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Between The World And Me Analysis

703 Words3 Pages

Kyndal Hampton
@02841893
Team 3a

Between The World And Me
A Powerful and Relatable Story About Being Black in America

Between The World And Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is an impactful and very familiar account of a loving father telling his son about what it means to be a black man in America. Throughout this novel, Coates explores the history of decades of constant attack on the black body by society’s forces: decades of fear, mistreatment, and labeling are placed around black bodies in every setting. Observing these trends from Coates’s perspective caused me to reflect on my own life, sparking many personal takeaways.
The most powerful message in this book was when Coates started analyzing the black body. Coates points out that since the beginning of time in America, black people have constantly had to fight over the right of our bodies. Black women and men throughout American history have been enslaved, beaten, tortured, captured against their will, lynched, sprayed with fire hoses, and raped. The most tragic part about this is that even now, in 2018, nothing has changed much; we still experience police brutality, senseless shootings, and undercover …show more content…

I felt this part of the book on another level because my guardians have always been especially hard on me since I was very young, and I never understood why. I now am aware that they didn’t want me to be another hashtag or another statistic. The way my family raised me, and the way Coates’s family raised him, has carried over into how we present ourselves now, and how we move through the world. It has given us the strength and thick skin to be able face the challenges that confront black bodies every single day, and the knowledge to make the right choices when doing

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The book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a letter to his son, Somori, and attempts to expose him to the larger racial context of U.S. Society. The book explores fatherhood in the black community where the safety of their children cannot be promised. A story of fatherhood emerges that is filled by fear and awareness that the survival of their sons is threatened by forces outside their control. These forces are the policies of U.S society. The author’s way of writing this book as a letter directly to his son serves as a warning from an experienced black father to a young inexperienced son which gives rise to one of the the themes of this book: consciousness.

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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.

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Coates talks about why their is so much crime in these ghettos which many would think is their own doing until you hear the backstory behind that. This also helps to put some context into police brutality against African-Americans. Another example of this is when he visits a Civil war memorial and is shocked that the people around him were focused on things like battle formations and tactics than the reasons they were there in the first place. This is also a connection to the very beginning of the problem which is people ignoring what happened in the past and the problems it is still causing in the

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Coates the writer awakens from the truth of the invention of race. As much as he wanted to believe that blackness was real, he came to the realization that it is simply and illusion and there was simply no such thing. “ I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained in the Next”(125). Coates and Dana will both realize they will forever will live with the pain and struggle they have witnessed on racial segregation.

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The Life of a Black Body in America The novel Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a compilation of letters written for his son analysing the life of african american people in the United States of America over the course of his lifetime. A main topic unraveled in the book is that of the “Black body” and how it is viewed through Coates’ perspective. Ta-Nehisi is explaining to his son Samori about how race is really just an arbitrary social construct as opposed to a natural biological fact. Coates further investigates how this ideology came to be and still continues to prosper today throughout the novel and finally finds answers to questions he had been asking himself his whole life.

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Between The World And Me Rhetorical Analysis

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Although he believes that this question is unanswerable, Coates’ purpose is to express his deepest concerns for his son and to help him understand his personal experiences as a black man. He achieves his purpose by incorporating rhetorical skills such as ethos, pathos, and logos. Coates has been a successful journalist and writer for several years. He previously worked for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and O

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Early in the book Coates discuss his time growing up in a rough neighborhood, his need to adapt to the lingo and what gestures were appropriate when and where. Describing his time growing up in West Baltimore Coates stated “Before I could discover, before I could escape, I had to survive and this could only mean a clash with the streets…you have some acquaintance with the old rules but they are not as essential to you as they were to me… a culture concerned chiefly with securing the body. ”(Coates pg. 21 & 24) In this quote it shows how the streets was molding who was, his identity; by adapting to the environment Coates compromises his identity for the safety of his body.

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Coates educates his son, Samori, on the reality of white society. Coates is of African-American descent and reflects that America is built upon the spines of black Americans. Coates emphasizes that America had built a legion based on the idea of “race” and remains unsatisfied with the falsehood it has brought to the current day. Similar to Alexie, Coates ponders the question whilst educating his adolescent son; What does it mean to be a black man in America? As the book opens up, Coates reckons, “In accepting both the chaos of history and the fact of my total end, I was freed to truly consider how I wished to live– specifically, how do I live free in this black body?”

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Coates is a strict believer of change, and having the American people take it upon themselves to adopt the mindset of the American Dream solidifies his disappointment in present-day America. Coates' writing describes how the “Dreamers” of American society are content on sustaining the fantasy of the American Dream, regardless of how many of the oppressed and mistreated are sacrificed. As the systematic and blatant racism continues to brew within American society, Coates wants the people to address the

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Coates let his son cry for a while before going in and explaining to him that he’s just going to have to learn to live with it because that’s how it is for blacks, he will always have to be careful and think twice. The essential question of Coates’ memoir is “How do I live free in this black body?” Coates believes that race is because of racism, and that no one is white they just believe that they are, which also means that no one is black, but they’re just told and shown that they are. He asks himself and other black people how they can live freely, without a constant presence of fear in America. On a deeper level, he also asks how he can transcend the fear and racism that he has

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Writing is a form Coates can express himself, and called his writing “a confrontation with my own innocence…and I was left with the cold steel truths of life” (52). He is aware of the harsh reality of what life is for a Black man in America. For instance, In Washington D.C, his friend named Prince, was shot and killed by a policeman, for looking suspicious, but, Prince was a good citizen, he had a family and went to college. This is a current issue with inequality and racism, and Coates writes the letter to tell his son how this injustice is still persistent in modern society. Coates has been stopped by policemen and has faced discrimination for his skin color, despite living in a country with the “American Dream” of everyone being equal and having a voice.

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