Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s, is a letter to the author’s fifteen-year-old, African American son, Samori. The author uses his own experiences to explain how to live in a black body in America. This metaphor of the black body is used to show the relationship of American history and the America today. Coates says that blacks are faced with police brutality and mentions in the beginning of his work: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and others that have been the focus of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Coates explains that "racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscles, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth" (Coates, 2015). In American history, blacks were slaves, chain up and beaten like an animal; they were a piece of property to their owners. Later, we see the civil right movement were blacks are lynched, segregated, not treated like equals, and sprayed with high-power firehoses. The America, Coates knows, is the:
Pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sake of children; and
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various acts. (Coates, 2015) He warns his son that the America be has grown to know is only here to “deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies”, because we live in black bodies. The black bodies today are arrested, restrained, and shot for things like selling cigarettes or having a toy gun. Coates says that a black body must have a specific demeanor in public in order to protect the body. The "killing fields" of the present day ghettos, where black neighborhoods are infested with crime and poverty (Coates, 2015). The destroyers of the black bodies are white men who are not held liable; they are in the “police departments of your country” and “have been endowed with authority to destroy your body” (Coates, 2015). The white man’s personal life and background is not questioned. Instead, black body got what was warranted. It was the black bodies fault for having a toy gun, wearing hoodies, and selling cigarettes illegally. Coates writes his son as a warning, to protect his black body because if you, Sell cigarettes without the proper authority, your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed. Turn into a dark stairwell and your body can be destroyed. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pension. (Coates, 2015) The author uses the motif of armor as a way for the black body to clench control of their humanity.
The black body uses hoodies, guns, and behavior as a means to shield themselves, like armor. Coates uses the history of the destruction of the black body to explain to his son how this is what the black body has always had to endure. That the “destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy”; hence, the white police men are just mirroring their country’s heritage (Coates, 2015). The heritage that is entrenched in slavery, Jim Crow laws, police brutality and racial profiling is our, the black bodies, history; nonetheless, “the new people are not original in this”, but they do carry on their heritage (Coates,
2015). The white men are blind to the racial discriminations; they believe they are not racist. “America might justify itself” but the “black body's destruction must begin with his error, real or imagined” (Coates, 2015). The America Coates son has seen has included: Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help, that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store. And you have seen me in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect. And you have seen men in the same uniform pummel Marlene Pinnock, someone’s grandmother, on the side of a road. (Coates, 2015) Coates uses these example because they are at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement. These topic are very controversial; but they are the event the media blast at the community. It is what his son sees everyday on social media and the nightly news.
In the article, “A Letter My Son,” Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes both ethical and pathetic appeal to address his audience in a personable manner. The purpose of this article is to enlighten the audience, and in particular his son, on what it looks like, feels like, and means to be encompassed in his black body through a series of personal anecdotes and self-reflection on what it means to be black. In comparison, Coates goes a step further and analyzes how a black body moves and is perceived in a world that is centered on whiteness. This is established in the first half of the text when the author states that,“white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence,”
Ranikine’s addresses the light upon the failed judicial systems, micro aggressions, pain and agony faced by the black people, white privilege, and all the racial and institutional discrimination as well as the police brutality and injustice against the blacks; The book exposes that, even after the abolition of slavery, how the racism still existed and felt by the colored community in the form of recently emerged ‘Micro aggressions in this modern world’. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen explores the daily life situations between blacks and whites and reveals how little offensive denigrating conversations in the form of micro-aggressions were intentionally conveyed to the black people by the whites and how these racial comments fuel the frustrations and anger among the blacks. She gathered the various incidents, where the black people suffered this pain. This shows the white’s extraordinary powers to oppress the black community and the failure of the legal system Rankine also shares the horrible tragedy of Hurricane Katrina experienced by the black community, where they struggled for their survival before and post the hurricane catastrophes.
In this passage from the novel Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes meaningful, vivid imagery to not only stress the chasm between two dissonant American realities, but to also bolster his clarion for the American people to abolish the slavery of institutional or personal bias against any background. For example, Coates introduces his audience to the idea that the United States is a galaxy, and that the extremes of the "black" and "white" lifestyles in this galaxy are so severe that they can only know of each other through dispatch (Coates 20-21). Although Coates's language is straightforward, it nevertheless challenges his audience to reconsider a status quo that has maintained social division in an unwitting yet ignorant fashion.
For as long as I can remember, racial injustice has been the topic of discussion amongst the American nation. A nation commercializing itself as being free and having equality for all, however, one questions how this is true when every other day on the news we hear about the injustices and discriminations of one race over another. Eula Biss published an essay called “White Debt” which unveils her thoughts on discrimination and what she believes white Americans owe, the debt they owe, to a dark past that essentially provided what is out there today. Ta-Nehisi Coates published “Between the World and Me,” offering his perspective about “the Dream” that Americans want, the fear that he faced being black growing up and that black bodies are what
Racism is against equality, divides unions and promotes stratification. The differences that humans have created between race are some of the causes of America's division. From thousands of years ago, racial injustice has meant oppression for Hispanics, Asians, and blacks primarily. Although racism is not as visible nowadays, it still exists, but it is more subtle, which means that sometimes it is difficult to identify an action that has a discriminatory purpose. In the article “The Great White Way” by Debra J. Dickerson, she presents the impact that race has in America, and emphasizes the real purpose of having the “whiteness” status. Similarly, in the letter to his teenage son called “Between The World And Me” written by Ta-nehisi Coates,
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ novel Between the World and Me is the descendant of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. It is the next in the series of great novels that reflect on the narratives of black people in America. He explores the idea of the black body and how it is in danger. But, the most powerful message that Coates gives to the coming of age black youth is that despite knowing that danger, we must live life without fear.
