One experience that Coates shares on to his son is the constant fear he had experienced of being black. That fear includes being taken to jail, getting beaten for no reason, losing their lives all simply for being black. Explaining the fear he encountered growing in a black body, he writes “When I was your age the only people I knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid. I had seen this fear all my young life, though I had not always recognized it as such” (14). Here, Coates is tracing the fear he experienced and came to see in the lives of the people he knew who were also black and afraid. In his book, Coates shares how the boys in his neighborhood protected themselves by projecting in fashion and ways
