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Thanks for checking back!  Here at Bibliophilia, I’m sharing a book review of Between the World and Me, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  This book is especially relevant in today’s world, due to the inequality-charged tension that exists in our society.  Coates writes intimate and honestly raw letters to his son in an endeavor to commiserate with their position as black men in America, but also to explain how and why they are treated the way they are.

What really hit home for me was the allegory of the American Dream and its exclusivity.  As Coates points out, it seems only available to certain skin tones.  It was eye-opening to me that this far-off American catch-phrase is about as realistic for many as finding a unicorn in the front lawn.  The country of the free certainly has a great ability to ignore big portions of its population.

Please note- this isn’t a political stance, this is a stance on human rights.  And what Ta-Nehisi so eloquently comments on is something I agree with wholeheartedly.

The fact that for African Americans, the theme of fear seeps into everything- being pulled over for a minor traffic violation, to playing music loudly from a boom box, even to making eye contact with the wrong person.  It is absolutely appalling to me that his community’s respective body isn’t even theirs to call their own- that at any minute their body- both physical and ideological- can be taken from them is horrifying and something that I know I’ll never quite be able to understand.

Coates taught me a lot about white privilege- not that it’s anything to be ashamed of, but that it’s something we must acknowledge and fight to give others that same privilege.