I first became aware of Ta-Nehisi Coates when someone posted an excerpt from
one of his Atlantic articles in which he talks about “guardrails” in marriage. Coates is a secular-atheist so there’s lots I don’t agree with him on but there was some real wisdom in his article:
“I've been with my spouse for almost 15 years. In those years, I’ve never been with anyone but the mother of my son. But that's not because I am an especially good and true person. In fact, I am wholly in possession of an unimaginably filthy and mongrel mind. But I am also a dude who believes in guard-rails, as a buddy of mine once put it. I don't believe in getting "in the moment" and then exercising will-power. I believe in avoiding "the moment." I believe in being absolutely clear with myself about why I am having a second drink, and why I am not; why I am going to a party, and why I am not. I believe that the battle is lost at Happy Hour, not at the hotel. I am not a "good man." But I am prepared to be an honorable one.”
When I came across his memoir “Between the World and Me” I decided to give it a try. I realize that Coates is a controversial writer (for a lot of white people) and I may not agree with everything he writes but none of us got any wiser by reading only those with whom we agree.
“Between the World and Me” is a love letter from a father to a son written with the urgency of a man who knows he may perish at any moment. Coates writes beautifully as he recalls his youth and experiences as a father. His memoir reflects serious inner self-examination as he seeks to create a blueprint for his son to survive and possibly even thrive in a world that Coates argues is stacked against him from a historical, institutional, and psycho cultural perspective.
As Coates warns his son to keep his guard up, he adds, “Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.” This observation reminded me of Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns” which I
wrote about it here. That book on the great northward migration of blacks from the Jim Crow south points out that 77 years ago killing blacks was not a crime in ⅓ of the United States. Both observations point to a corporate (but also deeply personal) memory that white people just don’t have and that I never thought about it prior to reading these books. But it puts much of what Coates in perspective and should give the reader pause in considering the author’s hypothesis that the system created by the “dreamers” (all the white people that benefit from an American society designed to make their lives better and easier, exclusively) has always sought the disembodiment of the black body. He adds: “Disembodiment is a kind of terrorism, and the threat of it alters the orbit of all our lives and, like terrorism, this distortion is intentional.”
While his hypothesis is one which inspires much heated debate--his writing is strongest as he make personal the stories of murdered black youths, in particular, that of his Howard classmate Prince Jones: “Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince's daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright — that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.”
Overall, though, Coates' atheist outlook makes much of his advice ring rather bleak. He talks of hope in such limiting terms--instead valuing "struggle" since there's nothing beyond this life. That's my personal take as a Christian, of course, and I would add that Coates doesn't belittle those with faith in his writing but in his strident atheist stance one can't help but get the idea that he actually is searching...for something or someone.
See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.
Related Reading:
Key Quotes:
11 “And I didn’t comfort you, because I thought it would be wrong to comfort you. I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay.” Coates on why he did not console his son’s heartbreak after Michael Browns killers were acquitted.
51 “Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life.” Coates on his discovery of poetry as a distiller of one’s beliefs and truths.
61 “But this girl with the long dreads revealed something else--that love can be soft and understanding; that, soft or hard, love was an act of heroism.” Coates on love as first discovered at Howard70 “Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.” Coates’ observation on black history.
71 “These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.” Coates outlook on life in which he states is not to be confused with despair.
81-2 “Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince's daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright — that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.” Coates grappling with the death of Prince Jones. This is a powerful personalized reflection on death that rescues it from being a mere headline.
97 “I am ashamed that I made an error, knowing that our errors always costs us more.” Coates on his reaction to an older white woman who pushed his son.
113 “You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear a hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you.” Admonition from a murdered black boy’s mother to Coates’ son.
114 “Disembodiment is a kind of terrorism, and the threat of it alters the orbit of all our lives and, like terrorism, this distortion is intentional.” Coates on the persistent threat to the “body” of black men and women.
125 “How much I would have loved to have a past apart from fear. I did not have that past in hand or memory. But I had you.” Coates’ revelation upon visiting Paris and seeing another reality.
127 “Do you remember how your eyes lit up like candles when we stood out on Saint-Germain-des-Pres? That look was all that I lived for.” Beautiful writing from Coates as he remembers he and his son together in Paris.
131 “Should assaulting an officer of the state be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner?” Coates on the unanswered, unaddressed questions following Michael Brown’s death.
Key Takeaways:
29 Coates speaking of writing as not merely organizing sentences for effect but as a means of investigation.
36 Coates speaks to Malcolm’s appeal. For the white outsider this is a great distillation of his movement and philosophy--”Malcolm never lied…[he] spoke like a man who was free.”
69 The idea of the the black body and Coates’ admonition that his son must guard his body as a sacred object--never giving it away willingly.
90 Any guidance to be “twice as good” really means to accept half as much as steals away ones self-worth.
110 The successful retired black couples are to be lauded but must also be acknowledged as survivors against the backdrop of countless others who didn’t make it.
110 Coates drafts a great takedown of the notion of “black on black crime”. He argues that the term itself is a product of the “dreamers” who are basically people “who believes themselves white” and benefit from the institutional and societal construct of the US. I believe it’s also a critique of the notion of the American dream as understood by most whites.
125 In his time in another country Coates yearns for a “past apart from fear”, that is, memories associated with freedom.
For Further Study
45 “Destruction of Black Civilization” by Chancellor William
106 Thavolia Glymph
(latest novel from Liu Cixin)
