The Beautiful Struggle Analysis

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In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Beautiful Struggle, he speaks on the experiences he faced throughout his childhood. Ta-Nehisi was raised in Baltimore, Maryland, which is a predominately Black community. Growing up Ta-Nehisi witnessed and was faced with many street challenges such as, violence, gangs and drugs that were too advanced for him to handle. His father, Paul Coates, worked hard to transition Ta-Nehisi from a naïve boy into a strong and wise Black man. Coates’s experience in The Beautiful Struggle defied the stereotype placed on Black people. Coate’s experience shows that not every Black child grows up in a single parent household. His experience shows the possibility to be Black and …show more content…
In Kemp’s What’s Black About It? he brings up an important subject called, The Filter. It derives from the distinguished characteristic that African Americans have compared to other cultures and racial groups. A more educational meaning of The Filter is, the nucleus of the Black experience and Black culture. It is about the impact on how African Americans see themselves and how African Americans are represented. In The Beautiful Struggle, Ta-Nehisi speaks on The Filter. Paul Coates, was a very wise and educated man. He was big on reading books, especially books that revolved around African American history. This was an interest he found necessary to pass down to his children. Paul Coates did not want to be perceived as an ignorant Black man. In my opinion, this is the reason Ta-Nehisi refers to his father as a “Conscious Man”. When Ta-Nehisi said, his father is a conscious man, because his father was always questioning something and expecting an answer. He wanted his children to not be dumb founded and to be aware of what was going on in the world around them. He didn’t want them to fall easily to inner city adolescence, but instead wanted them to stay in the books and do well in school. He knew it would be a point where it was time for them to go to college, therefore he tried to guide them when they were younger so in high school they would be focused on doing their work and getting the proper

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