An Analysis Of Clyde Ross Story

Prince Jones was wrongfully killed by the police by a PC County officer in Northern Virginia. He was accused of trying to run the police officer over with his jeep not far from his fiancé’s house, whom he was visiting. As time went on, details about the shooting rose, that only confirmed on what I assume, Coates already was thinking. The cop never showed his badge and was dressed like an undercover cop, Prince was shot several times and officers did little to investigate Prince’s death. This was so profound to Coates, because of a few reasons. First, he knew that could have/could be him one day. He knew that police stereotype younger black men who “look like they are up to no good.” This happens all over America, and Coates grew up in a world

A large influx of colored people created many problems. First, there was a major problem in the availability in housing, of which was responded to with racism. This is the root for the hatred between the black and white communities. There wasn’t enough housing in the “black belt” community, so Negroes began to spill into white neighborhoods. The very existence of a colored person in a neighborhood would lower the property values. When a house was sold to a colored person, the rent for the house would be higher than the previous, white owner’s rent. Real Estate companies believed that “it is a matter of common knowledge that house after house…whether under white or black agents, comes to the Negro at an increased rental” (Sandburg 46). They sold housing despite the fact that “the Negro in Chicago, paid a lower wage than the white workman” (47), and that black people would have

Slavery and racism was the plague of the United States. It followed on the heals of government policy and trickled down the social ladder for many years. Racial discrimination is still existent today, though people are afraid to talk about it, for fear of admitting ancestral sin and current stereotypes. Ta-Nehisi Coates expresses these ideas in his article “The Case for Reparations”, and focuses on the issue of home ownership in Chicago. The bottom line of his article is that one must not forget and discard of the past, rather they must acknowledge and own what has happened. With Coates focus on American oppression, one doesn’t glean an exceptional take on the United States, from his perspective. He describes the U.S. as too timid to own its mistakes. In the middle of the 20th century, Chicago, discrimination was rampant. Blacks were targeted by “real-estate speculators” when trying to own a house, they were put “on contract.” In response to the issues brought about by the contracts, the Contract Buyers League was founded. This was an attempt to reverse the damage that was being done. Discrimination still occurs today. Racial discrimination has long plagued the U.S., but it is possible to change.

Coates receives credibility by using his personal life that relates to other African American youth. For example, his relationship between him and his father is one that many black youth can relate too and learn from through reading Between the World and Me .

Coates provides readers with a lesson in American history and explains to his son that race is not reality, but that “Americans believe in the reality of ‘race’ as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world” (Coates 2015; 7) He brings the reader inside the America in which he lives. He argues that “America’s problem is not its betrayal of ‘government of the people,’ but the means by which ‘the people’ acquired their names,” meaning that America has only ever represented and supported white people, that America was founded on a system of racial bias (6). He draws attention to the struggles that peoples of color, especially black people, have faced. Those struggles generate fear, which is one of the main ideas in the

America is supposed to be the land of opportunities. A place where you are free to do anything and become whoever you want to be but this does not apply to everyone. One of the reasons for Coates disagreement is the permanent racial injustice in America. People might think that the war between black and white people is over but this is not true. Daily, we can see many cases about racial injustice like when a white man with power treats other black workers as if they were inferior to him. Not only white people treat black people this way but there are many other cases in which you can see black folks discriminate white folks and this can also be seen through public media. Coates thinks that the war between black people and white people will be a permanent one, and because of this, he is also afraid that his son needs to be more prepared for the

Coates’ allegory of the “Dreamers” and their detrimental impact on the lives of African Americans in the US is highlighted with this declaration: “But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all” (151). Coates is essentially claiming that the people who refuse to live in reality are subsequently robbing those who do because they instill a sense of false hope and unrealistic expectations that make every injury inflicted upon the African American community hurt even more. By extension, Coates is affirming that living in the moment rather than always thinking about the future and how to make things better is the most authentic route to happiness. Much of the misery in life derives from people in power abusing the privileges society has granted them, and the exploitation of black people in American society has solidified the idea that civilization breeds barbarism in Coates’ mind. This is further supported by Coates’ assertion that, “The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine” (70). This image of black lives being chewed up and spit out by industrial America is visceral and jarring in that it shows a complete failure on the civilization’s part to protect and raise its citizens to a more prominent status and improve their lives. To Coates, the ideas of patriotism and “the Dream,” or

