In the brief article titled “Black Men in Public Space,” which was written by Brent Staples, the author shares his own experiences on how he is stereotyped since he is an African American and seems to be afraid in “public settings” (Staples 225). Staples is a bright young guy who is now pursuing his PhD at the University of Chicago. Because of the intricacy of his skin, he is never given fair treatment and is always subjected to discrimination. During one of his customary evening strolls, he crossed paths with a white lady. She gave him a couple of looks before quickly picking up her pace and avoiding him for the rest of the evening. He decided to alter his look so that other people would not be alarmed by the hue of his skin. He changed his appearance as well as the way he moved. This paper discusses the tribulations young black men often face due to their skin colour. It talks about how Brent Staples struggles to find a sense of belonging and acceptance in a racially biased society. Lastly, it discusses the methodologies black men may use to counter-check racial acts against them, taking Brent Staples’s examples.
Brent Staples gives a first-person account of his life as a black man living in contemporary society and his challenges. The narrative of “Black Men and Public Space” serves as a trip for the readers to accompany Staples on as he uncovers the many prejudices held against him by society just due to the colour of his skin. When Staples was twenty-two years old and out late one night on the streets of Chicago, he encountered a lady who reacted with panic when she saw him. This sets the stage for the beginning of the essay. He realized that people would automatically categorize him as a “mugger, rapist, or worse” because of his size and the fact that he was a black guy (135). Staples relates his experiences in Chicago of being racially profiled, including individuals locking their vehicle doors as he went by, people walking to the other side of the street after seeing him, and police officers presuming he was a danger because of his race. After that, Staples relocated to Brooklyn and had the same reactions there. He was seen as “a frightening apparition with whom passersby avoid establishing eye contact” (136).
Brent Staples focuses on his personal experiences, which, from his point of view, revolve around issues of racism and injustice. This viewpoint brilliantly portrays a black guy’s existence in a completely distinct way, complete with an outside appearance that directly influences how other people see him as a person. Many people who read this, including myself, have never been terrified of how Staples is regularly. When he said, “It also made it plain that I was indistinguishable from the muggers who periodically crept into the area from the adjacent slum,” it brought me the gravity of the situations he had been in. (135). Many individuals will never comprehend what it means to acknowledge that truth as a reality and embrace it. It is of the utmost significance that Staples was able to communicate this vision of the world to others for them to start the process of seeing society from a perspective that is distinct from their knowledge. In addition, he whistles a few pieces from classical music to brighten the atmosphere and make himself seem nicer. “I whistle tunes from Beethoven and Vivaldi and other well-known classical composers,” the author writes (Staples 226). Whistling caused everyone around him to feel more at ease, as shown by the fact that he writes that “sometimes they even join in the melody” (Staples 226). He altered his outward appearance to reduce the likelihood that others would categorize him according to a preconceived notion of what an African American should look like.
Annotated Bibliography
Carter, P. (2018). The black swan of trespass: Dramaturgies of public space. In Movements of Interweaving (pp. 216-236). Routledge.
In this study, we see that when two stuffed animals start talking to one other at the beginning of The Black Swan of Trespass, the little theatre inside a theatre takes on the character of a giant puppet show, and all of a sudden, no single viewpoint can be regarded as fact. The piece that was put on by Stuck Pigs Squealing Theatre has already been seen at fringe festivals in Melbourne and New York, and the plethora of prizes it has won are certainly well earned. The author’s Lally Katz and Chris Kohn have taken the literary prank perpetrated by Ern Malley in 1943 and flipped it inside out to produce a depiction of wartime Australia that is startlingly compelling, though abstract. The premise of this argument is that two young conservative soldier poets named James McAuley and Harold Stewart, who fabricated the identity and poetry of Ern Malley to mock modernist literature, did, in their act of creation; unconsciously reveal a genuine artistic response to a society that was experiencing the strain of significant social change.
Ferreira, C. A. A., & Nunes, S. C. (2022). Racial injury in public space: narratives of black students. Revista Teias, 23(69), 397-410.
In this study, racism encountered by black pupils in Brazilian society is brought to life in the literature. This research goes further to explain the experiences of eleven black university students in public space in terms of racial harm. We used a qualitative descriptive method to describe the situation. There are 18 questions in this semi-structured interview script, all of which deal with topics of race, gender, social class, and profession. Intersectionality between gender, race, and social class is used as an analytical category in this research because it focuses on problems of gender and race, and it analyzes students’ narratives in light of their setting. Studying samples from Brazilian media, this study aims to discover how racism against black women is reinforced via discursive practices in Brazil. Research shows that racial harm starts in the classroom with little insults and grows in the workplace in a different form. Black women in Brazil are more likely to suffer from emotional distress and racial injuries in the public sphere because of this country’s racial dynamics. There must be better respect for black people, a stronger militancy and opposition to situations of racial harm in the police station and the media, and an end to the subjectivities embedded in society’s subjects as a whole.
