The author, Ta-Nehesi Coates is the country's leading black intellectual and his frank discussion on race has sparked a dramatic speech that is the first step to destigmatize the topic. Coates' essay, “The Case for Reparations,” explores how slavery, Jim Crow laws, and housing policy produced widespread inequality within the black community (2014). Coates' views resonated not only in the black community and caused a stir. Further essays by Coates, such as “The Black Family in the age of Mass Incarceration” describe the black community as a victim of racist policies resulting from the infamous Moynihan Report (2015). The harmful ideas of the Moynihan Report, such as the idea that the black family is responsible for the ills of the black community, are still prevalent today. These ideas can perpetuate themselves and must be addressed. With this in mind, stereotype threat is the theory that individuals often carry out stereotypes on their own if they are reminded that they have been classified as that stereotype. Steel and Aronson found that African American students perform worse on standardized tests when primed with information than their White counterparts (1995). To prevent self-perpetuating stereotypes and stereotype threat, we need to talk about race. Coates' essays are helpful in promoting the idea that the misfortunes of the black community are largely due