Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Throughout this book, Coates is constantly talking about his body. Not like he is talking about the features of his body. More the fact that he is constantly reminded of the existence of his body. Reminded that it is was a collection of muscles used for others’ profit; a black body that is in more danger from police than white bodies in this country; a body that, when behind bars, funds Mass Incarceration Inc.
The book, written as a letter to his son, chronicles how he’s addressed the constant divide he’s felt about himself and the standard “Dream” of being American. He wasn’t a part of it and, from an early age it seems like he’s been constantly trying to truly figure out why. During his high school and college years, he seemed angry and read everything under the sun to inform himself on how race in America got to where it is today. After that, he discovered journalism, where to his initial amazement, he could just call people up and demand answers to his questions! Beyond that, he also had his son which further pushed his intellectual life forward and traveled to Europe too where the uniqueness of America’s racial situation was revealed even deeper.
For me, the memoir greatest punch came at the end of Part II where he completely lays out why these is a divide between the world and him. It comes down to what so much else in American culture comes down to — that beautiful and tortured American dream. He writes,
“The Dreamers accept this as the cost of doing business, accept our bodies as currency, because it is their tradition. As slaves we were this country’s first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country’s second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guest room, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world’s prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value” (132).
In American society, everyone has the dream. Of course they do! I certainly do. And its not intrinsically bad. I want to be successful. I want people to think I’m smart and I want to be financially comfortable. Getting to these things isn’t easy for anyone — black or white. But here, he lays bare the underlying “cost of doing business” and the “down payments” that made that path a easier for some rather than others: black bodies. Ask people to willingly give those historical advantages away — people who feel like they have had to overcome hurdles of their own in their individual experience — and you end up facing resistance.
Whether it is the political bubble I live in, or a true national shift, this kind of argument is in many of the discussions prompted by the George Floyd protests. Thank God. I would have to think that this book is part of the reason why.
Other Annotations
“Howard University is an institution of higher education, concerned with the LSAT, magna cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. The Mecca is a machine, crafted to capture and concentrate the dark energy of all African people and inject it directly into the student body (40)
His years a Howard University clearly had a life-changing impact on his life. A true Mecca it was called by him and his contemporaries. These years at Howard are begging to be made into a movie. A lot of this book is sobering, but his description of his years at Howard are so motivating. I love the image of him finding his own, finding a home, and expanding his mind in D.C.
“I felt that I had crossed some threshold, out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you, and then there was after, and in this after, you were the God I’d never had. I submitted before your needs, and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival’s sake. I must survive for you (67)
Coates seems to have an understandable chip on his shoulder against a world where he is often treated as a second class citizen because of his body. You can’t really fault him for rejecting traditional spirituality. As beautifully written here though, he found some form of it in his newborn.