Analysis Of Just Walk On By Brent Staples

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In the reading Just Walk on By by Brent Staples, the topic of racial stereotypes surfaces from the man who gets racially profiled quite often as he explains his personal experiences. The author bluntly tries to pass the message that racially judging people is wrong and explaining how it makes the other party ,african americans, feel. When analyzing Staples’ message his rhetorical strategies play a huge role into how his message is perceived. He uses influential diction allowing each word to give an impact unmatched by any white man who tried to convey a black man’s thought process. Staples also appeals to his credibility with the obvious observation that he is a black man talking about his real life experiences. Staples’ use of emotion …show more content…

He conveys this through his powerful use of diction, even in the first sentence he says “My first victim was a woman-white” (Staples 1). The word victim gives a very dark and scary tone as if something horrible is bound to happen, but as the reader reads along the whole scenario is just the narrator walking through a park at night and the white woman feels threatened and progressively runs away from the man. The narrator is a college student. The main message is that people are still so quick to judge and feel like they are in danger when they are around african american people they’ll in this case run away. It's also a proven statistic by Havard University states that women are in fact scared of men. So, it may be both reasons as to why the woman ran away. Together as a society fears and stereotypes are created by those who feel attacked and terrorized by multiple people try to find a common denominator between all the people who hurt them, then a certain stereotype or fear is created to let everyone know that since three black men raped a girl …show more content…

This well educated man was getting dirty looks and halsted for using standard everyday services. As a person in today’s society most would hope that this doesn’t happen as often on the contrary it happens everyday. Many people are still more likely to trust white people over black people even with the same credentials as each other. Especially with jobs in today’s society, how many african american bankers does one see on a regular basis usually one to none because even today entire companies are racially profiling. Many Americans have come to the conclusion that the black people movement ended when they obtained voting rights, but no matter what rights are given to people of different races they will 6 times out of 10 feel attacked or racially profiled at least once a day. In addition, it is not like the author is pulling these experiences out of thin air these are his experiences he is speaking of his own feelings. This adds so much more credibility to his message by showing readers a different point of view in situations usually told by the other side. Usually in any acts of “misconduct” between white and black people the side of the white person is mostly focused on and unless there is clear evidence contradicting the crime the black man is accused of there is a strong probability that the black man will go to jail