Feel free to post a comment about Staples' essay, the phenomenon he describes, or related issues or experiences.
Here are a few possible discussion topics:
1. How relevant is Staples' essay (written and published in 1986) today? Do you think young black men have the same effect on public space in 2011 as Staples' experienced twenty-five years ago?
2. What IS Staples' attitude about this phenomenon? Is he bitter? angry? disappointed? understanding? (Give evidence). And what IS his purpose? Explore the connection between his tone and his purpose.
3. How does Staples consider and appeal to his audience? Does he avoid alienating or accusing his reader? If so, how?
4. Share your own experiences as they pertain to the essay--when you've instinctively judged someone as a threat, for example, or when you've been perceived as a threat yourself.
5. Explore the idea introduced in par. 2 and reinforced in the analogy of the hiker's cowbell: that "being perceived as a threat is a hazard in itself".
6. What, if anything, can be done to avoid or reduce these incidents? (Where do such assumptions come from? Can we ever stop making snap judgments?)
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18 comments:
1. I don't think the young black men have the same effect on public space now as when Staples wrote this. I think now it's more on physical appearance than skin color. Like we were saying in class, I'd be more afraid of a white guy in a hoodie than a black man in a suit.
3. I think that Staples confronts his readers, not in a purely negative way but in a way that makes the reader think about if they act how others act around him. By making the reader aware of how they act can impact their thinking and make them realize "oh maybe I shouldn't make these assumptions about people." Which is the overall purpose of the essay.
4. The other night I was walking to Walgreens. It was 6:30 but was already fairly dark and I had my keys in my hand just in case anything was going to happen. Whenever anyone passed me I got tense and made sure I had my keys at the ready. It didn't matter who was passing just the fact that someone could hurt me made me scared.
6. My immediate thought about how to stop judgements is to tell people, don't judge people but it's not that simple, you can't just tell people how to think. I don't think we will ever be able to get rid of judgements but I think by exposing people (in a nice way) and by making the issue widely known will hopefully make people think before they act.
Staples writes, "...I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I'd come into- the ability to alter public space in ugly ways." However, I found that those who unfairly and inaccurately judged him were the ones making the situation awkward and ugly, not Staples. His stories of how he was thought to be a mugger in his office building, and especially the tale about the jewelry store, made me realize that those people were the ones causing problems. Their fear that was motivated by racist assumptions negatively transformed the situation, not Staples presence.
Staples establishes a very specific tone from the outset. His first sentence, "My first victim was a woman - well dressed, probably in her late twenties" captured my attention so well, that I was willing to forgive Staples for the dullness of the essays title. But this sentence is more than just a hook. With the language of "Victim" and "Came upon her late one evening on a deserted street," Staples gets across his meaning so much more clearly than he could have if he had said "People judge me unfairly." This is because his tone is so well developed by his bitter, sarcastic words. Besides working to capture our interest, these words make fun of the people who are treating him unfairly and show that they are completely misguided. He goes on to use such sophisticate language throughout his writing, and he mentions that he was a graduate student (at the University of Chicago, no less) and that he writes for a magazine (or used to, at any rate.) His down to earth, iconoclastic approach to dispelling the common misconception of him as an "Accomplice in tyranny," coupled with his bitter sarcasm used in the first few sentences, excites a sense of injustice in us that is so much stronger than it would be if he had simply written about "How he is misunderstood."
I don't think that the racial situation that Staples experienced in 1986 was actually much different from today. Yes, it was 25 years ago, but 25 years ago things were more or less the same as they are today. I feel that the only reason we don't feel like it has to do with race anymore is that we live in an area of the US that has long tolerated people of different races. We also live in an area that is pretty diverse. There are places where only white people may live. If a black man is walking down a street in a predominantly white neighborhood -wearing a suit or not- heads will turn.
3. It would be easy for Staples to take on a criticizing or accusatory tone in this essay. But that would not help his argument. Instead, Staples attributes the pedestrians' actions not to ignorance but rather to rational fear. Clearly, he sympathizes with the pedestrian's point of view.
What is really interesting about Staple's point is the role of the "victim." Through society's eyes, Staples is perceived as sketchy and uncultured, as a threat. But he explains that this misconception makes him a victim as well: not only does it affect his view of himself("her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny") but it could be hazardous to his safety if he were to scare someone with a weapon.
Staple's reflection on prejudice is something that many people can relate to in some way or another.
