Summary Of Just Walk On By Brent Staples

We live in a world where stereotyping shapes our society. It’s often said that by observing a person’s physical appearance you’re able to figure out a lot about them. Brent Staples author of “Just Walk on by,” writes a short story on how growing up he always faced racial differences, because of his appearance. Breant Staples is a tall, 6’2, black man who works as a journalist where the race is predominantly white. He being perceived this way made him feel “surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once”(Staples 241). Why, because he was nothing like people thought he was. Late at night Staples would like to take long walks and it was there where he encountered this women. She was well dressed and in her early twenties. As Staples walked behind her, he realized she began to “pick up her pace and was soon running in earnest. Within seconds she disappeared into a cross street” (Staples 240). This occurred without Staples making a single move. It just justifies that the women, not only her would have changed their route because of society’s poor judgment. The women automatically judge Staple without even knowing what his intentions were in the first place because of his physical appearance and the racial difference. As we see in the short story

It is easy to plan out a picture on how Staple felt during this time. He himself made the readers think that he was all the things people presume about black males by starting the short story with “my first victim was a women” (Staples 240).Automatically the reader draws conclusion that the stereotype is true, when in reality it is just a bad rumor the people have created, and later it is realized that he is the opposite of our