Book #7: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This book was only 150 pages but it felt longer, deeper, harder to get through. Coates is writing the story of what he's learned about being black in America, to his son. So this is an intimate letter about all of the difficulties and struggles he has gone through, and their whole people has gone through, as a result of the "Dreamers" (as he calls them, the "people who think they are white") in America. His main theory is that being black means that you are always in danger of losing control of your body, whether by being killed or attacked or raped or enslaved, and all of that goes back to the centuries of slavery in America when Africans were being kidnapped and stolen and taken across the Atlantic. America as it is today is built on the backs of these actions, and the white American Dream is only possible today because of how it excludes those they think are black (because race is a social construct) and is built on the history of slavery and violence against this whole group of people.

His writing about his fears for his safety is so strong and illuminates so well the difference between someone with my upbringing in a privileged, white home. He grew up in a violent neighborhood and wrote about the moment he realized that his life could end at any time, just depending on if someone else decided to shoot him--whether another gang member or a police officer (because it could be either). His son is clearly growing up with a much safer experience, but, as Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner make clear, Coates knows that his son, by virtue of his body, still has to realize that these same fears still have to apply to him. He says that the white policemen/men who kill these black men are just the manifestations of the centuries of views of what "white" people have towards them.

It's hard to read this as someone who falls directly into the class of "the Dreamers." A white person who has been so privileged and who lives the ideal life in a suburban neighborhood with a yard and a minivan, and who has never feared for the safety of my body. I can't even imagine having to worry about teaching my sons about the need to fear for their bodies, like Coates is doing here. On the one hand, I can't help feeling grateful that I am safe and so is my family, but I also feel ashamed that my safety and security is in spite of the lack thereof for others (or, as Coates might say, at their expense). I wish he offered more of a solution, but I think that is part of his point. There's not one solution that one person could offer up as a pat answer in a few pages at the end of his book. He doesn't make it sound hopeful at the end or even focus on any hope gained throughout the history of "progress" since slavery ended. It's just the way it is, and as it is, he and his son need to be more aware of and more careful with their bodies, and to learn how to live in a country and home that expects you to have to do that.