Coates briefly mentions the use of corporal punishment by his father and other parents in his childhood community, but neglects to expand on its meaning as it pervades the black community of generation after generation (10 ). Coates focuses exclusively on Black men in his discussion of racism and ignores the opportunity to address misogynoir — a word coined by Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey to describe the racialized sexism that Black women face (Trudy, “Misogynoir”) — when refers to black women. in his letter. It perpetuates misogynism by mentioning black women as an afterthought, only to accompany the narrative of the suffering black man and characterizing slavery as a woman; it offers no insight into the black woman's struggle, nor does it acknowledge the severity of the problems faced by black women, whether at the hands of whites or black men, in any meaningful way (Coates, 9-10, 37). Furthermore, Coates presents a narrow and one-sided depiction of “street life” (9-16) and romanticizes Howard University into the stereotypical exoticism of Blackness, characterizing Howard as a racially religious center and appropriating the language of Islam as “Mecca.” – which fuels the politics of respectability that black Americans continually grapple with; the poor urban black community must be left behind in search of something more meaningful and superior,