What Is Between the World and Ta-Nehisi Coates?

Between the World and Me has me asking two questions; what is between the world and Ta-Nehisi Coates and why he is sharing this intimate letter to his son with the entire planet.

Let's start with the latter. Coates has fiery and beautiful language with which he burns all over the board; he is autobiographical, philosophical, and journalistic all at once. He is obviously trying to avoid being just another voice in a sea of incredibly loud voices. Early in life, while on a quest for some unknowable and objective truth, he recognizes that everything published about black people and black struggle can be contradicting, confusing, both right and wrong. To avoid this trap in his letter to his son, Coates boils his message down to three essential rules; protect your Body, find your Mecca, and beware of the Dream. It could be that Coates is trying to impart his message to every black youth in America, which I think is an adorable sentiment but ultimately untrue. There is fierce and thought provoking social criticism underlying this book and by packaging it as a letter to the future generation he makes it twice as thought provoking. Here are some things that made me stop and think; "why were only our heroes non-violent? I speak not of the morality of nonviolence, but of the sense that blacks are in especial need of this morality"; "the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects - are the product of democratic will"; "should assaulting an officer of the state be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner?". After considering what all of these things mean to me, I'm also thinking about what they mean for generations after me, so Coates is literally making the reader, including, presumably, his son, think twice. About what exactly?

This is the first question I had; what is between the world and Coates? The thought provoking message to his son is just as much all over the board as his style of prose, so where does one begin? I suppose the better question is what isn't between the world and Coates. There are some really fascinating points about race and power, Coates elaborates well on Malcolm and Baldwin, but stops short of adopting either whole-heartedly. The result is pretty messy; you'll catch him referring to white people as 'people who think they are white' but you'll get almost no explanation as to why, any one who has read Coates's Reparation piece will recognize his continual reference to 'plunder' but won't be given a history lesson on what he means by it, and his continual comment on the black body, how its plunder and destruction is what allows people to continue to live the dream, is considered a harsh, immutable reality. This isn't to say that Coates is trying to get everyone on board with a flimsy assumption, but in order to see what Coates sees through his "eyes made in Baltimore" you have to agree that our entire reality was built on the destruction of other people. This is a brutal realization aside from it's accuracy, but it is also difficult to imagine readers will make this jump, or at any rate make it comfortably. The answer to what is between the world and Coates is simply; we should know, because we put it there (assuming of course you are not a reader of color). No, not me or you individually, but all that we are and continue to be -- down to our very own sons and daughters -- is still a result of power structures being built by racism. Once this is accepted, Coates becomes remarkably clear, but without this acceptance it isn't possible to fully understand this book. Coates isn't looking to open your mind, he is hoping you come with it already open so he can blow it.

Between the World and Me reads like a classic in the making. Coates has a remarkable and truly lovable writing style but he is also poignant, engaged in a conversation forming for a time well past when we are gone. There was definitely some cheese, like taking a paragraph out in the middle of talking about the brutal murder of his friend by the police to marvel at the invention of the internet to his son. This effectively fools no one and throws the pacing for a loop (as just one example). But what classic is without cheese? This does nothing to diminish the intimacy, the relatability, the deep and often dark places the book might take you. Toni Morrison is absolutely right, this is essential reading.