Between the World and Me Glossary of Key Terms

allude: to refer to indirectly

Black Lives Matter: a social movement founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer. According to its website, “Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.”

epigraph: a quotation that precedes a literary work in order to suggest its content

exhort: to urge strongly

false identity: Coates says that the concept of “whiteness” is a false identity because people only identify as white in opposition to Blackness. He points out that America’s settlers were “something else before they were white,” identifying by their religious faith or country of origin, for example. In contrast, he says, “whiteness” involves elements of illusion.

genocide: the systematic destruction of a group of people