Topic: "The Talk" and American Life
Type of Essay
Argumentative Essay
Description
The essay will address the question "Is a 'talk' necessary for minority populations in America?"
Minority populations are not equivalent to Black people. Minority populations can mean any
non-white (largely seen as Europeans or descendants of Europeans) group of people. Minority
populations can also be used to discuss immigrant populations, specific genders such as women,
various sexualities, as well as non-Christian religious groups. Minority populations is not so
much about numbers as it is being "othered" or a member of a group outside of the dominant
culture in America.
This is an argumentative essay. Therefore, you cannot make statements without giving
explanations. For this assignment, you are not expected to find statistics, as we are not using
sources yet. However, you are expected to give examples. You need three reasons to support
why a talk is or is not necessary (please pick one side of the argument for the sake of having a
coherent essay).
The first step in writing the essay is to pick what group you wish to address. Then it might be
easier to construct the rest of the essay.
Structure
Your essay should have an original title. The length should be anywhere from two to four pages
total. The beginning of each paragraph should be indented. There should be five paragraphs for
this essay that follow the traditional essay format. Although you will reference the points in the
article, your primary examples should be from your life or observations, not strictly from the
article itself.
The essay should also utilize a total of five vocabulary words from Week 2 and Week 3.
Format
This essay should be typed in twelve point font using a common font such as Times New Roman
or Arial. The margins should be one inch all around. The page number should appear at the top
right hand corner of each page. The essay will be brought in hard copy on Friday, September 15
2015. This final draft will be turned in via Blackboard and graded anonymously.
Ta-Nehisi Coates' 'Between the World and Me' soberly details
what it's like to be black in America
Ta-Nehisi Coates
(Liz Lynch)
By Lawrence Burney Baltimore City Paper
As a black child growing up in America, receiving "the talk" is inevitable. Not the talk about
where babies really come from, but the talk that brings you to reality—and that talk comes in
stages. I remember walking home with my mother as a young child. She came to pick me up
from my grandmother's house right off Harford Road and 25th Street and we walked down 25th,
under the train tracks and to our house on Aisquith Street in East Baltimore. We began to talk on
the way there. I can't remember who sparked the conversation but I do recall that it was about
skin color and race.
She asked me what race I thought she was and I said "brown" due to her caramel-toned skin. She
then asked me about my grandmother, whose skin is much lighter. I told her that Grandma was
"white" and that I (much lighter than I am now) was as well. She quickly corrected me and told
me that light skin wasn't what made you white and that our family was, in fact, black no matter
the tone of our skin. This was hard for me to grasp but I accepted it as truth.
The talk continued over the next few years. Conversations about skin color progressed into ones
about why police were always in our neighborhood and why my older sister was beaten by police
when she was a teenager. When I became a teenager, my father regularly gave me talks on how
to always stand my ground against white people, as they would surely attempt to exercise their
perceived superiority over me-passively or overtly. None of these exchanges have ever left me,
even the ones I can't remember.
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Those experiences are mirrored in Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book "Between the World and Me,"
which is structured as a letter from the author to his 15-year-old son, Samori, on what it means to
be black in America. Early on, Coates mentions Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address where
the former president proclaimed, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth." This is mentioned to give insight on what the term "people" has
meant over time in America. Coates reminds his son, "In 1863 it did not mean your mother or
your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me." Even some people who were actually
considered "people" were subject to the illusion of race, like Jews, Irish, Italians and other
Europeans immigrants who eventually graduated to whiteness in order to further denigrate those
of a darker hue. Coates calls these people The Dreamers: people who enjoy their privilege but
wince at the thought of accepting the origins of that privilege—the abuse, exploitation, and
destruction of black bodies and psyches.
At one point, Coates recounts noticing the difference between the luxuries of comfort that whites
on television experienced compared to the overcast of fear in the West Baltimore neighborhood
he grew up in. He relives the terror he felt being pulled over by the notoriously racist Prince
George's County Police Department in his early 20s. He tells Samori about his college friend,
Prince Jones, who was unlawfully killed by the same PG County police who illegally followed
him over state lines to northern Virginia. While reading "Between the World and Me" is a
rewarding experience in the fact that more African-American stories need to be shared and that
Coates is a superb writer, at times, reading it feels like a heavy burden; the fuel that fires this
extended letter is Coates' perpetual fear for the safety of his young, black male child—safety that
he can only assure when Samori is in his presence. Coates recalls his son staying up until 11 p.m.
to hear the verdict from the Trayvon Martin case, only to be crushed by another Dreamer being
let off the hook for destroying a black life. Even with his son going to his room to cry out his
sadness, Coates elected not to comfort him, believing it to be dishonest and ignoring the reality
of what it means to be black.
I remember that night too. I was at home with friends when an alert from my New York Times
app popped up informing me that George Zimmerman would not receive any jail time for
murdering Trayvon. I remember feeling empty; too empty to cry like Samori did. That feeling
has returned each time a black person has been slain only to be further disrespected by the law. I
felt the same emptiness when my own 4-year-old daughter innocently confessed to me that she
was scared of the police and I felt even emptier when I did not know exactly how to reply. There
isn't a feeling much lower than knowing that nothing in my power can save her from possibly
suffering the same fate as a Sandra Bland. A 4-year-old child should be afraid of "monsters"
under the bed, or loud thunder or the dark. But as a black person, that fear of the establishment is
present and justifiable from an early stage—even before you can articulate why.
While generous and seemingly genuine, Toni Morrison's declaration of "Between the World and
Me" as "required reading" feels like it's geared toward whites or non-blacks. If you are black,
there's a great chance that by the time you've gotten to Coates' book, you were aware of its
message before you even learned to read.
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