"Just Walk on By”
In Brent Staples essay, “Just Walk on By”, he explains how during his lifetime, different people was judging him because he was a tall, African American who pursued his career as a journalist in a substantially Caucasian environment. In his essay, Staples applies a written description to demonstrate the different times where individuals begin to react in another way when they identified him because of his color. For example, as he was rushing to hand in an article for a magazine, he was being accused of being a robber. From reading that statement, it is understandable that Staples was being criticized wrongly. Also, Staples applies cause and effect to demonstrate how he acts in another way, optimistically so individuals can see him as a different person. He compares and contrasts how a few circumstances would change if he were another color. Staples covers various examples all through the essay “Just Walk on By” where he was wrongly treated on behalf of his color. For example, he applies is when he realize individuals began to act another way towards him. “I was a 22 years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago. It was in the echo of a terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know that unwieldy inheritance I’d come into – the ability to alter public space in ugly ways. It was clear that she thought herself the quarry of a mugger, a rapists, or worse” (118). Another example, “I was on assignment for a local newspaper and killing time before an interview. I entered a jewelry store on the city’s affluent Near North Side. The proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash” (120). This is a great example of acting another way yet wrongfully. These two examples staples uses is obvious that he is treated wrongly on behalf of his race.