Reaction to reading: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I first learned of Mr. Coates on Chris Hayes' shows on MSNBC. I remember thinking what an intelligent eloquent thinker. This guy is going to go far in political analysis and commentary. His essay The Case for Reparations in the Atlantic was  exemplary in being well-reasoned and persuasive, free of invective despite being quite clear in its judgment. His latest comes with high praise by Toni Morrison of his being the new James Baldwin,

The book jacket itself tells much of the story. Appearing to be printed on a poster advising of rewards for capture of runaway slaves the author's name appears boldly but the title seems to be a screen of the image referred to therein through the poem by Richard Wright, "Between the World and Me," a scene of racial execution by torture and immolation.

This image of power wielded with impunity both in history and today is the background of Coates's letter to his fourteen year old son who walks away from the television coverage for the day of Michael Brown's death by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who is not charged for the killing nor is likely to be indicted, to his bedroom to cry for the injustice. Moved by those tears to offer some wisdom to his son, Coates pens the book as a way for his child to cope with the horrible truth that in this society men who "would call themselves white" (Coates uses the phrase repeatedly) are empowered to dispose of the bodies of black people as a matter of policy and custom without fear of punishment. 

The power to control, plunder, annihilate the black body is the ground of a primordial fear in the black psyche today as much as before in history. It saps any possible naive strength and respect of themselves as equals among the nations of the earth, helps them to forge their own shackles even in this time when one would have thought freedom, progress in civil rights, and new found self-esteem would have overcome the historical sin against them.

Perhaps, had not white society continued the sin in new forms of wage slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and today mass incarceration while never having recognized in any serious way the sin committed in slavery. Today's black youth perceiving they shall never know parity pursue a hypermasculine gang authority as the only manhood they will however briefly achieve. Having forgotten (not likely) or been cut off from their history by oppressive schooling they grow angrier and more frustrated as white society continues instructing them in their essential worthlessness.

Reexamining his own development in understanding his American predicament, Coates rediscovers for his son their proper history in Africa and the world--how they, blacks, are more genuinely the "real people of the earth" and these "people who would call themselves white" are the aberrations of humankind who suppress recognizing their original evil and their continued fraud and plunder agains their victims.

He confesses several times he does not believe in an afterlife or any religious rectification: either justice is achieved here and now from person to person or it is forever denied. The vulnerability of the black body in America is central and Coates allows none to forget it. He sympathizes with Malcolm X's conviction that any black man who is to be destroyed is justified in taking another white man along--no more self-sacrifice for salvation. There is no ultimate salvation therefore there is no logic in meek self-sacrifice.

Coates bolsters his interpretation with many examples drawn from recent deaths of unarmed black men by white policemen but relies primarily on the death of Prince Jones, a friend of his from Howard who was shot dead by an African-American policeman who mistaking Jones in a Jeep for similar man in a similar Jeep--the machinery of unpunished killing having been set in motion proceeding to annihilate the innocent.

As I titled this piece it is my reaction, not a book review or bookreport. The opinions expressed are solely mine. I have attempted to relay them accurately and if I have failed the fault is solely mine.

This reaction may well differ from yours. There is much to learn here. Coates's is an authentic if disturbing voice. I urge all to read it who would wish to understand the problems of race in our land.




c. J.S.Manista, 2015