Comparing Coates Between The World And Me

To attempt to live like Atticus Finch is quixotic, much like expecting a new social construct within the United States. A professor of Political Science and African American studies, Dr Melvin Rogers, initially seems like he will appreciate modern black introspection and then admire how its epistolary form contributes to contemporary literature. But he does not move in that direction. I disagree with Rogers’s assessment of Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates, specifically his view, that as a writer Coates makes no room for hope. As a parent, he writes hopefully that the cruel reality of the world will change, while prioritizing preparing his son to navigate and protect his body through the insidious design of the world.
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This misconception comes from his priority of the body; it is the only vehicle that an individual has in this world so the obsession with its well being is well warranted. The word “destroy” possesses a connotation of completeness, which also inflates the idea of violence. To this point Rogers’s claim that Coates accepts white supremacy as reality is correct but hope is not abolished. At the beginning of his letter Coates address the conundrum of how to navigate the world with a targeted vehicle (driving while black is dangerous) saying, “"...how do I live free in this black body?... The question is unanswerable, which is not to say futile" (12 Coates). Presenting this question with open-ended language early in the work even though Coates says it’s unanswerable, he will use the rest of this letter to equip his son so that he might be able to answer it. If that is not the case, then it puts his son in a better position to prepare another generation. The search and constant assessment of how to live can only be accomplished through hope’s perpetual nature. Optimism in this literary work is derived from acknowledging the negative aspects of the