Between the World and Me: Part 1 Summary & Analysis

Coates begins the book in the style of a letter addressed to his son Samori. He explains that he was recently on a talk show where the host asked him “what it meant to lose my body.” Coates feels that there is an enormous gulf between the host’s world “and the world for which I had been summoned to speak.” At the same time, he is used to being asked about his body, and understands that the woman is trying to understand why he thinks American progress—which, he clarifies actually refers to white American progress—has been made possible by “looting and violence.” This question tires him, because he feels that the only answer lies within the myth of American history itself.

Coates argues that white Americans’ tendency to “deify” democracy causes them to forget that their country has historically violated democratic values through “torture, theft, [and] enslavement.” On the other hand, America is not unique in this violation, as many other democracies have committed the same crimes. When Abraham Lincoln declared that the United States would have a “government of the people” in 1863, the definition of “person” did not include black people. This leads to another problem within the US, which is the belief in the reality of race as a natural fact. Coates argues that this belief inevitably leads to racism and to the acceptance of racist atrocities as a natural (if tragic) part of life.

Coates explains that the boundaries of what counts as “white” identity are fluid, and that Catholics, Jews, and the Welsh (among others) did not used to be considered white people. The creation of the idea of whiteness took place through the violent torture and oppression of black people; in other words, white identity was made by denying black people autonomy over their own bodies. Historically, there may have been groups other than white people who systematically subjected entire races to genocide and enslavement, but Coates does not know of any. Americans themselves like to claim they are exceptional, but perhaps what is truly exceptional about America is its legacy of systematic violence.

At the time Coates is writing, his son Samori is fifteen, and has recently witnessed the violent, racist deaths of Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, John Crawford, and Tamir Rice. These killings make it obvious that police in America are “endowed with the authority to destroy” black bodies and that no matter what black people do, they will never be safe from this risk of violence. Coates argues that the language and academic tools we use to discuss racism encourage us to forget that racism is a “visceral,” bodily experience. He tries to explain this on the talk show, but the segment ends with a picture of a little black child hugging a white police officer and Coates realizes he had failed to convey his message.

Leaving the TV studio, Coates walks around and observes white families going about their days. He feels sad, and realizes this is because they are living in “a gorgeous dream.” This Dream, which encompasses all the desirable aspects of American culture, such as “perfect houses” and “Memorial day cookouts,” has been built through the oppression of black people. It is tempting to avoid this reality and embrace the dream, but sadly not possible.

That same weekend, Samori learns that the police officer who killed Mike Brown will not be punished, something that does not surprise Coates but does surprise Samori, who walks out of the room crying. Coates chooses not to comfort him, deciding it would be wrong to provide false hope that everything will be ok, because Coates does not believe it himself. Instead, Coates reminds his son that trying to understand how to live in the world as a black person is a question that “ultimately answers itself.”

Avoiding false optimism and tidy resolutions puts Coates at odds with the “‘goal-oriented’ era” in which he lives. He explains that he inherited this suspicion of “magic” from his parents, who rejected both American exceptionalism and religion. Coates believes it is necessary to reject these myths in order to achieve personal freedom. He argues that although Americans like to think of their country as “God’s handiwork,” the treatment of black bodies in the US disproves this idea. Coates has sought answers for the question of how to live as a black person in the US through conversations with his family, his friends, and his partner Kenyatta, through reading and writing, and through music. Although the question is “unanswerable,” the quest for answers is itself a form of freedom.

The freedom of this questioning makes Coates less afraid of “disembodiment,” but he still remains fearful. He recalls that when he was Samori’s age—fifteen—everyone he knew was black, and all of them were afraid. The narrative jumps back in time to this era, and Coates describes the “extravagant boys of my neighborhood,” who disguise their fear through their cool, tough outfits and “customs of war.” Coates recalls watching a street fight between two boys when he was five years old, and observes that these fights demonstrate “the vulnerability of black teenage bodies.”

