In the last pages of his novel, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates describes the advantage that black people have over the Dreamers: that they know how fragile life is. Ta-Nehisi describes the dream as the suburbs, as treehouses and cub scouts. He says that the Dream “smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry cake” (11). However the Dream rests on the backs of African Americans. African Americans never get to experience the dream because the bedding is made from their bodies and built on their broken bodies. Ta-Nehisi uses the last pages of the novel to explain that although the Dreamers have placed them into a box, they still managed to make a home. He talks of black power, which was created from the dark history of African
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I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us” (15). Violences rises from fear; his and many other parents logic was that they could either beat their children of the police could. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. They understand how dangerous it is. They see their children as their only possession, an endangered possession. Parents would rather hurt their children than see them killed on the streets that America made. This is the philosophy of people with no power, who cannot protect anyone. These parents are made to fear the police and the criminals. Ta- Nehisi explains that he eventually felt these fears when he became a father. Ta- Nehisi uses his parents to show how every parent feels, that these aren’t traits of a singular family but the traits of every black family in …show more content…
In the past and even today, the U.S has treated African Americans as an underdog. Due to this disadvantage African Americans are constantly trying to reinvent themselves in order to be successful. Ta- Nehisi describes the life of Mabel Jones, mother of Prince. Mabel rose from the ghettos by succeeding in her education. She rose from poverty through school, university and medical school to the head of radiology at a hospital. She realized that even while being successful, being black put you at a disadvantage; and she wanted to give her children all the advantages that she didn’t have. Ta- Nehisi also understood this and explained it to his son “I know that it has happened to you already, that you deduced that you are privileged and yet still different from other privileged children, because you are the bearer of a body more fragile than any other in this country” (137). Mabel spent her entire life, developing a career, acquiring assets yet she still lost her son to racism. She gave her son everything yet she still lost him to the Dream. Similarly to Mabel, Frederick Douglass realized that the only way out was through education. He taught himself how to read and write and used these skills to escape and to advocate for the abolition of slavery. However being educated and eventually rich didn’t matter in the grand scheme.
I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us” (15). Violences rises from fear; his and many other parents logic was that they could either beat their children of the police could. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. They understand how dangerous it is. They see their children as their only possession, an endangered possession. Parents would rather hurt their children than see them killed on the streets that America made. This is the philosophy of people with no power, who cannot protect anyone. These parents are made to fear the police and the criminals. Ta- Nehisi explains that he eventually felt these fears when he became a father. Ta- Nehisi uses his parents to show how every parent feels, that these aren’t traits of a singular family but the traits of every black family in …show more content…
In the past and even today, the U.S has treated African Americans as an underdog. Due to this disadvantage African Americans are constantly trying to reinvent themselves in order to be successful. Ta- Nehisi describes the life of Mabel Jones, mother of Prince. Mabel rose from the ghettos by succeeding in her education. She rose from poverty through school, university and medical school to the head of radiology at a hospital. She realized that even while being successful, being black put you at a disadvantage; and she wanted to give her children all the advantages that she didn’t have. Ta- Nehisi also understood this and explained it to his son “I know that it has happened to you already, that you deduced that you are privileged and yet still different from other privileged children, because you are the bearer of a body more fragile than any other in this country” (137). Mabel spent her entire life, developing a career, acquiring assets yet she still lost her son to racism. She gave her son everything yet she still lost him to the Dream. Similarly to Mabel, Frederick Douglass realized that the only way out was through education. He taught himself how to read and write and used these skills to escape and to advocate for the abolition of slavery. However being educated and eventually rich didn’t matter in the grand scheme.