A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and over simplified image or an idea about a person or thing. In “Black Men in Public Places” by Brent Staples and “The Myth of a Latin Woman” by Judith Ortiz Confer both authors were judged based on there races and not who they are. People classify others to keep themselves safe and this impact on how they are viewed. This classification made people think Staples was a thief, mugger or worse. In “Black Men in Public Places” Staples talks about his encounters where he was thought to be a thief or a thug. One night when he was walking he turned the corner and a white woman was in front of him “she cast back a worried glanced. To her, the youngish Blackman-----a broad six feet two 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 quick glimpses she picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest. Within seconds she disappeared into a cross street” (Staples, 404). When he was working as a journalist in Chicago he was mistaken as a burglar when he was running to the editor to turn in his article. “The office manager called security and with an ad hoc pose, pursed him through the labyrinthine halls nearly to my editor’s door. I had no way of proving who I was, I could only move briskly toward the company of someone who knew me” (Staples, 405). Another incident occurred when he went into a jewelry store, as soon as he walked in the “proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of the leash. She stood, the dog extended towards me, silent to my questions, her eyes bulging nearly out of her head. I took a cursory look around nodded, and bade her good night” (Staples, 405). Classifications like these are not the only kind of stereotyping, Confer was judged based on her Latin American origins. In “The Myth of the Latin Woman” Cofer also discusses her encounters with stereotyping. On her first formal school dance she remembers the boy who took her “leaning over to plant a sloppy, over-kiss painful on my mouth; when I didn’t respond with sufficient passion, he remarked respectfully “I thought you Latin girls were supposed to mature early”, as if I were expected to ripen like a vegetable, not just grow into a woman like the other girls” (Confer, 246). On vacation with her friend at a classy metropolitan hotel a man with his daughter stopped her in the hallways and “He began to shout-sing ditty to the tune of “La Bambi”---- except the lyrics were about a girl named whose exploits rhymed with her name and gonorrhea. The girl kept saying “Oh Daddy” she wanted me to laugh but me and my companion just stood there in silence” (Cofer, 246). One incident she never forgot was when she was mistaken for a waitress at her first public poetry reading. “At a restaurant in Miami an older woman motioned her to her table