Coates also recognizes the fear in the music he listens to, which is full of ostentatious boasts, and in the toughness of the girls he knows. He sees the same fear when he visits his grandmother and recalls the fact that many of his family members have died “unnatural” deaths. Coates also recognizes it in his own father, Paul, who gave him money to help raise Samori and who also beat Coates as a child—beat him with a severity that showed he was worried “someone might steal me away.” Coates explains that this was reasonable because it happened all the time, with black youth being lost to violence, drugs, or prison. He recalls his father saying: “Either I can beat him, or the police.”

Coates understands the reasoning behind black parents subjecting their children to harsh physical punishments, but he is not sure if it is effective in keeping them out of trouble. Children learn to joke about it, but in reality they are “afraid of those who loved us most.” In the Baltimore of Coates’ childhood, he and other young people were deliberately exposed to the dangers of the world through policies designed to keep black people in a constant state of fear. The law did not protect black children from these dangers, and was in fact another source of violence itself.

Coates recalls a particular time at age eleven, watching a group of older boys yell at a kid his age. The boys are stylishly dressed in ski jackets, and as Coates is watching one of them pulls out a gun. Coates has been hearing about murder all over the news, but the topic doesn’t feel real until this moment. The boy’s friends pull him back and he puts the gun away; Coates goes home and does not tell his parents or teachers about the episode. He feels amazed at the ease with which “death could so easily rise up from the nothing of a boyish afternoon,” and thinks of another world where this is not the case—a world where children are safe, families are prosperous, and people’s worries are minor. Although this feels like another planet, it is in fact just the world of white people and the Dream.

Coates observes that Samori’s life is very different from his own. During Samori’s youth, the president is black, social media is everywhere, and black women proudly walk around with natural hair. On the other hand, Samori’s anger at the trial over the death of Mike Brown is the same feeling that Coates himself experienced at that age. Coates recalls striving to survive as a child and teenager, and says he understands why some people become addicted to the risk inherent within the streets. On the other hand, the claim to “own” or “run” the streets is inherently fictitious, because the “game” is not designed or controlled by black people.

People who turn their fear into violent rage pose the biggest threat, and Coates recalls that he learned to avoid certain places and individuals in order to keep himself safe. He also learned to speak in gestures, to recognize “fighting weather,” and other codes and practices of the streets. He remembers these rules better than the basic education taught in elementary school because “they were essential to the security of my body.” Samori, on the other hand, does not have to spend as much time obsessively learning and enacting these rules. Coates sees this as a good thing, and does not wish to force Samori to become “tougher.” At the same time, as a young black man, Samori will never be completely safe from violence.

Coates argues that “if the streets shackled my right leg, the schools shackled my left”; however, Coates feels more resentful of the schools. While the rules of the streets were “practical,” the schools were designed to discipline black children rather than give them a chance to grow. It was absurd, for example, that Coates and other black children learned French when it was likely none would ever go to France. Coates argues that, as a child, he felt “drugged” by the “false morality” taught in school. Education was not an opportunity for learning and development, but simply the more preferable institution to prison.

Coates did not imagine he or anyone he knew would escape this oppressive environment. Some of the tougher kids thought they would escape by asserting dominance on the streets, but this ultimately led nowhere. Coates felt he was in an impossible bind in which either being too violent or not violent enough could result in his death. Succeeding in school required absolute obedience to arbitrary rules and expectations. Meanwhile, he wasn’t able to find solace in “the church and its mysteries,” because his parents rejected what they saw as the myth of religion. Fear was omnipresent in Coates’ life, and he knew that this fear was connected to the carefree lives of those living in the Dream.

As a child, Coates is curious about the way in which racism simultaneously sustains the Dream and perpetuates the oppression of black people like himself. However, there are no opportunities to understand how this works, as neither the streets, his school, nor religion provide any answers. On the other hand, his mother Cheryl had taught him to read at age four, and she makes him write reflective assignments when he got into trouble at school. These writing exercises allow Coates to develop a better understanding of himself, which in turn helps him understand other people and the world around him.

