...Society and Our Stereotypical Views Everything we do and say could have an everlasting effect on the people around us. Stereotypes are one of the easiest ways to make someone feel uncomfortable and out of place. The essays “Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples and “Celebrating Nerdiness” by Tom Rogers both show us how the stereotypes we label each other with can affect the people around us. Stereotypes can be very hurtful and misleading. In the essay written by Brent Staples, the author shows us how difficult it is to be a black man in New York City at night. The preconceived notions associated with black men lead people, predominately women, to mistake the main character for a thief, a rapist, and even a murderer. Similarly, the essay written by Tom Rogers sheds light on the conventionalized ideas associated with nerds, or smart kids in school. Rogers explains his enthusiasm to answer questions in class, and his son's ability to name all of the elements...
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...the process. Black History Month is a time to celebrate how far African Americans have come, but also a time to realize how much further they need to go. Hindrances, such as racial slurs and acknowledged discrimination, are part of the huge race problem still present in America. The result of this is that black men are more at risk to suffer injustices, specifically regarding police brutality. Black males are physically handled harsher, killed at a much higher rate, and are handcuffed or restrained more than white males. In Staples’ essay, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space,” he says black men are recognized as threatening public space. Despite race and gender both being present in stereotyping, race is the main variable in establishing whether a man poses a public threat....
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...Fernando Mercado English 101 August 20,2013 Black Men and Public Spaces In Black Men and Public Spaces,” Brent Staples is a black man who whenever in public is met with fear from “others because of his race's stereotype. Staples has the ability to alter public space by his physical behavior, his dress and his verbal reaction. Black men have a reputation of being rapist, murders and gang members how to change his perception or level of threat to others. He accomplishes this by his physical behavior. In his essay “Black Men and Public Space”, Brent Staples attempts to introduce people to something most all are guilty of, but pay little attention to. Using accounts from his own and others’ experiences, Staples essay portrays the racist tendency of people to assume black men are potentially violent and dangerous. Therefore many people get worried when a young black man is around. He’s since realized how people view him when he’s on the streets. If he happened to be entering a building behind some people who appear skittish, he’ll walk by letting them clear the lobby before he returns so as not to seem to be following them. He’s even had to change the way he walks just so people wouldn’t suspect him of doing anything. For example one of his most frightening confusions occurred in late 1970’s when he worked as a journalist in Chicago. One day he was rushing in the office with a magazine deadline in hand. He was then mistaken for a burglar...
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...projects of the Bronx who is a black male towering at a height of 6’6” and three hundred and sixty-five pounds just fresh out of jail charged on a gun possession. My mom and I wanted a better life for him so we took him out to breakfast one morning at the Ihop nearby our house. After we ordered our food, he went to the restroom as everyone moved out of his way with his purple bandanas showing to represent his gang. An older lady came up to my mom and I and asked if we were ok and if he was with us with a startled face. Right then and there I realized society makes bold stereotypes off of appearance and race. In the two articles “Hip Hop Planet” and “Black Men and Public Space” society stereotypes identity by appearance and race. The authors in both articles explain their thoughts on appearance and race. Brent Staples in “Black Men and Public Space” feels appearance is a strong way for society to judge people. Also he states that more black males cause fear in people than any other race. James McBride actually states his fear is his daughter marrying a rapper with gold teeth and a do-rag. He also says hip-hop in New York started from black males in Harlem and the Bronx. Brent displays his experiences on the streets to show that society stereotypes race and appearance. Staples states, “At dark shadowy intersections, I could cross in front of a car stopped at a traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, of the driver- black, white, male, or female- hammering...
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...Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power To Alter Public Space” Stereotypes affect different individuals regardless race, religion, sex, and creed. In “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space,” Brent Staples demonstrates how a stereotype on race and sex can intervene with one another. Each point, whether a narrative or remark, can have positive and negative outcomes on the audience Staples is trying to enlighten. His thesis, the ability to alter public space through racial stereotypes, affected him as well as many other persons of his stature and skin color. It not only influenced lives of people like Staples, but infringed onto the “victims” of Staples and others like him. Staples explains his thesis throughout the essay through narratives of incidents in his life. He explains one encounter with a young white women, “on a deserted street, in an impoverished section of Chicago” (556). She glances back at him and disappears off into the dark. In paragraph two, Staples understands her thoughts of him being a mugger, a rapist, or even a murderer; but “her flight” made him feel “like an accomplice tyranny” (556). It also made him feel like he was “indistinguishable from the muggers,” and laid on him and “unnerving gulf between nighttime pedestrians—particularly women” and himself (556). This confrontation not only shows how a stereotype affected the thoughts of a female walking at night, but how it negatively touched a black male. Staples...
