Between the World and Me

by Ta-Nehisi Coates,
The Florida Courier, September 11, 2015

Throughout his life, Ta-Nehisi Coates has asked this question: “How do I live free in this Black body?” 150911_book01The context for addressing the question, he emphasizes, is an America in which “death could so easily rise up from the nothing of a boyish afternoon;” in which White boys live in homes with immaculate bathrooms, compile complete collections of baseball cards, and worry only about dating popular girls and avoiding poison oaks, while Black boys, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, are killed because they are Black.