Genre
Nonfiction
Setting and Context
Modern-day America
Narrator and Point of View
First-person narration from Coates’ perspective.
Tone and Mood
The tone is honest and emotionally charged and the mood is angry.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the black citizens of the United States of America and the antagonist is racism.
Major Conflict
Coates combines eight of his prominent essays to address the two terms that President Obama was in power. They focus on the systemic racism originating from the Reconstruction era that persists in a country led by a black president.
Climax
The climax is not apparent.
Foreshadowing
Coates foreshadows the concepts in modern-day America by the ideas that flourished during the Reconstruction era in the introduction.
Understatement
“To secure the White House, Obama needed to be a Harvard-trained lawyer with a decade of political experience and an incredible gift for speaking to cross sections of the country; Donald Trump needed only money and white bluster.”
Allusions
“In 2002, the rapper Ice Cube produced and starred in Barbershop. The movie was a surprise hit, spawning a sequel, a spin-off, and a short-lived TV series. Its success shocked industry-watchers, because it took place exclusively in a black community and seemingly focused on “black issues.” But you could find the same characters in any other ethnic community.”
Imagery
“A huge mountain shadowed Aspen and a ski lift stretched up from the town to the peak. Kenyatta insisted we take the lift up. I am afraid of heights, but a mix of machismo and curiosity pushed me forth. I remember the sloping ground rising and falling beneath us, the lift swaying in the high wind, the town falling away from us, the fear tightening my arms, legs, throat, and then at the top, the clouds hanging over mountain ridges still, in June, speckled with white.”
Paradox
“This focus on money must seem strange, if you have never been without it, and it still must seem strange if you have been without it before”
Parallelism
“Films like The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind revealed an establishment more interested in the alleged sins perpetrated upon Confederates than in the all-too-real sins perpetrated upon the enslaved people in their midst. That predilection continues.”
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“…a blue-collar worker—was able to go to work and earn enough money to support a family of four”
Blue-collar is a metonymy for the working class.
Personification
Coates personifies the constructs of racism and white supremacy.
