Summary Response: Discrimination

JUST WALK ON BY Have you ever been obsessed by the fear of being different from other people? People usually give the wrong perception on the others based on their appearance, or their skin. In the article “Just Walk on by”, the author Brent Staples tells a story about his own experiences, which are how he was discriminated because of his appearance: a black man. The story begins when the author was mistaken for a criminal due to his black skin by a white woman. Although Brent Staples was just a graduate student, every time he went to the public, almost everybody, especially the women tried to run away from him. Simply, he is black, and they considered that a black man could be a rapist, a mugger or worse. The readers can picture how a young black man is isolated from the public through the author’s experiences: being perceived as dangerous on the street, or being mistaken for a burglar at work. At the end, he found out that he was not able to change the bad perception on his black skin, so he learnt to get use to it and tried to be successful. In response to the essay, there are three points that crossed my mind after read the article; specifically, these are the discrimination, the compassion and ways to get over the obstacles. To begin with, discrimination is the first issue which was pointed out very clearly in the article. Discrimination has lasted for many decades. There are many kinds of discrimination, such as skin colour, religion, national origin, and gender. Although many laws, controversies, demonstrations have exploded to against the discrimination, a lot of people are still suffering from that issue. The victims often receive the bad perceptions of the others on their own appearances, and as the results, they are not trusted by anybody or even be considered as a criminal, and worse for the society. For example, the author was mistaken for a burglar at his workplace just because he is the black. He finally chose trying to be successful as