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Black Men And Public Space By Brent Staples Literary Devices

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Literary Devices and How They Affect the Reader
“Black Men and Public Space” is an essay written by Brent Staples in which he describes his struggles in the public as a black male. Throughout this work, he uses many literary devices to make the reader sympathize with his experiences. For some, they may empathize and feel themselves in his shoes.
In “Black Men and Public Space”, Staples is very descriptive and remains on subject with the issue at hand throughout the essay. Starting off with the title, he immediately addresses the conflict, black men and public space. The title is intimidating but also draws curiosity from readers. This is because race issues and social issues in general are considered taboo and make some people uncomfortable …show more content…

He introduces his emotions by using diction when he explained how he felt about the woman running away from him. He said he felt “surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once.” (Staples 1) When describing her he used alliteration. She “was a woman-white, well dressed…” (Staples 1) This makes the reader get the impression that she is proper and not from around Hyde Park, the area he was describing. When he wrote about Hyde Park, he used imagery which helps the reader imagine exactly what the scene looked like. How he said it was “[an] evening on a deserted street [at the park].” (Staples 1) When he described SoHo, he helped the readers understand the feel of the area by personifying the “tightly spaced buildings” (Staples 2), painting a picture that they shut out the sky. By placing the setting, he helps the reader place themselves at the spot, so they can truly experience and feel the event. However, that was not his only uncomfortable “encounter” with a frightened woman. Staples sets the scene, he is waiting for an interview and to pass the time, stops into a jewelry shop. The employee, without a question, goes and retrieves an attack dog. Ironically, he says that she looks frightened as her eyes were bulging out of her head. Of course that is an hyperbole. He says that they are nearly coming out to emphasize how terrified she was. He later explains he excuses himself and

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In the article, “Black Men in Public Places,” Brent Staples first grabs the reader by telling them about his first victim. This, “victim,” was not harmed by Staples at all, he only walked passed her at night, which made her incredibly uncomfortable and she was not the only person that had felt this way. Staples describes how people would lock their car doors when he would walk by, just because of his appearance, to them he looked the same as a mugger or rapist. Staples moved to New York, and faced the same racial profiling he did back in his hometown. Staples describes himself as shy and timid, while the people where he grew up were gang affiliated and were dying at young ages.

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Stereotypes have the power to label someone and rob them of all their hard work or strike fear into others. One such stereotype is that of black men being more dangerous;yet, one black writer voices his opinion on such a stereotype. In the essay “Just Walk On By” by Brent Staples, Staples describes his experience of being a large black man and how it affects the people around him. From people locking their doors to pedestrians crossing the street to avoid a confrontation, people seem to be afraid of Staples just from a glance. Yet Staples does nothing to cause this fear, rather his stereotype is to blame.

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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.

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