Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Rhetorical Analysis

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. He talks about how those who believe they are white are essentially doing the “theft” from the bodies of the black. By using example from the American history and some recent disputes between the police and the black, he seems to express hope, but then he realized there’s real hope. The law enforcement and black Americans are seen by Coates as mistrust, sadness, and hopelessness because he knows it’s not all right but he has t

I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard.” I think this passage is really powerful and direct to those who ignore the black. Another thing that stands out to me is that Coates refers to the white American as dreamers living in the dream, which is "perfect houses with nice lawns," "ice cream socials," "the Cub Scouts," etc. It’s interesting to see how Coates portrays the American Dream in this passage. The Dream, to him, is tied to those “who believe themselves to be white”. It doesn’t seem to be a dream of a ideal vision for humanity, but rather a dream of dull move. Instead, it seems that everything is just fine and there’s no need to make