The way Staples structures this essay emphasizes his awareness of the problem he faces. The essay’s framework consists mostly of Staples informing the reader of a scenario in which he was discriminated against and then following it with a discussion or elaboration on the situation. This follow-up information is often an expression stating comprehension of his problem and than subtitle, logical criticisms toward it. For example, Staples describes women “fearing the worst of him” on the streets of Brooklyn. He then proceeds to declare that he understands that “women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence.” Staples supports this statement with information about how he had witnessed gang violence in Chester, Pennsylvania and saw countless black youths locked away, however, Staples pronounces that this is no excuse for holding every young black man accountable, because he was an example of a black man who “grew up one of the good boys” coming “to doubt the virtues of intimidation early on.” This narrative structure highlights that Staples is not a hypocrite because he is not show ignorance toward the problem he is addressing unlik...
In his book “Between the World and Me”, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores what it means to be a black body living in the white world of the United States. Fashioned as a letter to his son, the book recounts Coates’ own experiences as a black man as well as his observations of the present and past treatment of the black body in the United States. Weaving together history, present, and personal, Coates ruminates about how to live in a black body in the United States. It is the wisdom that Coates finds within his own quest of self-discovery that Coates imparts to his son.
In the book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks on racial encounters developing while growing up and gives a message to his son about the unfair racial ways he had to overcome in his life. Through Coates racist and unfair lifestyle, he still made it to be a successful black man and wants his son to do the same. He writes this book to set up and prepare his child for his future in a country that judges by skin color. Coates is stuck to using the allegory of a disaster in the book while trying to explain the miserable results from our history of white supremacy. In parts of the story, he gives credit to the viewpoint of white
In the late 19th century, African-Americans suffered pain, frustration, and anguish caused by Caucasians, as well as from one another. For African-Americans to openly voice the violence they faced from Caucasians would result in a dangerous aftermath. Sometimes, African-Americans would hold their true feelings from each other because they didn't want to be judged or cause uproar. So they stayed silent letting all this happen to them, Paul Laurence Dunbar helps all those who lost their voice in the violence regain it, in the his poem “We Wear the Mask”.
In the awarding winning novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, Coates places blame for American gang violence on the power structure of the American government, and the damage subtle wordings and policy can inflict on black bodies.
Between the World and Me addresses Coates's 14-year-old son in a letter. This letter uses the feelings, mistreatment, and harsh realities associated with being an African American in the United States. Ta-Nehisi Coates relates to the history of violence against black people and the constant incarcerations of black youth. The tone of book is very serious while it’s open for interpretation. He touches on the physical, religious, and mental security of African Americans in their mistreatment in America. Ta-Nehisi Coates describes his background as physicality, chaos, and mentally abusive. He also puts emphasizes the daily religious concerns in the African American community within American. Ta-Nehisi Coates's believes that there is an absence
Intersectionality points to the fact that people are affected, often adversely, not only by their race, but also by their gender, sexual orientation, class, age, and global location. In the novel, “Between the World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates tells a story that demonstrates an instance of intersectionality in which a black boy raised in the ghettos of Baltimore experiences first hand how racial, class, and global location, intertwined, induce a of life hardship on the author, for social reasons other than just race alone. The book is formatted as a letter to the author’s fifteen year old son, Samori, in which the writer (and father) instills his wisdom on his son and, ultimately, outlines how to survive and live “in a black body in America.”
The most prominent demonstration of racism in America had to be the slave codes that were in place in all states where slavery was practiced. In “From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans,” John Hope Franklin went into detail on slave codes on pages 137-138, “…these laws varied from state to state, but most of them expressed the same viewpoint: that slaves are not people but property and that laws should…protect whites.” One law stated that those enslaved could not bear arms or strike a white person, even in self-defense, but when a white person killed a slave it wasn’t even considered murder. Africans had no standing in court, they couldn’t testify or be a party to a lawsuit and their marriages were not legally binding. Raping an African American woman by her master wasn’t considered a crime either. The slave codes were designed to oppress, persecute, and humiliate blacks by the hands of the whites. With the slave codes and the eventual Jim Crow laws and any oppressive laws and segregation practiced in America, the idea of blacks being inferior was stamped into the minds of any person living in the country. African Americans were treated as subpar, they weren’t considered human beings and to this day the same belief is held unto, although not nearly as outright or not as blatant as in the past centuries. Slavery in itself is a large example of how racism is and may always be embedded into American society; blacks had to fight to even be considered citizens, be able to vote, and be given basic human rights. Though many would deny the existence of racism, the sad truth is that racism may be an ever-present concept in American society.
Racism is the mistreatment of a group of people on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, place of origin, or ancestry. The term racism may also denote a blind and unreasoning hatred, envy, or prejudice (Dimensions of Racism). Racism has had a strong effect on society. Despite the many efforts made to alleviate racism, what is the future of African Americans' Racism's long history, important leaders, current status, and future outlook will be the main factors in determining how to combat racism. Racism is still present in many societies, although many people are doing their best to put an end to racism and its somewhat tragic ordeals.