Themes In Walking While Black By Garnette Cadogan

Five o’clock, most people have got off of work and are making their commute back home. The darkness of night arises as people are arriving home. Out of the corner of their eyes, a suspicious person is behind them. Tall, big, and unable to see them in the cover of night, one begins to panic. Who is this person? Are they up to no good? Without a question, most people decide to speed up their pace or even make a run for it for their door. In “Just Walk on By”, Brent Staples is able to convey his message that society has gotten acclimated to negative perceptions of certain races, resulting in hasty assessments of one another through the use of personal anecdotes, to anger the audience and build trust, and persona, to demonstrate how the racism

The black race has faced many hardships throughout American history. The harsh treatment is apparent through the brutal slavery era, the Civil Rights movement, or even now where sparks of racial separation emerge in urbanized areas of Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. Black Americans must do something to defend their right as an equal American. “I Am Not Your Negro” argues that the black race will not thrive unless society stands up against the conventional racism that still appears in modern America. “The Other Wes Moore” argues an inspiring message that proves success is a product of one’s choices instead of one’s environment or expectations.

In literature and societal interactions African-American people, especially men commonly face scrutiny for their supposed intimidating exterior. In Brent Staples’ 1986 essay “Just walk on by: Black Men and public spaces” featured in Ms.Magazine, Staples critiques the detrimental effects and injustice of perceiving African-American men through an antagonistic lens. In order for Staples’ to effectively gain the attention of the audience he appeals to their emotions by employing anecdotes that highlight marginalization his audience may empathize with and their self interest by mentioning relatable consequences of his oppression. One anecdote Stapes recounts is “On less traveled streets after dark, I grew accustomed to but never comfortable with

In America today, racism is still massively affects blacks, which most think racism is a thing from the past. In “Between the World and Me,” Coates argues that racism is still active in America today, and most people do not realize the struggles blacks have to face everyday. Throughout part one, Coates uses credibility, logic, emotion and perfect timing to really demonstrate how much the black community endures.

“You are a nothing little nigger” is one of the demeaning phrases African American human beings have heard over the years in an effort to keep them in a state of persecution. This paper will discuss the persecution of the African American. The following documents the struggles, gut wrenching pain, and heart ache of African American people have endured and are still suffering with today.

Text E1 is titled just walk on by, written by Brent Staples. He was born in Chester Pennsylvania and was an author/editorial for the new york times. The text is an essay and was written in 1986 while the major events of racial profiling and brutality were a big issue. Throughout Brent's life, as an African-American, he lived with being discriminated and verbally abused by other races for example, whites. In the text he tells the how he feels when people run away from him or how he feels when whites are afraid because they see a black man nearby. Brent discusses how it is “abnormal” to be black in where he lived. In order to be respected in that town you have to look, dress and even talk like the white people do. He talks about how he has

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

The life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination… the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land (qtd. in W.T.L. 235).

One of the most prominent components of the text is that the black body is constantly under threat. Coats argues that “the question of how one should live within a black body… is the question of life.” He shows how racism works through the control and exploitation of black bodies and the delicateness of black bodies that results within a racist society. Coats writes that racism is a natural experience. Throughout American history, black men and women were chained, beaten, labored, and killed. Now, they experience police brutality and nonsensical shootings. Arrested for trying to get into their own homes and shot because they look suspicious or their hood is up. Shot because they inhabit a black body. It is the subtle ways in which a black body must conduct itself in public. Violence is consistent in an America that is still divided by race.

Imagine a situation where one is walking down an empty street and a woman gives one a glance and begins running, or one is told to leave a public restaurant simply because of the family one was born into. This is the reality for two African-American authors in the 20th century. Over the history of the United States minorities have faced a numerous amounts of racism. The types of racism that was expressed to these minorities has evolved as time went on. Two authors decided to write about their experiences and they occurrences vary vastly. The details that really set one essay apart from the other include the time of day the racism took place, time period of the occurrence, and type of racism witnessed.

The misinterpretation of African Americans is very prominent in society. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen sheds light on the hyper-visibility of the African-Americans through stereotypes and invisibility of the Black body itself in an attempt to get readers to understand the inner conflicts of Black citizens. Citizen is composed of seven sections, which vary in length and content. The book is interspersed with photographs, sculpture, paintings, and other types of media. Rankine also draws from film and video, and various news media. Her descriptions of encounters between people of different races show how disconcerting words are and how they affect people. Though we often hear about deep-rooted institutional and cultural forces that contribute to racism, it appears that we less often hear about the psychological processes involved. Many would like to believe that racism is over, but society actions are a constant reminder of their true feeling about Blacks. Racial bias is prominent at all levels of the institution and it paralyzes the race as a whole. Rankine uses pronouns, anecdotes, and visual art to uncover the unconscious nature of racism and extend the conversation. The audience is both the eyewitness and the victim in this “post-racial” society that fails to teach us how to be a citizen. In allowing us, the readers and audience, to subject ourselves to this hurt, we experience, an understanding of true citizenship by identifying the wrongs and understanding the difference.

Throughout all of the history of the United States of America, race has been a prevailing issue. Although the ways in which racism presented itself has changed, the prevalence of the problem has not. Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man does an excellent job of allowing some insight into the way racism has and still does impact the life and self identity of affected individuals. In this book, the narrator is faced with the challenges that come with being an African American in mid 1900s. The struggle first becomes something the narrator is aware of when his grandfather utters some troubling advice on his deathbed. He said in order to succeed in a white man’s world, you have to

We continued down the early morning streets of New York, the sun barely peeking over the towering concrete and stone giants surrounding us. Not many people were out at this time of day, and it felt as though there were even less with all the newsies absent from their usual corners. Albert had started to slow down as we got closer to the Lodging House. It was quiet, as if a strange spirit had taken over now that all the rambunctious and rowdy young boys were out causing trouble elsewhere. Even from farther away, you could still hear faint shouts in the distance rising up from the aforementioned ragamuffins. When one particularly loud uproar rose into the air, Albert yanked me up the stairs, my

Having spotted a herd of fanny packs on the horizon, I sent a fistful of milk chocolate doubloons raining down on the throng of incoming tourists. Beside me, my classmate, Dory—named, ironically enough, after the fishing boat—bellowed “Ahoy, matey!” in a quasi-pirate accent. Adjusting the feather on my skull-and-crossbones cap, I surveyed the incoming wave of urbanites—families who, having wormed their way out of the Big Apple, now zigzagged through my sleepy, one-traffic-light-hometown.

The diction that Colum Scott uses to captivate the journey of Philippe Petit and the other protagonists is artistic and poetic. And through it creates a parallel of these seemingly diverse lives and the riddle of New York City during the 1970’s.