Black Men and Public Spacing Since the dawn of time, colored people have always been treated unfairly. In “Black Men and Public Spacing”, Staples discusses the ongoing problem of being considered a possible assailant due to his race and appearance. He gets into the horrendous facts that “black people” face and that, unfortunately, remains part of our world. As he starts his story he says, "My first victim was a woman—white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties.” What’s interesting is that he describes this woman as his first victim, giving the idea that this (a victim) is what people would expect to be, encountering a person like him. He says that the most frightening of these situations was in the late seventies and early eighties when he worked as a journalist in Chicago. One day, rushing into the office of a magazine he worked for to hand in a paper, he was mistaken for burglar. In another example he says, “Another time I was on assignment for a local paper and killing time before an interview. I entered a jewelry store on the city's affluent Near North Side. The proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash. She stood; the dog extended toward me, silent to my questions, her eyes bulging nearly out of her head. I took a cursory look around, nodded, and bade her good night.” …show more content…
He says, “Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn’t be warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. It is my equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country.” He tries to make himself seem as disarming as possible. For instance, making sure not to walk behind someone for too long, as not to seem like he’s following him or her. Or paying extra attention to himself on subways, especially when he’s in jeans rather than his usual business