The Struggle In Between The World And Me

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Almost a century following the apparent freeing of slaves in the United States, institutionalized racism in our society has evolved into a whole different type of beast. It has become more concealed, blurring the lines that determined who is responsible for the hindrance of equality experienced by the black population. Instead of pointing towards the plantation owners and Jim Crow laws who had a direct, visible effect on black people’s lives, the oppressed are forced to attempt to point to biased prison system, unregulated police forces, distracting school curriculums, and rampant gun violence as factors in the melting pot of problems produced by the faceless bureaucracy that is our government. But for the average white person, the American experience is completely alien, and Ta-Nehisi Coates demonstrates how the black person and the white person truly are worlds apart in his novel, Between the World and Me.

The main dividing aspect of the black person in contrast to, as Coates coins them, “those who believe they are white” is their having been born into a black body. In American
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His letter cautions of all the wrongdoings that we don’t have the privilege to forget, but also implores to remember to enjoy the life that we have, for as long as we can possible have it. For the hopeless and the angry, Between the World and Me leaves us with the advice to “make your peace with the chaos” and to be a “conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.” We must be enraged by our past, remembering our heritage of slavery and alienation from humanity. We must fight to live in the present, behaving twice as good to receive only half as much, and then be expected to be satisfied that we haven’t been shot dead yet. And we must have hope for the future, praying for relief from the murderous world we are forced to

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