He gives examples from walking down the street at night and women grabbing their bags tighter to walking across the cross walk and people locking their car doors. Staples tells a personal story where he had his first bad encounter with a woman as he was walking through the park behind a woman innocently and because he was a tall, black, and suspicious looking man she was scared and instantly ran away, “it was in the echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldly inheritance I’d come into-the ability to alter public space in ugly ways.” (1). Staples didn’t realize what he was getting himself into when he lived in these new areas, and especially him being
We can understand through examining Bret Staples examples that altering public space had a lot to do with appearance, and how someone perceived another person would be. Staples first sentence introduces the reader to his own experience on how a white woman feared something wrong would happen to her based on Bret’s appearance, he goes on to explain: “She cast back a worried glance. To her the youngish black man – a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket… After a few more quick glimpses, she picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest.” According to the author of Black Men and Public Space black men were stereotyped as being “criminals.” He believes to find a remedy to the situation, stating “I now take precautions to make
This is why people think its ok to stereotype black people because it’s been done for years. After realizing that there was nothing that he could do about being stereotyped the character stated “Over the years I managed to smother the rage I felt at so often being taken for a criminal. (q) 212 Staples Trying to change himself and the opinions of others. Imagine being the only black kid in an all white classroom, and your peers ask stereotypical questions like “do you live in the ghetto?” Not even bothered with asking your name first. Besides getting mad there is nothing that can be done, so you try to blend in and do as the Romans do.
Although Bob Jones is angry, he drives a new car and is employed. Easy Rawlins served in World War II and is an unemployed factory worker who is on the verge of losing his home. In Bob Jones' story his nightmares become his reality as he is overcome by external forces and inner turmoil. Easy Rawlins is not consumed by anger and accepts his circumstances and at the end of his story is a landlord and an independent business man. Bob Jones moved to Los Angeles from Cleveland because he was tired of being passed over for work while white boys were hired.
The other Wes as we read saw the flashiness of selling drugs, he just wanted the new clothes and shoes that Tony and the rest of the kids and teens had. While the author Wes did not exactly go that far, he went with lying to his friends about being hard and tuff and exaggerating on stories a little bit and ditching school. Both of them growing up in the same neighborhood had to deal with the same thing, Drugs, more specifically Crack . The area that they lived in had seen a sixty one percent jump in the crime rate. This was not your typical drug “Crack was different from the drugs that preceded it.
The book begins in 1995 during a stake-out on the streets of Chicago where detective Frank Goff is sitting in a police cruiser. He is waiting to see a drug deal. The people he sees are young teenagers, mothers, and sad souls starving for their fix. It was difficult to find the source of the deal; the ones handling the drug were never the ones behind the scene. Goff sat a distance back and watched a child outside a school.
Just walk on by is an article written by Brent Staples depicting his run-ins with racism. He discovers his incontrollable power to negatively affect pedestrians and other individuals around him while on one of his regular night walks in Chicago. He became used to being judged based on his race and appearance, but not content with it. Ultimately, Staples found a way to relieve the tension of other around him, causing them not to be so hasty with their assumptions. Pat Capponi’s Dispatches from the Poverty Line tells a story of how she fell victim to stereotyping, but also made some of her own.
In 1927 Capone fled New York and moved to Chicago to reunite with his mentor Torrio, who saw many job opportunities such as bootlegging during the prohibition. Capone was being linked to two crimes and a suspect to the killing of James “Big Jim” Colosimo, who did not agree with Torrio’s ideas. An eye witness was said to have seen a heavyset man with scars on the left side of his face fleeing the crime scene. Even with a very clear description of Capone, he was never caught or arrested.
By poking fun at the misconceptions the gang infers about African Americans, the audience is able to see how pre-existing ideas about race still influence our everyday interactions. Language, activities and interests, as well as social status are negative racial stereotypes displayed in the African American portrayal in the episode “The Gang Gets Racist.” The authors of The Real World: an Introduction to Sociology define stereotyping as: “judging others based on preconceived generalizations about groups or categories of people” (Ferris and Stein 114). In the show, black people use exaggerated slang, listen to hip hop music, and live in lower income neighborhoods. For example, Terrell, the main African American character and Dee’s friend from acting class in the episode “The Gang Gets Racist,” uses derogatory and “racially relevant” slang. While showcasing his skills as a bar promoter he states: “Everybody and their mommas gonna be there, you know what I’m sayin?
Not everyone has a special power to alter public space, but if the surroundings were different then people would probably have a very good sense about what is being said. In "Black Men and Public Space," Brent Staples claims that he is a black man who whenever in public is met with fear from his surroundings because of his racial stereotype. He points out that one can easily change physical behavior and dressing in order to alter public space in a good way or bad way. As Staples says, “Black men have a very bad reputation of being a mugger, a rapist or even worse” (336). Therefore, many people are afraid of them.