Why Between the World and Me is required reading

Originally posted at www.21stcenturyscholar.org

1.

Written as a letter from father to son, Between the World and Me chronicles key moments in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ life. Imparting lessons to his son and the reader, the author, who contributes to The Atlantic, presents an unidealized portrait of America and its history of racial injustice and violence.

The emotional center of the book is the death of Prince Jones, a bright star and dear friend whom Coates met while attending Howard University. His murder, by a Prince George’s County police officer, is a reminder of an unrelenting and harsh system that constantly works to harm men of color.

Coates employs clear and precise prose to appeal to a broad audience. Rooted in a long intellectual tradition, he peppers pages with references to critical writers and activists. He uses symbols like Mecca and Dream to describe complex ideas. The author, however, always returns to the real, or corporeal, to be more exact. While recalling his youth, he writes—and I quote at length:

To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, fists, knives, crack, rape, and disease. The nakedness is not an error, nor pathology. The nakedness is the correct and intended result of policy, the predictable upshot of people forced for centuries to live under fear. The law did not protect us. And now, in your time, the law has become an excuse for stopping and frisking you, which is to say, for furthering the assault on your body. But a society that protects some people through a safety net of schools, government-backed home loans, and ancestral wealth but can only protect you with the club of criminal justice has failed at enforcing its good intentions or has succeeded at something much darker. However you call it, the result was our infirmity before the criminal forces of the world. It does not matter if the agent of those forces is white or black—what matters is our condition, what matters is the system that makes your body breakable. (p. 17-18)

2.

Why is Between the World and Me essential reading?

We have all read alarming statistics about the unprecedented rise of the carceral state: 1 in 12 black men ages 18 to 64 are incarcerated, compared to 1 in 87 white men. Since the 1970s, 1 out of 4 black men have been incarcerated. As a result of stricter policing and sentencing laws, since the 1990s, while violent-crime rates have fallen, incarceration rates have risen. High school dropouts are more likely to go to prison. Former inmates are less likely to obtain employment. Households are stripped of husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, and friends.

Coates knows the statistics too. Between the World and Me, however, is about the people that populate statistics. Prince Jones. Sean Bell. Trayvon Martin. And, countless more.

Coates does not allow his son, or the reader, to lapse, to be misled by persuasive talk or lulled by fantastic promises. He writes, “I loved Malcolm because Malcolm never lied, unlike the schools and their façade of morality, unlike the streets and their bravado, unlike the world of dreamers. I loved him because he made it plain, never mystical or esoteric, because his science was not rooted in the actions of spooks and mystery gods but in the work of the physical world” (p. 36). He demands more. Be critical of everything. Focus on what is real. He commands, “So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope” (p. 71).

The book is an illustration of the effects of bad policy and the need for good policy. It is a warning and invocation. Similar to James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, it takes the form of a letter to a loved one. The editorial decision to write using second person allows Coates to speak to his son and the reader, creating some intimate and evocative moments. We learn as the son learns. And, when he writes "What I want you to know is that this is not your fault, even if it is ultimately your responsibility" (p. 137), we listen.

Why people talk about Dukes of Hazard, not the Charleston Massacre

Originally posted at www.21stcenturyscholar.org

A few weeks ago, Antar and Bill posted personal and thoughtful blogs about the Charleston Massacre and, more broadly, the repeated and targeted violence perpetrated against Black people in the United States. Antar asked “scholars to do some soul searching.” Bill wondered if he could do more.

Since the tragedy, I’ve been thinking a lot about my hometown.

I grew up in a small town, clusters of houses grouped around tobacco fields. A single highway bisected the county. We called the main road Route 4; if you drove long enough, the name changed to Pennsylvania Avenue—maybe, you’ve heard of it. When the county installed a second stoplight, it made the front page of the local newspaper. Residents were outraged.

In Southern Maryland—like a lot of places below the Mason-Dixon—the past and present exist simultaneously. People try to move forward, but they’re always tethered to some old way of life. It sticks to you. The reminders are everywhere. Waterways and towns carry the names of Native American tribes. Placards celebrate this building or that field for something or other, usually related to the colonial era. Tobacco barns dot the landscape. And, farming and fishing are still professions. Most forward momentum is due to a growing number of commuter families; otherwise, I’m positive there would still be one stoplight.

On the bus ride home from school, at the entrance of my neighborhood, I passed a one-room house. It used to shelter slaves. Behind the deteriorated structure stood a two-story house that had been converted into a church. Black families congregated there; for perspective, my high school had enough black students to occupy one lunch table—and they did. On Saturday nights, the church came alive, all music and dancing. If I took a black and white photo of the scene, you’d have trouble telling if it occurred ten or one hundred years ago.

On Friday nights, if I took another route home from school, I occasionally passed a gathering of Ku Klux Klan members. They didn’t look much different than a bunch of bikers—unless you knew what to look for.

I grew up around men who embodied tough, no-nonsense identities, something like what Matthew Desmond calls country masculinity. They exhibited aggression—both physical and verbal. I often heard the worst imaginable slurs about gay and black people.

As I got older, I heard fewer slanders. Front stage turned to back stage. Rather than overhearing the n-word in public spaces like a mall or restaurant, I heard it in the garage where I worked or on the soccer field among players. I’m not so sure the changes occurred because people were enlightened; more likely, they were ashamed. It was no longer publicly acceptable. So, the hateful expressions retreated to more protected spaces.

The debate has now turned to the confederate flag—a symbol I still see on the bumpers of pickup trucks when I visit home. Politicians have petitioned for the flag’s removal. Flag supporters argue for its historical and regional importance.

That’s the trick of racism (and the reproduction of social injustice). Instead of focusing on the murders of nine innocent people and the contexts that led to such tragic outcomes, the public debates a flag and the media wonders why TV Land removed the Dukes of Hazard from its programming schedule.