comment on theme

The book is, on a fundamental, foundational level, a warning from one black man to another – specifically, from someone who was once a young black man himself to one who is maturing into what the author suggests is the inevitably dangerous territory of being a member of one of the most suspected, the most arrested, the most incarcerated, and the most murdered demographics in America. Using carefully integrated references to four young black men, each of whom lost their lives as the result of what has been generally believed to be racially motivated violence, the author writes with the apparent primary purpose of urging his son to be watchful, to be careful, and to arm himself with knowledge.