Brent Staples essay “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space” is mostly about how being a black man in today’s society has caused people to stereotype him and misjudge him only because of his color of skin. Black men’s are seen as bad people when in reality, the black man who people judge are innocent civilians just like any other people with different race. Staples uses figurative language, writing techniques, and diction to tell his past experiences and the effect it has caused in his…
Brent Staples’s “Just walk on by” was written to clarify how African-Americans like Staples go through stereotypes when in actually reality, shouldn’t be prejudged in the first place. He reminisces being perceived as dangerous just because of his skin color, and how this situation puts himself in endangerment. Staples arguers that people shouldn’t be so judgmentally and should get to know the person by the actions. He not only makes statements all through the text, but gives incidents of how his color and the way he looks to others tend to play in the role. He stresses about the fact that African Americans, can’t all be the same with the same intentions and wants the readers to know that as well.…
Cruse opens the text with then contemporarily profound ideals concerning the ‘new’ Negro intellectual class that emerged out of the late 1950s and 1960s. In his discussion around the Negro spokesperson, I found myself considering the idea of Black representationalism—the avant-garde context of Cruse’s ‘spokesperson.’ His depiction of true America were bone-chilling as he analyzes the country in its totality in efforts to capitalize on the Negro’s function within in. Cruse speaks very highly of Harlem. At times, his thoughts seems to be guided through a bias, but as he spoke more of the section within the Manhattan borough, I conjured up the image of the utopia described. Cruse provides the vision for group Black economics, the vision of unity. Emerging in between the high-rises and co-ops of Harlem is a world separate from that of America. I was able to dissolve the thoughts of biases from Cruse as I noted several cases in which he, too, spoke of Harlem’s downfalls. His personal anecdotes provides the reader with full truths that employ historical contexts throughout the novel. Cruse uses his narrative of the city’s highs and lows to articulate the reality of double consciousness and introduces what…
Invisible Yet Strong “Black America’s Invisible Crisis” is an Essence article written by Lois Beckett that talks about a woman named Aireana and her family who were diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In 2013, after riding along with her family in their car, someone on the outside started shooting at them. Aireana and her husband got shot, but her two kids were unharmed in the back seat. As Aireana was bleeding from the neck and mouth, she didn’t want her kids to think that she was going to die. She crawled out the car as she hear her kids screaming from the back seat yelling out, “My mom’s dying!”…
In the article How It feels to Be Colored Me, Zora Hurston describes her experiences being colored. She lived in a prominently colored town in Florida up until she was thirteen and she lived a great life. Everyone knew her; she was “their” Zora. Then, her mother passed away and Hurston was shipped off to boarding school. This, she said was the first time she became colored. Now, when I first read this article I wondered how she could remember being born. Then, I realized that what she really meant was that when she left home, she was no longer Zora. To everyone she was just a little black girl.…
Gary Nash’s “Black people in a white people’s country” is an article that provides us with insight into the overall development of the international slave trade and slavery of West Africa beginning in the late fifteenth century and continuing. The economic influences, impact of the stages of transport on the slave ships especially that of the “middle passage”, and the impact on white or the Europeans society as African slavery became not only more prominent but also more institutionalized in the Americas.…
Coates’ biggest piece of the essay is actually at the beginning when people start to talk about how the world is against African-Americans as a whole. In fact, Coates stated, “America makes no claim to the banal.…
In “Black Men and Public Space” Brent Staples utilizes anecdotes or stories as a literary technique to convey by prejudice affected him in his career and as a person in his everyday life. Early on in his anecdote, he sets the scene and utilizes descriptive language to evokes a feeling or nervousness and uncertainty from the reader. However, he also creates a situation where the reader feels compassion for him. It is evident that women and men pre-judged him based on his race. Although not everyone can feel sympathetic towards him, the reader should definitely feel compassionate.…
“No task is more urgent for racial justice advocates today than ensuring that America’s current racial caste system is its last.” – Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (2010) describes an American paradigm that encourages pervasive racial injustices that are beyond average comprehension. In particular, the “New Jim Crow” is a system that predicates current racial differences on past social constructs that relate and date back to slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. The mass incarceration of black men in America is not the result of a propensity to commit or an affinity for drugs and crime, according to Alexander.…
“Just Walk On By,” by Brent Staples describes his life as an African American that is criticized and judged by the appearance the he reflects. He talks about the many different times in his life he experiences these act of racial profiling, and what he does to resolve these acts of discrimination. Through his passive calm tone he displays throughout his essay, he comes up with ways in which he changes him self in order for society to accept him. However, this is just one of many life stories that people go threw and how they are affected by these unfair acts. We can still see this in today's society, all around us, some of us do this naturally with out putting thought in what we are rely doing. My dad had a friend at work in the same situation which was judged and made fun of because of the ethnicity he was from. I believe he wrote this essay to give us an idea of how the human race see people through the their eyes and do not comprehend that we can not infer something against someone just because he is this race or that race.…
“In the eyes of white Americans, being black encapsulates your identity.” In reading and researching the African American cultural group, this quote seemed to identify exactly the way the race continues to still be treated today after many injustices in the past. It is astonishing to me that African Americans can still stand to be treated differently in today’s society.…
One of the major themes Coates highlighted was the issue of racial profiling. Coates recalled his encounter with the PG County police officers. The corrupt officers of PG county were renowned as it related to police brutality. Many African Americans, like Coates, constantly live in fear not knowing if the next police officer they see will target them for no other reason than the color of their skin or if they will even live to tell the tale. They feared the same people appointed to serve and protect them. Another important aspect identified was Coates’ perspective on the adage that says blacks have to be twice as good in order to succeed. Coates believes that black parents should stop telling their children to be twice…
“Many sincerely think the Negro, because of his very Negro-ness, could not possibly measure up to white standards in work performance.”…
15. 98% of the cases heard in the Supreme Court are based on what type of jurisdiction?…
In the beginning Locke tells us about “the tide of Negro migration”. During this time in a movement known as the Great Migration, thousand of African Americans also known as Negros left their homes in the South and moved North toward the beach line of big cities in search of employment and a new beginning. They left the South because of racial violence such as the Ku Klux Klan and economic discrimination not able to obtain work. Their migration was an expression of their changing attitudes toward themselves as Locke said best From The New Negro, and has been described as "something like a spiritual emancipation." Many African Americans moved to Harlem, a neighborhood located in Manhattan. Back in the day Harlem became the world’s largest black community; also home to a diverse mix of cultures. Having extraordinary outbreak of inspired movement revealed their unique culture and encouraged them to discover their heritage; and becoming "the New Negro,” Also known as “New Negro Movement,” it was later named the Harlem Renaissance.…