Between The World and Me: Living as a Black Man in a White World

In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a letter to his fifteen year old son, Samori. He explains his personal and historical life in his letter trying to get across to his son what it’s like living as a black man. Living as a black man in the world brought many challenges in history and even to this day it is not by any means perfect conditions. That is the reason why Coates is writing his son, to help him with the life today to prepare him for the problems to come. In this letter to his son, Coates has three main parts, what he experiences himself growing up, events after Samori is born, and his visit with Mable Jones.

In part 1 of the letter, Coates describes what happens to him as a young boy. Growing up in Baltimore as a black child, the simplest things were extremely dangerous and could end up getting you killed. Coates learned to behave similar to his peers, but was constantly scared of anything that could happen, all he could think about was getting out. Following grade school, Coates continued on to study at Howard University and planned on becoming a writer. He was amazed by the amount of diversity among one University. While attending Howard, he meets a girl that later becomes his wife.

The second part of the letter comes once a twenty four year old Coates has his son, Samori. He proceeds to dropout of college and move to Maryland. While living in Maryland, he heard of the death of one of his classmates, named Prince Jones. This event was just one of the first of many that spiked Coates emotions in his letter to his son. This form of police brutality made Coates angry. Coates begin to look into police brutality in his area which led him to end up moving to New York where he slowly started his journaling. Starting out making the minimal amount of money when moving to New York, he gradually became a stronger writer while his wife supported the rest of the family. During his time in New York, he faced a difficult racial situation when a white man pushed his son and then threatened to call the police when Coates tried to confront him. Coates begins to realize what the dream of the country is. This dream was the idea that white people thought they were above everyone else, especially when it comes to black people. The white people believed that black people should be held to lower standards.

The third part of the letter explains that Coates visits Prince Jones’s mother, Dr. Mable Jones, who experienced the same difficulties as himself. Both rose out of poverty and became successful individuals that could support their families. Coates begins to conclude his letter by saying that the dream is never going to end. He gives it a wishful thought hoping it will end, and also that his son won’t experience what he did during his lifetime.

Throughout Coate's live, he faced several difficult situations that made living as a black man in a white world even harder. Moving from Baltimore to New York, the racial problems didn’t get any better. After the move to New York, he slowly became successful enough to support his family and didn’t have deal with as many segregation issues. Coates writes the letter with the bases of two choices, hope and fear. He hopes that one day all of the dreamers will realize what has happened and change for the better for the sake of him and his son and the many that will come for years after.