Black Men In Public Space Analysis

In both “Black Men In Public Space” and “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” we see characters who, at first, view their identities a certain way. It is after they move to a new area and see the reactions of those around them that they begin to question their individual identities and start to consider how the opinions of those around them influence how they perceive themselves. Both stories call in to question the ways that gender and particularly ethnicity can influence how a person is expected to behave by the others around them, and how the individual may not always live up to the stereotypical expectation, be it good or bad. In these two stories both characters feel the expectations of those around them and eventually come to the conclusion that it does not matter as long as they try to stay true to their own individual identities.
In “Black Men and Public Space” the narrator is exploring how his perceived individual identity varies greatly from the identity others attribute him based on his gender and ethnicity. Being college educated and “A softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken” the narrator first views himself as a completely
In these two instances people are basing their ideas about how the narrators should behave on their ethnicity and gender, instead of on them as an individual. When confronted by this fact, both narrators take steps to try to reconcile their identities with how other people see them. In “Black Men In Public Spaces” the narrator takes steps to alleviate the anxiety of the people around him and get their view of him more in line with how he sees himself. In “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” the narrator takes steps to conform to the notions of the people around her before realizing that she must stay true to her own individual identity if she wants to succeed and be