangerous man, he is a fine, respectable person who has a PhD in psychology from the university of Chicago. However, the horrible phenomena that is widely

In Brent Staples’ essay, “Just Walk on By” the author describes his experiences, feelings, and reactions towards the discrimination he has faced throughout his life as a black man. Staples describes several different personal experiences of when he felt that he had been judged or discriminated against by other people based on the color of his skin and how that contributed to his overall appearance. Staples has continuously been perceived as a danger or criminal simply because of his skin color, leading him to have to deal with many uncomfortable situations. The author has even gone so far as to take precautions when he is on the street just so that he will not be

In "Black Men and Public Space," Brent Staples writes about how he was treated differently throughout his life due to his race by using connotative diction that invites ethos and pathos. Staples describes the problems, discrimination, and disapprovals he faces being a black man in public places. Staples explains how through his lifetime, people have discriminated against him because he is an African American man who works as a writer in a primarily Caucasian field. Brent Staples explains, the first time he understood how much his presence startled or concerned others was after an experience he had when he used to take late night walks as a graduate student. In addition to his first experience Staples describes countless other different occurrences of when he felt he had been discriminated against by other people based on his race. Staples has constantly been seen as a threat or criminal solely because of the color of his skin, leading him to have to deal with many distressing situations.

Through manipulation of language, Staples demonstrates his comprehension of the effect this discrimination had on innocent black males. Since he has had firsthand experience in this matter, Staples discerns his situation as an “unwieldy inheritance” with “the ability to alter public space in ugly ways.” Clearly, Staples feels as if he was cursed, for he was constantly treated like a “fearsome entity with whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact with.” This put him in an

Brent Staples is an author and editorial writer for the New York Times. His writing is mostly on political issues, cultural issues and controversies including races. In one of his essay written in 1986 which was published in Ms. Magazine “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space,” Brent Staples explains about his personal experience being black in an American society. Author wants his reader to understand that we are living in a culture with is constantly becoming violent and dangerous. Staples in his essay is gathering sympathy from his audience. He explains his thesis throughout the essay describing different incidents which took place in his life. Staples wants his audience to know how racial stereotypes has affected him as well as many other peoples like him and forced him to change so that he is not misunderstood by people and can prove himself fearless for others.

The prejudice dilemma is exasperated by the distinctive treatment black people receive from the world, consequently strengthening the feeling of mediocrity in the colored community and forming their negative perspectives on whites. As Jablonski noted, associating “skin color with inferiority has been one of the most powerful and destructive intellectual ideas of all time, leading directly to slavery, civil war, and, more recently, segregation and apartheid.” Racial discrimination still causes hardships suffered by many people. Wilkins expresses deep concern regarding racial integration “not only because of the past but also because of the future.” Even though the former segregation laws have been done away

African Americans are judged more for their race than for their self-perception. Brent Staples is an African American male who is treated unjustly for being black. In his story entitled “Black Men and Public Space”, he describes himself as “a softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken”, yet he is “often being taken for a criminal”. In his mind, he is a harmless man who could never cause harm to anyone. This is not how he is treated by others; instead other racially profile him as a dangerous man. For example, one night he is walking around the city due to his insomnia. A woman sees him walk her way, and she runs away. Obviously, she judged him based on his race instead of his personality. She believed that he was “a mugger, a rapist, or worse”. Staple is not the only black man to be discriminated against. In American, there are hundreds of stories about how blacks are discriminated against, especially by law enforcement officers. They claim to be stopped by police officers often for being black. This happens so often that it has been labeled “driving

“Recent research suggest that racial/ethnic discrimination is a common experience for adolescents of color in schools and other public settings given the overabundance of negative stereotypes that situate Black and Brown youth as dangerous and threatening to society (Nicholas et al, 2008; Rose, 1994).” (Hope, Skoog, Jagers, 2014)

In Brent Staples’ life, he has had many life experiences dealing with racism and has experienced racism first hand. Relaying these personal experiences is what he chose to write about in his essay. A life experience that Brent Staples shared is, “My first victim was a woman - white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties. I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighbourhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago…. She cast back a worried glance. To her, the youngish black man – a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into he pockets of a bulky military jacket-seemed menacingly close. After a few more quick glimpses, she picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest. Within seconds she disappeared into a cross street.” (Staples

The intended audience for this article is people of Caucasian descent. “Yes, we all have unconscious biases, but white people 's biases support a racist system”(Blake, 4). In America, the Civil Rights movement was about freedom of people of color from white supremacy. While people of color are able to enjoy freedoms that they were not able to enjoy in previous centuries, there are still remnants of racial prejudices that exist. The author argues that while everyone stereotypes, racism continues to persist because of the stereotypes of prominent white persons.

“Racism still occupies the throne of our nation,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pronounced just before his assassination. Almost fifty years later, we are still faced with the same unchanged threat that makes the words of Dr. King true. As individuals, communities, and a proud nation we have made an everlasting fingerprint for the children of our future, yet we lack the strength of acknowledgment to alter the course of racial discrimination and conquer prejudice. Has the formation of structural discrimination rooted itself too deeply into our subconscious that hope for rehabilitation seems unattainable? As a nation, we voted a man with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya as the first multiracial President of the United States. Racism has not been eradicated because of the racial background of President Barrack Obama and we have not accomplished victory because of his African decent because prejudice has been too deeply fixed within our society. Social circumstance and the insinuation of race continue to change over time, precisely because race has become a social construct that serves political ends. The prior and present leaders of our nation organize, generate, and endorse the laws and public policy that ensure racism continues to maintain itself against people of color. Our historically racist foundation, the rising effects of structural discrimination, and the view of modernized racism all actively participate in shaping our structural

Racism and racial stereotypes have existed throughout human history. The radical belief associated by thinking the skin color, language, or a person’s nationality is the reason that someone is one way or another has become extremely detrimental to society. Throughout human existence it has sparked tension between groups of people and ultimately influenced wars and even caused slavery. Racism in America dates back to when Native Americans were often attacked, relocated, and assimilated into European culture. Since then, racism within the states has grown to include various other cultures as well. In the essays by Brent Staples, Bharati Mukherjee, and Manuel Munoz, they discuss the various causes as well as the effects that racial stereotyping can place on a victim and the stigma it leaves behind for the society to witness.

People of color have been persecuted in this country since it was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus. Starting with the genocide of the Native Americans, the slavery of African Americans, continuing into the institutionalized racism that exists to this day. “For generations, people have used their mixed-race backgrounds to gain advantages in society. Many of those who were half black, for instance, “passed” for white to avoid discrimination” (Hu, 2012). While race is clearly not the definition of one’s character, many people, even members of the same minority group often look at only negative stereotypes when meeting a person. In my personal experience, I have been told by people of multiple races that I could pass for