Racism In Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

There is hardly any contemporary literature that touched the essence of racism to its sore spot: most African American literature either accuse the world of the unfair treatment with extreme statements or exhibit their passive aggressiveness and cynical opinions to the mass majority. However, one such writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his letter to his fifteen-year-old son Samori, “Between the World and Me,” exhibits his critical analysis of this matter through recounting his personal experience with the history of racism. He set up multiple paradoxes, including the adoption personal tone, establishment of vivid imageries and address to the wide diversity of audiences, showing the audiences what it means to be a black person in the world of white …show more content…
His rage came to an extremity when confronted with Prince’s death as a friend, which happened when “he was driving to see his fiancée” but then was “killed yards from her home.” (77) And yet the “only witness to the killing of Prince Jones was the killer himself,” which the police officer who has oathed to protect the innocent citizens claimed that “Prince had tried to run him over with his jeep,” which the author hinted as excuses of the officer that only “the prosecutors would believe.” (77) These history of the past that contributes as one of many reasons that the author continually experience the fear, the confusion, and anger of the lost of control to his body, where in fact, is the lost of control that all black experience to their bodies. With all the examples, Coates sets up the first binaries in this long letter of “control” and “lost of control”, a paradox that explained the lack of ownership to their bodies that the black suffer as whatever social identity they might experience as a regular citizen, a human being. As sons, they could not control their bodies to act as a protection to themselves on the streets; as fathers, they could