Scatter The Pigeons

Brent Staples, “Just walk on By”
First of all, this guy is a jerk. He intentionally tried to scare other people by intimidating them in a game he called “Scatter the Pigeons”, where he would stalk white female pedestrians until they ran away from him. (http://www.answers.com/topic/brent-staples). He would dress and act in an intimidating manner to create fear in other people, then blame the fear on their racial prejudice because he is black. Overall the initial question or issue seems to be, “Should people alienate others because of their race.” This is misleading because the author has baited the subjects in his story and misrepresented himself as a victim of racial stereotyping, where the reality appears to be that the first woman he describes as a
“victim”, in quotation marks, really was a victim who should have run from this creep. He doesn’t go on to speculate about what kind of emotional trauma his game may have had on his victim.
This raised other questions: Does placing the term “victim” in quotation marks give it the appearance to the reader that she wasn’t a victim? Is this intended to give the reader the impression that her fears weren’t real? That she didn’t really suffer any emotional trauma from the experience? Did his game cause an exacerbation of the problem, (racial stereotyping), that he was claiming that he was himself the victim of?
Is the problem racial in nature, or was the young lady, all alone late at night walking down the street justifiably wary of this big guy with billowing hair and hands in the pocket of his bulky military jacket, who was stalking her, was she right to be fearful of the guy stalking her? My thought is absolutely yes. She should have been concerned for her safety with anyone acting the way he did, regardless of how he is dressed or what his racial heritage might be.
This story was published 23 years ago, describing a series of incidents that occurred near the end of the Viet-nam war (1973) and within a decade after.
For 1973, the military jackets weren’t the same popular culture as they are today. I can’t think of a current analogy that would apply, but in 1973 there was a different stigma associated with anyone wearing military surplus clothing. As he goes on to relate that now as the same person walking in New York late at night, he finds that people are more at ease when he’s whistling classical tunes. I’d say he hasn’t changed his racial heritage, so much as having changed his presence or how he presents himself in a group setting.
The author quotes Norman Podhoretz’s essay, “My Negro Problem – And Ours.” Do people still feel there is a negro (and minority) problem?” The author quotes a line from Podhert’z essay, written in 1963 about his experiences growing up during the depression and prior to the Second World War, that describes his fear of the negro boys in his neighborhood who often terrorized and assaulted him, his family and his neighborhood. Podhertz’s shares the several incidents where he was robbed, or assaulted by individuals or gangs of
individuals.
(http://www.lukeford.net/Images/photos/out.pdf )
It seems as if the author, Staples, was acting out the very behavior that Podhertz’s described in his essay. What Brent Staples doesn’t acknowledge is the conclusion of Podhertz’z essay where he states that “It is wrong for a man to suffer because of the color of his skin.”
Norman Podhertz http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=PodhNorm
From the site: Podhoretz has written hundreds of articles for most major American periodicals and lectured at many universities and before many civic and religious groups on foreign policy, American culture, and Jewish affairs. He appears frequently on radio and television. He was a Pulitzer Scholar at Columbia University, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1950. Podhoretz also holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Cambridge University, England, where he was a Fulbright Scholar and a Kellett Fellow. In addition, he has a Bachelor’s degree in Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Here is probably the best review and retrospective of the article comes from Norman Podhertz in this 1993 publication, http://reportingcivilrights.loa.org/perspectives/podhoretz.jsp
Do people feel there is a negro /minority problem? The short answer would have to be yes. But who’s propagating the issue? I’d have to point at least one finger back at this author, Brent Staples, who, while he may have very well been the victim of some sort of discrimination at some time in his life, acted as criminal intending to harm a young woman, late at night alone in a Chicago suburb, then cry that he is a victim of discrimination because she ran from him. This kind of false propagation leads to an invalidation of possible legitimate claims made elsewhere.
But it apparently sells books and stories to magazines.