Is Police Brutality In A Letter To My Nephew By James Baldwin

The world naturally creates boundaries, such as the line between land and water, or the borders that separate New York from Pennsylvania. In sync with nature, humans tend to also create less physical, more abstract lines or boundaries with each other, like the separation of acquaintances from friends. The division of human relationships is essentially harmless, as the divisions determine how one interacts with the other socially. However, James Baldwin addresses a prominently recognized segregation based in the United States: the line that separates race. “A Letter to My Nephew” is a message written by Baldwin to teach and advise his nephew about the African American experience in the United States. The letter expresses the social inferiority

Although surface-level solutions were proposed and previously executed in an attempt to untangle the complicating factors of police brutality, an understanding of the foundational factors that catalyze the issue will better support the ultimate resolution to eliminate police mistreatment towards Black Americans. The general mistreatment of Black Americans in America dates back to their arrival in the United States as slaves. Coates explains that the U.S. has a history of brutality and aggression towards Black Americans, as atrocities during the time of slave-holding America in 1619 included torture, lynching, rape, and the slaughter of many captive Black Americans. Coates refers to his concept of ‘broken bodies': “the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies” (Coates 8). Coates's acknowledgment of the atrocities shows that the dehumanization and mistreatment of African Americans have been dated since the birth of

repeated itself despite America’s effort to unshackle chains that confined Black Americans’ control of their bodies. The cycle has continuously made African Americans face the hardships of discrimination, oppression, and violence. The pattern that dates back to early America further reinforces the belief in White supremacy as mistreatment over the decades became more normalized as the African American experience. Without fail, it maintains the record of enforcing the role of African Americans in America as second-class citizens, as the practice of normalizing the loss of Black bodies allows the concept of Black discrimination, oppression, and violence. Coates’s claim of America treating Black Americans as second-class citizens is reflected through his personal experience on the Upper West Side of New York City when Coates and Samori went to watch a Japanese film, “Howl’s Moving Castle.” They were walking down the street, and Samori was walking at the pace of a child, slow and sluggish. A white woman behind Samori was then compelled to push him to encourage a change of speed. In harmony with her push, she said, “Come on!” (Coates 95). Her reaction to Samori’s slow pace angered