Honey-Rosés, J., Anguelovski, I., Chireh, V. K., Daher, C., Konijnendijk van den Bosch, C., Litt, J. S., … & Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on public space: an early review of the emerging questions–design, perceptions and inequities. Cities & health, 1-17.
In this study, existing disparities were exacerbated by COVID-19. Minorities, the homeless, and residents of low-income areas are more vulnerable to COVID-19’s effects since they have fewer resources for health care and have a harder time self-isolating. Inequities in race, class, and neighbourhood may spill over into the public sphere. Public or private green areas, for example, are less accessible to vulnerable populations. More frequently than not, the green spaces in lower-income areas are smaller, less well-maintained, and less abundant. It is possible that COVID-19 may lead to a rise in gated communities and neighbourhoods as a result of the physical closure of streets and parks. It is crucial for the socially disadvantaged to have access to public areas, which serve a number of objectives. Public areas are sometimes the only places where low-income persons may escape their tight living quarters and get some fresh air. Having access to public places is critical for children and teenagers of all ages. The more tightly policed and “securitized” public areas become, the more undocumented immigrants and racialized minorities are likely to avoid them. The same stresses may be felt by those who are homeless. Criminal activity may decline if public areas are better protected by police and other authorities, enabling more people to utilize them.
Kuhlken, J. (2021). The Arendtian Public Space of Black Lives Matter. Southwest Philosophy Review, 37(2), 71-74.
Her article “What is Freedom?” argues that philosophy has always accepted the existence of morality only if it is predicated on the foundation of liberty. However, for Arendt, politics is the true abode of freedom. “It seems safe to conclude that man would know nothing about inner freedom if he had not experienced a situation of being free as a worldly concrete reality,” she writes. It is through our interactions with others, not our interactions with ourselves, that we first become conscious of freedom or its antithesis. Having a fresh beginning, according to Arendt, is experiencing freedom. “The freedom to call something into reality which did not exist before, which was not provided, not even as an object of cognition or imagination, and which thus, simply could not be known” is how action arises in the world when human beings work together to establish something new. This illustrates that freedom, properly understood, is not freedom of the will as, for example, when a moral principle given by reason leads the will, as in the case of the Declaration of Independence. Arendt’s premise, on the other hand, demonstrates how freedom manifests itself in the world via action.
Staples, B. (2021). Just walk on by, A black man ponders his power to alter public space. In Public Space Reader (pp. 90-95). Routledge.
Her article “What is Freedom?” argues that philosophy has always accepted the existence of morality only if it is predicated on the foundation of liberty. However, for Arendt, politics is the true abode of freedom. “It seems safe to conclude that man would know nothing about inner freedom if he had not experienced a situation of beingfree as a worldly concrete reality,” she writes. It is through our interactions with others, not our interactions with ourselves, that we first become conscious of freedom or its antithesis. Having a fresh beginning, according to Arendt, is experiencing freedom. “The freedom to call something into reality which did not exist before, which was not provided, not even as an object of cognition orimagination, and which thus, simply could not be known” is how action arises in the world when human beings work together to establish something new. This illustrates that freedom, properly understood, is not freedom of the will as, for example, when a moral principle given by reason leads the will, as in the case of the Declaration of Independence. Arendt’s premise, on the other hand, demonstrates how freedom manifests itself in the world via action.
Valasik, M., & Torres, J. (2020). Civilizing Space or Criminalizing Place: Using Routine Activities Theory to Better Understand How Legal Hybridity Spatially Regulates “Deviant Populations”. Critical Criminology, 1-21.
The convergence of administration, civil, and criminal law has resulted in the expansion of contemporary systems for the control of crime, as well as a significant rise in the legal power and discretion afforded to officers of the law. This kind of legal hybridity has led notably to the widespread employment of spatial regulatory procedures (or spatial remedies) by law enforcement in metropolitan areas. Some examples of these practices include the use of exile policies and civil gang injunctions. While banishment policies and CGIs are examples of the reliance on legal hybridity to spatially manage “deviant” population numbers, empirical results suggest that spatial solutions steered by the theoretical foundations of prevention and broken windows perspectives are not effective at predicting observed behavioural changes. This is the case despite the fact that banishment policies and CGIs are examples of the reliance on legal hybridity to spatially manage “deviant” populations. The research suggests a critical tool for understanding insubordination to spatial remedies and suggests that routine activities theory is an adequate model to expose why these methods fail to image and gives compliance or remedy problem areas. The study also argues for a critical framework for understanding how spatial remedies can be improved.
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