Fear In Public Spaces

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Biases towards men of color portraying them as being more violent and threatening than other men are not a recent development in communities across America. A study conducted by Kristen Day, a former UC Irvine professor, entitled “Being feared: Masculinity and race in public space” begs the question: “How does being feared influence men’s behavior and perception of public space?” Prior to conducting this study, Day noted that women’s fear of men in public space has been well researched and documented by numerous studies. She also notes that there has been a profound lack of research that delves into the effect of this widespread fear on men, especially minority men, who are more frequently feared by Caucasian women in public spaces. This lack …show more content…
While this find is not surprising to many people, especially those affected by this fear, it is essential to have evidence of this in order to form a course of action to make public space a safer and easier place for all to be in. One of the strengths of this study was the diversity of the subjects involved, there were nearly all of the major ethnic groups in the United States. This diversity provided insight into how each group had experienced being feared and its individual impact on their behaviors and perception of public spaces. Although Day makes a strong argument about the effects of fear on men of color, the arguments would have been more convincing if Day had considered interviewing more men of color throughout her research. Day based her conclusions on the experiences of a very small number of men. While I believe that her findings would not change if she increased the number of men of color in the study, it is still imperative to interview more than a handful of men in order to conclude that their experiences are similar to millions of others. This idea can also be applied to the size of the general sample of the study. There were only 82 men interviewed, all were UC-Irvine students and no man was above the age of 36. Day provided no information about where these men were from other than the fact that they attended UC-Irvine. UC-Irvine is a prestigious university and 18.9% of students at UC Irvine are non-residents, meaning they are from outside the state of
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