Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me discusses the issues black people have to deal with in America on a daily basis by expressing his point of view to his son in a letter. He begins by explaining his years when he was just a kid and already seeing the fear in his black neighborhood, by the way they talked, walked, and by the way the parents beat their children. As he grows up he tries to look for an outlet, look for people that understand his situation, and that is when he starts to attend Howard University, where his mind began to open. But even after he left Howard University, he continued to have this fear for world until one day his good friend Prince Jones was robbed of his body by a white officer, and instead that fear turned …show more content…
into anger. With fear and anger combined and then one day discovering he was bringing a child into this world he knew now he had a bigger role to play in this world and he knew he was not just looking out for himself anymore.
One of the main fears that was presented throughout the book was how the people had to worry about the safety of their black bodies. But by becoming aware of themselves, of their governemnt, and history, eventually came as sense of freedom. Unfortunately, there is an overwhelming fear they get once their black body leaves their home, because they know that their safety is at a higher risk once they step out into the world. Ta-Nehisi Coates states in his letter to his son how growing up in an all black community he could feel the undeniable fear of every black person, that was how powerful it was. He saw it in the way the men and women dressed and stood on the corners with their fancy puff coates and big shiny jewelry. Even in the streets, they made up their own rules and laws they needed to abide by because …show more content…
if not they become the next victim. Also by the music that they would play because the music spoke for them. The fear was everywhere and there was no way to avoid it but to only be consumed by it. “My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. Everyone had lost a child, somehow, to the streets, to jail, to drugs, to guns” (15-16). As a non-white parent, there's always this fear and anxiety that goes through their minds as soon as their child leaves their home. They know what the world is like and they know they can not protect them, only hope and pray that they survive on their own. That is why they love harder and become violent towards their own. They know how it feels to loose someone in the streets and they're tired of it, so besides fear they become angry and frustrated. When that happens, they react with violence because that's how they were taught to listen and get a point across. And they might not like it, but that fear and anxiety ends up controlling their behavior and they do not know what else to do. Although violence was everywhere, for some people instead of conforming, they tried to find a way out of the boundaries that have been set for them.
One way was simply by gaining knowledge and gaining understanding through books, where some have found their way out of the darkness. Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses how he has entered a new chapter in his life in where Howard University had become a home for him. He refers to his school as The Mecca, it was a place where he felt for once he belonged and connected with other people who also had come from a place not like The Dream. After learning about Malcolm X and being inspired by him, he began to educate himself and get a better understanding of the world, instead not be bound by ignorance. “The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself” (48). This is important because many people look for an escape from their harsh reality but for many, some do not even make it past high school and end up going back to the streets. It's so easy for people to take the easy way out and stay stuck than trying to rise above all the chaos going on around them, especially if everyone is so brainwashed it becomes a lot harder to break free. They are told to survive but not how to survive, that
they need to figure it out on their own. But those who are fortunate make it out, turn to self knowledge and start educating themselves because what they know what they teach at school is only feeding them poison. Being able to feel and think for themselves was a sense of freedom for them because they were breaking through what is not normal for them. When fear is felt not only in one’s own world, but to continue to feel that fear in another country, shows how powerful fear can be and how it affect someone’s mind and body. Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks about his fear when he went to visit another country for the first time. He started to realize how damaged and wounded he has become over his years as a black man. He has let himself be so consumed by this fear that he was passing it on to his son and that is exactly what he did not want, he wanted him to break those chains and break away from that fear. He wants to show his son he does not have to be afraid to be himself. “And watching him walk away, I felt like that I had missed part of the experience because of my eyes, because my eyes were made in Baltimore, because my eyes were blindfolded by fear. What I wanted was to put as much distance between you and that blinding fear as possible” (126). As a black body living in a world where doing basic daily activities such as going to the store to buy food already causes fear and anxiety, just imagine going to a new country for the first time. As soon as they arrive into a new environment, they become extra precautious because they do not know the people or their world. Having to experience a different culture and lifestyle opens people's minds, in various way, but in this circumstance, ones realization is when they can not even enjoy their vacation because of having to feel the same way back home. They have to protect their bodies because they do not know these people. It's a harsh reality that there fear is way too deep and wounded that in way there is no escaping it because they got comfortable with the uncomfortable. Another form of resistance