Living in Our Bodies: Connection, Responsibility, Vulnerability

In “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, he is describing to his son what it is like to live as a “black body” in America and the importance of educating young minds, specifically in this case, his son, on the significance of the structural issues that affect blacks as a people. Throughout his writing, Coates uses the example of the “black body” to allude to the structural issue of police brutality and racial discrimination in the modern era. Coates not only references the physical torment that is a result of police brutality, but the psychological and emotional torment that accompanies it. He recalls his experiences growing up in which he remembers being overwhelmed in news stories of murders and incidents with uniformed officers, provoking a sense of fear among his generation, which is hence passed down to later generations. Coates states “Fear ruled everything around me, and I knew, as all black people do, that this fear was connected to the world out there, to the unworried boys, to pie and pot roast, to the white fences and green lawns nightly beamed into our television sets.” In this, he is highlighting how he came to realize how the race problem in America is separate yet tethered to the structural causes of racism, opportunity and poverty among others. Coates continues to expose the network of police brutality by saying “There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. This legacy aspires to the shackling of black bodies. It is hard to face this. But all our phrasing — race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy — serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.” Coates uses the metaphor of “the destroyers” as a reverse euphemism for police officers and the injuries that they inflict upon certain individuals, often with correlating racial identities. For a majority of the writing, Coates is expressing his frustration and struggles of being a “black body” in today’s world, for example when he states “To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, fists, knives, crack, rape, and disease. The law did not protect us. And now, in your time, the law has become an excuse for stopping and frisking you, which is to say, for furthering the assault on your body.” However, all of the points that he makes about racism and police brutality extend to the points that he makes about the “Dream.” He mentions “I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is tree houses and the Cub Scouts. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option, because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists by warring with the known world, I was sad for the host, I was sad for all those families, I was sad for my country, but above all, in that moment, I was sad for you.” Coates is allusively drawing the conclusion that to accept the reality of the discrimination and other similar structural issues, and the Dream, is to reach a feeling of liberation and consciousness because you become content with yourself and reality.

In Episode 3: “Looking Out” we learn about a man who is referred to as Rauch and is currently serving a sentence of fifteen years to life in San Quentin Prison. Throughout the podcast, we gain insight into his childhood where we learn about the time he spent at an orphanage. When he was younger, his mother tried to drown him in the bathtub on multiple occasions, but will proceed to leave the room crying. After that, he was put into the care of an orphanage with Sister Maria, his first genuine human interaction. He recalls a time when he and some other children from the orphanage, along with Sister Maria, took a trip to the Atlantic City boardwalk. There, they witnesses hundreds of seagulls hovering above them. Rauch remembers being scared of the birds because of their aggressive behavior, so he threw the clam that he was trying to feed them and ran behind Sister Maria for protection. After this, his fixation for animals grew, as well as their respect for them. He does not consider animals as pets or property, but rather as friends and companions. He said “I take care of animals because they teach me what I can’t learn from people” and they give him an sense of “unconditional love” that he had never felt previously. Coates’ main motivation for educating his son on the racial and structural issues in today’s society is to prepare him for the future and any predicaments that he could perhaps encounter, and thus gaining a sense of freedom and liberation from such concerns. He wishes to use his experiences as a child, being exposed to murder and police brutality, to inform his son of the structural issues that are present in society, namely, racism. Similarly, Rauch draws upon his childhood experiences to reflect on truth and liberation. It is vitally important for Rauch to care for the critters that he collects because they give him unconditional love and he is able to communicate with them more so than he is able to with humans. This correlates to our shared human condition and suffering because we all desire a sense of love and affection. We must feel needed and appreciated, “unconditional love” as Rauch puts it. A lack of this is what results in our suffering and hardships.

At Next Generation Scholars, for example, many of the students there could relate, or have parents that could relate to the narrative that Coates presents. The students at NGS are primarily minority families, Hispanic and African American, which means that they could, and most likely do, fall victim to police brutality and racism in general. For example, a pressing current political situation that is continually unfolding is that of the mass deportations that are being initiated throughout the United States, ripping away the opportunities that these families came to America in search of initially. The parents at NGS are informed of the preferred course of action if they are deported and their offspring will remain in the United States. This is a devastating occurrence to have to prepare for, but it is reality. This creates a sense of both vulnerability and responsibility in the students at NGS themselves as well as their parents.