Prince Jones Speech Analysis

Prince Jones was Ta-Nehisi Coates’ good friend from Howard University who was violently killed by an undercover police officer that confused him for someone he was supposed to be tailing and then proceeded to lie to cover it up. Jones’ came from a good family that had not always had money because his mother came from a family of sharecroppers and worked hard through a life of poverty to become a prominent radiologist. This section about Prince really struck a cord because of the continual assertion that cops who are meant to protect us are the ones causing the most harm. How it only takes one racist act which is a continual reality in the world we currently live where every day means we are going to be faced with a video of a cop killing someone and how there is no way a body can actually be safe. Coates’ saw himself in Prince and how this instance from fifteen years ago was one of the instances that stands …show more content…
My impression of this is that even though everything is set up for people of color to fail I believe that if I work hard enough I can achieve whatever I set myself to. That necessarily doesn 't answer the question of whether I agree or not with Baldwin’s statement because the system shows that work as hard as you may and you may still end up dead. Coates’ statement “Earth has no respect for us, no use for us” is one that will stay with me because while the struggle continues there is also this negative mindset that can take over my thoughts as well. There might be days I want to quit but I know that I won 't because the beauty is in the struggle; the struggle to continue to learn, to become the best version of myself is the