The Bedford Reader. Edited by X. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron.

Bedford
Books of St. Martin's Press, Boston, 1991.

BRENT STAPLES
Brent Staples is a memberof the editorial board of the New
York Times. Born in 1951 in Chester, Pennsylvania, Staples has
a B.A. in behavioral science from Widener University in Ches-
ter and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago.
Before joining the New; York Times in 1985, he worked for the
Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Reader, Chicago magazine, and
Down Beat magazine. At the Times, Staples writes on culture
and politics. He also contributes often to the
York Times New
Magazine, New York Woman, Ms., and Harper's. In 1991 he
published Parallel Time: A Memoir.

Black Men and Public Space

"Black Men and Public Space" appeared in the December 1987
issue of Harper's magazine. Itwas originally published, in a
slightly different version, in Ms. magazine (September 1986)
under the title "Just Walk on By." The essay relates incidents
Staples has experienced "as a night walker in the urban
landscape."

My first victim was a woman — white, well dressed, prob-

ably in her late twenties. I came upon her late one evening on a
deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood
in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago. As I
swung onto the avenue behind her, there seemed to be a dis-
creet, uninflammatory distance between us. Not so. She cast
back a worried glance. To her, the youngish black man a —
broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both
hands shoved into the pockets o{ a bulky military jacket —
seemed menacingly close. After a few more quick glimpses, she
picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest. Within sec-
onds she disappeared into a cross street.
That was more than a decade ago. I was twenty-two years
old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chi-
cago. It was in the echo of that terrified woman's footfalls that I

199
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first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I'd come into — the
ability to alter public space in ugly ways. It was clear that she

thought herself the quarry of a mugger, a rapist, or worse. Suffer-

ing a bout of insomnia, however, I was stalking sleep, not defense-
less wayfarers. As a softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to a
raw chicken — let alone hold one to a person's throat — I was
surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once. Her flight made
me an accomplice in tyranny. It also made it clear that I
feel like

was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped

into the area from the surrounding ghetto. That first encounter,
and those that followed, signified that a vast, unnerving gulf lay
between nighttime pedestrians —
particularly women and me. —
And I soon gathered that being perceived as dangerous is a haz-
ard in itself. I only needed to turn a corner into a dicey situation,
or crowd some frightened, armed person in a foyer somewhere, or
make an errant move after being pulled over by a policeman.
Where fear and weapons meet —
and they often do in urban
America — there is always the possibility of death.
In that first year, my first away from my hometown, I was to
become thoroughly familiar with the language o{ fear. At dark,
shadowy intersections, I could cross in front of a car stopped at a
traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver

— black, white, male, or female — hammering down the door

locks. On less traveled streets after dark, I grew accustomed to but
never comfortable with people crossmg to the other side of the
street rather than pass me. Then there were the standard unpleas-
antries with policemen, doormen, bouncers, cabdrivers, and oth-
ers whose business it is to screen out troublesome individuals be-
fore there is any nastiness.
I moved to New York nearly two years ago and I have re-

mained an avid night walker. In central Manhattan, the near-

constant crowd cover minimizes tense one-on-one street encoun-
ters. Elsewhere — in SoHo, for example, where sidewalks are
narrow and tightly spaced buildings shut out the sky — things
can get very taut indeed.
After dark, on the warrenlike Brooklyn where I live,
streets of
1 often see women who fear the worst from me. They seem to
have set their faces on neutral, and with their purse straps strung
Staples/Black Men and Public Space 201

across their chests bandolier-style, they forge ahead as though

bracing themselves against being tackled. I understand, of course,
that the danger they perceive is not a hallucination. Women are
particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males
are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that vi-

olence. Yet these truths are no solace against the kind of aliena-
tion that comes of being ever the suspect, a fearsome entity with
whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact.
It is not altogether clear to me how I reached the ripe old age
of twenty-two without being conscious of the lethality nighttime
pedestrians attributed to me. Perhaps was because in Chester,
it

