“Women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence” (Staples 5). Brent Staples’ Just Walk on By: Black Men in Public Space proposes a thoroughgoing question: are women scared of him walking down the night street because of his race or his gender? With overwhelming evidence and examples, the latter seems to lay true. Race only amplifies the fear.
	To preface, the world that we live in today is the safer than it ever has been decades past. Rates of violence against women have dropped to just a quarter of what it was since past peaks. However, with the sensual over dramatization of news coverage, and the availability to learn about any event at the fingertips, it seems the opposite. A culture of over dramatization and pop culture that insinuates violence lends people the idea that, despite the dropping rates of crime, certain people and groups are the sole perpetrators of violence. Apart from the 24/7 news coverage of events that lead to misconstrued ideals, hyper masculinity leads men to believe that dominance over women is a ticket into manhood.
	Manhood is defined as the point or process in a boy’s life where he grows to maturity. Simply put, he becomes a man rather than a child. In the falsified reality of hyper masculinity, men are conditioned to believe that their dominance in relationships, be it over women, friends, coworkers, is the ticket to becoming a man. Without delving into too many details, there are a plethora of ways a boy can truly become a man. This is overlooked. As a result, it leads to cases of sexual assault, such as Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, Chris Brown, Larry Nassar, Harvey Weinstein, Ben Affleck, R. Kelly, Louis CK, Bill Cosby, and, of course, Donald Trump. Similarities lie in each of these cases. The perpetrator had a position of power, the perpetrator holds public influence, the perpetrator, obviously, assaulted or attempted to assault a woman, and the perpetrator is a man. By showing men that it is easy to assault women and there are little to no repercussions (despite Nassar holding several life sentences, a sexual abuser currently holds the most important position in the United States), it also exposes to women that something will seldom be done, and it is elementary for a man to attack. This pseudo facile crime builds up in the consciousness of women, be it cognitively or subconsciously, and disguises men as pigs.
As seen, women are already programmed to think of a man as dangerous. With every man comes a race (most likely. It’s hard to predict what people are in 2018). According to the National Sexual Assault Hotline, it is reported that 27 percent of sexual assaults are committed by blacks. Frankly, that’s an alarming number, and it is understandable why a woman might be scared of a black man walking down the street. Paradoxically, 57 percent are committed by whites. Statistically, women should be more scared of white men walking down the street than black men, so why is society configured to believe that black men will commit the crime?
Well, people will site law enforcement. According to the Uniform Crime Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, and robbery are committed at a higher percent by blacks than whites. The mean percent difference is only three percent between the two races, and those who use the statistics suppress evidence.