Puzzle Paragraph!

            In Brent Staples’s essay “Black Men and Public Space,” he criticizes America’s seemingly incorrigible infatuation with stereotypes and suggests that blacks have been tossed from the frying pan of slavery and de jure segregation into the fire of unjust stereotyping and informal racial profiling. The confounded fates would have it that all black men—even those pursuing a PhD in psychology at the University of Chicago— taking a midnight stroll would cause hearts to beat faster and car doors to lock! Staples explains that African-American males reporting on a murder case oft get mistaken for the murderers themselves. And it is not just his article that depicts a society riddled with stereotypes—no, in Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle, the stereotype of blacks beating up on whites is so engrained that classmate Dinitia Hewitt must viciously bully Jeannette in school, but has pleasant excursions to the pool with her on Saturdays. So how do we get rid of stereotypes so powerful that they persist when they are obviously not always true and actually force the stereotype-ees conform to them? While others—like Staples, whose essay offers no solution to the problem—might say that the stereotypes will persist ceaselessly, no matter how impressive a black man’s education, I say they are wrong. Yes, stereotypes are difficult to eradicate; however, no one ever said that they were impossible. Perhaps if the government spent less money on their own salaries and tax breaks and welfare that would never motivate anyone to work, and instead spent it on improving the quality of education for all and not making student loans so crippling, blacks could truly advance themselves from the ghetto and be free from the bondage of stereotypes. Staples does not realize that men like him are the solution. Hardworking blacks with education and acclaim are truly paving the way for their race to be recognized as accomplished equals, not a nation of thugs. What about the fourteen black American astronauts who have shown throughout history that not even the sky, but outer space, is the limit for their race? What about Jimi Hendrix who skyrocketed to fame in an era when rock was dominated by whites? Maybe one day, when blacks truly have the education and motivation necessary to succeed, Staples can whistle the riff from “Purple Haze” instead of a theme from The Four Seasons, and no one will cower in terror.