Nature Vs Nurture Essay

Despite mistaking fear with stereotyping, his skin color does come into play when deciding the factors that would cause one to avoid him or run away, but he does have to realize that the place and time of the event does matter just as much. Most drivers who lock their car doors at the sight of him are more paranoid at the risk of having a stranger attempt to break in and harm them; he did also mention that it didn’t matter whether that person was black and white, man and woman (Staples 369). After all, I would have avoided

Furthermore, this essay gives a perspective on what a Black man goes through. Brent wanted to enlighten his readers about daily life as an African American man. This meant explaining his view of the public from his perspective. By bringing these issues to light, he

Fueled by fear and ignorance, racism has corrupted the hearts of mankind throughout history. In the mid-1970’s, Brent Staples discovered such prejudice toward black men for merely being present in public. Staples wrote an essay describing how he could not even walk down the street normally, people, especially women, would stray away from him out of terror. Staples demonstrates his understanding of this fearful discrimination through his narrative structure, selection of detail, and manipulation of language.

Staples wants to show his audience the effects it has not only on the black community but people in general. Black males need to understand that there will always be stereotypes against them, and need to take drastic measures to prove to society that not all stereotypes are accurate. Staples accepts the stereotype against him and hopes to acquaint with his dual audience the positive and negative impacts of a black man’s ability to alter public space.

Primarily, this paper is structured as a cause and effect essay as he narrates his personal experience, reinforcing his message and making the audience realize his viewpoints. In his article, Staples takes out all of his frustrations of being treated as a criminal throughout the passage. Firstly, Staples express the fear a white woman faced when she felt a young,broad six feet two inches black man with a beard and billowing hair was menacingly close. He continues by stating more incidents he experienced as a teenager, as a journalist and so on where people (mostly women) panicked imagining him as a mugger or a rapist. Furthermore, the author

Throughout my nineteen years of living I have gone through many events and have had many influences, both good and bad. Only a few of these events I would consider significant. I believe that both nature and nurture played a role in these significant events. Nurture had the biggest impact in my life and how I am today.

black man fights against, constantly trying to identify himself. At the same time, black men have found approaches to detach from this narrow minded image that society has created for them including; sports, education and family. The black male struggles to gain his own identity because there is already a firm image created for them that the white man visualizes the black male and the expectations of the black male. However, it isn’t just the society that plays a role in the development of the black males identity, there is also the consideration of how black males are brought up or raised in their current lifestyle situations. For example, athletes,

Staples, Brent. “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology, Third Edition, edited by Samuel Cohen, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, 383-386.

“Cut from the same cloth”, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”, “A chip off the old block”; most of us have heard these types of idioms at one point or another, ways of likening us to our parents. Sometimes they are right, while other times it couldn’t be farther from the truth; leaving us to wonder, “what is it that makes us who we are?” Are we simply the product of our environments, a collective sum of our interactions and experiences? Or, do our genetics pre-determine who we are, complex variations in our DNA that dictate our individual personalities? Some scientists argue on behalf of the nurture theory, that our personalities are continually changing and growing, influenced by the world and people around us. Others believe that we are pre-wired by genetics alone, that while external factors may magnify or diminish some aspects of that wiring, everything we are is already programmed into us from the moment of conception. So, who is right?

John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, two highly respected and influential people in the nature vs. nurture study state, “Evolutionary psychology is not just another

1) Use the example of feral children to construct an argument in the nature versus nurture debate.

From Dr. Money’s perspective, raising Bruce as a girl would allow him to live a “normal” life, if he were to live his life without a penis, he would be seen as an outsider and rejected from society. He also suggested to put Bruce on estrogen, but also surgically give him a cosmetic vagina. Dr. Money explained to Ron and Janet that Bruce/Brenda, would psychologically mature as a woman, and be attracted to men, as well as be able to have sexual intecourse, without a problem. According to Bruce’s parents, there was no reason “that it shouldn’t work” (50). However, they could have thought it out thoroughly, what if Brenda didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin? Would she feel as though something is wrong with her? This is where the topic of

Nature vs. nurture has been discussed by philosophers in the past and by scientists more recently. Philosophers such as Plato argued that all knowledge was inherited from your parents and when you were told something you didn’t learn it you were just reminded of it. Aristotle however argued that all humans were born with a blank slate and built on it with influence from there environment. In the 1700’s the empiricists and the internalists took over the argument. They fought through letters explaining there point of views and denouncing the others. This leads to Pavlov coming up with the idea of behaviorism in the early 1900‘s. Behaviorism became the new wave of Psychology and influenced a lean towards the nurture side. It was not

Your life is built on what you see, what you do, and what you think. This, inevitably, morphs and overlaps to create your personality, a concept sometimes hard to grasp. A personality develops through your life experiences, each changing your perception of the world. Many of the things you experience as a child, though seeming insignificant, are the bases to explain your actions. With this in consideration, family teachings, culture, and environment are major factors in the shape of someone’s future and identity.

Scientists and psychologists everywhere study twins. The argument most commonly studied is nature versus nurture. The focus of this essay, however, is whether or not to separate twins in schools. Some believe the separation is demeaning and traumatic to the twins. The side about to be proved however that is this separation is a necessary step in the individualization of twins. Often, separation sparks the path to individualization.