Brent Staples Parallel Time: Growing Up Black And White

In 1986, in Brent Staples memoir Parallel Time: Growing Up Black and White, he wrote a selection called Black Men and Public Space. Throughout the essay Staples talks about the injustice and racial profiling that he receives as a black man in society. This causes him to change certain aspects that he does on a daily basis to make the people around him feel less threatened. Unconsciously, Staples presents ways on how he and society systematizes him and other black males.
The very first paragraph of the selection sets the tone of how society views him . In this paragraph, Staples talks about his first “victim” and how she was scared of him because of the idea that he could have been a criminal. This is where the systematization starts. This very incident
causes him to start to believe the negative ideas that society was and have always been throwing at him. Staples says “ Her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny.” This one incident causes him to feel like he is indistinguishable from the stereotypes of a black male.
In the same way, Staples states that he understands how dangerous not only women, but how society sees him and black males in general.
In paragraph five, he states that the fears that women think of when they see him are “ not a hallucination.” By this he means that all the fears that women have are very much real. Fears of being robbed, assaulted, raped, etc.can actually happen and are often done by black men. Because of these accusations that society has convinced Staples to believe, he starts to see himself as that potential robber, assaulter, or rapist that the women in society believe that he is or is capable of becoming. It also doesn’t help that we as a black culture portray ourselves to be those murderers, muggers, and rapists, in social media, music videos, and on reality television. It only causes society to view us as those types of criminals. Then we complain when we are stereotyped by others but we are the ones putting out that image for everyone to see. But also, society plays a big role in over representing us as criminals through media outlets and agreeing that we are criminals that need to be feared. This goes to show that we as a black culture are feared based off of a few people’s
mistakes.
As a result of the accusations, side looks, and nervous glances that Staples gets, he changes certain everyday things that he does so that the people around him can feel comfortable. He wants society to see him as a harmless black male and not one of the criminals that they believe that he is. While walking he whistles Beethoven so people will see him as less threatening. He is conscious of how he dresses because he doesn’t want to be portrayed as a thug. And lastly, he waits for an area to clear because he doesn’t want to offend anyone when he is walking by. He does all of this unconsciously. He is so used to believing all the things that society see black males as, he tries harder not to portray that image. He goes out of his way to prove to both himself and society that he isn’t what society sees as a stereotypical black man. He wants to be looked at as just a regular human being but because of the color of his skin he is automatically put into a box that wasn’t made for him. He does all this because he doesn’t want all of the negative attention to come to him and he believes that if he does these things people will see him as unthreatening.
In all, Staples talks about the negative light that society views black males in. Throughout the essay Staples discusses how he changed his ways to make people comfortable and how people have feared him because he was a black male in society. These factors and many more caused Staples to see the stereotypical ways of society and how they view black males.