Analysis Of The Black Body By Ta-Nehisi Coates

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THESIS To be of African decent and living in America is a struggle as we have faced countless years of slavery, oppression, and discrimination due to the morals of what this country was built on. Ta-Nehisi Coates goes on to explain that one of the most underappreciated, controlled, and manipulated things in this country is the black body. In the blink of an eye, the existence of the black body can become vanished and those who possess this black body must understand that this is the way it is in America.
SUMMARY
In this book, Ta-Nehisi Coates details in a letter to his fifteen-year-old son the meaning of possessing a black body in America. In the form of an autobiography, Coates shares views of disappointment and anger over how the black …show more content…

Race is the son of racism, as race was derived from the act of bigotry and racism. Race has no biological make-up and there are no genes that are race specific. Race is primarily based off of phenotype. Race is a social construct, created to define and justify racism. Coates details series of events over hundreds of years which proves race to be created to support racism. Dating years back to slavery, white Europeans brought Africans over to a land which they had already stolen and in their greed for wealth, they forced those Africans into enslavement. Race was determined as a way to establish superiority over another group. Unfortunately, this mindset of different races has stuck and become the norm for countless years. Coates explains the theory of race being socially constructed by telling about the murder of his dear college friend Prince Jones, who was unjustly killed by a police officer. This police officer happened to be black, yet Coates still considers the murder of Prince Jones to be an act of racism. Coates does not specifically blame the murder on the police officer who pulled the trigger, but on the racism that this country has established against black people. America is built on systematic racism, it was set up to work against black people through criminalizing us, incarcerating us in mass numbers, and murdering us. The country’s government, justice, and social systems were not designed with black people’s best interest in mind. It was built upon not even considering us to be human beings and this, Coates

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