Just Walk on By by Brent Staples
Twenty-two-year-old journalist Brent Staples illustrates and talks about his experiences while being racially profiled while living in Chicago and New York. He demonstrates the current negative view of being racially profiled in the United States and racism. He is being discriminated against when doing everyday routines such as taking walks in his neighborhood and workplace. By using his experiences as examples of how people react when seeing him, gives you examples that prejudice also still exists. The fear of women feeling anxious and vulnerable when seeing him. Staples understand why women are fearful of him, and they have the right. However, he firmly believes that he can remove that stereotype because he is not dangerous, and not everyone is like that. He is practicing to look less menacing to individuals that he encounters and prevent behavior by engaging it. Staples talks about how black men feel when they racially profiled today, and that not all are harmful.
Lone Ranger and Tonto by Sherman Alexie
Indian Native Sherman Alexie wrote about how he was racially-profiled outside of his reservation in Seattle, Washington. He left the reservation to pursue his education at Washington State University, majoring in American studies, where he found his interest in writing. His writings consist of short stories related to his own experiences as a Native American struggling with his own culture, a reservation culture, and border American culture. In this story, he writes about him being racially profiled as a robber in a 7-11 store, having a girlfriend he argued with because she is white, encountering a police officer that labeled him as an outsider, and his view as Native Indians while being caught between two cultures. He tried to have his audience understand his perspective in life as a Native American while combining metaphors between two cultures. Overall, this reading was difficult to give an overview of what the author is trying to project.
