An Analysis Of Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

Between the world and me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a novel written towards the author’s teenaged son. Throughout the novel, the author expresses deep concern with the identity and situation of African-Americans in American society. He justifies his concerns and worries by comparing his past and current experiences that affected him and his environment. His thoughts are not unwarranted and clearly are a product of his identity in American society. This novel expresses a deep psychological effect that has troubled him through his life. The novel can also be well received as a bridge for the relations of racism and those of caucasian descent and how this relationship has created a stirring issue within American culture. I find the novel to show an …show more content…
He explains that the education system for blacks was taught to them to be solely a tool to keep them out of prison, rather than help them grow and develop into the best people they could be. He refers to Howard University; the university he attended as his personal mecca. Coates found diversity in blackness there. He met his wife there and he developed a greater sense of himself there. Something he felt he had no complete control over, and throughout the novel, it was apparent that losing his sense-of-self was his greatest psychological barrier. University is often the time you see other perspectives and realities. It was here where he began to develop a category of people known as the dreamers. Dreamers were those who did not accept the reality of the world. The dream in his perspective sounds good, but it 's a lie that removes racism from the eyes of those who believe in it. The dream is considered the American dream that everyone works towards, what this society considers the biggest representation of equality and freedom. “...Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca…But do not struggle for the Dreamers…Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves…the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers the planet...”(Coates 151). Coates at this point can …show more content…
He grew up in poor conditions and was forced to understand the realities of the world in harsh incidents involving people of his skin color. For the most part, he felt powerless, lost of identity, doubtful and confused for a large part of his development. His psyche has been attacked by racism and discrimination. Fear controlled him for a long time, and he still lives in fear for his son and loved ones. He writes an entire novel to his son, hoping it may save him one day from the harsh reality of what happens to African-Americans in American society. He doesn’t want his son to grow up with similar fears but knows that may be inevitable. Carl Jung’s theory of unconsciousness explained deeply what Coates was hoping to achieve in finding his consciousness, while Henri Tajfel’s theory of self-identity created an interesting outlook on the struggles he dealt with once enrolling in Howard University and so on. He was trying his best to convince his son of reality versus the dream, but in my opinion, he was also hoping to better convince himself of that idea. He showed no indication of his anxiety or fear being removed, meaning he still suffers the psychological burdens society has placed on him. It almost seemed he had accepted it at the end of the novel as he drove through Chicago. “They were the same ghettos I had seen in Chicago all those years ago, the same ghettos where my