Student Essay on "Black Men and Public Space"

"Black Men and Public Space"

Essay

The "Black Men and Public Space" essay brought me to the realization of something that I, myself probably wouldn't have ever thought of because I would never be in that situation. I never thought being a large, black male would ever cause people such fear, fear I thought never existed. But when I measure out the situation that Mr. Staples lays out with today's given society perhaps there is reason why these women would walk away from Mr. Staples or even across the street away from him. With the way women are raped, assaulted these days there is justification in how most female pedestrians have protection or know how to protect themselves from any harm they may come into contact with. But for these women to make a generalization based partly or wholly upon gender is obviously something wrong which makes us realize that racist views are still widely held. Mr. Staples enjoyed taking walks at night, in casual clothes and he happened to live in a mean, impoverished section of Chicago. You can call it a bad combination, a prejudice society or maybe just a violence-prone world, you can expand upon any one of these reasons. I would have to take a moderate view and say that it's a little of all of them.