Brent Staples’ short narrative, “Just Walk on By”, illustrates the hardships minorities have to go through due to generalizations made about them. Staples through his writing tells the reader about the hardships of being a minority and how he wants people to truly see that he is not the ruffian they think he is. One quote in particular is an anecdote of the first incident of this occurring. It was the first paragraph written in the whole story, and he started it with, “My first victim..”(Pg. 1). He uses comedy to make light of the incident to make it seem like he was the perpetrator instead of the victim. Staples in this passage also uses phrases like “I came upon her..”(Pg. 1) and “As I swung into the avenue behind her…”(Pg. 1). He uses