begins once one has become self aware and aware of the history of their government and culture because one can begin to break free of that cycle of fear and head towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Ta-Nehisi Coates explains the time he took his son to work, to do a report on a mother who lost his son because he refused to turn down his music. He wanted to show his son this because Coates father did the same to him, but mostly to show his son this reality they live in. To not hide the truth but to learn from it and understand it so he can do better than him. He wants him to understand he can be himself without having to fear that his body can be taken for being himself and apologizes for not showing him better. “Do not drink from poison. The same hands that drew red lines around the life of Prince jones drew red lines around the ghetto. I did not want to raise you in fear or false memory. I did not want you forced to mask your joys and bind your eyes. What I wanted for you was to grow into consciousness. I resolved to hide nothing from you” (111). It's hard for a parent to realize how their actions and behavior have affected their child in a negative way and feel a sense of regret. In situations like these, as a parent trying to break the cycle of telling their child what to do or how to act in public because of their color of their skin, is not easy because they have become so accustomed to doing so. But it is not impossible because once the parent becomes conscious of their actions they are able to teach them what one wished they were taught and show them better. Instead of hiding the truth, explain it to them and let them learn from their mistakes and be and do better. That's what any good parent wants is to see their child be a better person and go out into the world fearlessly. Fear is a mental struggle that destroys people's future and takes over their lives. What fear does is it stops a person from reaching their full potential and is like a virus But there are those few individuals that feel the fear but they do something about it and they don’t let it control them. Resisting is a form of strength and integrity when the whole world expects someone to conform and not break through their chains they been locked up in. One of many fears that was presented was the fear of their black bodies being taken by the world. But instead of continuously living in this fear some have turned to consciousness, becoming aware of themselves and their history and using that to navigate themselves through the world.
At the beginning of the book, Coates wrote about how growing up in a community that was hostile against African Americans was like. “The streets transform every ordinary day into a series of trick questions, and every incorrect answer risks a beat-down, a shooting, or a pregnancy. No one survives unscathed. And yet the heat that springs from the constant danger, from a lifestyle of near-death experience, is thrilling.” Coates was always “on guard” as a kid, for he feared that if he spoke or even have the slightest chance of expressing the feeling of dissatisfaction both the streets and the police will seek trouble. There were too many examples at that time that showed Coates physical harm
The novel covered so much that high school history textbooks never went into why America has never fully recovered from slavery and why systems of oppression still exists. After reading this novel, I understand why African Americans are still racially profiled and face prejudice that does not compare to any race living in America. The novel left a mixture of frustration and anger because it is difficult to comprehend how heartless people can be. This book has increased my interests in politics as well and increased my interest to care about what will affect my generation around the world. Even today, inmates in Texas prisons are still forced to work without compensation because peonage is only illegal for convicts. Blackmon successfully emerged the audience in the book by sharing what the book will be like in the introduction. It was a strange method since most would have expected for this novel to be a narrative, but nevertheless, the topic of post Civil War slavery has never been discussed before. The false façade of America being the land of the free and not confronting their errors is what leads to the American people to question their integrity of their own
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.
...eir lifehave felt and seen themselves as just that. That’s why as the author grew up in his southerncommunity, which use to in slave the Black’s “Separate Pasts” helps you see a different waywithout using the sense I violence but using words to promote change in one’s mind set. Hedescribed the tension between both communities very well. The way the book was writing in firstperson really helped readers see that these thoughts , and worries and compassion was really felttowards this situation that was going on at the time with different societies. The fact that theMcLaurin was a white person changed the views, that yeah he was considered a superior beingbut to him he saw it different he used words to try to change his peers views and traditionalways. McLaurin try to remove the concept of fear so that both communities could see them selfas people and as equal races.
...olitical and judicial rights of free blacks, their social freedoms, opportunities for jobs and education, and religious freedom. Blacks who escaped enslavement, didn’t all go on to have perfect lives in the north. They still had to go through hardships and endure many burdens even though they were free. The reason it is important to learn about the life of free blacks in the north is that even though they were free, life wasn’t all that easy for them. This is important to learn because it clears up misconceptions that the north was a complete safe haven for slaves. They were free, but were not treated as equal beings and it was still hard for them. These things are important today because we see how much our country has changed. We need to know this because we can see how much we've changed for the better and use that as motivation to keep improving into the future.
