Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Where does the Black identity come from in America?

Teaching Suggestion: Between the World and Me positions Blackness as an outgrowth of the desire to assert whiteness as the dominant identity in America. Getting students to consider how race is both an actively-constructed concept and an identity marker with intense significance to the individual will help them grapple with Coates’ assertion the Blackness is an invention of the American imagination that grew to inform its reality.

• Blackness, A Haunted History – James Padilioni Jr positions Blackness in a historical context that focuses on the trauma of Middle Passage. In doing so, he sees Black identity as a historical trauma response.
• Historical Foundations of Race – This article from the National Museum of African American History and Culture documents the history of race as a social construct in America. It focuses on Blackness as an identity constructed by powerful white landowners and lawmakers.

2. What is whiteness?

Teaching Suggestion: Most conversations of race in America focus on Blackness, but Coates is much more concerned with critiquing the people who defined Blackness, not Black people themselves.