Summary Of Between The World And Me

What does it mean to be a black body in America? Why does this minute aspect of one’s being affect the way they look at the world and how the world looks at them? These are questions that Ta - Nehisi Coates investigates in his book Between the World and Me. This narrative, written in the form of a letter to the author’s 15 year old son, addresses the realities of being a person of color in the United States. It explains that although the black community has overcome seemingly insurmountable problems in the past, such as slavery and segregation, the exploitation of the black body is still prevalent in today 's American society in the form of institutionalized racism and a deeply rooted history of intolerance. Through a recount of his own personal …show more content…
Deriving from a statement that he had said earlier that week, the host asked Coates what it meant to lose his body? Having dealt with intelligent individuals before, he quickly realized that even though it was not directly mentioned, the host was really asking not about the condition of his body but instead why Coates felt like white success is accredited to violence. The answer to this question is in the history of whites in this country, American history. As it is often said, history is written by the victors, so when history claims that the country was built on the foundation that it is a “government for the people and by the people” they are able to choose to whom this relates. This declaration was the first step in the creation of racial barriers. He states, “race is the child of racism, not the father”, establishing the concept that race and ethnicity are socially constructed and have been accepted by society to believe that there are differences between the races (5). This allegory of the interview introduces the thesis for the book, the disparity between blacks and those living in the Dream. The Dream is white suburbia, the bubble that neglects to acknowledge the things that occur outside it and those who have this white privilege of ignoring this …show more content…
He had met Prince while attending Howard University and . On his way to his fiancee’s house in Virginia, he was followed by an undercover officer from the notorious Prince George County Police Department. This particular department had a history of committing acts like this and the author himself had a run in with them in the past as well. Although, Coates knew exactly who the officer was that had shot his friend, he insists that his friend was not murdered by an individual officer but instead by his country and, “fear that have marked it from birth... the killer was the direct expression of all his country’s beliefs”