Between The World And Me Literary Devices

In “Letter to My Son,” Ta- Nehisi Coates portrays it is easy to destroy the black body through abuse and violence of one’s community to outline and create a feeling that America’s racist society created a government that oppresses and murders the black community. As an attempt to support his claim, Coates states,“—it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest.” By explaining the difficulty someone would have to control another person, Coates is trying to

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

Not only being a gangster of the streets can be a reason for having your body taken, but also illegally selling cigarettes and simply walking home with a hood on can both be reasons for someone to come and “take your body”. These ideas are clearly and evidently illustrated by Coates in his use of the names of unarmed African Americans like Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin, who were innocently killed by people claiming to be the protectors. Coates not only references the unneeded deaths of these and other African Americans, but he also refers to the way justice is taken after the incident...it isn’t. It’s like after every death of an unarmed black person the justice system wants to get back at the public and the

This book tackled many situations that people of color face on an everyday basis. For example, in one situation Coates and his son were faced with mistreatment. A white lady pushed Coates son, rushing him to hurry up, in an act of showing who was boss, the author tells how he became upset with the situation. What ended up happening was that because of the way Coates defended his child people began to scream at him and threaten to call the police for his behaviors. He states that he faced a state of shock, he was unaware, how cruel people could be and how much power white people attained. (94) This example shows how people misjudge a person of color it doesn’t matter if they did something right, they are being called out just by the pigment of their skin. It goes to show that the statement Coates said was true “not being violent enough could me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body.” (28) Either way one may look at a situation, for a person of color, it can go bad and seeing through the eyes of this author we become aware that social racism still exists in today’s

“And though I could never, myself, be a native of any of these worlds, I knew that nothing so essentialist as race stood between us. I had read too much by then. And my eyes—my beautiful, precious eyes—were growing stronger each day. And I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us... ” (Coates 154) Coates understands that seeing the world from different perspectives humbles the mind. He no longer had to live with the stigma of being a black man in America.

In part one of “Between the World and Me,” Coates gives constant examples on how the black community deals with the loss of their bodies and violence on the daily. He makes his argument by being brutally honest. He does not hold back when talking on the subject, making the reader feel somewhat convicted after reading. He uses the element of right timing throughout part one to show how intense racism still is.

The novel starts with Coates addressing his son, Samori.He begins recounting a time when he was invited on a talk show and the host asked him what it meant to lose his body, looking for an explanation as to why Coates “felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence.” This turned out to be a very heavy, intense, and loaded question. Coates went on to explain to his son that America was built on the oppression, abuse, and exploitation of black people, of their bodies, which only intensifies the hypocrisy of the democratic foundation that America prides itself on. The recent murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, and other black people and “the destroyers who were rarely held accountable” prove that the disregard and mutilation of black bodies is embedded in America’s DNA, and no one gives it a second thought. The American “dream” that is built on the purity and innocence of wanting happiness was only ever made plausible by the oppression of black people, who still struggle to achieve that dream because they were abused into a life of silence and fear. “The Dream rests on their backs, the bedding made from their bodies.” Coates went on to explain how this history of exploitation and the fear that’s been rooted into the lives of black people in America followed him throughout his schooling and on the streets of his neighborhood. The schools that he was sent to discouraged black children, rather than encouraging growth and facilitating a healthy learning environment. The streets were carefully orchestrated for self defense. You had to protect yourself, because you knew the law wouldn’t. At Howard University, “the Mecca”, the excitement of witnessing the diversity that flooded the

One of the most prominent components of the text is that the black body is constantly under threat. Coats argues that “the question of how one should live within a black body… is the question of life.” He shows how racism works through the control and exploitation of black bodies and the delicateness of black bodies that results within a racist society. Coats writes that racism is a natural experience. Throughout American history, black men and women were chained, beaten, labored, and killed. Now, they experience police brutality and nonsensical shootings. Arrested for trying to get into their own homes and shot because they look suspicious or their hood is up. Shot because they inhabit a black body. It is the subtle ways in which a black body must conduct itself in public. Violence is consistent in an America that is still divided by race.

Even corporeal objects, such as his body, are known much more distinctly through the mind than through the body.

Coates describes his early forms of education in grades k-12 and the ways in which it shaped his views of the black body. This period of education was a time in which Coates viewed the black body as powerless based on the difficult situation he was living. This early educational experience in Coats’s life was extremely conflicting due to the fact that the

Each topic connecting with my own personal experiences. Coates clarifies the use of the physical and verbal punishments in Black culture and the relation to the effects of racism. When I was younger, I thought spankings were common in every family. Later noticing, it was the norm in just the black community. Coates connects it to manifestations of fear from passed down generations, a fear of losing another person. These spankings are a scare tactic used in the home to avoid the negative encounters others would use to intervene. Looking at the news, crimes happen every day in the “act of protection”, but to what extent. More deaths of a

Coates, with an obsessive tone, claims that he would rather take the life of his own son than let other strangers steal away his son's life. Here, the word "kill" doesn't exactly stand up as a term to describe a cold-blooded murderer. In Coates' case, he was deeply afraid that he might lose his son because he is utterly powerless against the streets of America. Such "streets" are filled to the brim with racism, discrimination and the kind of cruelty that at any second, at any street corner, one can have their body taken away from them instantly. And the murderer would not be to blame at all. The "streets" itself are created by fear, and the general mindset that black people are inferior is the cause of this fear. Thus, rather seeing his son

     For centuries philosophers have debated on monism and dualism, two different philosophical views of the human person. Philosophers have been trying to decipher whether the person is made up of the mind, the body, or both. Monists hold the belief that existence is purely based upon one ultimate “category of being” this means that either the person is made up of only the body or only the mind (Morris p155). Dualists hold the belief that existence is based upon the body as well as the mind and its mental properties (Morris p155).

The generalized western opinion of the body is that it is akin to an object. Like a car the body is composed of several diverse aspects. From a medical

Coates mentions the “body” throughout his book to represent skin color. He uses “body” instead of “skin” to separate the actuality of a person and their skin color, to say that a person’s skin doesn’t represent the person itself. The American Dream was first conceived with the intention of freeing everyone from control and limitation, however, that only applies to white men, and since white men are privileged because of the Dream, others struggle. American history also caused major poverty and struggle to others who aren’t white, causing generalizations and stereotypes to rise and spread, making people think they are better than others.