Civil War Dialectical Journal Essay

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

The name Civil War is misleading because the war was not a class struggle, but a sectional combat, having its roots in political, economic, social, and psychological elements. It has been characterized, in the words of William H. Seward, as the “irrepressible conflict.” In another judgment the Civil War was viewed as criminally stupid, an unnecessary bloodletting brought on by arrogant extremists and blundering politicians. Both views accept the fact that in 1861 there existed a situation that, rightly or wrongly, had come to be regarded as insoluble by peaceful means.

The Civil War was provoked for several reasons which included industry, slavery, and territorial disputes among the Northern states and Southern states of the newly established United States. The first recorded engagement of war between the North and South is documented to have taken place on April 12th, 1861 at The Battle of Fort Sumter. This was the starting point of a war that would claim over 600,000 American lives in a relatively short span of 4 years.

Coates doesn’t like the events because he hated watching videos of black people are being tortured. “ The tears gas that clawed their lungs, the fire hoses that tore off their clothes…..they seem to love the men who raped them, the women who cursed them, love the children who spent on them and the terrorists that bombed them” (Coaste, p 32). He hated watches these kind of film during the Black history events because these film to him seem like black people love being

The book, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is written as a letter to his son. Coates cuts into the experience of the father as advice too the son. He writes this letter to his son to educate and awaken his son to the logic of white supremacy and the obstacles he will face as a black man this world. However, Ta-Nehisi’s son isn’t the only audience. He exposes the readers too the effect of racism on Black America, from history until present day. The purpose of this essay is to conduct a rhetorical analysis on Ta-Nehisi Coates’, Between the World and Me regarding his usage of ethos, pathos and logos to unveil the ongoing effect of the system of racism that continues to cause major problems to our society.

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

“Last Sunday the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to lose my body”(Coates 5). The phrase “lose my body” is reiterated numerous times in Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The topic/theme of this piece of literature may be discernable as innocence as Ta-Nehisi profusely speaks of how his upbringing changed and affected his perspective on life. Coates uses a multitude of examples to portray this from how he witnessed another boy almost being shot at a young age to him learning and understanding the laws and “culture of the streets”(Coates 24) as who and even more who not to mess with(Coates 23). Coates effectively uses these examples as perfect representations of living in an American ghetto as well as how since birth blacks do not “own” their body and are susceptible to lose it.

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

“What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” (Coates). This powerful quote exemplifies the mistreatment of blacks in America as something that has been prevalent throughout our nation’s history and is still present in our contemporary world. Our national founding document promised that “All men are created equal”. As a nation we have never achieved the goal of equality largely because of the institution of slavery and its continuing repercussions on American society.

The first main cause of the Civil War was conflict between the North and the South about differences in economies. The North economy was dependent on industrialization, while the South economy was dependent on agriculture (Document A). The North had a larger population because of immigrants migrating to the North. The reason why immigrants were migrating to the North was because since the North was more industrialised it had more factories and railroads that needed workers to operate. The South had a smaller population but did produce more cotton.

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.

Coates has the art of writing mastered. Throughout Between the World and Me, Coates used words like "disembody" and "black body" to force his message that white supremacy does in fact exist and it is time for the world to stop looking the other way. He does not show this in a pleading way. Instead, he uses powerful diction, as well as the depth of his personal experiences making the reader truly try to imagine oneself in that exact position to cause the audience to want change. Perhaps two of the most apparent instances, and best parts of his work, were when another African American boy pointed a gun at a younger boy in his adolescent years, and, also, when he explained how prejudiced it was that the officer that tracked down and killed Prince Jones was not charged because the cop was white. This message Coates was attempting to get across was in accordance with an article out of Social Problems: Readings that argued violence is not in fact random, but actually targets African Americans (Silver). He wrote from his heart which shows how real and dangerous the issues of black vs white are.

In 1861, the American Civil War commenced after many years of tension building between the Northern and Southern states. The main reason of the tension was said to be the debate of slavery between the North and South, and although some documents support this claim, it is false. The war had been brewing since 1607, before slavery was even introduced to the colonies that would become the United States of America. The debate of slavery did play a major part in the civil war; however it did so in supporting the true cause of the civil war. The main cause of the American Civil War was not the debate of slavery, but rather Europe’s role in the American economy.

After a string of widely publicized police shootings of black men, Ta-Nahisi Coates pens this beautiful and tragic letter to his son. He begins by emphasizing the role of American history in the still strained racial relations of today. He declares that “…democracy is a forgiving god…” and considering that our nation is built upon the ideals of democracy—although, not always a true democracy—there is space that allows for the evasion of America’s past offenses. These offenses have always had a foundation in the color of one’s skin. It was not long ago that if you were not blessed with a very slight lack in melanin, you were not a person: inhuman and inferior,