Analysis Of Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

The relation between the political and the personal - between the practice of redlining and the physical and psychological effect of living in racially segregated communities - constitutes Ta-Nehisi Coates’ contribution to modern political writing. Between the World and Me was written in 2015 by award winning essayist, journalist,and writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates in form as a letter to his son. The book is focused on the problem of racial injustice, which is presented in his point-of-view in  form of memories ranging from when his child living in a traditionally black community, to his experiences as a youth, and finally present day America (2015). By challenging institutions like the government, police and schools, Coates shreds the facade of the American dream, and destroys the uninvestigated truism of the American charade of innocence and equality through emotional, logical, poignant, and plausible appeals, in order to teach the reader about racial racial injustice. Coates, through his book, creates a guide to racial segregation in America.  
                        Between the world and me is an arrow of awakening aimed at  anyone who is deluded  by the illusion of “the American dream.” This dream, according to coates “is perfect houses with nice lawns. ...The Dream smells like peppermint but

tastes like strawberry shortcake… the dream  rests on our backs. The bedding made from our bodies” (11). Coates asserts that Americans are fooled by “The Dream,” his term for the phantasms of suburban euphoria and domestic repose, which is merely a mirage used to obscure the racist cruelty that still succor America, and that they can only be discourteously awakened. They must be made aware that America thrived on the ideas and benefits of a white supremacy that remains deeply rooted in its culture and institutions. Coates also communicates the struggle and fear that is consistent with growing up as a black man in America as well as addresses the issue of social injustice in America.
              There are several events that occur over a span of several years which may have influenced Coates to produce this great work of literature. The most important of these events being the death of Prince Jones, a friend of the writer who was killed by the Maryland police on his way to visit his fiance. In a society that promised to reward talent and effort, he and his family had done more than hold up their side of the bargain. His mother, Mabel Jones, was raised poor managed to make a good life for she and her son through hard work. Her son, Prince—a Howard graduate, a man of faith—did his part, too. But none of that was enough to protect him. The killing of Prince Jones, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride, and Trayvon Martin symbolize Coates fears because he realizes that no black man is immune from the violent caprice of the police; any black man’s body can be destroyed at any time, anywhere. It is a crushing realization and one that is echoed in Samori’s (Coates son) shock and dawning comprehension that he could also be Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin.
                    By constructing Between the World and Me as a letter to his 15-year-old son, Samori, Coates can amalgamate anecdote and examination, memoir and history, which provides him a larger canvas  to convey the psychological intricacy of black life. It is a broader rumination about the experience of growing up black in America. Although the book is structured as a letter to his son, the targeted audience is anyone who does not understand what it means to be black in America. The book is written in the form of a letter to a black teenage boy (Coate’s 15-year-old son) who is trying to make sense of the flagrant racial injustice and come to grips with his place in a society that deprives him of the freedoms that so many others take for granted. This boy is everyone who has ever experienced racism, every man/woman/transgender who hangs on to the lie of “the American dream,” every child who is struggling with understanding the social injustice that is paramount in this present day, and anyone who weeps for the ignorance and actions of “those who believe themselves to be white” (7). Coates makes the book a non-fiction representation of his life, so his audience knows that he can relate to the notion of social injustice that the book is centered on. He also uses a sad and unapologetically angry tone in the book to enable the reader truly understand the situation he describes.
                 By questioning police brutality, Coates makes a logical argument that the body of a body is never safe, and their life can easily be taken away by the same people who are sworn to protect them. These destroyers are not held accountable and police departments seemingly have power to destroy black bodies. This realisation leads him to raise a very evocative question, “the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream” (Coates 12). Coates registered that if the police could kill black people like Prince Jones, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown for committing a little or no crime, who’s to say it cannot happen to he or his son. This reasoning proves to be effective for his argument because it shows how the actions of the police are destroying people’s lives and creating fear in others. Coates also mentions that he too “a survey of Europe post-1800,” but this is not effective to his argument because it signifies an opposition to his beliefs (55). The results of the survey proved that he was not actually as special as he thought, because there were other people - who were not black by heritage - who were suffering the same fate as blacks.
              Coates also uses emotional appeals to coax the reader to view his argument through impassioned lens. He uses some heart-wrenching cases of police brutality entice his reader to buy into his argument. By mentioning these occurrences, he is able to relate them with his theory of social injustice by elucidating that the officers involved in these heinous acts were not penalized for their actions. When Coates speaks of the police brutality that led to the deaths of certain people, like Prince Jones, mentioned in the book, does not write that the police killed these people, instead he writes that they destroyed their bodies. This is a symbol of Coates rebellion, not only is he trying to make his audience feel the force of these deaths twice over, he is also defying the notion of death by implying that even if these law enforcement officers could kill their bodies, they cannot kill their souls.
                   The interview of Prince Jones mother is sentimentally disturbing because it evokes the emotions of the readers when Coates fills the atmosphere of the book with the crushing pain of a mother who has lost her  precious child that she worked hard to raise. The story of Mabel Jones and its disposition at the end of the text exemplifies Coates’s mindset by portraying a black woman who had done everything “right” for her child but saw him ruthlessly massacred despite these advantages that she thought she had achieve for him. This is an example of the fear Coates explained that every black parent has - that the street would claim their children.. There will always be something “between” a black person and the world.
                     The most important appeal to credibility is that he (Coates) was present for most of the events in the book. Although he needed more hard evidence to boost his reliability and cogency, the fact that the text is about his real life experiences makes his argument plausible. Readers are able to imagine the scenario depicted in the book as real life occurrences seen through Coates eyes. He is able to make the argument of racial and social inequity because he has had a first-hand experience, but although this makes his argument more believable, it should not be the only criteria for credibility. To some, the fact that he has experienced all these incidents may be the only bases for credibility, but for others, he loses some credibility because the human memory is not perfect so, he could be omitting or exaggerating a piece of information. Therefore, the credibility of the author is based on how much the reader trusts his reminiscing.
                 A major flaw of Coates argument is that it does not acknowledge opposing viewpoints.

Throughout the book, white people are classified as racist, but there is a problem with this generalization because Coates assumes that all white people are the same, he does not recognize that not all of them conform to the social standards. Coates portrayed all white people as protagonists in his book by referring to them as “those who believe themselves to be white.” He implies that all white people exist on a spectrum that extends from cordial neglect on one end to  brutal heartless murderer on the other, therefore, all white people are guilty on different

levels.    
                   Although the author makes an effective argument, he does not provide a solution for the myriad of problems highlighted. He does not contribute any ideas on how to resolve the problems he accentuated, and this creates a sense of hopelessness. Racial injustice and the American Dream do not seem to be going away anytime soon. Coates belabors the evident permanence of racial injustice in America, the inanity of believing that one person can make a change, and the dangers of believing in the American Dream. The inability of Coates to provide any solutions implies that black people will continue to suffer from inequality and injustice for a very long time, therefore, optimism and hope of change are conspicuously absent. In the beginning of his book, when he was the reporter asked him about hope, he wrote that he only felt failure. In Between the World and Me, Coates repeatedly writes about defeat: the failure of efforts to change the structural inequalities that sustain institutionalized racialism. He writes about the vanity of accosting the psychology that declines to recognize that inequity exists.