"Black Men and Public Space" - Brent Staples

Black Men and Public Space is an essay about a young African-American man’s experience during his years as a graduate student in Chicago.  The man is none other than the author himself, Brent Staples.  In his essay, he details the issue of his placement in the community and his appearance had a great, but negative, effect on the people there.  He provides an example of an incident where he was just walking by someone, a white woman, who took his strolling by her as stalking.  Fearing for her safety, she gave Staples a few awkward glances before quickly taking off.  Staples also tells of how he could hear the sounds of shutting doors and windows as he casually continued his walk and contemplating his situation. 

            Staples, a man who appears to be of a pacifist nature, felt disappointed and embarrassed about how some people could just easily judge him based upon his appearance.  While understanding of their point-of-view and their feelings, he still felt bothered that his very existence in their presence would ignite such fear and resentment toward him.  Brent understood this all too well, as he explains how he, all too often, had to witness how the “tough-guy” image and criminal mentality installed in young black men often let to prison, death, or both.   This was something he wanted to avoid being associated with and he had made significant effort to do so.  It wasn’t until he started openly adapting certain habits that people would begin to tolerate his being in their presence. By reading the beginning of the story I felt immediately sorry for this guy. Prejudice is the basic of human classification and different treatment based on their outside appearance. But how is it possible to see the thoughts and his believes of somebody just be seeing him walking? I think that is impossible. For sure there are tendencies that you can assume how people are thinking but you never know until you know the person. With the believe that every person has something good in mind you are more likely to experience the positive side of the people and you will get treated way more friendly. I think that is important to find real friends and having a happy and satisfied life.