“Just Walk On By” and “The Myth Of The Latin Women” Compare Essay

In both Essays “Just Walk On By” by Brent Staples and “The Myth Of The Latin Women” by Judith Coffer, both authors talked about how people stereotyped in the world especially by self situations. But to me there’s a difference between thinking your being stereotyped to misunderstanding. Both of these articles talks about the authors and how they were stereotyped for either being Hispanic or black but I believe one of them is right and the other is a misunderstanding. The way I can depict this is the three topics that differ the authors and their essays. Their details are different and their tones and somewhat of their urban past because one grew up in in the United States and one grew up in Mexico. In the essay “Just Walk On By” Brent Staples gives details of his stereotype of a tall Black male wearing camo clothes and a women looking at him and running away “To her, the youngish black man- a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into his pockets of a bulky military jacket-seemed menacingly close… she picket up her pace and was soon running in earnest”(Staples, Brent).

Another example is how a woman pulls a dog on him just because of the way he looks. “ I entered a jewelry store on the city’s affluent Near North Side. The Proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman Pinscher straining at the end of a leash. She stood, the dog extended toward me, silent to my questions, her eyes bulging nearly out of her head” (Staples, Brent). Now compare it to the essay of Judith Coffer, in the “Myth Of The Latin Women” Coffer is too vague with her stereotype in her essay, Coffer was excused for a waitress in a restaurant “An older woman motioned me to her table. Thinking (foolish me) that she wanted me to autograph a copy of my brand new slender volume of verse, I went over. She ordered a cup A of coffee from me, assuming that I was the waitress” (Cofer,Judith). Also while on a bus a drunken guy came up to her and started singing Maria from the play West Side Story and Don’t Cry For Me Argentina “Our way blocked, my companion and I listened as the man half-recited, half-bellowed “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” (Cofer, Judith).

Brent Staples details about how the women all dressed fancy ran away from him was stereotypical because she judged him as looks rather then his personality. Judith Coffer on the other hand took all her situations as stereotypes meanwhile they could have been obvious mistakes. The women in the restaurant who mistook Cofer as a waitress probably saw what she was wearing and the book her in hand and she probably dressed like one the waitresses. And the guy on the bus was drunk he didn’t know any better. Another difference between theses two articles is the tone of both authors. In the article “The Myth Of The Latin Women” Judith coffer’s tone is aggressive through every situation. In the situation of the being mistaken as a waitress she said this “That day I read to that woman and her lowered eyes told me that she was embarrassed at her little faux pas, and when I willed her to look up at me, it was my victory, and she graciously allowed me to punish her with my full attention”(Cofer, Judith) .

In Brent Staples’s article his tone is mellow and relaxed but you know inside that he is angry about the situations that happened like the dog being pulled out at him and the women running away from him. In both articles the authors talk about how they were stereotyped and how they reacted to it but to me only one was stereotyped the other author took all her situations as a stereotype even though they were mistakes. In the article “Just Walk On By”, Brent Staples was being stereotyped for the way he looks even though he acted the opposite of what he looks unlike in the article “The Myth Of The Latin Women” Judith Coffer thought she was being stereotyped meanwhile she was only mistaken as a waiter and a drunk guy sang to her. This is how these articles differ from one another.

Work Cited Page:

1) Cofer, Judith. ‘The Myth Of The Latin Women. “Patterns OfExposition.20thED.RobertA.Schwegler.Pearson: NewYork.2012.Print