He remembers how one day he saw a group of older boys yelling at a younger boy his own age this was a war for the boy’s body. Childhood in Baltimore was being “naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, fists, knives, crack, rape, and disease” (17). He remembers how once, when he slipped away at a playground and was found by his family, his father said it would be him that beat him or it would be the police. He felt his father’s fear when he was beaten with a belt.

He saw their fear in their customs of war and in the music he heard. Their clothes and demeanors asserted their attempts to possess themselves. He saw fear in “the extravagant boys of my neighborhood” (14) growing up in Baltimore. His big question – how do I live freely in this black body? – can only be answered by his reading and writing. This world is goal-oriented and full of big ideas, but Coates has never ascribed to magic or religion. Coates could not comfort him, but only tell him he must find a way to live in it all. He heard the verdict and went to his room and cried. This week Coates’s son learned the killers of Michael Brown would go free. He felt awakened from the gorgeous American Dream of driveways and strawberry shortcake and Cub Scouts. The news show host asks about hope and Coates knew he’d failed. In this way, racism is made visceral, rather than limited to just words actual bodies are destroyed. Their destroyers are not held accountable and police departments seemingly have power to destroy black bodies. This year saw the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride, and others.

As such, Coates wants to hold America to this exceptional moral standard. However, America has always viewed itself as exceptional, seeing itself as a champion of democracy. This is not singular to America it is a part of human history. They achieved their whiteness through slavery, flaying, pillage, and oppression. However, race is the child of racism, he writes, and “white people” are also a new concept. He writes of America’s deification of 'democracy ' America has never betrayed its promise of “government by the people” but has had trouble figuring out what it means by “people.” Americans also think they understand race, believing it is a “defined, indubitable feature of the natural world” (7). The actual question was why he believed the progress of America was based on looting and violence. The host did not say that specifically, but he is used to the question. He begins with “Son,” and divides the book into three parts.Ĭoates begins by telling a story of how he was interviewed for a popular news show and asked what it meant to lose his body. The book is in the form of an extended letter to the author’s son Samori.

In between the world and me