Analysis Of Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

“So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rule that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason.”
—Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, p. 9
Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a letter to his teenage son titled Between the World and Me, illustrates a candid depiction of the struggles that African Americans encounter on a daily basis. These struggles are due to the negative social structures of subliminal oppression and systemic racism which reign in the American society. There are unsaid rules that marginalize blacks, causing them to navigate the world in fear of losing
However, black literature, his experience at Howard University (the Mecca) and his experience as a journalist help Coates defy the racial structure that intends to keep him down. Education is truly power for Coates. When he reads the works of renowned black activists, he gains more insight concerning the plight of African Americans. He realizes that the structural disadvantage of racism began many years ago with slavery; it has only changed faces in the 21st century. He explains how seemingly innocent aspects are laced with systemic oppression. For example, he states “fail in the streets and crews would catch you slipping and take your body. Fail in the schools and you would be suspended and sent back to those same streets, where they would take your body” (Coates, p. 33). Basically, African Americans are often times set up to fail because of the way society works. However, attending a university does elevate one’s status. At the Mecca, Coates is exposed to not only more literature, but to African American peers who taught him practical life lessons. He voices that he “first witnessed this power [of the black diaspora] out on the Yard, that communal green space in the center of campus where the students gathered and I saw everything I knew of my black self-multiplied out into seemingly endless variations (Coates, p. 40). At Howard University, Coates gained a deeper understanding of what it meant to be black, and his education increases his social status position. Finally, Coates’ journalist position gave him the power to scrutinize the unjust events that are occurring around him. Journalism gives Coates a voice to ask questions like “Why did I live in a world where teenage boys stood in the parking lot of the 7-eleven pulling out?” (Coates, p. 63). Knowledge and the status positions of college graduate and journalist are essential to unraveling the intersectionality