More handpicked essays just for you.
Importance of studying african american history
Importance of studying african american history
Police brutality within black communities
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Importance of studying african american history
In Ta-Nehisi Coates book “Between the World and Me”, he addresses American history, current crises, and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, regarding “the black bodies” of women and men, so he writes a letter to his adolescent son, age fifteen, to give him crucial and effective knowledge from his personal, historical, and intellectual development of his thoughts on how to live in a black body in America. From the moment Coates begins his language and tone was driving, passionate, sharp, and straightforward. I automatically thought I was right in front of him as if he was telling me the story; he provided memoir and history along with stories of his own personal experiences and analysis which allowed him to convey the emotional …show more content…
The book is very personal, incisive, and uncompromising towards those who promote or indulge in the racial hierarchy in America. It is not questionable that Coates goal for the letter is not only to advise and give his son knowledge about the idea of race, which damages all people but is more impactful on the bodies of black women and men, but the letter he writes his son is a conversation that black parents must have with their children to protect them from the racist excesses of the police. Not to mention, this is important because after black people experiences of America’s history of destroying their “black bodies” by being exploited through slavery and segregation, and the vulnerability on black bodies today, such as being threatened, locked up, and murdered. Coats makes a valid point about race being the child of racism and not the father. In other words, race is not an indubitable reality because it has been constructed, altered, and
The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.
These details help many who may have trouble understanding his hardships, be able to relate. The use of real world examples from his life and history are very convincing and supportive of his theory on blacks lives. Coates talks about how “black blood was spilled in the North colonies, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War [...] and most of all during segregation and the time of JIm Crow Laws. [...] Why is it still being spilt today over the same reasons?” Coates use of history relates to the issues today. It represents how serious the problems were back then, and how serious they still are in the modern society. History is factual, this creates and accurate support to his claim and also allows reader to relate to the past and compare it to today 's society. The rhetorical question causes the audience to think and catches eye. Asking this question emphasizes the issue because it still is a problem that does not have a solution even still today. The author also uses statistics to support the unfair lives of black people. “60 percent of all young black people who drop out of high school will go to jail.” This claim is factual and convincing to his claim about the rigged schooling system in many black communities. The communities are shoved in corner and neglected. This problem results in the thousands of dropouts that later result in jailing. If our schooling systems were
America have a long history of black’s relationship with their fellow white citizens, there’s two authors that dedicated their whole life, fighting for equality for blacks in America. – Audre Lorde and Brent Staples. They both devoted their professional careers outlying their opinions, on how to reduce the hatred towards blacks and other colored. From their contributions they left a huge impression on many academic studies and Americans about the lack of awareness, on race issues that are towards African-American. There’s been countless, of critical evidence that these two prolific writers will always be synonymous to writing great academic papers, after reading and learning about their life experience, from their memoirs.
Ethnic group is a settled mannerism for many people during their lives. Both Zora Neale Hurston, author of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me; and Brent Staples, author of “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space,” realize that their life will be influenced when they are black; however, they take it in pace and don’t reside on it. They grew up in different places which make their form differently; however, in the end, It does not matter to them as they both find ways to match the different sexes and still have productivity in their lives.. Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Florida, a quiet black town with only white passer-by from time-to-time, while Staples grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, surrounded by gang activity from the beginning. Both Hurston and Staples share similar and contrasting views about the effect of the color of their
“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, – this longing to attain self-consciousness, manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message f...
