ENGL&101 – English Composition I (Online)
Week 4 Reading Response
This assignment asks you to practice with summary by doing the following three things:
1.Quote a sentence from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay “The Paranoid Style of American
Policing” that is an example of one of the author’s ideas.
1. Quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay "The Paranoid Style of American Policing": "In the minds of the police, there is no difference between a black youth with a gun and a white youth with a gun; there is no difference between a black man in a hoodie and a white man in a hoodie."
2. Now quote a sentence from the same text that is an example of plot.
“This is illustrated by the following quotation: The notion that it is permissible, wise, moral, or advisable to kill such a person as a method of de-escalation, to kill because one was afraid, did not really exist among parents in my community.
3.Write a 4-5 sentence analytical summary of Coates’ text.
The essay "The Paranoid Style of American Policing" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published in 2015, contrasts the way the police and parents in his neighborhood handle de-escalating violent situations. Parental attitudes in Coates' community do not, he claims, support the use of deadly force as a de-escalation tactic motivated by fear. Police, on the other hand, frequently lack the ability to defuse situations peacefully and believe that what they do endangers their own lives. When they finally get to the community, this has fatal effects. Coates feels that because community members lack the police's chronic paranoia, they are better suited to keep the peace than the latter. These communities are denied democracy and lose faith in law enforcement when there are no consequences for the activities of the police.