Coates finds further answers in the books supplied by his father, Paul, who works as a research librarian at Howard University. Paul “had been a local captain of the Black Panther Party” and Coates is fascinated by the BPP newspapers and books. He views the Panthers as much more reasonable than the Civil Rights heroes he learns about in school, who appear to “love” the violence inflicted on them so much that they refuse to engage in violent resistance. Coates is suspicious of the extent to which the schools glorify nonviolence, perceiving it to be a way to maintain the oppression of black people. Encouraging nonviolence seems especially strange given the amount of violence that surrounds Coates and other black children every day.

Coates ends up viewing the streets and schools as “arms of the same beast.” Both exert control over the population through fear and violence, and “failing” within either means risking imprisonment or death. He emphasizes that “intentions” are irrelevant, because most Americans do not advocate racist violence directly but do support the Dream, which indirectly oppresses black people. Coates brings his concerns to his parents. Paul rarely gives an answer but instead advises him to read more books, which do not provide answers, but help Coates to “refine” his questions.

Coates remarks that he is not alone on this journey toward political consciousness. The work of Malcolm X is being taken up within the developing hip hop community, just at the point when Coates is emerging into young adulthood. Coates idolizes Malcolm, inspired by his message that black bodies are sacred and “precious,” and that black people have the right to defend violations to their bodies. Unlike the schools and Dreamers, “Malcolm never lied.” Coates identifies with Malcolm’s life story, and begins to feel hopeful that he might “live free” after all. He develops ambitions as a writer and feels that he is finally beginning to have answers to the questions that have troubled him throughout his life.

Coates listens to hip hop and takes inspiration from the Black Power movement. He begins to wonder if black people should “return to ourselves,” concluding perhaps it’s time they returned to Mecca. Coates goes on to explain that his only Mecca is Howard University. Coates’ father, Paul, worked there, many of Samori’s aunts and uncles attended, and it is where Coates and his wife Kenyatta met. Coates draws a distinction between Howard as an academic institution and “The Mecca” that shaped him, however. Because of Howard’s unique history, it has exceptionally illustrious alumni, a heritage that powers the “dark energy” of its community in the present day.

Coates describes the students who pass through the Yard at Howard; students of different national origin, religions, styles of dress, talents, and tastes. He explains that “the vastness of black people across space-time… could be experienced in a twenty-minute walk across campus.” To Coates, every student is “hot and incredible.” His encounter with this black community makes clear the extent to which white people seek to repress and control black people’s bodies. It also reveals the arbitrary nature of racial categories, which were invented by white people and imposed on everyone else.

Coates senses that whites oppress black people because they are intimidated by black people’s power. He quotes the Canadian-American author Saul Bellow, who once asked: “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?”. The question troubles Coates because it implies major intellectual and historical figures must be white in order to qualify as important. He feels that this denial of the significance and beauty of black culture is intimately tied to the “destruction of black bodies” that occurs through racist violence. As a result, black people are desperate to find a “new history,” and thus risk manufacturing their own Dream in the form of a narrative of a super-powerful, majestic “black race.”

Having made this warning, Coates admits that he himself held the view that black people were “kings in exile” when he first arrived at Howard. At the university library, he enthusiastically devours books, making pages of notes about black history and culture. He is astonished by the extent to which the books contradict one another, overwhelmed by the “brawl of ancestors” each with their own view. Nonetheless, Coates admits that “the pursuit of knowing was freedom to me,” and feels more comfortable learning independently in the library than he does being taught in the classroom.

Coates gradually gains a more solid sense of himself, guided by the things he is learning and the precedent of Malcolm X. He is accompanied on this journey of self-discovery by his friend Ben, whom he refers to as Samori’s uncle and “a fellow traveler for life.” Coates continues to write “bad poetry” and read it at open mics in Washington DC. He reflects on what it means to lose one’s body, and concludes that “The Dream is the enemy of all art.” Coates is inspired by black artists whose work embraces the “void” beyond the myth-making of the Dream. He argues with other poets after readings, discussing everything from politics to boxing.

