Analysis Of Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

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The conflicts of racism has been an ongoing and pressing issue for many years. The world separating people based on color and ethnicities has created such a divide and struggle for human nature. Ta-Nehisi Coates, is an African American writer, journalist, and educator from Baltimore who writes about racial, cultural, social, and political issues that face African Americans in the United States. In his book, Between the World and me, he writes a letter to his teenage son who is 15 years old, named Samori. He explains to him about the struggles with racism that they face as African Americans, now that he is getting older and viewing these issue first hand. Coates uses many personal experiences and historical facts about this ongoing issue to …show more content…

He explains that these issues stem back to slavery, the battles of the Civil War, police brutalities, the Jim Crow Laws that were demoralized, racial profiling, and one of his themes in the book, about the creating of the “Dream.” (pg.96) Coates begins his letter by telling his son about an interview that he once had and how he was able to interpret the questions, even thought the interviewee hadn't asked it specifically. His thoughts were about how Americans view race and racism. Coates states, “Racism-the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them…But race is the child of racism, not the father…and the notions of these factors can correctly organize a society.” (pg.7) This quote sums up the entire books’ theme of racism and Coates feelings towards it. He describes Americans view of racism in a terrible, but descriptive way that felt correct to him. This is how he feels as an Africa American in the United States and is trying to help his son understand this terrible issue, called racism. Coates told a few of the reasons why he decided to write this letter to Samori throughout the …show more content…

Coates has felt a feeling of anger and passion because he feels like he cannot help his son through racism and that he always has to try twice as hard at things. Coates talked about his personal experiences of facing racism in this letter. He wrote about a friend of his at Howard University, Prince Jones, who was succeeding in school but was killed by police officers. This was very eyeopening to him, but ultimately filled him with anger. Another experience was of his own encounter with police officers. “I was pulled over by the PG County police, the same police that all the D.C. poets had warned me of…I sat there in terror.” (pg.75) Coates explains his experience of being pulled over by police for no specific reason, being approached on both sides of his car, and thinking about all of the other black men that he learned about the the PG County had killed. He listed numerous names and scenarios of these men being brutally killed by these officers, and in that moment he had to wonder if he would be

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