Payton Ike Perine English 10 Hon 22 February 2023 Disintegration of the black body in America American writer and activist, Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, attempts to address the issues that have plagued him his entire life in the article titled "Letter to My Son," in which he writes a letter to his 15-year-old son Samori Toure. The letter explains what it means to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it in the United States. After 150 years since the end of the Civil War and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, he dissects the story of America's most immense movement, in a time when African Americans are viewed as inferior due to the color of their skin. Coates recounts different times in his own life when his innocence was lost, his internal sense of terror was threatened, and a wall of rage was erected around him. Throughout the use of syntax, figurative language, ethos, and pathos, …show more content…
Paul states “I am writing you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Reneisha McBride was shot for seeking help, that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store." He uses ethos to show the reputation of African-Americans being tremendously beaten and killed by police officers who were oath-bound to protect them. Coates creates pathos through his use of ethos in the phrase, allowing the audience to feel grief and sympathy. Paul also states “And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body.” and “Sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed.” He uses ethos to show the reputation of systematic abuse towards black bodies that are entrenched deep in America's history, the primary focus of the