Racism In Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between The World And Me

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When one mentions race there are usually dozens of meanings and conventions that are typically thought of and associated with it, this was true for me as well in the past. However, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s understanding of race and its origins in his book Between the World and Me is completely different from that conventional understanding. He considers race to be a hierarchical structure that came to be as a result of racism. Racism, and from it race, are functions of society that developed for practical reasons that enforce hierarchical narratives and not because of biology or essentialism. When most people think about the reason why racism exists it is usually something along the lines of ‘this race of people is different from me and my race, because they are different they must be dangerous …show more content…
I’m certain that if my high school didn’t have a rival school, then we would not have been as unified and our performances would have been worse, and, although it may be an uncomfortable truth, this is also true at the scale of countries. The hierarchies that are created in these cases, whether by school spirit or patriotism, are not essential qualities of the groups, but are still more than helpful to the institutions they serve. In fact, I’ve noticed that patriotism and school spirit are not only similar in nature, but are also heavily perpetuated by the same types of people, the kind of people who I think Coates would consider to be Dreamers. In conclusion, race and similar group identities formed in order to enforce hierarchies and antagonism between people that serve the institutions and society they are part of. This is supported by Coates’s idea that ‘white’ people are only able to remain on top because black people are below, which makes racial separation and oppression of minorities a necessary part of this system (The
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