"Black Men And Public Space"
Outer appearances are the first characteristics that one notices before actually knowing the person. In "Black Man and Public Space", Brent Staples claims that he is a black man, whenever in the public, is met with fear from his surrounding due to his race's cultural stereotypes. In this excerpt, Staples describes the reactions he receives as he walks near a white, well-dressed woman. Although Staples is a highly credible character with a PhD from the University of Chicago; and is far the forged perception of the "black males who are drastically overrepresented as the perpetrators of violence", he often gets mistaken for a criminal. People noticeably communicate "the language of fear" as he approaches them, and he points out that by simply changing physical behavior or outer appearances he can alter public space for the better or worse and uses personal experiences and stories he has heard from other men to prove his point.
Staples leads off with a woman who was walking down a street in Chicago and Staples was walking down the same street behind her. He notices that she was picking up her pace of walking , eventually reaching a slow running pace. Within seconds, she disappeared from his sight, all because he was a black man walking down a street at night. It was because of this experience that he learns he has the ability to alter public space. In addition to causing his inner self to realize the views of the public, the pressure from the society can also change the way people correspond to it. In this essay, the pressure put onto the narrator by the public results in him interacting and behaving with his surroundings in a different way. When walking behind a white woman, "there seemed to be a discreet, uninflammatory distance between [them]" . Having a different skin color, the narrator has "the ability to alter public space in ugly ways" . Statistics also show that "women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are...
View Full Essay