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Analysis Of Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

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Between the World and Me, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a powerful book written as a letter from the author to his teenage son. This book outlines the race issue in America from a first hand perspective. The author explains his struggles and fears as he grew up and how those fears transformed into a new meaning as he reached adulthood. Through his personal story, the reader is offered insight into the lives of other African Americans and how they may experience racial injustice themselves. The beginning of the book highlights the importance of race. Race was invented and assigned to individuals solely on their outward appearance. Most Americans unconsciously accept race as a product of Mother Nature. In reality, it has nothing to do with your genetics. The …show more content…

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. He writes that “all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid (pg 18)” including himself. Their fear lied in the way that they dressed so differently than those who considered themselves “white.” It was in their loud music, and harsh language. It was in the violence on the streets and in the way a mother would wail on her child. All of this grew due to fear for their own bodies. Learning the streets would be the only way to survive at the time, but the author knew going to school would be the only way to survive in the future. Coates did not want to brutally accept this reality, so instead he transformed his fears into questions.

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The Beautiful Struggle, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a memoir that heavily reflects upon the personal experiences of a young boy that was growing up in West Baltimore. The author, Coates himself, uses his own personal experiences from his life to show the hardships that he had to endure through and preserve on in order to acquire social progress despite the ample number of historical obstacles that were present in his early life. The constant struggle to progress is social standing and striving to gain his parent’s approval and acceptance is the general theme that seems to come up throughout the memoir. In regard to impending social progress, Coates had to live through environmental and social racism along with familial behavioral changes

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Ta_Nehisi Coates book was about racism in America, how much grit does Coates have, the habit of mind he has, and what's his personality is like. Ta-Nehisi Coates was born in Baltimore in the 1980’s and his father was a Vietnam veteran and a member of the black panther. In the book Between the World

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Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a letter to his son explaining innocence. He tells him how the destroyers of his black body will hardly be held accountable for their actions. He explains how the people who have the authority to protect and serve this country are also capable of harming innocent people. Coates uses the Middle Passage, Trail of Tears, Michael Brown, and the Civil War to explain about innocence.

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Ta-Neshisi Coates a well-known writer of “Between the World and Me” uses his book to meditate on what it means to be black in America today. It uses a letter from Mr. Coates to his son, Samori and speaks on living in a country where unarmed black males and little boys are targets of police brutality – such as victims like Michael Brown, Tamir Gray, Eric Garner and many more. Mr. Coates uses this title “Between the World and Me “from Richard Wright who wrote a poem based on the fear he felt growing up. Fearing the police who possessed to have full control of his body, meaning they were beating and frisking anyone whom they believed was causing trouble (“the blacks”). Coates however writes with the purpose of urging his son and other African American boys and men to be watchful, to be careful, and to arm himself with knowledge by giving them recounts of stories of innocent men.

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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.

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In the 21st century, during a period of racial injustice, political activist for African Americans, Ta-Nehisi Coates, presented “Letter to My Son” in which he outlines how America’s racist history has created a government system that oppresses and destroys the black community. In an attempt to support his claim, Coates compares Black bodies to vital aspects of slavery in an effort to remind the reader of ongoing, persistent, continuous exploitation of Black bodies. In fact, the misuse and abuse of African American bodies occurred so frequently, that it managed to become woven into the fabric of American heritage. Coates’s underlying purpose is to explain the innate cruelty the United States and its legacy of abusing bodies, especially black ones.

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Coates knew he wasn’t in his hometown, so he wasn’t able to act violently. At this point Coates feels he’s being restricted and is experiencing the black vail. Coates also feels like he’s incapable of doing anything about the woman who was vigorously shouting at Samori. Although Samori and Coates experienced numerous encounter that has to deal with racism, they are not the only African Americans that have experienced such things. A female by name of Abigayle Reese has undergone racist remarks against her from white people.

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Between The World And Me is a contemporary essay written in the form a letter to his son, Samori, from the author Ta-Nehisi Coates. In this letter, Coates, goes to extreme lengths to share certain aspects of what it is like to grow up with a black body in America. Inspired heavily by James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Coates interprets what it means to navigate the landscape of being black in America. Like Baldwin, he brings a harsh critique to light as he explores the meaning of black bodies that are subject to injustice.

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He wrote this piece to express his important opinion about the effect of racism and how he’s viewed as a man of color. He talks about his first encounter of racism when he was young man in college and was assumed to be a mugger or killer just because of skin. “It was in echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into the ability to alter public space in ugly ways.” I feel that the author is trying to connect to his vast audience of people who don’t understand what it is like to a black man in society. Later he contemplated that he rejected or shunned by the white race collectively as a dangerous man.

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The most powerful message encountered in the Coates work “Between the World and Me” is the message to his son about the prevalence of racism in America in society today. Coates provides his son with a plethora of scenarios and personal experiences that showed how racism is still common in society today. Coates encourages his son to be cautious and also aware of these instances because they are numerous and can happen to him at any moment. One key idea about racism in America that Coates explains to his son is that racism gave birth to race and prior to racism there was no such thing as race. Instead, everyone lived as a human being, not feeling entitled to certain societal expectations such as school systems, jobs, or living conditions depending on the color of their skin.

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In moments that are full of hardship and struggle, focusing on the fact that they will pass and that good things will happen, having hope, shapes a person into how they cope through tough times. Of course, it is unfortunate to go through difficult times and struggles, and many disregard the belief that the struggle becomes the reward, but how you face the struggles shapes you. In the autobiography, Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates, a series of letters written to his future son about the hardships and struggles he faced as an African American man in America. Coates says “The changes have awarded me a rapture that comes only when you can no longer be lied to, when you rejected the dream. But even more, the changes have taught me how to.

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1. A heightened vulnerability is a major commonalty between the families in &2.00 a Day. In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about how an African American man cannot have control of his body. Black men are vulnerable in this country; at any moment a black life can be taken.

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The

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Between the world and me Race is such a touchy subject these days and I loved how the author put it in words. It’s a story about what it’s like to be black in America and its written to a son so he can get his though and feeling across. Coates recalls in a letter to his son what it was like for him to grow up black in America and the lessons he learned. Coates emphasizes the difficulties of racism in America and police brutality. We can clearly see this when the author writes that one of his college friends was shot and killed by a police officer, for simply being black.

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The concept of race hasn’t always existed but it has developed over time. “I argue that race was institutionalized beginning in the 18th century as a worldview, a set of culturally created attitudes and beliefs about human group differences” (Smedley 1997). The idea of

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