The notion of Utopia means “no place”, where the perfect view makes people yearn for an ideal and magical land, but simultaneously it can be satire on real life. As a literary tradition, utopia always has the double functions of criticism and construction of a new, better world. Dr. King’s courage enabled him to face the difficulty and dangers inherent in his quest to establish a more equal and peaceful world, which he created a vivid, passionate and beautiful vision for. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win. For Ta-Nehisi Coates, the post-Civil Rights racial utopia society exists only in a dream where white people live, so it is actually no more than an illusion about the US where Utopia is just for certain …show more content…
Coates asks white people to compensate for the the moral debt and economic damage on black people. The inequality is more like a collective unconscious of white, and the black people can only be aware of and accept their own history in fear. “White flight”, which implies a natural expression of preference, was a “triumph of social engineering, orchestrated by America's public and private sectors”, and it has become a structural segregation (Coates, VII). His observation and Dr. King’s criticism of the “white moderate” go together, both referring to a certain group of people who appear decent but in reality more like hypocrites. The origin of ghetto is decades of racist policies by the government and racist housing practices by business, not just individual …show more content…
We should not consider King’s Christianity-related inspiration and Coates’ somewhat radical writing as incompatible. It is always possible to seek harmony out of their different teachings, because they are pursuing the same goal. Harmony neither means to follow and echo others' views blindly and fail to distinguish between right and wrong, nor to agree without giving serious thought. Utopian thinking always includes the view of global multiculturalism, and many other cultures have the notion of seeking common ground yet reserving differences as well. This is why we need to be culturally conscious and learn to accommodate divergent views, but not looking for uniformity. People are not supposed to take everything for granted, at the expenses of forgetting their own cultural identities.
Religion is not a chain. For some people, it can be perceived as a philosophy of life. People with different religions, including those who are atheists, have in common in terms of trying to establishing their ways of thinking and moral standards. For atheists, moral code can also come from empathy, whose formation doesn’t require the help of religion. One does good things, because he will expect others do good to him as well, rather than resulting from any kind of fear or
In his book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a letter to his son divulging into what life is like growing up as a black man. As Cotes writes he explores the life of a black man and the ways he must navigate through a society that prioritizes the white hegemonic above the lives of young black men. The specific idea that intrigued me the most in Coates’ book was his idea exploring that: “The streets and the schools as arms of the same beast” (Coats 33). Coates discussed that both schools and the street weaponize fear as a means of control over black men. Schools would use their power as an official system as a means to perpetuate racism.
Perhaps Coates’s idea of the “especial need” of nonviolence is to question why did only Black Americans have to be nonviolent? Why do Black citizens continuously have to compromise in order for white Americans to understand? Coates believes that Black Americans, and other minorities, are held up to a higher standard to behave around white people in order to be taken
As a black person in America, I have come to realize that there are many other people that see my race as inferior. It is often difficult to consider this thought in my everyday life and after reading Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates has demonstrated that I am not the only black person in America who feels this way. The most powerful message that I encountered in this story is the fact that I come into this world with the world already against me and I am constantly trying to find who I am versus what others perceive of me. Being black in America forces individuals to change their natural being to try and live up to the standards of others. The American standard or the “American Dream” is described by Coates as a goal that cannot
On top of this, he argues that the white middle class are unrelenting with their methods of depriving black advancement in American society. Knowledge of this incites many blacks to occupy dead-end jobs, or to settle for mediocrity in the face of adversity. A large number of black males in America find themselves forced to take jobs that offer no security, or socioeconomic growth. He also contends that many blacks are not very literate and therefore left behind in cultural revolutions like the information age. For twelve months between 1962 and 1963, Liebow and a group of researchers studied the behavior of a group of young black men who lived near and frequently hung around a street corner in a poor black neighborhood in downtown Washington, D.C. Liebow’s participant observation revealed the numerous obstacles facing black men on a day-to-day basis, including the structural and individual levels of racial discrimination propagated by whites in society.
Many people forget that African Americans in this country have been enslaved for longer than they have been free. Coates reminds his son to not forget their important history and that they will continuously struggle for freedom over their own bodies. They must learn to live within a black body. These struggles can be seen in the racial profiling and brutality among police officers in cases such as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless of others. He goes on to describe his childhood and how fear was the root of black existence.
