Between the World and Me – Pre-writing one

Ryan DeLuca

Feb 18^th, 2019

ENG 123

Dr. Drown

Between the world and me Pre-writing

In class we talked about what Coates statement meant, “But race is the child of racism, not the father.” The but in the sentence refers to a sentence in the paragraph above “In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature…” How these two sentences are related is as follows, the first sentence gives us the idea that Racism came before race and the daughter of mother nature is Racism. With is idea I believe he is sort of contradicting his self by saying, Racism came before race. It sounds backwards and doesn’t make sense.

Coates portrays the American dream as wanting to be white and wanting to raise their kids to be white and believing they are white, he says as he walks down the street he feels sad for the people “Families, beliving themselves white, were out on the streets. Infants, raised to be white, were bundled in strollers. And I was sad for those people, much as I was sad for the host and sad for all the people out there watching and reveling in a specious hope.” What Coates means by this is people in the black community are raising their kids to act white and are acting like they are white to fit into their communities. Something else Coates says about the American dream is what he thinks the American dream is, “It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The dream is treehouses and cub Scouts. The dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake.” Coates believes the American dream to be, living in a close community where everyone likes each other, and where everyone has everything nice, a nice house, a nice lawn, nice neighbors, and perfect family.