He did not have the luxury of being open-minded and carefree, he was constantly on guard twenty-four-seven. He talks about having to succeed in school because had he failed in school he would be forced out on the streets where he would have to work even harder to protect his body. He speaks of the drug dealers who used violence and power as a means to disguise the fear of losing their bodies to the streets. Bell Hooks speaks of these same men in her essay Gangster Culture. Men in prison are views as superior because they are using the same power to mask to their bodies during a period of incarceration. Although every person who is currently incarcerated in America does not come from the ghetto they are still placed in an environment where their bodies have to be protected on a consistent basis. Coates says, “In America I was part of an equation- even if it wasn’t a part I relished. I was the one police stopped in the middle of a workday.” (p.124) As Coates then writes, “Your mother had to teach me how to love you-how to kiss you and tell you I love you every night. Even now, it does not feel like a ritual. And this is because I am wounded.” (p.125) The environment in which Coates was raised did not grant him the opportunity of being openly affect and loving because those this left his body vulnerable for attack. He makes reference to growing up in a hard house, a
Both show just how terrible and unfair the world truly is based on the color of your skin. However; both differ from Coates’ Between the World and Me as they have a more positive outlook on the future. Goffman and Dubois believe a change will and needs to come in order to stop this unfair treatment and racism while Coates’ simply states that his son must find a way to survive with the odds stacked against him. The world for the black community is a “terrible” place where they have already been given an unfair disadvantage solely based on their skin color. While I agree, one should be “conscious” of this and find a way to survive, I do not agree that just allowing it to happen and not fighting to end this prejudice is the right way to go about the overall
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of Between the World and Me, he discussed in a letter to his son addressing the feeling of an African-American living in America. He makes it clear that the African-American body is always vulnerable. Coates communicated with his son about his childhood in the ghettos of Baltimore and how he had managed to live in such harsh environment. A child in a different country also experienced similar occurrences and learned to coped with the street rules. The author includes many examples of African-American bodies under attack and it also relates to what some Asian-Americans experienced. Not everyone would be able to digest this book without bias and prejudice. The interpretation of the book about vulnerability of African-American
In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, he encompasses the life of Howard University and the meaning of being a “black body” in America while writing a letter to his son. Coates includes personal experiences and his lessons learned to allow the reader to connect to him as if he were writing to them. Coates’s message resonates with the reader because his powerful words and advice are meant to get readers thinking.
The author seems to write the letter to his son as a warning. That since he is black, he will have to work harder and will have to carry himself in a specific demeanor in order to survive in white privileged
In the article, “A Letter My Son,” Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes both ethical and pathetic appeal to address his audience in a personable manner. The purpose of this article is to enlighten the audience, and in particular his son, on what it looks like, feels like, and means to be encompassed in his black body through a series of personal anecdotes and self-reflection on what it means to be black. In comparison, Coates goes a step further and analyzes how a black body moves and is perceived in a world that is centered on whiteness. This is established in the first half of the text when the author states that,“white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence,”
For as long as I can remember, racial injustice has been the topic of discussion amongst the American nation. A nation commercializing itself as being free and having equality for all, however, one questions how this is true when every other day on the news we hear about the injustices and discriminations of one race over another. Eula Biss published an essay called “White Debt” which unveils her thoughts on discrimination and what she believes white Americans owe, the debt they owe, to a dark past that essentially provided what is out there today. Ta-Nehisi Coates published “Between the World and Me,” offering his perspective about “the Dream” that Americans want, the fear that he faced being black growing up and that black bodies are what
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.
What I liked most about this book was the reality it revealed. It showed how brutal and cruel the society was. This book made me realize that racism is deeply embedded in the life and history of the nation, and it still exists in today’s society.
The author has been quite drastic with the use of words. He has used really strong words like “incarcerated, flippantly, constitutively fraught, maligned, categorical imperative” (Goldberg)- words like this might be hard for some people to understand. Also the use of sentences like “The universalization politics of ‘All lives matter’ is one of racial dismissal, ignoring, and denial” (Goldberg), “There are slippages on strategy, sometimes a lack of clarity on what is being demanded of political candidates as a result of BLM interventions……. representatives”, “Compelling social movements are struggles against entrenched structures and cultures of entitlement, self-protected privilege, and unquestioned institutional access on the part of the anointed to the exclusion of the unbelonging” (Goldberg) shows the extent to which someone could baffled by the sheer vagueness of the information. Statistics like “We are a better humanity because of the deep reflection and insight black intellectuals and artists have provided about what it means to survive in the face of repression, humiliation, and death, from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.” (Goldberg) are arranged in such a