Ta-nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me is a powerful piece of literature that highlights both the beauty and trauma of the black life in America. Coates discusses the struggles he endured while growing up in poverty as well as his enlightening experience at Howard University. By showing both the positive and negative experiences of a black man in America, Coates provides an intriguing perspective on the racial disparities in the U.S. as well as the influence of an institution like Howard University. Coates discusses his upbringing in Baltimore, Maryland and how it brought him to the realization that his life was extremely invaluable to others. Growing up in the inner city, Coates feared for his life every time he stepped out of the house. He recalls a time when he was walking down the street in his neighborhood when a stranger aimed a gun at him for no apparent reason. When that happened, he realized how quickly his life could be taken from him and compared that experience to …show more content…
the life of suburban, white kids who don’t have to worry about such dangerous situations. I identified with Coates’ experience not because I grew up in the inner city, I didn’t, but because I recognized how drastically different the experiences are for white and black kids in America. I went to a predominantly white high-school where most of the kids were oblivious to the circumstances Coates described from his childhood. Fortunately for Coates, attending Howard University was a completely different experience than growing up in the inner city.
Coates described how enriching his time at Howard was and it was mainly because of the diversity on campus. Coates was around different variations of black people who all aspired to be successful. He wasn’t just seeing gang bangers, drug dealers, and killers. Instead he was surrounded black people with positive energy, and that is one of the keys to life. There is an old saying that says “If you want to know something about someone look at their five closest friends.” This cliché presumes that we are most like the people we spend the most time with. That means that our social environment plays a huge role in either elevating us towards success or contributing to our failure. As a current student at Howard University it was extremely relatable to hear Coates speak about how fruitful his experience on campus was because I am currently experiencing the same
things. As personable as it is, Between the World and Me felt like more than a book to me. The highly relateable content made the literature feel as if it wasn’t literature at all, rather a reflection of my own everyday thoughts. One of the main story lines throughout the book is Coates’ fear for his son’s life, and deep down all black people share this fear. We may not all be fathers, but we have brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and friends that we care about. We don’t want to see those people tarnish due to inner city crime or police brutality. So, looking beyond the enriching campus of Howard University, and past the comparison of white suburban kids and blacks in the inner city, the most powerful takeaway from Between the World and Me was the vulnerable confrontation of fear that Coates described. A lot of times we as humans like to cover up any signs of fear because we have been conditioned to think that fear parallels weakness. Instead of hiding behind fear, we can look at fear as a step to resolving the glaring issues that African-Americans are plagued with in society. Once white Americans realize that we are consistently scared for our lives, a feeling that they generally don’t encounter, but do understand, then they can better empathize with black Americans which will lead to better race relations in America.
Coates wrote a 176 page long letter to his 14 years old son to explain what the African American society were going through at the time being. In the book, Coates used himself as an example to demonstrate the unjust treatment that had been cast upon him and many other African Americans. Readers can sense a feeling of pessimism towards African American’s future throughout the entire book although he did not pointed it out directly.
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.
“This is Our World” by Dorothy Allison is an essay that brings her own personal views to art and the impact that it has had on her life. She brings descriptive language to describe how the art can be compared to writing. The author persuades her audience that writing is more than just writing and it can be an eloquent and beautiful piece of art.
The two concepts are perhaps the most powerful writing of the sheer burden of African-American in our society. Ever though the story was written many decades ago, many African-American today reflect on how things haven’t changed much over time. Still today American will conceptualize what is “Black” and what is “American”.
Coates (2015) shared with his son and his audience about "America 's history and slavery through a series of inspired experiences" that he described as a journey when he was a child (p. 3).The purpose of the article is to persuade the audiences which relies on author 's justification and biases. Coates ' goal is to make the audience understand the history of the United States and the current racial crisis that exists in the country now. "The different kinds of crime that young black males have tolerated in the U.S. because of white culture is emphasized and the community which trying to obtain sovereignty over black bodies" (Coates, 2015, p. 5). Coates describes in his article that racial issues have influenced America and how police officers treat black people brutally. He conveys his powerful message through appealing his audience to emotion and
In the novel “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the story is a direct letter to his son. This letter contains the tools and instructions that his son will need in order to be a successful “black body” in the modern society. Coates explains his life experiences and hardships he had to overcome because of the color of his skin. Coates pushes an urgent message to the world; discrimination is still prevalent and real in today 's society, and the world is still struggling to accept an equal life for blacks. Coates writings alter the minds of his readers and allow them to experience life through a black man 's eyes. Ta-Nehisi Coates does this by the use of rhetorical strategies like, repetition and tone, metaphors and similes, and
Life on the Color Line is a powerful tale of a young man's struggle to reach adulthood, written by Gregory Howard Williams - one that emphasizes, by daily grapples with personal turmoil, the absurdity of race as a social invention. Williams describes in heart wrenching detail the privations he and his brother endured when they were forced to remove themselves from a life of White privilege in Virginia to one where survival in Muncie, Indiana meant learning quickly the cold hard facts of being Black in skin that appeared to be White. This powerful memoir is a testament to the potential love and determination that can be exhibited despite being on the cusp of a nation's racial conflicts and confusions, one that lifts a young person above crushing social limitations and turns oppression into opportunity.
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,
America have a long history of black’s relationship with their fellow white citizens, there’s two authors that dedicated their whole life, fighting for equality for blacks in America. – Audre Lorde and Brent Staples. They both devoted their professional careers outlying their opinions, on how to reduce the hatred towards blacks and other colored. From their contributions they left a huge impression on many academic studies and Americans about the lack of awareness, on race issues that are towards African-American. There’s been countless, of critical evidence that these two prolific writers will always be synonymous to writing great academic papers, after reading and learning about their life experience, from their memoirs.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a prime example of Woodson’s argument on “miseducated” blacks. Although Thomas benefitted from programs like affirmative action, once he reached the high point in his career he supported legislature to end such programs. Hampton University and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities must take it upon themselves to teach their students the importance of contributing to their communities once they graduate and enter into the business world. Colleges like Hampton, Howard, Spelman and Morehouse have the opportunity to produce professionals that can restructure and save the black community. Students who graduate from these institutions have the resources and knowledge that are needed to revive the African American community and their economy. Black colleges must educate their students on the need for black businesses, role models and the importance of staying connected to their culture and community.
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 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
“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, – this longing to attain self-consciousness, manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message f...
Urvashi Butalia in her book, The Other Side of Silence, attempts to analyze the partition in Indian society, through an oral history of Indian experiences. The collection of traumatic events from those people who lived through the partition gives insight on how history has enveloped these silences decades later. Furthermore, the movie 1947 Earth reveals the bitterness of partition and its effect of violence on certain characters. The most intriguing character which elucidates the silence of the partition is the child, Lenny. Lenny in particular the narrator of the story, serves as a medium to the intangibility created by the partition. The intangibility being love and violence, how can people who grew up together to love each other hate one another amidst religion? This question is best depicted through the innocence of a child, Lenny. Through her interactions with her friends, the doll, and the Lahore Park, we see silence elucidated as comfort of not knowing, or the pain from the separation of comfort and silence from an unspoken truth.