Throughout his novel Between the World and me, Ta-Nehisi Coates seeks to answer the question: “how do I live free in this black body?” (12). While attempting to answer this question, he analyzes America’s institutions of education. Coates’s initial critique is, “I sensed that the fear that marked West Baltimore could not be explained by the schools. Schools did not reveal truths, they concealed them,” (27). He is absolutely right. Institutionalized education restricts curiosity, fails to equalize the disparities between students, works to make the black experience more palatable and, fails to offer the tools necessary to reveal the truth, to black students. In his search for an answer, Coates concludes institutionalized education conceals
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Throughout his K-12 education, Coates was forced to search for his own resources at home to find knowledge pertaining to the truth. Howard University is different from traditional institutionalized education because here, Coates has access to a vast collection of books at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. He writes, “Moorland held archives, papers, collections, and virtually any book ever written by or about black people,” (46). Here, Coates has access to knowledge pertaining to the ultimate question: “how do I live free in this black body?” (12). Howard hid nothing from him purposefully, whereas the other schools he had attended did not give him the tools. Rather, they concealed the parts of history that showed what they didn’t accept, like the Black Panthers. His earlier institutionalized education was tailored to living life in a white body, for students who didn’t have to navigate violence. Howard University as an institution is, “concerned with the LSAT, magnum cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa,” just as any other institution of higher education is (40). Yet, what made the difference for Coates is the tangible atmosphere he called the Mecca. The Mecca, “derives its power from the heritage of Howard University… The history, the location, the alumni combined to create The Mecca – the crossroads of the black diaspora” (40). This atmosphere gave Coates the opportunity for a cultural education and a new set of tools for attempting to reveal the truth. When out on the Yard Coates encounters individuals with black bodies and saw everything he knew of his, “black self multiplied out into seemingly endless variations,” such as: “scions of Nigerian aristocrats in their business suites, bald-headed Q’s in purple wind breakers, high-yellow progeny of AME preachers, California girls turned Muslim,” the
Throughout his K-12 education, Coates was forced to search for his own resources at home to find knowledge pertaining to the truth. Howard University is different from traditional institutionalized education because here, Coates has access to a vast collection of books at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. He writes, “Moorland held archives, papers, collections, and virtually any book ever written by or about black people,” (46). Here, Coates has access to knowledge pertaining to the ultimate question: “how do I live free in this black body?” (12). Howard hid nothing from him purposefully, whereas the other schools he had attended did not give him the tools. Rather, they concealed the parts of history that showed what they didn’t accept, like the Black Panthers. His earlier institutionalized education was tailored to living life in a white body, for students who didn’t have to navigate violence. Howard University as an institution is, “concerned with the LSAT, magnum cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa,” just as any other institution of higher education is (40). Yet, what made the difference for Coates is the tangible atmosphere he called the Mecca. The Mecca, “derives its power from the heritage of Howard University… The history, the location, the alumni combined to create The Mecca – the crossroads of the black diaspora” (40). This atmosphere gave Coates the opportunity for a cultural education and a new set of tools for attempting to reveal the truth. When out on the Yard Coates encounters individuals with black bodies and saw everything he knew of his, “black self multiplied out into seemingly endless variations,” such as: “scions of Nigerian aristocrats in their business suites, bald-headed Q’s in purple wind breakers, high-yellow progeny of AME preachers, California girls turned Muslim,” the