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...“You’re black!” “You’re yellow!” People will always be identified as their skin color, I do not know how whites developed a superiority complex. “FOBs vs. Twinkies” by Grace Hsiang and “Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples are two articles highlighting racial discrimination. Hsiang’s article focuses on intraracial discrimination while Staples’ articles focuses on racial stereotyping outside of his race. In ‘“FOBs” vs. “Twinkies”’ the author is surprised to hear about intraracial discrimination because she expected to hear about whites vs. the minority. Students took turns telling their stories of personal experiences with racial conflict. “Black Men in Public Space” is a little different because the author uses personal experiences...
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...Staples compounds one example after the next as evidence of this discrimination. He argues that the perception other people have of him is premised on a negative view society has of young black men in general. In this case, people are using an incomplete story, what limited knowledge they have about a certain ethnicity, to actively judge people of that ethnicity. Applying Adichie’s idea of a “single story” to Staples’ essay helps the reader understand that the way in which we view others is predicated on the information we have about them; when that information is incomplete, uninformed opinions lead to inexact...
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...2012 Altering public space Altering public space In the essay “Black men and Public Space” by Brent Staples, he talks about how being a black man alters public space in a negative way. Altering public space is changing how a person, place, or thing makes you feel. It can be negative, but it also can be positive. Some positive ways altering public space can be a friendly smile walking into a room, beautiful new constructions, and planting trees to better the environment. But with good, there’s always bad. Ways of altering public space in a bad way is Staples discovery of this comes during a late-night encounter. A young white female, whom Staples labels “my first victim” (197), was walking down the street in front of Staples and was not comfortable with the space he provided for her. After a couple of glances back and changes in her pace, she soon began running and disappeared down a side street. Of course, Staples had no intention of robbing or in any way harming this woman. He was just taking a walk, just as she was. Sometimes these kinds of aspects of life are just inevitable. It can be unfair and hard to deal with, but these situations happen in our everyday lives. Nevertheless, this was a fairly well to do neighborhood. Apparently, this woman figured that if a black man did find himself in this part of town, he was most likely up to something. Not wanting any trouble, she decided to get out of harm’s way. When you alter public space, people take...
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...can’t blame them, as “young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of… violence.” Ultimately, the reader empathizes with Brent Staples and others in his position. The reader comes to consider a city sidewalk or a deserted street from a different perspective. In his essay, “Black Men and Public Space,” Brent Staples expresses his shock and dismay upon discovering that, as a black man of large stature, his mere physical presence inspires fear in strangers. Obviously a gentle, harmless person, Staples’ view of himself is inconsistent with stereotypes, and he convinces the reader that he is anything but stereotypical. Brent Staples acknowledges that stereotypes are often deserved, but he relates personal stories and shares his emotions, allowing readers to put themselves in his place. Additionally, Staples points out the fact that being feared by others is often dangerous. Staples’s purpose is to reduce the stereotype for the group of blacks which is that not all the black men are dangerous. Staples is conveying a message to the public to not to jump to conclusions about people’s skin colors, appearance, and by their behavior. I think the authors purpose of the story is to inform his readers about how he never felt that feeling of not being satisfactory in the eyes of the public. Even thou the author does not blame people for having this prejudice against him, because he understands that the actions of many black men have created this image, he...
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...The essay, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space,” by Brent Staples is about a black man who faced racial challenges. Brent Staples has been accused as a criminal many times and people feared him when he would walk down the streets. Brent Staples went to college in Chicago and then moved to New York. Wherever Staples would go, people would fear him due to his dark skin and the stereotype that would go around. Living in the city was not easy for him and ran into many problems. Brent Staples’s first problem he ran into was in Chicago, He was walking on the streets when he knew something wasn’t right. He was walking behind a woman and he was able to feel the tension. The woman was getting nervous thinking that he may rob or hurt her. Staples knew he just had a label put on him. The woman feared him because he was black and thought he may do something violent to her. Out of fear the woman started to run and suddenly disappeared. Later in his life, Staples moved to New York and still runs into the problem of racism and stereotypes. Staples noticed that all of the women are more vulnerable on the streets; they are not as strong and unable to protect themselves unlike men. Women made sure their handbags were strapped around their chest with a firm grip and a neutral expressions. He had realized what the stereotypes and racism has done to the citizen on the streets and thought that it was not right and fair to him and many other similar to him. As a boy, Brent Staples has...
