Identity and the black American experienceThe black American experience is quite complicated. It takes many forms, but the oppressions that black people face all have similar roots. One of the most important points made by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his book Between the World and Me is that white America depends on the oppression of black people for its success and progress. We see ourselves as exceptional, the melting pot of the world, a diverse, post-racial society. However, none of this is really true. Coates challenges our belief that we are exceptional. He describes what it means to be black in America in an attempt to convey to his son his experiences and what he should expect. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay While Coates talks to his son and America about his experiences, OJ Simpson has an entirely different experience with race. He considered himself exempt from blackness because he had been adopted by white America and transformed into a global star. Although at first glance OJ Simpson may seem like an exception to Coates' argument, I would argue that this is not the case. His success spoke to the black community and for the black community. If he hadn't been twice as good as his white counterparts, he wouldn't have been as successful. In America, we glorify black athletes because they champion our own causes, while abusing black bodies and justifying this with our need to hold them back. at a higher moral level. We can see how this plays out when we dig deeper into what Coates said and how OJ tried to separate himself from him. Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, Between the World and Me, was written as a letter to his son about being black in America. . He reflects on his childhood, struggling to understand his identity through the context of the streets and school, where he really didn't feel like he belonged. "Unfit for schools, and wanting to a large extent to be unfit for them, and lacking the know-how I needed to master the streets, I felt that there could be no way out for me, nor honestly, for anyone else” (27). He coined the term dreamers for Americans who believe they are white. The dreamers are those who always seem to find justification for the forced control of black bodies. They justify the treatment of black bodies by considering that black people have a higher moral necessity to be nonviolent and peaceful, even in the midst of violence perpetrated against them (32). Black identity is not something that black people have had the opportunity to define, because it was defined before they were born. “To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, the fists, the knives, the crack, the rape and the disease” (17). Coates tries to tell his son how he navigated and found himself in this system that has defined him since birth. His world changed when he met black people from all over the world. This meant that who he was told he was, in schools and on the streets, was not all there was to black people. He learned new meanings of love. He learned that his own oppression did not mean that he and other black people were incapable of oppressing others. His view of the world then changed and he now wants his son to know everything that is possible for him as a black boy in the diversity of the world. “I was not so much tied to a biological ‘race’ as to a group of people” (119). Black people were not bound by their skin and theirphysical characteristics, but by the culture they shared, including their common oppressions. Living in America, his son will always be exposed to schools and the streets. Although the world is a big place, he still has to be especially careful about how he behaves around the police, because they won't see him as a bright, worldly, open-minded kid, but simply as a black boy in America.which, for the most part, is the same identity that Coates says America created for black people. He discovered that although the world was big and black men and women should not feel limited, the world, especially the white world, had relied on their oppression for centuries. “'The two great divisions in society are not the rich and the poor, but the white and the black,' said South Carolina's great senator, John C. Calhoun. “And all the former, poor and rich alike, belong to the upper class and are respected and treated equally.” And there you have it: the right to break the black body as a meaning of their sacred equality” (104). Racism is no longer the same as before, it is more subtle, less obvious, but it is there. And it will remain so as long as white people depend on black oppression. While Coates gives voice to the majority of the black community at a time when they still cannot count on society to respect and protect them, OJ has a very different, though not entirely separate, vision of identity, particularly as it relates to what it means to be black in America. OJ believed he was exempt from the black experience in America. He was even happy when a white woman called the black people around him “n*****s”, but considered him superior to them (00:36). He lived in a reality completely separate from other black people. He attended a wealthy white school and was surrounded by white people praising him for his athletic abilities. They didn't consider him black (inferior), because he was so good on the field. He embraced this notion, saying, “I’m not black, I’m OJ.” He later moved into advertising for Chevrolet and Hertz. He believed this was a testament to his ability to transcend race. Little did he know that it was actually being used to gain sales from black buyers, without losing sales to whites since they adopted it. Although he seemed distinct from black America, his presence on television was a major milestone for the black community. He fought for their cause whether he wanted to or not (1:09). Although he told the university that the pressure wasn't getting to him, we found that it was. He broke down. The attention went to his head and he abused his women. Ultimately, he murdered his second wife and her lover and was acquitted. He even wrote the book If I Did it. He was later convicted of another crime and now resides in prison for robbery. He will be released on parole in October 2017 (Cleary). Ours is a society where we abuse black bodies, while glorifying the black athletes and celebrities we benefit from. Coates remembers Prince Jones' mother telling a story from her youth in which she sat at a football game and heard her peers praising the black running back on their own team, while shouting "Kill that n *****! ” with her sitting right next to them (Coates 139). We can easily see the parallel between this and OJ's experience. He is said to have transcended race, which is why he was so successful. This gave him justification to ignore the violence his fellow blacks were experiencing. He lived in a completely different world, or so he thought. But I would say.