Pennsylvania, the small, angry industrial town where I came of

age in the 1960s, I was scarcely noticeable against a backdrop of
gang warfare, street knifings, and murders. I grew up one of the
good boys, had perhaps a half-dozen fistfights. In retrospect, my
shyness of combat has clear sources.
As saw countless tough guys locked away; I have
a boy, I

since buried several, too. They were babies, really a teenage —

cousin, a brother of twenty-two, a childhood friend in his mid-
twenties —
all gone down in episodes of bravado played out in

the streets. I came

doubt the virtues of intimidation early on. I
to
chose, perhaps unconsciously, to remain a shadow — timid, but a
survivor.
The fearsomeness mistakenly attributed to me in public
places often has a perilous flavor. The most frightening of these
confusions occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I
worked as a journalist in Chicago. One day, rushing into the of-
fice of a magazine I was writing for with a deadline story in hand,
I was mistaken for a burglar. The office manager called security
and, with an ad hoc posse, pursued me through the labyrinthine
halls, nearly to my editor's door. I had no way o( proving who I

was. I could only move briskly toward the company of someone

who knew me.
Another time I was on assignment for a local paper and kill-
ing time before an interview. I entered a jewelry store on the city's
affluent Near North Side. The proprietor excused herself and re-
turned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the
end of a leash. She stood, the dog extended toward me, silent to
202 Example

my questions, her eyes bulging nearly out of her head. I took a

cursory look around, nodded, and bade her good night.
Relatively speaking, however, I never fared as badly as an- lo

other black male journalist. He went

nearby Waukegan, Illi-
to
nois, a couple of summers ago to work on a story about a mur-
derer who was born there. Mistaking the reporter for the killer,
police officers hauled him from his car at gunpoint and but for his
press credentials would probably have tried to book him. Such
episodes are not uncommon. Black men trade tales like this all

the time.
Over the years, I learned to smother the rage I felt at so often ii

being taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led to

madness. I now take precautions to make myself less threatening.
Imove about with care, particularly late in the evening. I give a
wide berth to nervous people on subway platforms during the wee
hours, particularly when
have exchanged business clothes for
I

jeans. If I happen to be entering a building behind some people

who appear skittish, I may walk by, letting them clear the lobby
before I return, so as not to seem to be following them. I have
been calm and extremely congenial on those rare occasions when
I've been pulled over by the police.

And on late-evening constitutionals I employ what has 12

proved to be an excellent tension-reducing measure: I whistle mel-

odies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical
composers. Even steely New Yorkers hunching toward nighttime
destinations seem to relax,
and occasionally they even join in the
tune. Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn't
be warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
It is my equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they
know they are in bear country.

QUESTIONS ON MEANING
1. What isthe purpose of this essay? Do you think Staples believes
that he (or other black men) will cease "to alter public space in
ugly ways" in the near future? Does he suggest anv long-term solu-
 .

Staples/Black Men and Public Space 203

tion for "the kind of alienation that comes of being ever the sus-
pect" (para. 5)?
2. In paragraph 5, Staples says he understands that the danger women
when they see him "is not a hallucination." Do you take this
fear to
mean that Staples perceives himself to be dangerous? Explain.
3. Staples says, "I chose, perhaps unconsciously, to remain a shadow
— timid, but a survivor" (para. 7). What are the usual connota-
tions of the word survivorl Is "timid" one of them? How can you ex-
plain this apparent discrepancy?

QUESTIONS ON WRITING STRATEGY

1. The concept of altering public space is relatively abstract. How does
Staples convince you that this phenomenon really takes place?
2. The author employs a large number of examples in a fairly small
space. He cites three specific instances that involved him, several
general situations,and one incident involving another black male
journalist. How does Staples avoid having the piece sound like a list?
How does he establish coherence among all these examples? (Look,
for example, at transitions.)
3. OTHER METHODS. Many of Staples's examples are actually anec-
dotes — brief narratives (Chap. 1). The opening paragraph is espe-
cially notable. Why is it so effective?

QUESTIONS ON LANGUAGE
1 What does the author accomplish by using the word victim in the es-
say's first paragraph? Is the word used literally? What tone does it
set for the essay?
2. Be sure you know how to define the following words, as used in this
essay: affluent, uninflammatory (para. 1); unwieldy, tyranny, pedes-
trians (2); intimidation (7); congenial (1 1); constitutionals (12).
3. The word dicey (para. 2) comes from British slang. Without looking
it up in your dictionary, can you figure out its meaning from the

context in which it appears?

