10/12/2020

Race often can affect a person’s experience during a walk, to varying degrees depending on where or at what time the person is walking. According to Staples, “After dark…where I live, I often see women who fear the worst of me…Women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence. Yet these truths are no solace against the kind of alienation that comes of being ever the suspect, a fearsome entity”. (Staples 2) Here Staples describes the negative affects he sometimes has on some of the people around him, purely because of his stature and his skin color. He goes on to explain how seeing people react to him like this leaves a terrible feeling of loneliness and dismay. A person’s psyche and confidence could be damaged as a result of being perceived as scary, simply as a result of a person’s physical appearance. An unfortunate encounter involving a misjudgement based on a person’s appearance could definitely negatively affect a person’s experience of walking in the city.

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