Unprepared

Jerald Walker is a credible author who has been published many times, won awards, been a professor, and co-founded a literary journal called The Bridge.  Walker is an African American who grew up in Chicago and was once robbed.  He believes deeply in equality.  In Unprepared, Walker tries to show everyone, especially whites, that both black and whites commit horrendous crimes and that they are all equal.  His purpose is accomplished by using in media res, satire, logos, and analogies.  In the story, Walker ends up getting offered a ride to work by a stranger after he forgets his umbrella earlier in the morning.  It was revealed through a flashback that Walker had been robbed before so was wary of accepting the ride, but he did.  The stranger made Walker uncomfortable by showing his attraction toward him, but Walker felt that his body was safe.  At the same time in Atlanta, there had been a series of murders that spanned two years, from 1979-1981, in which Walker watched the trial.  The trial angered the black community, including Walker, because the convicted was black.  Walker wrote, “Sure, we had some rotten apples amount us, your garden variety of thugs, burglars, prostitutes, gangbangers, and dope dealers.  We even had middle-age men in cars who’d solicit sex from teenaged boys, but the torturing and execution of people for sport or at the behest of inner voices, that pathological shit, was the strict domain of white folks” (215-216).  Walker satirizes both blacks and whites to prove that whites are just as bad as blacks.  He even gives examples of white murderers who were clearly psychotic.  After hearing of a murder case involving a crazy black man, Walker wrote, “This was just a man-as vile and deranged as any white counterpart who had preceded him or who would follow.  And he, like Wayne Williams, and like Gein, Bundy, Mugett, and the others, belonged to us all” (217).  He uses logic to prove that both races are equal and that blacks are not the stereotype they are painted after he gets out of the car safely.     

Racism Still Exists

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