Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Between the World and Me, Part II: (73 – 88)

[Between the World and Me]

 In this section of the book, Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses what happened to his friend Prince Jones. The incident occurred more than a decade before the current attention related to the shooting of unarmed black men by police officers. Perhaps, the incident primed Coates to speak out so relentlessly and thoughtfully today.

What in particular did you have a notable response to in the section? Why? Please provide a page citation. 

12 comments:

Unknown said...

On page seventy-nine in the book, Coates mentioned that he knew that the country was ruled by majoritarian pigs. Through this examination he realized that he could never forgive the killer of his friend Prince Jones (79). I thought that this was terribly close to the killings that happened to the church in south carolina. The boy was charged with insanity, but I, like Ta-Nehisi, find myself unable to forgive him. It is just too overwhelming to attack people who are innocent, but those who are in church, repenting; he had no reason to take another's life

Joshua Jones said...

On page 76, Ta-Nehisi recounts upon a time where he was stopped by the PG police. He intimately describes the knowledge of what policeman in the same county had done to blacks such as Elemer Clay Newman. The police "shot at moving cars, shot at the unarmed, shot through the backs of men and claimed that it had been they who'd been under fire" (76). Policeman today act in the same manner throughout the USA.
This specific section of the book saddened me. I began to consider humans to be so evil and cruel, specifically whites with racial issues, to be so dogged and inhumane. The poem on pg 73 relates to this very well and I think that looking at this specific section would be something worth wild.

-Joshua J.

Unknown said...

What events Coates described of what happened in his past, are still happening now.The main one being the death of Trayvon Martin. He was gunned down simply because of what he looked like and the one person who witnessed it, is the person who shot him. This person also had multiple arrests on their record. Coates provided and excellent point when he said, "These shooters were investigated, exonerated, and promptly returned to the streets..."(76). The fact that not just ordinary people, but law enforcement can get away with murder and give false events as truth is appalling.

Unknown said...

The passage that was most notable to me was Coates' deeper thoughts about Prince's death when he states, "The need to forgive the officer would not have moved me, because even then, in some inchoate form, I knew that Prince was not killed by a single officer so much as he was murdered by his country and all the fears that have marked it from birth" (78). I think Coates is trying to explain that ever since our nations beginning there has been a systematic and institutional racism instilled in our society, and Prince's death is just one of the many infuriating outcomes of it. He refuses to forgive the officer who did it because it is such a massive problem and it is continuing to happen.

-John H.

Unknown said...

On page seventy-nine, the author has already explained the situation of his friends death. On this page , the author writes "I heard several people asking forgiveness for the officer who'd shot Prince Jones down. The need to forgive the officer would not have moved me...I knew that Price was not killed by a single officer so much as he was murdered by his country." This quote really caught my attention because I also would not have found the compassion to forgive the officer that murdered my best friend, because I am aware of the corruption of the American police force towards black males especially. I found it very comforting to know that the Howard community came together as a unit to consolidate the family of Prince Jones.

Xavier Morrison- Wallace said...

Cops and their activity can be a direct reflection of our country's mental state and beliefs(p.g.79) They are back on the streets doing the same thing they were doing before they killed an innocent person. I can see that no true justice was done there. Also, the last paragraph of that same page interested me. Knowing that Prince died unfairly and unexpectedly gave Ta- Nehisi a sense of his physical self by realizing that his soul is just a bunch of nerves and neurons and that his spirit is his flesh. He is realizing that people can die so easily rather you want to or not. We do only have one life, and it doesn't really take much to lose it.

Unknown said...

What really stuck out to me was how this isn't new that the police didn't fail to handle this situation properly. That Prince's death and countless others are the fault of this country and our society as a whole. Coates states that "The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs"(79). We cant expect simple police reforms to solve anything. As a country built upon the murder of innocent people we can not any radical changes to our society or country anytime soon.

Barry F. said...

While reading this section, the part that got my attention the most was how passionate Coates was about the killing of Prince, the Howard student killed in PG County. On page 83, Coates says, "I wrote about the history of the Prince George's County police. Nothing had ever felt so essential." He continues on to say that the officer who killed Prince was black and the black community activists didn't seem to care much. I could tell that Coates did not understand why, so he took matters into his own hands by doing research through several sources. It would be great is more people acted like Coates in the present day to try to get to the root of these problems and how they can be remedied for the future.

Jessie Carter said...

On page 75 Coates talks about being stopped by police officers and the fear that he felt. The beginning to this section got my attention because i often hear black people, myself included, speak about these same emotions when confronted with police officers. He felt this way because of all of the stories he read that ended in a death of an unarmed person for no reason. Every time i have a run in with the police, I noticed that i've never felt protected, I have always felt fear, as do most of us.

Unknown said...

On page eighty it talks about how Prince was shot by a police officer and there was not evidence on why he was shot or what caused him to get shot. I found that whole page intriguing because the officer had already made a mistake once and had been punished for it, and the second time it happened no one questioned him and just looked for evidence to prove Prince was in the wrong. You see that a lot today in society because I remember on the news their was a man who ran from a police officer because a gun got pulled on him and then he was shot to death. The police officer claimed it was self defense, but the whole incident was caught on camera. Incidents like this have become part of what seems like a normal day routine. You wake up turn on the tv and then find out that someone has been shot for some unknown reason by an officer. Sometimes I ask myself is that going to be me because some of these people live normal lives just like us and then they get treated like a common criminal and serenely injured or dead.

De'Abrion Joyner said...

On page 76 he talks about how the cops basically run free and don't get any consequences for how they treat people even if the way they treat them is unprovoked. What stood out to me was this wasn't necessarily a big deal to him, it was so common that he says "But I paid it no further mind" when he thought about if he knew the student who had just been killed by cops. This stands out because it shows just how common and used to things we get as people e stop even making big deals out of them after they happen so often.

Unknown said...

The part that frustrates me about this story is how the Prince George County Police was widely recognized for their senseless abuse and brutality, yet no one did anything about it. On page 76, Coates notes that the FBI did multiple investigations and the police chief ended up getting a raise. It doesn't take a group of certified secret agents to find the corruption that took place when the police are just blatantly taking lives on faulty premises that aren't the least bit believable. according to the evidence on page 80, Prince was not even close to matching the the description of the suspect,the office ignored proper procedure, and the end of the day he got off scott-free.