Alter Public Spaces In Ugly Way By Brent Staples

The speaker narrates his personal experiences in racial assumptions and how it affected him. This story conveys how unfairly judged the speaker was by society. The author uses illustrations get his point of view across, that he feels he can “alter public spaces in ugly ways”. He states that he has the ability to make others act discretely towards him. The author also uses anecdotes to portray an image for the audience by creating a certain tone for the story to represent how stereotypical society acted regarding Staples. Although the author already granted the audience a viewpoint towards him of being a good, propitious male the public still pictured him as a violent, dangerous male. The author used certain words and phrases to set the

The author shares personal insight using anecdotes to aid in his development of the story. The author gains perceptions of the public being stereotypical towards Staples although he doesn’t resemble society’s perception of him. For example, “I entered a jewelry store on the city’s affluent New North Side. The proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash”. Staples was mistaken for a burglar when he entered a jewelry and while taking a look around the store the owner briefly went to the back of the store and returned with a Doberman in the attempt to scare him off. Another example of anecdote being used, “At dark, shadowy intersections, I could cross in front of a car stopped at a traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver-black, white, male or female-hammering down the door locks”. This example reveals stereotypical behavior done by the public based on their assumptions and what they saw. This example also reveals that others fear him because of his looks which can come across as

He goes on to say he is not like how the other tough boys growing up, although he’s from the same place as those boys he was one of the good guys, “I grew up one of the good boys, had perhaps a half-dozen fistfights. In retrospect, my shyness of combat has clear sources”. Staples seen much going on in his childhood and didn’t realize his looks came across as frightening because he was such a reserved and quiet boy, he was usually frightened. "As a boy, I saw countless tough guys locked away; I have since buried several, too. They were babies, really-a teenage cousin, a brother of twenty-two, a childhood friend in his mid-twenties-all gone down in episodes of bravado played out in the streets. I came to doubt the virtues of intimidation early on. I chose, perhaps unconsciously, to remain a shadow-timid, but a