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Brent Staples Walk On By: Prejudices Of Society

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Recommended: Negative african american stereotypes

Adil Geilani
Scott Gregg
ENGL 1022
13 February 2023
Interpretive Essay
Prejudices of Society “Walk On By” by Brent Staples is an essay that was published in 1986. It addresses the racial prejudices that were and still are present within society. Staples was born and raised in Pennsylvania, then later moved to Chicago to get his college education. Staples was a psychology professor at multiple colleges in Chicago, but later, in 1983, went on to pursue journalism. It is shown through his firsthand experiences that a black man is typically perceived as dangerous and threatening solely because of their race. Staples has demonstrated this perspective in multiple of his writings. His perspective comes from the many experiences he, and the people …show more content…

I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago.” This starts it off by making the reader think that he is a bad guy that is on the prowl for his next victim by the way he is describing the setting and atmosphere. Then, he uses that attention-getter as a way to divert the essay into the reality of his life, which was the scenario from his perspective, he shows just how irrational and prejudiced the original story was all because of the preconceived notions that are held by society. Staples does say though, "women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young Black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence," The main intention that the narrator had in mind was to set the focus on the racial prejudices present in society and their effects of it on black people. Staples believes that these prejudices are not simply the result of individual biases, but rather, they are deeply ingrained in American …show more content…

Another way to put it is that there is a basket of apples that represents black men, and a couple of those are bad apples. But society thinks that because there are some bad apples, then the rest must be bad as well. This thought process is harmful to the progression of society as a whole. Staples explains how even with the negative stigmas attributed to him, he tries his best to go against the stereotypes by comforting and reassuring others that he is not what he is made out to be, by doing subtle things that are more attributed to a white man’s actions rather than a black

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