Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me

“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a written letter to his son that deals with race in America from a black man’s point of view. The novel touches on different points in the author’s life and how it affected him as a black man, and what he learned from those experiences going forward. Coates uses this novel to share those experiences and to also define history behind race and the power that comes with it.
One of the first things Coates writes about in his novel is how Americans perceive race, he uses powerful phrases like “…Races the child of racism, not the father” (P.7), to illustrate his perception against the American perception. Americas believe race is “bone deep features”, and that racism comes from what kind of race a person is where as Coates believes the opposite being that the idea of race comes from racism. Which stems from the fear of someone who is different. Race is an idea that is socially and historically constructed in America, and from that social and historical
Coates refers to policing in the United States as an example to illustrate a point of how in control that higher power is. He writes, “The destroyers [police officers] are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting the heritage and legacy”, the “whims” being the history of the United States that was brought in place by the government who employee police officers to keep the country running “correctly”. White America holds power to protect minorities but they also lynch and redline. Another example of power was a part in the novel where Coates told a story of a racist women and man he had an altercation with when he was out with his son and how that white man looked at him and threatened to have Coates arrested. As Coates reflects on this he just thinks of how his precious black body was so easily in the hands of white