Brent Staples '' Black Men In Public Space'

In the essay Black Men in a Public Space by Brent Staples published in Harper in 1987, Staples explains the preconceived notions Caucasians and other races have of African Americans while they are in public. The essay begins with Staples explaining the first time he made a individual in public, in particular, a Caucasian women feel uncomfortable by merely just his presence on a sidewalk during the evening. Staples explains that at the time he was a twenty-two year old man and a new graduate student at the University of Chicago and that the only thing he wanted to attack was sleep not people. After the first encounter with the woman, Staples began to draw conclusions that him being African American and dressing in street clothes gave him the …show more content…
Staples states that now (at the time of the article being published) he lives in Brooklyn, New York and still walks around at night like he did in Chicago. In New York, Staples was treated in the same manner as he was treated in Chicago, feared, for the sole reason of his skin color.

While staples explained the way he was treated in public during his college life and present (at the time of the article being published) he then began to explain his childhood background. Staples expressed that he was born and grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, a small crime infested town. Staples witnessed his friends and family get locked up or get murdered and have to bury them. Staples claimed that what he witnessed in his childhood with the brutality made him become more fearless but not enough.

Overtime as Staples got older he explained that he worked jobs as a journalist in Chicago and was mistaken for a burglar (page 2) and had no way to prove himself innocent. Another time he entered a jewelry store in Chicago to glimpse around and one of the clerks left for a moment and came bag with a large Doberman Pinscher and stood silently in front of him which prompted him to leave the