In her work, “This is Our World,” Dorothy Allison shares her perspective of how she views the world as we know it. She has a very vivid past with searing memories of her childhood. She lives her life – her reality – because of the past, despite how much she wishes it never happened. She finds little restitution in her writings, but she continues with them to “provoke more questions” (Allison 158) and makes the readers “think about what [they] rarely want to think about at all” (158).
In the next few chapters she discusses how they were brought up to fear white people. The children in her family were always told that black people who resembled white people would live better in the world. Through her childhood she would learn that some of the benefits or being light in skin would be given to her.
Her race wants him to win and overcome the pain and sufferance they had till then. The description of the men staying away from the walls, and the women clenching onto their babies, showed fear. No one could breathe, or blink as it was the moment of suspense which could go in either way was a turning point where black people felt it was all over.
In the novel there were many events that showed how the African Americans were in this time period. One of them being the court case of Tom Robinson, who was put under arrest for raping a white girl. Even though the white girl was the one coming on to him this resulted in her father walking in on them and hitting his daughter. Know this should have ended with the girl getting in trouble, but that was not the case in this time period it was a white man word versus a black man word and in this time a black man’s word was worth less than a dime. This was also shared in some level in the poem, this mask that it says African Americans had to wear to hide there pain and sorrow is the same thing that Tom Robinson had to do when facing life in jail, blacks had no choice they knew their fate in the hands of the
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
During the period after the emancipation many African Americans are hoping for a better future with no one as their master but themselves, however, according to the documentary their dream is still crushed since even after liberation, as a result of the bad laws from the federal government their lives were filled with forced labor, torture and brutality, poverty and poor living conditions. All this is shown in film.
The book has also been set in the pre-Civil era, a time when there were massive migrations to the west. The story uses vivid description that enhances the readers understanding and makes it interesting. The plot of the story is classic and shows the issue that were facing the black people at those times (Bunkley, 26). The plot is well designed, starting with the main protagonist facing oppression and going through tough times in her life. The story develops, demonstrating their endurance and their transformation as they get accustomed to the ways of the new lands. The book has great characterization with the main protagonist contrasting sharply with the master. This is very significant in bringing out the theme.
Fear grips all black societies and is widespread not only for black people but also white people. An unborn child will inherit this fear and will be deprived of loving and relishing his country because the greater he loves his country the greater will be his pain. Paton shows us this throughout this book but at the same time he also offers deliverance from this pain. This, I believe is the greater purpose of this book.
He tells of the fear his parents instilled in him all throughout his book Between the World and Me. With moments like “My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger”, it 's hard to not feel sorry for what Coates had to endure. While many black people would see nothing wrong with this, finding it a normal form of psychical discipline, this happens to be a prime example of the fine line that is often crossed in many black households. The use of objects in order to reinforce good behavior, is in no way psychical discipline and furthermore happens to fall under the category of abuse. Crossing the line just like in the Brittney Cooper article that recounted the instance of Adrian Peterson and his 4 year old child. The parallel between the moments accounted in Coates’ and Coopers’ pieces is uncanny because the same method of discipline was used in both and Adrian Peterson was found guilty of reckless assault. While Ta-Nehisi Coates’ parents were not found guilty by a court of law, one can conclude that their methods of discipline do not fit the qualifications of physical discipline either. The mixture of love and discipline to produce tough love is very difficult to argue against because the unconditional desire for the child
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the conflict between the streets and the school system that young black Americans had to deal with. Coates describes how black people have to survive in their respective conditions in America before they ever even have the chance to escape the streets. The core principle of the culture of black Americans growing up in cities is primarily just to secure their body, and survive. Coates further goes on to describe the everyday conditions of the streets. He writes that no one survives unscathed. Any given day can essentially turn into a near death experience, and some people become addicted to this “thrill.” These were the people who turned their fear into aggression, and were the ones that were the threat to others.