first victim was a woman—White, well dressed, probably in her early 20s. I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago. As I swung onto the avenue behind her . . . she cast back a worried glance. To her, the youngish black man—broad, 6 feet 2 inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket—seemed menacingly close. After a few more glimpses, she picked up her pace and was running in earnest. Within seconds, she disappeared into a cross street.
That was more than a decade ago. I was 22 years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago. It was in the echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into. . . . It was clear that she thought herself the quarry of a mugger, a rapist, or worse. Suffering a bout of insomnia, however, I was stalking sleep, not defenseless wayfarers. . . . I was surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once. Her flight . . . made it clear that I was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area from the surrounding ghetto. . . . And I soon gathered that being perceived as dangerous is a hazard in itself. I only needed to make an errant move after being pulled over by a policeman. Where fear and weapons meet—and they often do in urban America—there is always the possibility of death.
In that first year, my first away from my hometown, I was to become thoroughly familiar with the language of fear. At dark, shadowy intersections, I could cross in front of a car stopped at a traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver—Black, White, male, or female—hammering down the door locks. On less traveled streets after dark, I grew accustomed to but never comfortable with people crossing to the other side of the street rather than pass me.
After dark, on the warrenlike streets of Brooklyn where I live, I often see women who fear the worst from me. They seem to have set their faces on neutral, and with their purse straps strung across their chests bandolier-style, they forge ahead as though bracing themselves against being tackled. I understand, of course, that . . . 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.
Over the years, I learned to smother the rage I felt at so often being taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led to madness. I now take precautions to make myself less threatening. I move about with care, particularly late in the evening. . . . And on late-evening constitutionals, I employ what has proved to be excellent tension-reducing measures: I whistle melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers. Even steely New Yorkers hunching toward nighttime destinations seem to relax, and occasionally they even join in the tune. Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn’t be warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It is my equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country.
Source: Staples (2001). Reprinted with permission from Brent Staples.
Thinking Sociologically
Brent Staples goes out of his way to reassure others that he is harmless. How might one’s sense of self be influenced by being perceived as dangerous and untrustworthy? How might such stereotypes affect one’s physical and mental well-being?
Mead ([1934] 1962) also argued that role-taking is possible because humans have a unique ability to use and respond to symbols. Symbols, first described in Chapter 2, are actions or objects that represent something else and therefore have meaning beyond their own existence. Language and gestures are examples, for they carry specific meaning for members of a culture. Symbols such as language allow us to give names to objects in the environment and to infuse those objects with meanings. Once the person learns to symbolically recognize objects in the environment, the self can be seen as one of those objects. This starts with possessing a name that allows us to see our self as separate from other objects. If we said the name LeBron James, most people would immediately think of the same person: an extraordinary athlete, now with the Los Angeles Lakers, who largely turned around the fortunes of the Miami Heat professional basketball team to win back-to-back NBA championships and brought Cleveland, in 2016, their first-ever NBA championship.
In the process of symbolic interaction, we take the actions of others and ourselves into account. We may blame, encourage, praise, punish, or reward ourselves. An example would be a basketball player missing the basket because the shot was poorly executed and thinking, What did I do to miss that shot? I’m better than that ! Reflexive behavior, being able to look at oneself and one’s behaviors as though from the outside looking in, includes the simple act of taking mental notes or mentally talking to one’s self.
Parts of the Self
The self is composed of two distinct but closely related parts according to the symbolic interaction perspective—dynamic parts in interplay with one another (Mead [1934] 1962). The most basic element of the self is what symbolic interactionist George Herbert Mead refers to as the I, the spontaneous, unpredictable, impulsive, and largely unorganized aspect of the self. The I initiates behavior without considering the possible social consequences. We can see this at work in the “I want it now” behavior of a baby or a toddler. Cookie Monster, on the children’s television program Sesame Street, illustrates the I in every child, gobbling cookies at every chance and insisting on more now.
The I continues as part of the self throughout life but is controlled or tempered by the social expectations that surround individuals. In developmental stages from early childhood on, humans become increasingly influenced by interactions with others who instill society’s rules. Children develop the ability to see their self as others see them (role-taking), allowing them to critique the behavior initiated by the I. Mead called this reflective capacity of the self the Me. The Me is the part of the self that has learned the rules of society through interaction and role-taking, and it controls the I and its desires. Just as the I initiates the act, the Me gives direction to the act. In a sense, the Me channels the impulsive I in an acceptable manner according to societal rules and restraints yet meets the needs of the I as best it can. When we stop ourselves just before saying something and think to ourselves, I’d better not say that, it is our Me monitoring and controlling the I. Notice that the Me requires the ability to take the role of the other, to anticipate the other’s reaction.
Thinking Sociologically
For college students there are many temptations that tantalize and lure the I. What are some of these temptations, and how does the Me control them (or not)?
Stages in the Development of the Self
The process of developing a social self occurs gradually and in stages from birth to death. Mead identified three critical stages—(1) the imitation stage, (2) the play stage, and (3) the game stage—each of which requires the uniquely human ability to engage in role-taking (Mead [1934] 1962).
In the imitation stage, children under 3 years old prepare for role-taking by observing others and imitating their behaviors, sounds, and gestures. The play stage involves a child, usually from 3 to 5, being able to see things (role-take) from the perspective of one person at a time: simple role-taking or play-acting. Listen to children who are 3 to 5 years old play together. You will notice that they spend most of their time telling each other what to do. One of them will say something like, “You be the mommy, and José can be the daddy, and Zoe, you be the dog. Now you say, ‘Good