I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard.” I think this passage is really powerful and direct to those who ignore the black. Another thing that stands out to me is that Coates refers to the white American as dreamers living in the dream, which is "perfect houses with nice lawns," "ice cream socials," "the Cub Scouts," etc. It’s interesting to see how Coates portrays the American Dream in this passage. The Dream, to him, is tied to those “who believe themselves to be white”.
Professor Khalil Girban Muhammad gave an understanding of the separate and combined influences that African Americans and Whites had in making of present day urban America. Muhammad’s lecture was awakening, informative and true, he was extremely objective and analytical in his ability to scan back and forth across the broad array of positive and negative influences. Muhammad described all the many factors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since the abolition of slavery and also gave many examples of how blackness was condemned in American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Muhammad was able to display how on one hand, initial limitations made blacks seem inferior, and various forms of white prejudice made things worse. But on the other hand, when given the same education and opportunities, there are no differences between black and white achievements and positive contributions to society.
When he appears to the reader's intellect he says “the fact of history is that black people have not-probably no people have ever- liberated themselves strictly through their own efforts”. This quote appeals to the readers because Coates indicates that the history of black people in America is that we never been free in this country by our own personal actions. Coates further appeals to the reader's intellect by saying “history is not solely in our hands. And still, you are called to struggle, not because it assures you to victory but because it assures you an honorable and sane life”. In this quote, Coates explains that the history of being black in America is a struggle but it is a struggle worth black people being honorable of when we can overcome the struggle.
In this country, no one valued or accepted people of color. They were seen as outcasts. Coates notes, “Perhaps being named “black” was just someone’s name for being at the bottom, a human turned to object, object turned to pariah” (55). In his letter, Coates wrote to his son that throughout his life, he always encountered a barrier separating him from those around
The people meant to protect only reflect America “in all of its will and fear” (Coates 78). He speaks to this way of living, at a constant risk of losing one’s body. For his son, he wants him to know all the truths that he has found, the brutal history in all its expansiveness. This is the only way to not fall into the delusion that the Dream represents, the false narrative dependent on the dehumanization of black
Sugrue focuses on the economic and racial inequalities that have plagued America for over a hundred years. Just like Heather Thompson, Sugrue realizes that there is a plethora of factors that contributed to the urban crisis, and no one-factor can be blamed for America’s urban decline. However, Sugrue believes, “… that capitalism generates economic inequality and that African Americans have disproportionately borne the impact of that inequality” (The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 5). These two factors fall into the arguments made by Heather Thompson (although for she does not directly name capitalism, it is the umbrella that covers the economic effects of mass incarceration). Sugrue continues to argue that, “…the coincidence and mutual reinforcement of race, economics, and politics in a particular historical moment, the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, set the stage for the fiscal, social, and economic crises that confront urban America today”
Analyzing “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates The past is the past, but sometimes the past comes back and bites us on the butt. In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s article, “The Case for Reparations”, Coates describes the wrongful acts done by white supremacists towards African-Americans. Throughout his article, Coates provides strong logos and pathos to his argument. The one issue that he fails to discuss is ethos or credibility towards his argument.
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates is an article issue in June 2014. The article is about discrimination, segregation, and racism toward black Americans. Two and a half centuries ago American success was built on slavery. And in present day African American are being discriminated for the color of their skin that even now the wound that black Americans face in their daily life has never been healed or fully atoned for. In this article Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the struggle African American went through and all the hard time they face in their daily
African-American historian W.E.B Dubois illustrated how the Civil War brought the problems of African-American experiences into the spotlight. As a socialist, he argued against the traditional Dunning interpretations and voiced opinions about the failures and benefits of the Civil War era, which he branded as a ‘splendid failure’. The impacts of Civil War era enabled African-Americans to “form their own fraternal organizations, worship in their own churches and embrace the notion of an activist government that promoted and safeguarded the welfare of its citizens.”
Professor John Lennox clearly shows here that it is not possible for atheist to derive their ethics from anywhere else besides God, the absolute moral giver. The fact that we have a common set of morality across humankind is in itself evidence that we are moral beings made in the image of our