Coates's Writing: The Normalization Of Our Body

One aspect of the reading that stuck with me was how the author talked about the normalization of fearing for his body. For most of us, the safety of our body is one of the undeniable constants in our lives. Sure, there may be the fear of illness or injury, but more often than not, those are hypotheticals, greatly overshadowed by immediate concerns, such as trying not to miss the bus or making sure you’ve done your homework. However, for Coates, his self-preservation is a constant priority, with so much of his conscious energy being channeled into street maps and handshakes, both necessary for his survival. It’s this normalizing, I fear, that is the problem within his quest for safety. He fantasizes about an entirely different world where “children

did not regularly fear for their bodies” (20). The idea of safety is so unfathomable to him that it must exist in another galaxy, “past the asteroid belt” (20). In the documentary we watched, I’m Not a Racist, Am I? They bring up the issue of normalizing the N-word, between both the black and white students. When a word or an idea that is clearly bad becomes normalized, it becomes dangerous. For when people no longer realize the gravity of the words on their tongues or the fear in their minds, they no longer feel the need to fight against these offenses and injustices.

Yet, in Coates case, there is little room to do anything but normalize the situation, because the opposite response, the one that just might make a change or bring attention, is one he couldn’t possibly do. The opposite of normalizing is outrage. It’s calling the cops and the courts and the news, it’s saying that this is not ok to be normal, that this fear is not a life, it is merely survival. But as a black man, where the police are against him and the courts will try to jail him, where “everyone has lost a child, somehow, […] to jail” (16), there is no room for outrage. This is where people get trapped, when from an outside perspective, one might ignorantly ask why they didn’t just get out of the situation. I’ve included an image of some of the many black people who were unarmed and shot by the police, some of which Coates mentions in the book, to show just how dangerous it can be to be a person of color in a white world, how the normalizing of fear and the inequities of the justice system just further perpetrate the injustice that so many are living

with.