Written in the epistolary style as a letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me has pretty much become a sensation. Everyone's reading it. I've received multiple copies from people who are pretty sure I'm going to love it (and I do). I took a copy to the doctor's office, and my doctor said, "Oh, I'm reading that, too! Very interesting perspective."
I don't fully understand why it's become so popular, though, because Coates doesn't sugar-coat. I mean, based on conversations I've had with relatives and acquaintances (and even some friends), I think a lot of white people--or, as Coates puts it, people who need to think of themselves as white--are likely to be offended by Coates' ideas and how he states them. The fact that I've mostly heard positive things about this book is a bit of a head-scratcher.
Americans believe in the reality of "race" as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism--the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them--inevitably follows from this inalterable condition....But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming "the people" has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible--that is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white (7).That idea--that whiteness isn't what you probably think it is, that race isn't a "defined, indubitable feature" of the world--is more than enough to send lots of people into a rage. It strikes at a comfortable, established worldview, one its purveyors need to maintain belief in so as to maintain power. And yet.
Maybe people who would otherwise be offended are more open because of the format: The direct address to Coates' son certainly makes the book intimate and revealing, and there's a lot of love in there. Perhaps more people are open to Coates' ideas and even his anger because by the time they really start to get it, they've already identified with him on some level as a parent? I don't know. I imagine that's part of it for some people, but I can't imagine it's enough for most.
Throughout the book, Coates drives home the fact that individual "intentions" don't matter. I mean, yes, they matter in determining whether a person is an asshole, but whether each individual person is an asshole or not isn't the point. Racism is bigger than that. Coates highlights this repeatedly, like when he says about a friend shot dead by police, "I knew that Prince was not killed by a single officer so much as he was murdered by his country and all the fears that have marked it from birth" (78). Later on, talking about Eric Garner, he repeats the concept: "But what one 'means' is neither important nor relevant. It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a black body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black."
Coates is talking about systemic racism. Not familiar with the term? Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation has a great series of short videos about it, which you should definitely go watch! Here's a quick definition of systemic racism, though, and from an unexpected source--thanks, Ben & Jerry (yes, I'm talking about the ice cream guys!).
Systemic racism is about the way racism is built right into every level of our society. ...While fewer people may consider themselves racist, racism itself persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments, and elsewhere. Think about it: when white people occupy most positions of decision-making power, people of color have a difficult time getting a fair shake, let alone getting ahead.You can go read their entire article about this subject if you'd like more detail. They explain seven ways we know systemic racism exists, and their argument is compelling. A big part of the point is that it's not about the individual; it's about the system in which the individual participates.
This doesn't fully capture what Coates talks about; it's a start, but he goes deeper, coming back repeatedly to the psychological effects of racism. His "stunted imagination," he says, was due to his chains (85). "The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs" (89). Unlike the white people around him, his own childhood and his son's childhood were informed by fear, by learning to live by the rules that their parents desperately hoped would keep them alive. Though Coates obviously understands the impetus for teaching that fear and those rules, he also points out that doing so stifles and holds back black children. Instead of feeling mastery and confidence, they feel fear and must build up armor in order to deal with the world and their position in it. What kind of toll does that take on a child? What kind of toll does it take on a people, generation after generation?
"This is how we lose our softness," Coates writes. "This is how they steal our right to smile....It struck me that perhaps the defining feature of being drafted into the black race was the inescapable robbery of time, because the moments we spent readying the mask, or readying ourselves to accept half as much, could not be recovered" (91). I think this is something white people often miss when thinking about the effects of racism on black people.* It's not just the tangible damage, like the things listed in that article about systemic racism that I mentioned above (economic disadvantages, employment discrimination, rate of incarceration, etc.). It's all that time and energy spent in an intense defense mode--time and energy that could be spent on so much else, if only black people weren't treated in such a way that they need to spend it on self-defense instead.
Does that sound like a small loss? It sounds like a huge, monstrous loss, to me. It reminds me of how much time and energy I spent physically and emotionally folded in on myself during high school, constantly on guard, waiting for the next homophobic slur or cutting remark. That experience went on for four years and it was horrible--and still it was so much less horrible, ultimately less pervasive, than what Coates describes.
There's obviously much more to this book than what I've touched on here, but I wanted to at least bring up a few points I found especially interesting. Toni Morrison's cover quote calls Between the World and Me "required reading," and I couldn't agree more.
*I'm using these terms--white people, black people--the way most of us typically do. I fully agree with Coates' position, though, that they're not immutable biological categories, but are in fact ways of hierarchizing humanity. My use of them isn't meant to deny or obscure that reality.
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