Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

Coates describes his early forms of education in grades k-12 and the ways in which it shaped his views of the black body. This period of education was a time in which Coates viewed the black body as powerless based on the difficult situation he was living. This early educational experience in Coats’s life was extremely conflicting due to the fact that the

Define black… It is a shade of the clouded sky in the dead of the night, bathed in obsidian. It is as dark as tar, as cool as coal. Representative of the unknown, creating intimidation and aggression, it is deep, without pause in its current. It is, as accepted by societal norms, the end. Our blackness, born from the richest roots, stems from a long thread of adversity, struggle, and desolation. Delving into the heart of these truths within his narrative Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates presents a series of letters to his son, flowing through the footsteps he has taken within his own life as an African American. From Baltimore to the District of Columbia, and New York to Paris, Coates uneasily navigates space, questioning the reality

“The crews walked the blocks of the neighborhood, loud and rude, because it was only through their loud rudeness that they might feel any sense of security and power.” (Coates, p. 22) This quote from “Between The World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi shows young men in the streets who wear flashy jewelry, clothes, and act cool to fit in and get into Trouble, which makes them feel powerful and have security. It’s only in these groups, being loud, that they can have that. It relates to the behavior of the author feelings because of the writer felt like he had a hard time with dealing with who he really is. Each race has its own group and faces the challenges of which group to fit in, in order to know who they really are as a person.

“Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students.” (Steven Hsieh, 2014) Until now, we are still finding unequal treatment from school in American Society from different aspects, such as school discipline, early learning, college readiness and teacher equity. However, education is more than learning from books. Education enables individuals potential to utilize human mind and open doors of opportunities to obtain knowledge. But the US educational system doesn’t serve the majority of children properly and gaps remain between white and black students. What’s more, nowadays, a lot of schools only treat education as a curriculum and test scores; ignoring the stimulus of curiosity. Therefore, “Between the World and Me” is a book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who weaves his own personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America. In this book, Coates writes about education and pleasures of his own educational experience in Howard University. Although bad education hides the truth and restricts students’ ideas, education also contains pleasures, which broaden people’s mind, help people build their own thoughts, and prevent people from prison. As a result, there are more pleasures in American education that positively impact on black body than dangers.

After correctly pronouncing a series of difficult words from a book, Pauli Murray distinctly remembers her grandfather reply “that will do. That’s pretty good for a little girl. You may make a fine scholar some day if you keep at it.” Since those early days of colorful memories, education always served as a source of empowerment for Pauli—not only as a budding reader, but as an educated African-American female coming of age in the Jim Crow South.

Rosa Parks once said, “Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully we shall overcome.” Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Coates writes a letter to his son explaining what his life was like growing up in America as an African American man, and he also tries to give his son some moral advice on how to take charge of living as a man in a black body. Spike Lee directs a film on Malcolm X, who was a black activist and a leader of the struggle for black freedom. Both the book and film discuss slavery, civil rights, and police brutality. Coates and Malcolm X advocate that the malicious history of slavery has contributed to the shaping of modern day racism in America.

Between the World and Me is a letter by Ta-Nehisi Coates to his fifteen-year-old son Samori. Coates writes about his life growing up in the ghettos of Baltimore, which he learns how to survive the streets. His father was very strict and his mother wouldn’t let him go, but Coates now realizes that black parents (in general) are often like that because they do not want lose their children. For Ta-Nehisi Coates, growing up black in Baltimore would mean growing up poor. As a young man, Coates saw school as a useless part of life, though he pursued his studies in order to attend Howard University. At Howard University he went through an enlightenment as he saw the diversity of black people at Howard, and he studied black writers and history.

Coates spent his childhood years in a poor Baltimore public school, a system that “mostly meant always packing an extra number 2 pencil and working quietly” (Coates 25). He grew up believing that “The world had no time for the childhoods of black boys and girls” (Coates 25). School was not to him a place of education but rather an institution whose purpose was to train the students to obey and conform. “Algebra, Biology, and english were not subjects so much as opportunities to better discipline the body” (Coates 25).

Although growing up in Baltimore, Maryland is tough, Ta-Nehisi Coates had certain advantages that allowed for him to be something more than a statistic. Unlike most kids in Baltimore, Coates had parents who were able to provide for him and expose him to educational skills necessary for success. Coates’ mother was a teacher who exposed him to writing at a young age, making a successful career in journalism possible. Coates’ father paved a way for him and his siblings to be successful by working as a librarian at Howard University investing, in their future, and ultimately ensuring his childrens’ admission into a prestigious school. Black and Stone explain this to be as a way to “insulate” his children from the type of society they were growing

It may be true that American Society tells black men that they are destined to be criminals and will probably end up in jail. It may be true that American Society tells the black people not to try too hard because they will fail. Those may all be true and those are invisible chains that American society puts on the black people that live here. As Coates tells his son, it is the enchained person’s responsibility

As “Between the World and Me” was a letter for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s son, when writing he describes his path as completely different than that of his son. He wrote, “I did not die in my aimless youth. I did not perish in the agony of not knowing. I was not jailed. I had proven to myself that there was another way beyond the schools and the streets.

One of the many powerful messages in Between the World and Me is the idea of the “dream” or lack thereof for black men and women. Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author and is addressing it to his 15 year-old son. He want his son to know and understand what is happening in the world and why the world may view him differently than other races. The importance of him writing this to his son in his “15th year” (as Coates calls it) is because that is the point in a teenagers life where they began to make decisions for themselves and hang out with friends more. They are beginning to see the world for themselves without much help from their parents.

Until quite recently, education in the United States has been more of a privilege than a human right. Slaves were deprived of reading and writing, and schools were not integrated until the Civil Rights Movement in the twentieth century. Even then, African-American students continued to face the harsh realities of discrimination and inferior opportunities to white students. Still today, while education has become mandatory for all children through law, many students are not provided with the proper information and resources to become successful adults. We often take education for granted, but for many young students, the idea of lifelong knowledge is somewhat of a liberating factor. Through often difficult yet inevitable situations, however,

As critic Wang phrased it, “A black minister who gives a wonderful speech about the importance of education turns out to be blind” (Wang 1). In essence, the minister is in the wrong, regardless of his individual experience with education. It is an institution that cheats black people. Its educators are still predominantly white, it fuels the school-to-prison pipeline,

Education is one of the most essential necessities of a personal life because without education, we would not have a brighter future. In two essays “Learning to Read and Write” and “A Homemade Education”, Malcolm and Douglass describe what they have gone through in order to become more successful in their pursuits in life. While Malcolm X lived part of his life in prison, he spent his time writing numerous definitions from a dictionary amongst the walls and tables. The elements of the dictionary motivated him to not only become a free man, but a well educated one at that. Douglass, who also taught himself, began his life in slavery. But after a series of attempts, he escapes from slavery and pursues into his