In this post: Challenge your understanding of race in America through the story of a Black man raising his son, but read this with pause.
Category: Black in America
Ramiah Recommended?
Yes, with a grain of salt.
Let me start by saying Between the World and Me is an extremely critically acclaimed book. It has been hailed as a thought-provoker on the conversation of race.
I felt - even if I did not completely know - that the larger culture's erasure of black beauty was intimately connected to the destruction of black bodies. (page 30)
Yep, it's a pretty dense read, too. And yet, that density is interwoven with an intricate melody of reflection and harsh truth.
Don't do what I did. This book is meant to be read with pause.
I am not usually a fan of memoirs, and that is what Between the World and Me reads as. We read of Coates' experience feeling unsupported in school as a child, facing threats of street violence while growing up, finding his Mecca at his Historically Black Colleges and University, and his parenting struggles of raising his son with Black Boy Joy while teaching him the harsh realities of having a Black body in America. Although I was reading a life experience completely different than my own, I found myself reflecting upon every sentence's presence in my own life.
Particularly, my buying into the Dream. One is the greatest motifs of this book is the one of the Dream - the American Dream:
The point of this language of 'intention' and 'personal responsibility is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. 'Good intention' is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream. (page 24)
This book made me realize that the American Dream can be a method of placation of oppressed peoples. That, despite generations of racial injustice that have impeded the prosperity of Black people in this country (one of the most interesting statistics to me is that it will take Black people 228 years to reach White wealth), the American Dream gave me promise that I could surmount the odds. That I had been placated.
One of the strongest moments in the book overall, however, is Coates recalling the moment his son was accosted while going to a movie theater. His young son was eager to see the movie and bumped into a White woman when approaching the theater. The White woman reacted critically to being bumped into and some people in the crowd started to join in and support the woman. Coates raised his voice to defend his son, which led to the White woman yelled back "I could have you arrested!"
I came home shook. It was a mix of shame for having gone back to the law of the streets mixed with rage — 'I could have you arrested!' Which is to say: 'I could take your body.'" (page 61).
I immediately thought about word privilege. How do the words we say imply the power we feel, the power we have been given from our upbringing or learned experiences? Privilege can be perpetrated by anyone's words, but how do those words translate into our actions when we lead on them to express how we behave in the world? For this woman, her word privilege almost yielded Coates' arrest.
Here is a con: this book, even though its lessons should be engaged with by everyone, will rub some the wrong way. Coates is unapologetically himself - he speaks frankly and he tells his story as it is. As I read this book with my weekly book club, several members expressed dislike toward Coates writing this way. Particularly, these members were strongly Christian, and Coates makes several points throughout the book that share his Atheist perspective. For example: "How do I live free in this black body? It is a profound question because America understands itself as God's handiwork, but the black body is the clearest evidence that America is the work of men" (page 10).
I had no problem with Coates style. It was refreshing. I do not need to share beliefs with an author to benefit from their perspective, but his strong opinions are worth pointing out to those that do.
Regardless, Coates offers a thought of the joys and tribulations of being a Black man in this country, and even more underrepresented, of raising a Black man in this country. For that alone, it is worth the read.
Ramiah Reflects
My New Favorite Life Quotes:
"They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people" - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Questions to Ask Yourself (and answer!):
Coates writes about street life and gang activity as demonstrations of Black fear. Does Black violence represent Black fear or Black protection? (Page 11-13)
Coates says: "I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next... And that is because I am wounded. That is because I am tied to old ways, which I learned in a hard house." Is it possible to escape fear, or is it something that is deeply interwoven into the Black experience in America?
"I wanted you to be conscious, to understand that to be distanced, if only for a moment, from fear is not a passport out of the struggle," says Coates. Are foreign countries the only/best way to escape the fear that being Black in America brings?
Food for Thought:
"And my eyes—my beautiful, precious eyes—were growing stronger each day. And I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do. In America, the injury is not in being born with darker skin, with fuller lips, with a broader nose, but in everything that happens after" (Page 77).
Ramiah's Re-read When
Re-read when:
You want to challenge your understanding of race
You want to push your awareness of a Black man's experience in America
You want to read with pause
You want to relive the value of an HBCU education (or vicariously live through it)
See below for my book notes:
Check out my other posts and book notes here.
Until next time!
Montana Houston
