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“Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates” has broadly analyzed theme of African-American bodies, where Coates has based his arguments on how an individual can survive inside the body. He has highlighted how racism operates by manipulating, exploiting, and controlling black physiques and the consequential delicateness of the African bodies in a discriminatory society. Coates has drawn the fragility from blacks’ co-modification during slavery and colonialism, where black people were changed into objects with a fiscal value. He articulates, “how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold, and our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars” (Coates 48). Between the World and Me analysis regarding the body theme reveals challenges and insecurities involved in living in an African American body.
Precarious Nature of African American Body
The precarious nature of African American body is dependent on the vast gulf amongst the world of blacks and whites. Coates recalls the gulfing after an incident when he was being summoned to teach the whites about his views concerning American history and racism and by explaining “what it meant to lose my body” (Coates 7). He says, “last Sunday, the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to lose my body….no machinery could close the gap between her world and the world for which I had been summoned to speak” (Coates 7). Coates points out that a sign of the gulf between blacks and whites manifests in the context where there is expectation for him to enlighten his opinions while in mind the essential indication lies in the American history white mythologization.
Coates is writing regarding Samori, his son, aged fifteen, who witnesses the fierce xenophobic killing of Renisha McBride, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and John Crawford. Samori seeing the killing forced him to understand that America was an aggressive environment for blacks early in life. Though Coates did not witness the killing, he points out the act of discrimination in these circumstances as inevitable because whites cannot reserve black kids in a position of “innocent” oblivion like the white children (Coates 10). Coates accenting on the body portrays the clue of personified acquaintance, meaning it is a means to understand the world via bodily experiences and bits of intelligence.
Dangers Menacing Safety of the Body
Coates has explained the hazards intimidating the protection of his body in the story of the death of Prince Jones after an encounter with Prince George’s County police. The report highlights how simple it could have been for Coates to be killed. Every bit of the story certifies that the total criminal justice system and American police are particularly unfair and set up to incarcerate, incriminate, and homicide black people. Coates says, “all our phrasing-race relations, racial justice, racial chasm, white privilege, racial proofing, even white supremacy – serves to obscure the racism” (Coates 10). Prince was a generous, kind, and good man throughout his life, hence made no change against the force of the structural injustice.
Coates sightsees different ways blacks respond to the dangers and anxiety linked with one being black in America and recalled that at Samoris’ age, and everybody he identified was black. During that period, Coates defines the “extravagant boys of my neighborhood,” who covered their anxiety via their excellent, hard clothes and “customs of war” (Coates 12). He remembers seeing a boulevard fight between two boys in his neighborhood at five years old, whereby he observed that the conflict illustrated the defenselessness of black teenagers. Such behavior was a result of the menace modelled to them by the white Americans.
Violence Enacted Upon the Body and Attempts to Preserve it
Coates has emphasized different occasions explaining his body, violence acted upon it, and the efforts to save it in line with the bodies of his loved ones. “Between the Word and Me” is categorized through a profound suspicion in the government and in conventional approaches for revolutionizing prisons, forces, and other organizations that execute ferociousness against blacks. Coates reminiscences that his high school tutors would concentrate on the nonaggressive means of remonstration used as the suitable model for engagement during the Civil Rights period. This attacks Coates as ridiculous: “How could they send us out into the streets of Baltimore, knowing all that they were, and then speak of nonviolence?” (Coates 23). Though Coates terms himself as a peaceful human, the fierceness blacks are enforced to stay with is thrilling. He trusts that expectance of black militants to act submissively is irrational and unfair.
Coates highlights the truth that regardless of how much proficient accomplishment or class honor black gain, there is no black individual in the United States ever safe from the continuous risk of violence. The Coates thought is resounded in his dialogue with Dr. Mabel Jones, who put into comparison her skill to the tale of Solomon Northup described in “12 Years a Slave” Book. Both Northrup and Jones were extremely respected, refined, and influential individuals who followed the codes and implied decency (Stevenson 107). Though, it takes only an action of ferociousness for entirely this to be incomplete. According to Coates, the pervasive risk of violence regarding blacks becomes overpowering, a form of symbolic detention that blacks must agonize over daily, adding the uneven confinement of blacks in the jail system.
Explicit Ideas About the Perceived Value of Black Life
Racism can refer to attitudes, beliefs, acts, and institutional arrangements that degrade groups or individuals due to phenotypic characteristics. It exists at both institutional and individual levels. Perceived racism involves intolerant behaviors and prejudiced actions hence is not restricted to a more evident expression of deeds. There has been interethnic group racism in America whereby the United States blacks have authorized the impression of whites’ superiority and habitually jammed the blacks from treasured resources (Anderson 2). Coates says, “The black people in these films seemed to love the worst things in life, love the dogs that rent their children apart, the tear gas that clawed at their lungs, the fire-horses that tore off their clothes and tumbled them into streets” (Coates 9). In this, Coates demonstrates how racial coercion works in hidden habits adding to more noticeable forms like the prison system and police violence.
Conclusion
Coates’s analysis on the body theme addresses the reality and challenges experienced in surviving in a black body. He reflects on the fact that American progress has been built via the oppression and exploitation of blacks and that even though Americans glorify democracy, it is hypocritical as the country has never been a democratic nation. Several murders highlighted by Coates demonstrate that the destruction of black bodies is part of American society’s fabric. Being in a black body is associated with dangers like violence therefore, it threatens the safety of the body itself.
Works Cited
Anderson, Norman B. “Significance of Perceived Racism: Toward Understanding Ethnic Group Disparities in Health, the Later Years.” Critical Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Differences in Health in Late Life., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1970, Web.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.
Stevenson, Brenda E. “12 Years a Slave: Narrative, History, and Film.” The Journal of African American History, vol. 99, no. 1-2, 2014, pp. 106–118., Web.
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