Summary Of Black Men And Public Space By Brent Staples

The writer’s use of anecdotes, imagery, irony, and considerate syntax, portrays an incident in his life when he was said to be a person that didn’t exist. Through this usage, the reader infers that the essay creates relatable incidents to the way society identifies individuals, that leads to the formation of individualist, specified personas. Society tends to stereotype individuals depending on substantial exteriors, which leads the individual to construct an altered persona depending on the society surrounding; such as family, strangers, teachers, etc.

Somewhere along our life span, we have been “labeled” or classified as people we truly aren’t and these philosophies come from many situations; “But something unforeseen has entered

Staples writes anecdotes about the moments he is confused for a “mugger”. In the beginning of his essay “Black Men and Public Space” he presents his scenario by frankly directing to the audience, of his most remarkable encounter with a woman walking ahead who recognized him as a “criminal” because of his physical manifestation. “To her a youngish black man- a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket- seemed menacingly close.” (Staples 188). To Staples, the author, his typical style of attiring, and his physique, being six feet two inches and black, was something unalterable. Being born like that wasn’t his choice, it just happened but to the lady that was walking in front of him perceived him as a monster because of his appearance, that in reality he wasn’t a monster. Judging from his physique, he could’ve perhaps appeared like a typical criminal but subsequently Staples states “…I was twenty-two years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago.” As in justifying himself by crafting it to look like he was the victim under the lady’s assumptions. For instance, the woman saw him as a threat to herself and society while, he spoke of himself as just an ordinary person, who made the audience, feel sympathetic towards him through

Such as Staples’ anecdotes, however; we ourselves originate personalities for others just as quickly as them. Strangers maneuver the first impression of the individual, give off and vice-versa. Toni Morrison’s “Strangers” also presents a valid point, “The resources available to us for benign access to each other, for vaulting the mere blue air that separates us, are a few but powerful: language, image, and experience, which may involve both, one, or neither of the first two… Provoking language or eclipsing it, an image can determine not only what we know and feel but also what we believe.” (Morrison 78). We, society, can view an individual in normal clothes; such as baggy pants, designed brown boots, and a shirt, and this is without a previous image just a vague impression, to some people, this can be perceived as a country girl or boy, a low-class individual, or a regular person in just boots, shirt and pants. We tend to have our special means of tagging people because of our interactions with people comparable to them, either through media or the way it is recognized to us through our household and surroundings.

This is continuing ideology that has been around since probably the rise of man, just to classify others. It’s the motive we construct little factions with people who are similar to our personality. We change to be narrow-minded that we don’t give time to apprehend other