Between the World and Me

Coates begins the book, a long letter to his son, by describing his experience as a guest on a news program in Washington, DC. The news host presses Coates to explain why he believes that white America was built on looting and violence, to which Coates responds, “American history” (8). Through this letter to his son, Coates explains that the idea of hope in the face of racial violence is futile because it ignores the torture and enslavement on which the United States was founded. He compares the fallacy of white supremacy, and the ways white people are favored under the law as a consequence of it, as a “gorgeous dream” for white people. He asserts that addressing its effects on black communities throughout American history would be like asking white people, who have benefitted from this system, to awaken from this dream (13).

Coates writes to his son Samori when is 15 years old, which is the same age that Eric Garner, a black man, was choked to death by police for selling cigarettes. Coates acknowledges that at age 15, his son now knows that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot point-blank by police, that 22-year-old John Crawford was killed for browsing a Walmart and picking up a rifle he was considering purchasing, and 19-year-old Renisha McBride was murdered for seeking help after crashing her car. Coates writes, “And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body” (11). Coates believes these officers who murdered young black people were not inherently evil but “men merely enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy” (12).

Coates describes the night that his son learned that the police who killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man fatally shot in Ferguson, Missouri, would walk free. Coates recalls his son retreating to his room, where Coates could hear him crying from behind the door. Coates explains that he did not comfort his son because he felt that to comfort Samori would be to signal that things would be OK, when Coates knows that he cannot make this promise to his son.

Coates goes on to address how he approached the question of living free in a black body in America while growing up in Baltimore (15). He recalls the other young men, dressed in neat sweats, large T-shirts, and expertly cocked baseball caps, “garments enlisted to inspire the belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired” (16). Coates characterizes these crisp clothes and fearless attitudes as an attempt to counteract their awareness that their bodies were perpetually in danger as black men in America. Coates identifies this same fear in his father’s corporal punishment, expressing the attitude that black parents should teach their children how to survive a world that does not wish them to survive it. Coates recalls his father’s words: “Either I can beat him, or the police” (18).