James Baldwin – A Letter to My Nephew

There are several key similarities between Baldwin’s Letter to his nephew and Coates letter to his son. To mention the obvious, they both write to the children when they are 15 years old. A 15 year may not exactly understand the contents disclosed in the letter as they are quite heavy. Both letters describe the disadvantages and atrocities that the future generation will have to face simply because of the color of their skin. In Baldwin’s letter, he makes a conscious choice to call the oppressors “innocent”. The effect this diction has is powerful because it shows that he’s fighting the system in a nonviolent way. He’s in effect saying, kill them with love, and this is the concept he is trying to instill in his nephew through the letter. “You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early”, he is accusing his country of being at fault for the climate his son will have to grow up in. But the scariest thing about reading both of these essays is that, although they were written half a century apart, society has made little progress in addressing the issues brought up.