Brent Staples

Brent Staples (born 1951) is an American author and member of the editorial board of The New York Times, where he specializes in coverage of education, criminal justice and economics. His books include An American Love Story and Parallel Time: Growing up In Black and White. He writes about political, social and cultural issues, including race and the state of the American school system.

His memoir Parallel Time was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing and is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. His family had no money for tuition; his grades were average, and he had taken only a few high-level academic courses in high school. The expectation was that he would go straight to work, most likely at one of the shipyards in Chester.

He was convinced to attend Widener University (then known as Penn Morton College) by the only African American professor at the school as part of a program named Project Prepare. He graduated from Widener University with a B.A. degree in 1973. He was awarded two doctoral fellowships from the Danforth Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Staples received a master's degree in psychology in 1976 and a Ph.D. in the discipline in 1982 from the University of Chicago.

In 1983, his younger brother, Blake, a cocaine dealer, was murdered by a client, which forced Staples to reconsider his own success and his inability to stop his brother's life choices.

Career Staples taught psychology at Widener University and various institutions in Chicago from 1977 to 1981, but began to pursue a separate career track in journalism. In 1983, he was hired as a science writer by the Chicago Sun-Times. His essay "Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space", published in Ms. Magazine in 1986, was so influential that it soon became required reading in numerous college courses. Staples reflected: "Being Black enriches my experience; it doesn't define me .... I'm writing about universal themes – family and leaving home and developing your own identity – which all Americans can enjoy and understand." As a writer, he works to correct the myth that the American "Black experience" is defined only by poverty, violence, and crime. His editorials highlighted the history of racism in the United States and were described by the Pulitzer Prize committee as being "written with extraordinary moral clarity".