I had the pleasure of reading Between the World and Me in my sophomore year in high school. After Toni Morrison called Ta-Nehisi Coates “The Next James Baldwin”, my mother made sure to get a copy for the whole family to read. At first, I was a bit annoyed simply because being forced to read sometimes puts a negative aspect on the material itself. But, as soon as I started diving into this book, the pages began to fly. The concept alone, a father writing a letter to his son about the world and how to navigate it as a black man, spoke to me personally as I was going through situations with my own father. This book was unlike anything I had read prior. After hearing Coates depict Howard University, the Yard, and all of the knowledge he learned …show more content…
It was there that his son bumped into a white woman, who reacted in a very aggressive and disrespectful way. Coates confronted the woman about her reaction, and not before long there was a group of white men threatening Coates, defending the white woman without any context, putting Coates’ son in danger. It was then that Coates said so eloquently “But I am not ashamed because I am a bad father, a bad individual or ill-mannered. I am ashamed that I made an error, knowing that our errors always cost us more,” (97). This explains some of the biggest questions in society today. Why are people of color targeted so much by the police? Why is the mass incarceration problem in America skewed toward African Americans? These questions as well as others have convoluted and detailed theories to them, but the simple answer is that due to racism in the United States, African Americans and people of color’s errors cost them more in society. We do not get second chances, we simply get reprimanded with more force. This is a pressing issue that must be stopped, which is why it is the most powerful message in the …show more content…
The first one, which I noticed early in the book, was the sheer weight of being a father. In the story, Coates did a great job of depicting how much his life changed when he became a dad, dividing his own life into times before his son and times after his son was born. In my opinion, if more black men felt this way there would be less fatherless households in America today. The second takeaway I took from the story was how much of an impact the civil war had on African Americans. Although I knew about the history all through grade school, I never knew about the history from an African American perspective. This information was new to me, and it truly shed a light on how much the civil war shaped America today. The final takeaway I gained from the story is to always “embrace the struggle”. Throughout the book, Coates continues to emphasize the concept of embracing a struggle for the purpose of growing from your experiences. At first, I was skeptical of the concept, but after reading the book and understanding the benefits gained from all of the trials and tribulations Coates and his family went through, the idea of embracing hardship made perfect