There are many instances today where a person is judged not on their actions, rather they are characterized based on their skin color. The people in today's world that are judged don’t even have a chance to explain who they really are. Coates refers race as, “The child of racism, not the father.” He is explaining how race is merely a tool of racism, and that race can be used to spread the idea of racism. In the United States, the concept of race is environmentally driven, formed from specific biases, and from our history.
The idea of race can be affected by the people you are surrounded by. In the book there are certain areas that Coates refers to as, “The killing fields... to yell ‘black-on-black crime’ is to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding”(pg.111) Clearly, you are judged by the people you are surrounded by. That means if you are forced to live in a certain area with high amounts of these types of people, then it is more likely to encounter these forms of racism. Specifically in the Michael Brown case, the area that Brown lived in was African-dominate, meaning there is a greater chance of being judged instantly off of you color of skin. Which is exactly what happened to Brown and two other boys who were shot to death at a traffic light. They were judged not for their actions, but solely on the color of their skin.
Going off of the fact that race can be environmentally driven, it is also driven off of specific biases people hold toward different races. Coates was explaining to his son, “Indeed you must be responsible for your the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you”(pg.71) This is significant because it has been fairly common for there to be some extremely harsh biases against African-Americans. Which has resulted in the mis-treatment of African-Americans. Especially in Brown's case, he was at a traffic light with two of his friends, and a white police officer immediately formed his own biases about those kids, which ended up getting them killed for no logical reason. He just assumed the worst out of them because of his racist biases toward African-Americans.
Finally, it has been a consistent theme, that race, and racism are part of our history and always will be. Coates points out to his son, “In America it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage”(pg.103). Clearly, all throughout history black people, as well as other races have been looked at as inferiors, and these people have been abused and mistreated. Just like in the Michael Brown case, Brown and his friends were seen as inferior, and they were never given a chance to be treated the same as everyone else because they were already given stereotypes that, ‘they are criminals because they are black’ which is the mind set that killed these teens. Coates changed my perspective on how I look about race, because there are so many factors that go into how people of different races are treated as a whole. But in the end, the idea that race is environmentally driven, formed by different biases, and part of our history are the reasons how race is the tool of racism.
