Brent Staples: Just Walk on by: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space

Brent Staples: Just Walk on by: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space

Introduction

When Brent Staples published his piece, “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space”, in Ms. magazine it was very controversial. He was a black man, for starters, writing about racial profiling, and he was writing in a feminists' magazine in 1986. Staples chose to submit his article for publication in Ms. because, according to him, women are who profiled him the most even though they are against the profiling of their gender. He wanted to show how hypocritical it was of them, and he wanted to put their apprehensions of black men at ease. In his article, Staples utilizes personal experience with other evidence to provide his audience with an insight into his feelings on racial profiling from a black man's point of view (Staples 1998).

The words he used to describe a white woman's reaction to his presence were great examples of how pathos was used in this essay. According to Staples the way the woman felt was worried. She clearly felt uneasy, thinking that the man was menacingly close. He says how people automatically feel frightened, as if every black man on Earth is dangerous or hazardous. He exposes the emotions of fear that people experienced when there was a black man present. The main point of the essay is that as a result of racial prejudice and discrimination, black men are constantly being mistaken due to completely falsified beliefs. Staples did a great job of highlighting the key points of the situation, proposing an alternative solution to the problem, and backing up his reasoning as to why he thought it was ...