Black Men and Public Space Summary Brent Staples in his essay “Black Men and Public Space” decries that males are judged to be criminals simply because of the color of their skin. In Staples first incident with his first victim he states as he walked down a street late at night he came up behind a young lady and with a few looks back toward him the lady started to run away down a different street. States says he felt surprise, embarrassed, and dismayed. Considering he was often seen in his hometown of Chester, Pennsylvania as a one of the good boys. In the big cities of Chicago and 1+New York people showed fear of Staples by crossing to the other side of the streets, and holding their purses in a bandolier style.
His words were “my first victim was a women white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties.” This automatically had me thinking he was some type of serial killer or something in that nature. As I read the entire essay and understood what was actually going on I noticed that I did the same thing people were doing around him which was assuming. Staples was actually innocent to the ignorance. He states “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 down the door locks.” Another thing Brent Staples said was “As softly who is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken—let alone hold one to a person’s throat- I was surprised embarrassed, and dismayed all at once.” Since Staples felt embarrassed of how people stereotyped him he changed the way he went about things to make people feel more comfortable around him, whether they were walking past or standing an elevator, or sitting in a car. “I
If staples were a woman on his late night walks in Chicago, would other woman still clutch their purses in fear of robbery? Would people still lock their car doors at the sight of a woman walking past them at a stopped light? Gender plays a large role in the stereotyping that occurs in these two articles. In stapes’ situation he was perceived to be a dangerous and immediate threat everywhere he appeared. Could this be because of the history in the area?
I believe that another example of this behavior would be Ideological Racism. An example of this in the movie is when Sandra Bullock is walking down the street. As she approaches a black man (Ludicris), she clutches her purse when passing by him. She believes that black people are a threat. Her belief becomes real in the next few minutes when two other black men carjack them.
In another instance, during the time Huck was being written, “blacks were exercising their rights”(Culture Clash, Part 1). Part of incidents during the time Mark Twain was writing this book had been incorporated into it. By Twain including incidents that happened in real life in this book helped to teach people to understand the difficulties in that era. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will never let any generation forget the hard times for all those
Within a year of graduating high school, Hughes created the most memorable poems which were his first major literary responses to the racism and segregation he had personally encountered. Hughes wrote and published his poem, Democracy, in 1929 which sparked intrigue among both African Americans and
After a long term against, they get some good effects. The sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln, “on January 1, 1863, issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.” (www.whitehouse.gov) It is a historic matter that blacks have a good effort to win the respect. However, the discrimination still appeared in the whole country. The black people still need to struggle the unfairness from society. In this process, it occurred a lot murder and violence.
He was an educated boy who suffered many hardships because of his race and felt as if it was his duty to make a change in society. On August 28th, 1963, a peaceful march was held over the rights of African-Americans. Martin Luther King gave one of the most influential speeches of the 20th century, now labelled the ‘I Have a dream’, which was presented to over 205,000 people. His speech sparked the turning point for African Americas. Although King was voted the ‘Time’s Man of the Year,’ award, he was taking into custody countless times and
Finally, after years of hatred and prejudice, African Americans began to demand the fairness that was promised to them in the Constitution. There were many important achievements that the Blacks accomplished in the 40's and 50's that helped the Civil Rights movement in 60's lead the way for a new
With charismatic and intelligent spokesmen such as Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights campaigners had brought the plight of black Americans to the attention of the whole world. The federal government had been forced to respond and the legislation of the nation had been changed to address the inequality and oppression experienced by millions of black citizens. For many black Americans, and also many sympathetic white Americans, the hope was that the USA was entering a new age of equality and meaningful civil rights for all citizens. By the mid 1960s, however, many black Americans were becoming disillusioned. Many Southern states continued to harass and persecute blacks regardless of the new legislation.