Genre
Nonfiction Essay
Setting and Context
United States, specifically Chicago
Narrator and Point of View
Ta-Nehisi Coates, speaking from a first-person point of view
Tone and Mood
Serious, thought-provoking, critical
Protagonist and Antagonist
Major Conflict
The central conflict in this piece is between the institutions that fuel racism in the United States and the African-American community
Climax
Foreshadowing
Understatement
Allusions
Coates uses historical, biblical, and political theory references to support his arguments about reparations.
Imagery
Through multiple anecdotes, Coates illustrates how the US creates an image of its past that is not accurate.
Paradox
The essay is built around a fundamental paradox of American history: that the nation's highest ideals of individual freedom were built on a system of slavery, which denied that freedom to an entire group.
Parallelism
Coates draws parallels between different periods of time in African American history to show that the exploitation of Black people is something that occurs throughout America's existence.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Chicago, in particular, North Lawndale, serves to represent the flaws with housing in the United States; similarly, housing injustice represents all of the injustices done to African Americans in this piece
