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Summary Of Just Walk On By Brent Staples

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Sarah Foreman Professor Olson Composition II 1120-8 February 2, 2023 Analysis of “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples The essay “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space '' by Brent Staples is an essay (within the 50 Essays 5th edition by Cohen) describing the author’s experience with people perceiving him as a criminal or at least a likely one throughout his life. The first paragraph starts off with him describing his “first victim,” a young white woman in 1973 who ran from a twenty-two year old Staples who was out for a night walk. He paints a picture of him night walking due to insomnia in Chicago and ends up on the same street walking the same direction as the women. She immediately started doing the backwards …show more content…

This is something I can also relate to as I have to smother the rage at often being seen as a weak gender or having to deal with the dumb blonde stereotype. Granted this is more of an everyday annoyance than an actual danger to my life on most occasions, but it’s still a relatable point. He gives people a wide berth, especially late at night or if they appear skittish. I do the same in order to avoid the same potential confrontation. No one wants a fight or perhaps worse. One large difference is that I don’t have to take pains to avoid following people- I don’t have to take the longer route- I don’t have to take wrong turns and I don’t have to fear people merely going the same direction as me when I’m behind. What I do is become intensely aware of people potentially following me and become automatically suspicious of them even if they don’t deserve it. In this case I am the aggressor or at least making unnecessary assumptions or am I being sensible? I never act upon these suspicions except to gather more proof to prove my suspicions right or wrong. These are things that I began to contemplate after reading this short …show more content…

Criminals or at least those with criminal intentions don’t have the ability to relax and no one expects Beethoven. Personally I would be put more at ease by any people who would hum classical music while around me. As pointed out by my English Professor James Olson this could be another example of prejudice. Criminals or at least grunt criminals are perceived as not really knowing classical music as a difference between casts. That said, No criminal would hum Vivaldi while about to hold you at gunpoint, they are often too nervous. Resources Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement". Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/list/timeline-of-the-american-civil-rights-movement. Accessed 14 February 2023. HISTORY.com editors. “Civil Rights Movement Timeline - Timeline & Events - History.” Civil Rights Movement Timeline, A&E Television Networks, 16 Jan. 2023, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement-timeline. Staples, Brent. “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space.” 50 Essays, edited by Samuel Cohen, 5th ed., Bedford/St. Martaan, Boston, New York, 2016, pp.

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In Brent Staple’s essay, Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space, he discusses how the black are stereotyped and not in a nice way. The whites’ believe black people are dangerous to their community, that the blacks commit wrong doings and create violence everywhere they go. The author goes through many struggles in his lifetime, for example, people thinking he is a mugger or even worse. Staples writes about his “first victim” to begin his essay, the victim is a white women who is so scared that he is behind her that she sprints off as far as she can. When people see Staples, they immediately assume that he is a bad man, when in reality he is a hardworking man earning everything he has.

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In the article “Black Men and Public Spaces,” Brent Staples talks about black men being stereotyped as dangerous people in the society. When there is a crime a black man was always the ones that committed the crimes. Some people see all black men as the muggers, the rapist, or the murderer. When he was headed into work with a deadline story, someone mistaken him as a burglar. He didn’t have any I.D on him, so he didn’t have any way to prove who he was.

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In his paper,"Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space," Brent Staples clarifies how for the duration of his life, others have oppressed him in light of the fact that he is a tall, dark man who fills in as a writer in a transcendently white field. As he clarifies, he initially acknowledged the amount of his appearance terrified others, especially a white lady, when he used to take late night strolls as a graduate understudy. While he comprehends that we live in a society that has turned out to be progressively savage and perilous, he feels disappointed that dark men, specifically, are as yet being judged and misconstrued in view of their appearance alone. For instance, he refers to two occurrences where he was mixed

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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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Brent Staples’ essay, “Just Walk on By: A Black Man and Public Space”, is about the “ability” that a black man holds; which as Staples puts it, is the “ability to alter public space in ugly ways.” African American men, or people for that matter, have stated (even in present day) that they feel the same way. This, among other factors has contributed to the fact that this essay has become very popular among different communities. As the writing prompt states, the essay has been anthologized, and obviously placed in One Hundred Great Essays. For reasons unknown, this particular essay has caught the eye of many.

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In his essay, “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space”, Brent Staples uses the rhetorical strategies of anecdote and diction in order to convey his message that due to racial discrimination black people (mainly men) have to change the way they naturally conduct themselves in public for they run the risk of something terrible happening to them. Staples uses anecdotes to bring in the personal side of the message to the audience. Staples creates a persona of innocence and almost alienation in his writing. Anecdotes such as his both instances in which he accidently scared women on walks and the time in which he and another reporter were mistaken for murder suspects or robbers are used to show real life proof of his message.

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The message that Brent Staples is trying to convey to the audience in his essay Just Walk On By, is that as a society we have positive and negative preconceived thoughts of other people who are of either the same or different race and gender. For Staples, this means that as a tall black man he has to deal with being seen as deadly and threatening to people who don’t know him. These people let their fear of biased opinions of black men think that all tall, black, and athletic men are going to attack them. Brent uses his stories of people’s fear and judgement of him, to allow the reader to both understand what the people were feeling and how he felt being judged. Brent Staples’ persona helps the message through the use of strong diction.

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Brent Staples, in his literary essay “Just Walk On By”, uses a variety of rhetorical strategies. The devices he uses throughout his essay effectively engage the audience in a series of his own personal anecdotes and thoughts. He specifically shifts the reader 's perspective towards the unvoiced and the judged. Within the essay, Staples manipulates several rhetorical strategies, such as perspective and metaphor, in order to emphasize the damage stereotypes have caused against the mindsets and perceptions of society as a whole. Staples illustrates how the nature of stereotypes can affect how we perceive others around us in either an excessively admirable light or, in his and many other cases, as barbaric or antagonistic.

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In his essay “Black Men and Public Spaces,” Brent Staples explains that people often find him intimidating because he is tall and black. Staples shares his account of a number of personal encounters, arguing that in each situation, he was misinterpreted as being dangerous because of his daunting physical appearance. Staples asserts that as a result of this misinterpretation, he was continually mistreated. Staples begins his article by describing the events leading up to his life-changing realization that he has inherited “the ability to alter public space in ugly ways (183).” When he was twenty-two years old, Staples found himself one evening, walking behind a well-dressed white woman on a deserted street in a rather wealthy neighborhood.

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Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space by Brent Staples discusses the relevant issues of racial bias and how prejudice against people of color has embedded minds, as it demonstrates the importance of being aware of how we conceive others. Staples uses a contrasting element of race by introducing a white female and a black male. He uses his experiences and other people of colour to display the struggles of racism they face everyday. Staples reveals how people are prejudice against appearance, despite the importance of individuality of people and being impartial regardless of someone 's skin or looks. The story begins with Staples describing his first experience frightening a white women due to the colour of his skin.

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