And men like Morris Goldseker took this opportunity to buy the homes for practically nothing, then flip them for a profit to African Americans. This was a practice known as blockbusting, because the real estate person would be selling blocks at a time at the rate white families were fleeing from the city. And although Goldseker would later claim that he was fair and just with his prices, policies and practices regarding home sales, there is no doubt that he pulled huge amounts, like all blockbusters, by spiking the prices when selling to minorities.

Coates compares the lives of black people and the lives of white people, and the white life seems somewhat better than the way blacks live. For example, Coates explains how when he went to a white neighborhood and he was experiencing what the Dream was all about. He noticed how “There was so much money everywhere”. This means that when Coates seen all the different stored and people they looked like they had a lot of money, his is exactly what the American Dream is. “I saw white parents pushing double-wide strollers down Harlem boulevards”, the Dream is

This theme helps illuminate how black people came to be treated in America both when slavery existed and beyond into today’s society. The theme that black people are disposable bodies within American society. Because of the tradition of treating black people as objects or whose value strictly came from their ability to make profit, the idea of what it means to be black in America is imbedded in the danger of losing one’s body. Although slavery has ended, the racism remains as a violence inflicted on black people’s bodies. Coates is more than happy to emphasize that racism is an instinctive practice.

Coates ultimately poses the demand for reparations as a means for blacks to finally have justice served against the crooked system that existed in America. In his argument, he tries to justify reparations by giving a detailed progressive timeline of the continuous discrimination of African Americans after slavery was abolished. There are several ways that Coates executes his argument on the racial discrimination towards African Americans to make them inferior to white supremacists. He does this by using text from famous literature to pursue an ancient justification of reparations. Another way he does this is by using the life of Clyde Ross to illustrate racial discrimination on a personal level. The final way is by describing the idea of institutional slavery against blacks and the many ways white supremacists, or those in high powered positions would take advantage of blacks.

Fellow Cherokee people: There is a bad seed among us that must be expelled before spreading it’s disease to more members of our honorable tribe. Jon Ross and his cronies are spreading lies and blinding our people from seeing the truth.

Besides experiencing childhood growing up in the rough city of Baltimore and trying to survive, he also develops himself as a scholar at Howard University during the 1990s and the chronicled, as found in his talk of the routes in which the dark body has dependably been conscious of decimation. Coates places contemporary occasions like killings of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin in this bigger story of the dark battle between the blacks and the police. Furthermore, Coates refers to African American can start struggles over their "Black bodies" as being under attack. One of his main ideas is the "Dream" the world in which people who call themselves white in habit and the ones they do not want black bodies within.

As Coates extends and builds up the different variables and attributes, he presents new components. These conducted of analysis and additional memory of his very own history and memories growing up as a black man. He also refers to America history of slavery. In which he tends to feel is made up of socio-social, financial, and political establishment of the treatment of black individuals in America. He compares between

Clyde Volt sounds like a grungy name. When you hear that name, you don’t think, “That sounds like the name of the next president!” You think “I want to stay away from that guy.” Don’t try to deny it, you know you do, even if you’re not willing to admit it. Clyde Volt noticed his peers talking behind his back about his name, and some of the either duller or braver kids even came up to Clyde and gave him a piece of their mind. Clyde didn’t mind, even admired the attention over his name a bit. One particular boy did annoy him quite a bit though. His name was Kenny Baker, and it seemed as though his life goal was to annoy Clyde and make him feel bad about himself. Every morning, when Clyde would walk to school Kenny would jump out of the bushes