In Brent Staple's piece, "Just Walk on By," he shed some light on the racism that occurs in the daily lives of many African American men. Despite being an educated student at the University of Chicago, he was still characterized as a possible "mugger, a rapist, or worse" (Staples 542). He talks about how he has do to certain things such as "walk[ing] by, [and] letting them clear the lobby before [he] returns" or "whistl[ing] melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi" (Staples 544) just to get people to relax or not feel threatened when he walks behind them. Before this piece, I never really realized just how bad preconceived racial stereotypes are in terms of altering public space. For example, there have been times during school when I try to steer away from the "trouble makers." Even though I do not even know them or haven't seen them do anything exceedingly bad, I automatically assume the worst and tend to thing negatively about them. Even though I live in Troy, a safe city where crime rates are low, I still tend to have prejudice towards others and they still alter the space around them. It proves to show that no matter where you are, we live in a society where there will always be, whether it is intentional or not, discrimination based on stereotypes. The problem with this is that rather than having society change to become more open-minded, it is the discriminated individuals who have to change themselves. In a sense, they have to alter themselves more, so they alter the public space around them less.
David I really like how you connected the piece to our everyday lives and made it more real. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteThe comparison that you make with your own life in troy and what Staples talks about in his piece is really interesting. It is true that prejudice is still everywhere around us despite how badly we don't want it to be true.
ReplyDeleteYour last sentence was also really thought provoking.