Race In America
“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.” (Coates, 17) Between the World and Me, the bestselling book written as a letter by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a poignant reminder that 21st century America is still a country where African Americans are bound by invisible chains to the ugly realities of race and color in America.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for the Atlantic, as well as the author of A Beautiful Struggle, and A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, writes an intricate and reflective letter to his son about being black in America . Part bittersweet, part painful remembrance, Coates’ searing prose will surely make a strong impression on anyone who picks up this book. Coates is really stepping back in Between the World and Me and examining a country where, “The law did not protect us” (Coates, 17) and allowed for the exploitation of black bodies for a corrupted profit. Now, in our times, “the law has become an excuse for stopping and frisking you, which is to say, for furthering the assault on your body.” (Coates, 17)
Coates’ narration of his childhood growing up in Baltimore certainly provides insight to the origins of his ideas, and the influence that all his extensive reading had on his psyche. However, it seems as though these ideas really manifested and matured while Coates attended Howard University. At first, when Coates refers to Howard as, “The Mecca,” it seemed that he was perhaps making a point about religion, but later on it became clear that Howard is viewed as the Mecca of African American academia and learning -- the nucleus, and reflection of the African American minority in the United States.
One anecdote from this chapter in Coates’ life that I found to be particularly of note was the story of Queen Nzinga. She was a prominent figure in African history, and Coates considered her to be his, “...Tolstoy-the very same Nzinga whose life I wished to put in my story case.” (Coates, 54) Another example of an African American achieving the extraordinary; beating the odds and defying them as well. However, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ professor went on to relate how, “Nzinga [conducted] negotiations upon the woman’s back, she told it without any fantastic gloss, and it hit me hard as a sucker punch: Among the people in that room, all those centuries ago, my body, breakable at will, endangered in the streets, fearful in the schools, was not closest to the Queen’s, but her adviser’s, who’d been broken down into a chair…” (Coates, 54) What Coates takes away from this is an example of how despite Queen Nzinga being a shining example of progressive and complex African society during the 18th century, Coates sees not her example of the empowerment of African women as much as how she still sold slaves and figuratively, “broke the backs” of her servants. Therefore, she perpetuated and continually enslaved and killed Africans, making her no better than white slave traders essentially doing the same thing. A doomsday theme certaintlypervades the narrative in this book.
On the flip side, the time Coates spent in Paris and in Brooklyn opened the floodgates in terms of ideals contrasted and compared through the medium that was Coates’ upbringing in Baltimore. Again, the compelling nature of Coates’s narration is used to great effect in making the stabbing pain of inequality, oppression and institutional confinement felt on the reader. However, one would be foolish to simply consider this book as a lament or a complaint. Between the World and Me is aptly named; as the void between being white and black in 20th to 21st century America differs. This is especially relevant today, as recent riots in Charlottesville and in Ferguson showcase the racial divide that Coates aims to bring directly into the national spotlight.