

Just because he was black he was subject to having random and spontaneous violence directed at him.Īnother significant experience came in college, where a police officer gunned down his acquaintance Prince Jones on his fiance’s front lawn in Virginia. This scary moment solidified what he had already come to notice. He walked across the street and the boy brandished a gun, saying nothing, and then put it back. He recalls how as a young boy, another kid he didn’t know called him over after school. As he puts it, “to be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world.”

Growing up in Maryland, Coates saw the grim realities of racism at a young age. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: Coates came to realize early on that being black came with inherent dangers. Let’s dive right in and discover more about racism so we can know better how to stop it!

Nobody can really know what it’s like to live life as an African American in the US unless they’ve experienced it. Listen to the audio of this summary with a free reading.fm account*:
