An Analysis Of Ta-Nehisi Coates 'Between The World And Me'

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is a visceral rumination on race in America. This work emulates James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, as Coates dwells on the realities of black life in America, life teeming with feelings of fear and disembodiment resulting from racism, in the form of a letter addressed to his son,. This work contributes a new perspective to the extensive discussion on black American life; instead of providing an account of racial injustice to emphasize the necessity for revolutionary action, Coates simply expresses his frustration by incessantly attacking the very core of the issue of racism, the country’s fascination fixation on the perfect American Dream. Coates does not propose any route to alter the current conditions

of black American life because he is intent on simply refocusing the nation’s attention on the reality that racism is embedded in American society, a product of the fragile delusions of white supremacists holding onto the American Dream.
Coates does not place the blame of racism and racial injustice, perpetuating the pervading fear in black lives, on xenophobic whites, but rather on the “country lost in the Dream” (Coates 12).

While discussing the murder of Prince, Coates says that his death was not caused by a single officer but by “his country and all the fear that have marked it from birth,” the fear of falling out of the false reality posed by the American Dream (78). Coates connects this tragic event and racial injustice to the futile attempts of those “people who believe they are white” to hold onto the delusions of equality promised by the American Dream (6). Coates states the very foundation of the American dream is that “its adherents must not just believe in it but that it is just, believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works (98). An honest look at American history, the history of a nation built upon the work of slaves, instantaneously disavows the American Dream; slavery cannot be considered a good act or “a well-considered act of conformity with natural law” unless whites create the illusion of superiority (98). “Race is the child of racism, not the father” since the whites needed to create a separation between the blacks and the whites, one they believed was a natural distinction, in order to justify and bury the horrors of slaver, to prevent themselves from tumbling “out of the beautiful Dream;” they (7;

98).
Fear of losing the American Dream, of plummeting from the delusion of superiority, creates a system and a country that allows for and perpetuates racism (Coates 18; Coates 11).

Those who believed themselves white were desperately attempting to hold onto a false reality by exerting power of domination over blacks, creating a society in which “destroying the black body was permissible” and went unpunished (112). The desire to continue living in the fantasy of the American Dream plagues the entirety of the nation, polluting the perspectives of both whites and blacks; whites continue to attempt to prove the truth of this dream while blacks try to achieve this dream. With so many civil rights activists, and slight progress with racial issues, it is simple not to challenge the illusion of the American Dream but to believe that reaching this dream of equality is possible. Coates states that this creates a disembodiment for blacks, since and intentional distortion since the setup of the American Dream is that whites are superior to blacks; the American Dream only allows for blacks to be the “essential below” of American society (114; 106). Coates focuses on highlighting this bleak reality of American life, the truth that discredits the American Dream, to ensure that his son and all blacks never “willingly hand over our own bodies or the bodies of our friends” over to racial injustice by falling prey to the illusion of the American Dream

(69).
Coates is extremely harsh and blunt in his portrayal of the reality of black life in America. He provides an honest look at the racial injustices he experienced in his own life, the racial injustices that he sees as an inherent, inescapable product and element of American life. Coates does not intend for this letter instill a hope of the future, a hope that for equality, as he even informs his son that “the birth of a better world is not ultimately up to you” and that all he can do is to “struggle for wisdom [...] but do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them [...] but do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand the field of their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all” (Coates 71; Coates 151). It may not be the responsibility of any black person to mend the wrongs of the whites, Coates is right that the fault of racism rests with the whites who created the distinctions of race for purposes of feeling superior by dominating and controlling blacks by placing them into a group; however, Coates also points out that the Dreamers will never come into conscious because they will have to face the harsh facts of reality, their horrible treatment of other humans throughout the history of America, while also relinquishing their position of power. Coates only exposes the truth of American life, the dangers posed by the illusion of the American Dream and the rejection of reality, and he refrains from surmising any solution or any potential of a hopeful future; Coates simply begins anew the process of finding some solution, confronting and exposing the issue.