I can imagine myself in the shoes of both Staples and the pedestrian. Young adults are sometimes seen by the older generations as a threat to upholding a high standard of etiquette,dignity, tradition. In addition, we are not always trusted to be responsible or mature. For example, I remember walking into a nice jewelry store last year and being carefully watched by the clerk as I looked around. On the other hand, I have also acted like that woman in Staples' opening example, fearing someone because of a mix or prejudice and reason.
By presenting his perspective clearly while being careful not to accuse those who associate themselves with the pedestrians, Staples appeals to a large audience. Like Cady mentioned in class, this enables him to "alter public space" more effectively through his writing.
I wanted to respond to soemthing that kelan brought up in class a few weeks ago. He said that Staples was the victim in this situation, not the people who were afraid of him. I wanted to build upon this idea and say that I feel that Staples was the victim of others people's judgment. At the end of the essay, Staples explains that he had to modify his behavior & apperance in order to avoid scaring those around him. herefore, the people had a negative impact on Staples by forcing him to change his own actions.
I really liked Selam's point, in that it doesn't matter if this happened 25 years ago or not; 25 years ago there was still a lot of racism and general stereotypes about people based on appearance. This kind of reminds me of what we have been doing in class, with all the girls that started going wild during the industrial era. People definitely started associating teenagers especially with a kind of careless craziness. Yet today, teenagers are still given funny looks when they walk into a convenient store or if they’re out late. People are wary of us, and the only way us teenagers or really any stereotypical people can break free from prejudice is by a group effort to show people that the stereotypes are untrue. A reverse-stereotype must be implemented. But that will undoubtedly take a huge amount of cooperation, effort and time.
I hope nobody minds that I am adding my comment a bit late, but I haven't really gotten time to develop my idea about this issue until today.
Staples' essay, in my opinion, is the best one so far that we have read because it pertains to all of us in our lives, whether we have cowered from someone at night, or been cowered from ourselves. Personally, my experience came when I was in Costa Rica this past summer. Although it prides itself on being a tourist-friendly nation, I felt the atmosphere of a room change whenever my family and I would walk into a room. People would be tripping over themselves to "assist" us whether or not we told them that we were tourists because we were white. Some people were actually helpful, others found it humorous to lead us to their stand where they were selling cheap handmade rugs, and others just led us to the other end of town. Occasionally these encounters could get frightening, as we were often unsure where a stranger's directions could lead us. On the streets, my sister and mother made sure to take off their earrings and leave their purses in the hotel room in fear of robbery. Unfortunately, tourists are perceived as innocuous sources of wealth that are easy to steal from, and we had to be quite careful about that stereotype during our stay in Costa Rica.
To connect this to the essay, Staples seems to focus intently on stereotypes of the black male and how they affect the public, while in class we focused on the effect of teenager stereotypes on the public. However, I would like to use this example to put forth another idea not touched on by either author: could "altering public space" also make one seem more feeble or susceptible to threats?
Staples may be indignant about being perceived as dangerous, but in my opinion it is better to be avoided than attacked. It is up to him whether or not he attacks people at night or robs jewelry stores because he has free will, but being susceptible to attack (i.e. a tourist) is a byproduct of what the will of others is. Now I am not saying that Staples' example is not relevant, but I had a problem the way that he approached this issue, as I saw many other ways that altering public space could change someone's life in even more detrimental ways than merely being perceived as a threat.
6. What, if anything, can be done to avoid or reduce these incidents? (Where do such assumptions come from? Can we ever stop making snap judgments? Also like Bart, I could not really formulate my thoughts until just recently. I wanted to address the prompt for question six but first I wanted to comment on a point made in class during our discussion over a month ago. A student said something a long the lines of "due to the long violent history of African Americans..." and then went on to somewhat justify the current stereotypes of black males. To be historically accurate, there is more documented history of white/european violence towards other races and among themselves. Just reference any school issued history book. I hope this is not interpreted as accusing anyone or any group of anything but more as an example of how the media has warped our perception of people.In relation to the prompt the media has been able to spread ideas, some very primitive and negative ideas, about minorities (and quite honestly people in general)". I was recently talking with someone in relation to the subject and they said, "one is taught to fear or hate". Well, in this case the media is our worlds teacher corrupted by unsupported hatreds and fears. Snap judgements are inevitable because they are a part of human nature and a form of protection. In my opinion the only solution would be limitations on the media and a general acknowledgement that people should make judgements based on their OWN lives not the ones they watch on TV.
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