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

1. Write an essay explaining what it means to alter public space, con-
sidering these questions along with Staples's essay: Isn't there a
certain amount of power implicit in this ability? It seems clear that
204 Example

Staples would rather not have this power, but would such power
always be undesirable? Can you imagine an instance in which the
ability to alter public space might be a good thing? Whatever your
response, be sure to illustrate your answer with specific examples.
2. Are you aware of any incident in which you altered public space?
That is, where your entry into a situation, or simply your presence,
brought about changes Write a
in peoples' attitudes or behavior?
narrative essay describing this experience. Or write an essay about
witnessing someone else altering public space, whether in a negative
or positive way. What changes did you observe in the behavior of
the people around you? Was your behavior similarly affected? In ret-
rospect,do you feel your reactions were justified?
3. CONNECTIONS. Like Staples, Barbara Lazear Ascher, in "On Com-
passion" (p. 183), also considers how people regard and respond to
"the Other," the one who is regarded as different. In an essay, com-
pare and contrast the points of view of these two authors. How
does point of view affect each author's selection of details and tone?

BRENT STAPLES ON WRITING

In comments written The Bedford Reader, Brent
especially for
Staples talks about the writing of "Black Men and Public Space."
"I was only partly aware of how I felt when I began this essay. I

knew only that I had this collection of experiences (facts) and that
I felt uneasy with them. I sketched out the experiences one by one

and strung them together. The bridge to the essay — what I

wanted to say, but did not know when 1 started — sprang into life
quite unexpectedly as I sat looking over these experiences. The
crucial sentence comes right after the opening anecdote, in which
my first Victim' runs away from me: *It was in the echo of that
woman's footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheri-
tance I'd come into — the ability to alter public space in ugly
ways.' 'Aha!' I said, This is why I bothered and hurt and frus-
feel
trated when this happens. I don't want people to think I'm stalk-
ing them. I want some fresh air. I want to stretch my legs. I want
to be as anonymous as any other person out for a walk in the
night.'"
A news reporter and editor by training and trade, Staples sees
much similarity between the writing of a personal essay like
Brent Staples on Writing 205

"Black Men and Public Space" and the writing of, say, a murder
story for a daily newspaper. "The newspaper murder," he says,
"begins with standard newspaper information: the fact that the
man was found dead in an alley in such-and-such a section of the
city; his name, occupation, and where he lived; that he died of
gunshot wounds to such-and-such a part of his body; that arrests
were or were not made; that such-and-such a weapon was found
at the scene; that the policehave established no motive; etc.
"Personal essays take a different tack, but they, too, begin as
assemblies of facts. In 'Black Men and Public Space,' I start out
with an anecdote that crystalizes the issue I want to discuss —
what it is like to be viewed as a criminal all the time. I devise a
sentence that serves this purpose and also catches the reader's at-
tention: 'My first victim was a woman white, well dressed, —
probably in her late twenties.' The piece gives examples that are
meant to illustrate the same point and discusses what those exam-
ples mean.
"The newspaper story stacks its details in a specified way,
with each piece taking a prescribed place in a prescribed order.
The personal essay begins often with a flourish, an anecdote, or
the recounting of a crucial experience, then goes off to consider
related experiences and their meanings. But both pieces rely on
reporting. Both are built o{ facts. Reporting is the act of finding
and analyzing facts.

"A fact can be a state of the world —a date, the color of

someone's eyes, the arc of a body that flies through the air after

having been struck by a car. A

fact can also be a feeling — sor-
row, confusion, the sense of being pleased, offended, or frus-
grief,

trated. 'Black Men and Public Space' explores the relationship be-
tween two sets of facts: (1) the way people cast worried glances at
me and sometimes run away from me on the streets after dark,
and (2) the frustration and anger I feel at being made an object of

fear as I try to go about my business in the city."

Personal essays and news stories share one other quality as
well. Staples thinks: They affect the writer even when the writing
is finished. "The discoveries I made in 'Black Men and
Public

Space' continued long after the essay was published. Writing

about the experiences gave me access to a whole range of internal
206 Example

concerns and ideas, much the way a well-reported news story

opens the door onto a given neighborhood, a situation, or set of
issues."

FOR DISCUSSION
1. In recounting how his essay developed, what does Staples reveal
about his writing process?
2. How, according to Staples, are essay writing and news writing simi-
lar? How are they different?
3. What does Staples mean when he says that "writing about the expe-
riences gave me access to a whole range of internal concerns and
ideas"?