Rogers 'Critique Of Coates' Lack Of Hope

Baldwin and Coates are both teaching their kin that growing up in America is hard. In Baldwin’s letter, Baldwin talks to his nephew about how being born black can hurt you in the world. Baldwin states “You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason” (Baldwin 18). At this time in America, being born black will make your life hard and will place certain restrictions

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

“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.

Coates reveals that he understands the reality of black men in America. “Ethos is a rhetorical device through the author reveals his or her creditability to discuss the topic at hand.” (Kemp13). Coates shows throughout part one that he truly understand what it is like to live as a black man in America today. “ To be black in Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, fists, knives, crack, rape, and disease.” (Coates 17). Coates displays that growing up black in Baltimore was a true challenge due to the racism, even before all the violence was added. Coates builds his credibility by giving 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

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

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

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

The diction of the book is colloquial, which gives the text a tone that suggests the seriousness of Coates’s message as well at the importance of it being received by the audience. His conveyance of the dire situation African Americans face isn’t veiled in scholarly language. It’s clear and concise and as such the text doesn’t feel journalistic or a mere retelling of facts and figures. The narrative is empirical, relating authority from a place of authenticity, as Coates is African American, did grow up on the impoverished streets of Baltimore, and had experienced violence both first and second hand, whether it was

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.

Even if it is hard to accept and understand; for many readers, it is a striking self narrative about Coates’ experience of growing up at a disadvantage and a fight to make it to this idea of an American dream. However, Coates’ view on this dream, becomes more pessimistic as he becomes older. At first he believes the dream is achievable, but after the wrongful murder of Prince Jones and the other injustices such as Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray, the dream become tarnished. The killing of Jones proved to be a turning point, because it showed that no matter how well off, and how successful you want to be, the single act of an unjust racially driven killing, is all it took to end Prince Jones’ dream. Coates states, “The Dream seemed to be the pinnacle, then ---- to grow rich and live in one of those disconnected houses… The Dream seemed to be the end of the world for me, the height of the American ambition.” This quote opens the reader to the life of young black men in today's times struggle to not only succeed but survive. It shows the predisposition that blacks face when they are born in America. This book connects with people of all races, because it opens the doors to the real world, that so many people were trapped

The recently awarded 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has stirred quite some debate over the author himself and the issue on race in America. He is harsh and direct when it comes to commenting on the political policies in America or even the president. Much of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s works are affected by his life living in America as a black person. The violent and “fearsome” life he has lived became the only form of life he is acquainted to. As a result, he strongly believes that white supremacy dominates, a condition which will never cease to be. Hope – being a central element to the black moment – is absent in his projections; this hopelessness in Coates’s works is a center of discussion to the critics. There exist strong supporters of Coates who applauds him for his truthfulness and there are some who view him as a pessimist and a cynic. All the while, Coates defends himself by saying that he is simply a realist who refuses to hide behind the blind naivete like the rest.

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

After reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I felt that the most powerful message in the book was Coates’ assertion that African Americans are striving for the “Dream” which is in fact unreachable. The “Dream” is supposed to be the desire of people to live in a big house with a white picket fence and a big yard, however because it was built on the backs of black people, literally, it is not something that is a realistic goal or a realistic dream. Coates wants his son to realize that America has been built on the marginalization of black people and other minorities and that because of this, it is not a place which will allow races that white people have deemed as “lesser” to prosper. The first major takeaway that I got from reading