Coates describes a neighborhood in DC called Prince George’s County, which has a wealthy black population. Although the residents of Prince George’s County elect “their own politicians,” they still have a brutal police force, a fact that proves to Coates that black people are capable of reproducing the same oppressive structures as whites. Coates expresses gratitude to the history department at Howard, where the faculty assure him that his search for new myths to replace the Dream will not end well. One of Coates’ professors helps illuminate the fact that some black figures in history were oppressive to their own or other groups of people. In another class, Coates sees depictions of black people from the 19th century that are realistic, rather than racist caricatures.

Coates admits that this process of learning is “physically painful and exhausting,” even as it is also rewarding. He also comes across an answer to Saul Bellow’s question about Tolstoy by the African-American journalist Ralph Wiley: “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus.” Yet while Coates comes to accept the fact that race is not “written in DNA,” he also acknowledges that there is something that creates unity between black people across time and place—“on the one hand, invented, and on the other, no less real.” The community at Howard reinforces this view, particularly the powerful social connection between the students.

Coates describes the first woman he falls in love with at Howard, a half-Indian girl from California whose multiracial identity Coates at first does not understand. He then falls in love with another girl who is bisexual and who lives with two Howard professors (one male, one female) who are in an open, bisexual marriage. Coates is astonished, as he is unfamiliar with the idea that black people can be anything other than heterosexual. He is thus made aware of his own prejudice, and the fact that he has behaved in an oppressive way to others (for example, by using the word “faggot”). The bisexual woman inspires Coates to “love in a new way,” which is more nurturing and less disciplinary than the love he received from his parents.

Coates sometimes goes to local clubs where, although he is too scared to dance personally, he loves to watch other black people dance “as though their bodies could do anything.” He strives to write in the same way as black people dance and begins writing for the local alternative newspaper, where his white editors are “afraid neither for me nor of me.” Journalism allows Coates to investigate the world around him and understand how this has been shaped by history. The practice of writing continues to provide answers to the questions that have always troubled him.

The bisexual woman Coates mentions above was previously in a relationship with a boy who Coates admits he thinks about every day, “and about whom I expect to think every day for the rest of my life.” This boy is Prince Jones and, because he is killed young, he comes to feel like an “invention” rather than a real person. Coates says that Prince lived up to his name. He was a born-again Christian, warm and generous, and although Coates never gets to know him very well, he loves him and feels that Prince’s place in his heart is now like a “wound.”

The last time Coates falls in love at Howard is with Kenyatta, Samori’s mother. Kenyatta does not know her father, which is true of most people Coates knows. She and Coates are both 24 when she accidentally becomes pregnant with Samori; others pressure them to get married, but they choose not to. Kenyatta’s mother visits them while Kenyatta is pregnant, and Coates imagines her horror at the fact that they are living on very little money, with “almost no furniture.” She urges Coates to take care of Kenyatta, and Coates feels this is a pivotal moment in his growth and understanding of the world.

When the baby is born, Coates and Kenyatta call him Samori, after Samori Touré, the Guinean Muslim cleric who fought French colonizers in the 19th century. Coates reflects on the wisdom of the streets that he gained in his youth, and remarks that Samori’s name signifies the fact that “the struggle, in and of itself, has meaning.” He encourages Samori to remember that slavery is not “an indefinable mass of flesh” but rather the individual thoughts, experiences, and hopes of unique people. He emphasizes the notion that for these individuals, enslavement was “damnation,” and that they did not find redemption in the afterlife. This was true for 250 years, the majority of American history.

Coates encourages Samori to view American history realistically and to resist seeing enslaved people as “chapters in your redemptive history.” Nothing that Samori achieves—no matter how great—can make up for the reality of slavery. At the same time, Coates urges Samori not to feel responsible for creating a better world, because as a black boy, he is already disproportionately responsible for keeping his body safe. Coates tells Samori, “I love you, and I love the world,” and promises his son that one day he will “have to make your peace with the chaos” of the world.