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...The narrator, in Brent Staples' Black Men and Public Spaces, finds himself bothered by the fear response that he invokes in others. He attributes this response to his being black. He too though shows himself to get caught up in the fear of stereotypes, attributing their response to his skin color and failing to see the natural fear response that is evoked in people when they are in a situation that is unfamiliar to them, and through conditioning, perceive it to be threatening to their fundamental, all encompassing, humanistic need to survive. He overlooks these details in many situations. Because he feels that they are stereotyping him based on the color of his skin he allows himself to get upset over these situations rather than understand them. He speaks of giving other subway goers room to ease their worries about his skin color but it has become natural for subway goers to be weary of other passengers because of the extensive amount of talk or writing that goes around about all of the subway fatalities and incidents that occur by men and women, whites and minorities, young and old and even the ones that appear to be normal and the ones that obviously seem disturbed. Him running into the office of a magazine he works for with a deadline paper in hand and being thought to be a burglar is also something he attributes to his race; "Black men trade tales like this all the time" (para10). He fails to make a paralleling scene in which a white man is running into the office of a...
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...daughter to her hip just because a large black man walked up in line patiently waiting to order a sandwich. Both the Muslim and the black man left there standing alone wondering, “Why me?” After reading...
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...may be more wingey than others and that may affect the parents in a negative way. They may become depressed and that may impact the child negatively as they may start to neglect the child. People stereotype thumb sucking at this age or nose picking, older children and adults would not pick their nose in public whereas infants have no understanding of embarrassment and may do this in public. People may stereotype infants to tantrums and breathe holding as a way of getting what they want. Some people stereotype infants in a very negative way and decide on not ‘wanting’ to have kids themselves as it is easier to live for yourself. For Childhood 4-9, people seem to think children are bad behaved. If someone has an only child, the stereo type is that the child is over protected and is spoilt and then grows up to be selfish and lonely. This stereotype may affect parents choices and they may not want that to happen and in result have more than one child. Children at this age seem to be very adventures as some people would say, also people stereotype girls to boys, they think boys are more dirtier and less behaved than girls, some people think boys cause more trouble and are more selfish and uncaring than girls which may or may not be true as every child is different, however a stereotype like this may affect the parents or even the child’s self-esteem and may change the way a parent is...
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...COMM 3673 Test #2 Study Guide, Fall 2015 Media/Society, Ch. 6: Social Inequality & Media Representation · Comparing Media Content and the “Real World”: four issues raised by this comparison (pp. 188-189) o First – literature in media and cultural studies reminds us that representation are not reality, even if media readers or audiences may sometimes be tempted to judge them as such. § Representations are the result of process of selection that invariably mean that certain aspects of reality are highlighted and others neglected. § All representations re-present the social world in ways that are both incomplete and narrow. o Second – the media usually do not try to reflect the “real” world. o Creators of media products use entertainment media to comment on the real social world. Readers and audiences develop at least some sense of the social world through their exposure to both entertainment media and news media. · Third – Concerns the troublesome term real. o The concept of a “real” world may seem like a quaint artifact from the past. o Social constructionist perspective. § No representation of reality can ever be totally “true” or “real” because it must inevitably frame an issue and choose to include and exclude certain components of a multifaceted reality. o Fourth- Seems to imply that the media should reflect society. o For many people, media are an escape from the realities of daily life. o Therefore, how “real” media...
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...Brent Staples essay, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space”, is a tremendous example of the systemic wariness that people of African-American descent must possess in their everyday lives. There are a plethora of stereotypes regarding African-American males that are detrimental to their societal image. Typically when one hears the word “stereotype” it is merely in reference to a harmless anecdote that is used as a source of comedic expression. However, for black males, these attributions of humor could be the subconscious beliefs that fuel their demise. A very large question is left to ponder; why do these stereotypes exist? Delving deep into research and statistical analysis there is one prominent factor: the false identity of African-Americans...
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