In Brent Staples’ article “Walk On By” he makes mention of the African American man just walking down the street. He says that the woman in front of him gets a little scared and just starts running.
What an astute observation. You’re following a woman down an alleyway at night, you’re a six-foot-something man wearing some sketchy clothes and a scruffy beard… I don’t think Brent needs to make this into a racial issue. I think the problem here is that he’s being a total creep. Maybe he’s being a little racist towards white people by assuming that they’re all racist and afraid of ethnic people. It’s all a little blurry to describe. Everyone can “Alter Public Space”. There was a study done (though exactly where and when, I couldn’t pinpoint, so I know that this holds no credulity, but I swear that I read it somewhere) that showed how people move around other people, and how easily they get intimidated. For instance, they put a group of about four individuals at a table that was outside, and they just sat, chit-chatted took note of the paths that people took around them. More often than not, the passerby made a huge arc around the table, completely unnecessary and a little ridiculous, and these passerby also avoided eye contact and picked up their walking pace. Sure, not everybody did that, but a huge percentage did, a vast majority, at that. The best part? All the people at the table were white. What’s that? People are allowed to be intimidated by white folks, too? I’m sorry, I just feel that racism can go both ways, and that a lot of the times, it’s self-induced. If you’re sitting there going “These people are all afraid of me because I’m Haitian/Cuban/Korean/Iranian/etc” then you’re pretty much being racist against yourself. You don’t know what other people are thinking, and you can’t accuse them of it, either.
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2 comments:
I totally agree with this, I think that maybe Staples is having some issues with his own self. There are tons of terribly strange and awkward people out there, and they dont direct it solely towards people of ethnic backgrounds. That's just a stupid assumption to make. Not even an educated guess. I really agree with the last line you wrote, not knowing what people are thinking. Youre basically just thinking you know what theyre thinking and then making yourself feel awkward because of your own thoughts that reflect upon what you think of yourself.
Marissa, I couldn’t disagree with you more when you say he made it a racial thing. In my opinion, I think that staples is one hundred percent accurate. I believe that there are many people are afraid of big black men in the dark of night. I do agree with you when you say he is just being creepy because that is the truth!!! And I definitely do see that having a big man follow you at night can be very sketchy. I dont think that he was making any assumptions about how people were more afraid of him because he was black, I just think he was stating the truth.
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