Reading and analyzing Coates ' book “Between the World and Me” I found several messages that resonated with me. The one that influenced me the greatest being there is no protection or defense from being African-American. Coates references the black body throughout the novel. This term refers to black life. The author uses numerous examples of the black body being taken whether it be personal (Prince Jones) or current events (Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin). Prince Jones was a classmate of the author at the illustrious Howard University, killed unjustly by a Prince George County officer, who was out of his jurisdiction at the time. Prince Jones was raised in an affluent family and was the picture of black excellence. With a radiologist as a mother, …show more content…
On page 25 of the novel Coates states, “Fail to comprehend the streets and you gave up your body now. But fail to comprehend the schools and you gave up your body later.” As someone who believes that education is the ticket out of anywhere, Coates’ quote stuck with me. The author 's words challenged my beliefs, and also forced me to think differently. How can a student be completely focused on learning when they must deal with all the negativity going on in their environment? Finding the perfect balance between the streets and education seems to be a difficult task. Moreover, the balance can account for why a high percentage of students in urban areas are not graduating high school or attending college. In addition, a second theme I found interesting in “Between the World and Me” were the fear that Coates talks about black people having. In Coates opinion, the fear is to blame for the majority of our actions. From beating children as a form of discipline to selling drugs on the street the fear is at the root. This sparked my thought of how one is to overcome the fear if that is even possible. Another point that I found interesting was Coates ' view of black history. Because it was a perspective I’ve never heard before, I pondered on the idea heavily. At first, like myself, Coates took an enormous amount of pride in black history. Originally thinking that slavery showed how durable and resilient African-Americans were as a group, Coates later realized that the history he was honoring all stemmed from negative and atrocious places, which was not anything to turn into a triumphant story. In conclusion, the novel was filled with many nuggets of knowledge and insight. Coates used his writing to bring awareness on issues that go
Edmund Drago’s book provides a look into one of the first black educational institutions, The Avery Normal Institute in Charleston Virginia. This book discusses how this school was made too elitist, due in large part to the high-class nature of Charleston, Virginia, which segregated the students from the white people of the town as well as the black people of the town. They were separated from the white people because, while they were more elite than the common black citizen, and getting an education, they were also black, so many southern people did not want to socialize with them. Black citizens who did not attend the Avery Normal Institute were not fond of the students there because they struck them as too elitist. Drago’s argument is that the elite nature of this school allowed for the development of black leaders, who were crucial to the later transformation of the town and the destruction of racial barriers so many years later.
African Americans throughout most of their history have lived under the power of the crime-justice system according to Coates and not it’s authority. “Nisbet, distinguishes between “power” and “authority” … authority… is a matter of relationships, allegiances, and association… Power…is “external” and “based” upon force.” Although one can imply as to why he makes the argument, he does not provide any evidence or reasoning to back up his claim. One can imply from Coates saying “Power exist where allegiances have decayed or never existed at all.
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.
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.
Even just by reading pages 5-12, I can tell that Ta-Nehisi Coates is a good writer because his essay is highly thoughtful and provocative, and the well-written narrative provides lots of powerful examples to depicts the racial struggle in the U.S. He told his son, “You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regression all land, with great violence, upon the body.” The concept of violence upon the body appears on every important point of my reading. This is more powerful than the examples of law enforcement and black Americans because it leads the reader to truly see the the fears provoked.
Rhetorical Analysis Author Ta-Nehisi Coates in his book Between the World and Me discusses impactful racial issues in American history and educates his son on the past and current realities of being a black American. At the beginning of the book, Coates imposes the question: “How do I live freely in this black body?” (Coates 12).
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
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.
I will show how abolitionists like Fredrick Douglass and W.E.B Du Bois used literature to fight the preconceptions about the black people. The black man and woman have always had struggles in America, difficulty to assimilate into a society that is mainly made of white people. " Twenty years after Columbus reached the New World, African Negroes, transported by Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese traders, were arriving in the Caribbean Islands.
It has often been said that “that this is a greatest period for people of all races to live in.” Yet with change in society over time , there has a been a divide over the truth about that statement. In dialogue about race issues within the United States, one controversial issue has been about systemic racism towards people of colour, in particular, black americans. On one hand, Ralph Ellison, a recent predecessor to our present time argues that no matter what the future holds, people will judge others based on their association, their image, which will. In relation, a modern black activist group, Black Lives Matter, argues that even though change has come to America race relations, black people are still endangered by the system.
Throughout his essay, Staples is able to make the audience understand what he has to deal with as a black man. Staples does this by using words and phrases such as, “...her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny” and “... I was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area…” (542). By writing and describing how he (Staples) feels, the audience is able to get an inside look into how black men are treated and better understand why society’s teachings, play a vital role in how we see each other. Staples’ powerful writing also allows the reader to take a step back and see how as a society, people make judgements on others based on appearance alone.
He depicts how people just glaze over them as if they had done something to deserve it. As Ta-Nehisi Coates recounts his childhood, He entails how there would be no question about the murders of young black people. He tells the tale of how officers of the law destroyed your body and were faced with no consequences when he
Do you think people’s spirit should be brought down just because they live in a low income community?. As you have seen in the everyday society how the minorities are judged for being in a low income community and are stereotyped by it as rapist and “dangerous” criminals. This is not only a portrayal of every life society but it’s also a portrayal of the society in “Bodega Dreams” by Ernesto Quinonez as it shows how people like Chino are judged by the superior people in the society just for living in a low income community and for being Hispanic. The book shows us more than once how Chino tries to beat the stereotypes and even how he ends up in the wrong path for just trying to become successful in his barrio and all the hardships he went
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
Coates leaves little space to talk about slavery but instead talks about black reparations. He doesn’t really demonstrate this throughout the essay. He gives us a long list of slavery victims and their stories, but no overall