Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is an intimate letter from the author to his son about being Black in America. I wanted to take some time to explore the motif of The Dream and highlight how Coates puts into perspective living as a Black man in a country “lost in the Dream.”
America is infatuated with the Dream. The Dream is white picket fences with manicured lawns. It’s nuclear families and Sunday church services. It’s the pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality to achieve just that, except it’s not real. But the weight of the Dream is real. The weight rests on the shoulders of Black people living in America, perpetuating their struggle to achieve something so elusive it might as well be impossible because it wasn’t made for them.
The Dream wasn’t made for them.
The Dream was made for adherents who “believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and goodworks,” when it is in fact the natural result of privilege. The Dream has persisted in the minds of Americans because it’s easier to point to examples of Black Excellence than to acknowledge the systemic oppression that makes being Black and successful so remarkable to them in the first place.
Coates explains, “there is the burden of living among Dreamers, and there is the extra burden of your country telling you the Dream is just, noble, and real, and you are crazy for seeing the corruption and smelling the sulfur. For their innocence, they nullify your anger, your fear, until you are coming and going…” The Dream invalidates this burden and strips Black people of the ability to question a system built on their backs. Because to be a common man in the formative years of the American “democracy” was to dream of being prosperous enough to own property and ultimately, slaves. For the earliest Dreamers, success revolved around the control of Black bodies. It is no coincidence that the Dream now, so ingrained in the minds of Americans, allows us to evade accountability for such a standard made unrealistic by systemic oppression and marginalization.
Ultimately, to read Coates is to get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Black man in an America obsessed with the Dream. Between the World and Me helps readers understand the importance of dismantling the Dream that places the onus on individual efforts rather than systems of oppression in the American fabric and foundation.
Post-reading questions:
(Comment your thoughts and answers, and Reply to other comments you like!)
How do you define the Dream in the context of your own identity?
Do you think it’s a realistic ideal?
In your opinion, does the format of a letter from father to son make the text more or less accessible to readers?
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