Between the World and Me
Posted in: African American Experiences
Purchase →In this National Book Award winner, Ta-Nehisi (pronounced Tah-Nuh-Hah-See) Coates writes a letter to his adolescent son which attempts to answer the questions: What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? How can we all honestly reckon with the fraught history of race and free ourselves from its burden?
Coates says that “the elevation of being white” was achieved “through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs…the rape of mothers; the sale of children,” denying the right of blacks “to secure and govern our own bodies.” In light of Eric Garner being choked to death for selling cigarettes, and Renisha McBride being shot to death for seeking help, blacks are still being destroyed because they inhabit black bodies, he maintains.
Coates writes of growing up West Baltimore, a galaxy apart from other areas, from which he achieved the velocity to escape through an education at Howard University. He then worked for ten years as a national correspondent at The Atlantic. Coates writes about the experiences of himself and his contemporaries with raw power and energy. This book grabs those of us who are white by the shoulders, shakes us, and shouts, “Now, can you understand?”
A father’s letter to his son using a similar format to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Coates’ fear of harm to his body is expressed as anger and frustration with America and its systems, law enforcement, and the fabric of racism. Unlike Baldwin who became reconciled to the white race through love and who was writing at the beginning of the civil rights movement headed by King, Coates’ fear derives from the years following the movement in the ghettos that still exist and that do not permit him to express forgiveness or love.
Anger is the dominant emotion expressed by Coates. I was taught that anger is fear directed outward and it is clear from this book that there were few moments when fear was not an ever present feeling for the author. Coates understands his anger and that it is driven by fear. His mother taught him how to question himself and to continually ask questions of his environment. She made him write his answers to her questions. “Why did I feel the need to talk the same time as my teacher? Why did I not believe my teacher was entitled to respect?” She taught him to ruthlessly interrogate himself and his emotions and, as a result, his response to the world.
He recognizes that at one point he was trying to create in the black world a reality that was a mirror of or carbon copy of what the white world saw as civilization. He recognized the error of his thinking in Ralph Wilely’s response to Saul Bellow’s quip ‘Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?’ Wiley responded “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus. Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.” Coates realized that Bellow was implying since Tolstoy was white Tolstoy mattered and was questioning whether the Zulu’s had anyone to compare to Tolstoy. Wiley destroys the assumption by merely stating the fact that we are all humans.
In this passage I found echoes of MLK’s sermon on the text of the Good Samaritan in which he decried tribalism. “One of the great tragedies of man’s long trek along the highway of history has been the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class or nation.” For King it was the indifference of what happens to another tribe that was the basis of racial hostility. In Wiley’s response, Coates recognized not indifference but Bellow’s unstated but implied tribal belief in superiority. A belief that is universally false unless you accept tribalism.
Coates ends with a summary of his visit to the mother of Prince Jones, his friend who was killed by police when visiting his fiancé. She exhibits a quiet strength that he does not understand but respects. He sees that strength and armor in his people who have real faith in God and have relied on that faith to pull them through their trials. He admits to not having that faith and is pessimistic whether the white majority will ever awake from its dream of superiority and the stupor it creates regarding all things. Reading the writings of Coates, Baldwin and King, could help foster such an awakening.