Although Baldwin and Staples address racism, Baldwin describes personal experiences while Stables takes a global approach. Their experiences in their lives are pretty typical occurrences and their memoirs serve has a reflection of the historical times during which they lived. The similarity experiences that both Baldwin and Staples share is that they both grew up in a society where white control the power. They also discusses about racial discrimination that accrued in their lives, both use example of how they were profiled by people. For examples, in the essay that Baldwin writes he describes an event where he attends a restaurant and the waitress did not want to receive him because he was black. Meanwhile, Staples describes being discriminated