What I think
I don’t agree with this
because Americans don’t
include certain events that
would defame them.
Coates does talk about
the building of America
through the slavery of
blacks; hence, I agree
with this claim.
Totally false claim; Coates
argues that they are still
blinded by their skin color
and live in ignorance.
Coates claims this too and
I agree because this was
the main subject &
purpose of the article.
Claim
1. Americans largely understand why
the Civil War happened and why it
was a good thing that The South
lost.
2. America was made great through
the mass torture and murder of
black people, ​and that legacy
continues to this day.
3. White people have changed and are
no longer racist in the same way
they used to be ​because they
understand their own racist
history.
4. All Black people in America have to
live up to a higher standard and with
more worries, dangers, and
struggles (but less privileges) than
their White counterparts
What the text supports (Quote and analysis)
Coates states that the Civil War was glossed over in
history textbooks; hence, the American system did not
genuinely teach or cover it in its curriculums: “And yet it
had been glossed over in my education, and in popular
culture, representations of the war and its reasons
seemed obscured.” Coates also states that “this lie of
the Civil War is the lie of innocence, is the Dream.
Historians conjured the Dream.”
Coates does claim that the idea of enslavement is
heritage as “in America, it is traditional to destroy the
black body...Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic
borrowing of labor—it is not so easy to get a human
being to commit their body against its own elemental
interest.” He also claims that America was built on the
shackled & broken black bodies: “The soul was the
body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood
that watered the cotton, and these created the first fruits
of the American garden.”
Coates would have disagreed with this claim too as he
repetitively states that white men are living in ignorance:
“For the men who needed to believe themselves white,
the bodies were the key to a social club, and the right to
break the bodies was the mark of civilization. ‘The two
great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but
white and black’.”
Coates claims blacks have more things to worry about
in their lives as they are always the “prey” of the white
as they are in a race “in which the wind is always at
your face and the hounds are always at your heels.”
Also, he tells his son that he should continue living as a
 black man though he would be vulnerable to all sorts of
dangers and despite all that, he should keep struggling:
“And to varying degrees this is true of all life. The
difference is that you do not have the privilege of living
in ignorance of this essential fact.”

I agree: Coates has
wanted to educate his son
into a sober & conscious
black man who continually
struggles for his liberty &
safety..
5. The narrator is able to offer a
hopeful solution to his son about
how to be Black in America. He
understands what needs to be done
for his son to be safe.
In the last paragraph, Coates talks directly to his son
and tells him how he has educated him into a sober,
serious, & conscious citizen in this “terrible & beautiful
world.” Also, he advises his son to never “apologize for
his human feelings...make excuses for his height, his
long arms, his beautiful smile... need to constrict
yourself to make other people comfortable.” Finally, he
tells him that he never wanted his son to be as good as
the whites but instead to “attack every day of your brief
bright life determined to struggle.”

Summary of his argument:

My Thesis​ - In his article, "Letter to My Son," author Ta-Nehisi Coates claims that America was built on the slavery of
blacks and this has become a legacy in which whites still maintain through police brutality, believing oneself being white is
being blinded by skin color and living in ignorance, and that despite living in a racist nation, blacks should continue to
struggle until the end of their lives for their liberty & safety.

Mr. Rose’s Thesis​ - Coates, in resisting his own father's fearful REACTING through physical violence, instead encourages
his son to ACT from understanding how racism undergirds life in America. Even though he knows his son will never be
free from the dangers and fear of being Black in America, he can be conscious and free from ignorance about the ugly
reality of America