Analysis Of The Black Body By Ta-Nehisi Coates

THESIS

To be of African decent and living in America is a struggle as we have faced countless years of slavery, oppression, and discrimination due to the morals of what this country was built on. Ta-Nehisi Coates goes on to explain that one of the most underappreciated, controlled, and manipulated things in this country is the black body. In the blink of an eye, the existence of the black body can become vanished and those who possess this black body must understand that this is the way it is in America.

SUMMARY

In this book, Ta-Nehisi Coates details in a letter to his fifteen-year-old son the meaning of possessing a black body in America. In the form of an autobiography, Coates shares views of disappointment and anger over how the black

body has been treated and continues to be treated which originate from his upbringing, education at one of the most prestigious Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the country, and his life experiences. Coates’s letter was inspired after witnessing his son’s disappointment and heartache after the “justice” system’s failure to indict the police officers involved in the modern-day lynching of Michael Brown. Coates’s son, then only a preteen, learned the harsh reality of how priceless a black man’s life is in this country. Coates could not console his son, he could only let him feel the grief so that his son could understand that this is America, this is the black body, and that he must find a way to live within the all of it.
In addition, Coates’s views of America came long before the writing of this book. Coates was the son of a Black Panther, he grew up in the rough neighborhoods of Baltimore, and he experienced the unjust slaughter of a college friend by the name of Prince Jones in the hands of a police officer who went without consequences. All of this played a role in Coates’s views. Prince Jones who was the son of a doctor, raised in a privileged household, went to college, and did all things “right” could not even escape the realities of possessing the black body. During many years, Coates learned that through elements like systematic racism to the violence in our inner-city neighborhoods, the black body will constantly be at risk of harm or elimination.
ANALYSIS
Overall, I find this book to be very captivating. Similar to Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s book, I feel the passion of the author. By Coates telling his story through a letter, we get a feel his experiences and thoughts as we read.
Racism plays a major role in this book.

Race is the son of racism, as race was derived from the act of bigotry and racism. Race has no biological make-up and there are no genes that are race specific. Race is primarily based off of phenotype. Race is a social construct, created to define and justify racism. Coates details series of events over hundreds of years which proves race to be created to support racism. Dating years back to slavery, white Europeans brought Africans over to a land which they had already stolen and in their greed for wealth, they forced those Africans into enslavement. Race was determined as a way to establish superiority over another group. Unfortunately, this mindset of different races has stuck and become the norm for countless years. Coates explains the theory of race being socially constructed by telling about the murder of his dear college friend Prince Jones, who was unjustly killed by a police officer. This police officer happened to be black, yet Coates still considers the murder of Prince Jones to be an act of racism. Coates does not specifically blame the murder on the police officer who pulled the trigger, but on the racism that this country has established against black people. America is built on systematic racism, it was set up to work against black people through criminalizing us, incarcerating us in mass numbers, and murdering us. The country’s government, justice, and social systems were not designed with black people’s best interest in mind. It was built upon not even considering us to be human beings and this, Coates

understands.
Furthermore, the black body is a major part in this book. The black body is something that every African American has. The black body is so beautiful, elegant, diverse, and powerful, yet it is so vulnerable. It is one of the most disrespected, hated, manipulated, and controlled things by this country. The progression of this country was built by the hands and on the backs of the black body, yet those of us who possess the black body have nothing to show for it today. Through the racist ways of America to the violence all over the inner cities, the black body can be here and then gone in an instant. The black body is always in constant threat of so easily becoming no more, this is what it is like to be black in America. Coates writes to his son that whether we accept it, we must understand that this is the fact of the matter and that we must live the best we can, while we still can. To describe how easily one could lose the black body, Coates recounts a day back in his childhood when his black body was almost taken away. Standing on the corner, in his Baltimore inner city neighborhood, Coates stared at the barrel of a gun pointed directly at him. One of the neighborhood trouble makers pulled a gun out on Coates for no apparent reason at all. Had that guy decided to pull that trigger, Coates’s black body could have so easily perished forever. We see this in our country all too often. In addition to the destruction of our black bodies that we face from America itself, we also face losing our black bodies to violence in our own neighborhoods. These are the neighborhoods that was created by the government through racist housing segregation as they forced black people into the ghettos. The history of beatdowns to the black body ultimately is a product of America’s racism. It is unfortunate, but the reality of the black body is one that cannot be escaped.