Between the World and Me Audio CD – Unabridged, September 8, 2015

Way back at the beginning of time, that is, the 1960’s, Richard Wright and James Baldwin were obligatory reading for me, and I have read much of their work. I still recall a black woman in Atlanta damning me with faint praise: “I think you are a moderate liberal.” Likewise, the lyrics of an old Phil Ochs song, “Love me, I am a liberal” have rolled around in my head: “…and I knew all the old union hymns.” Nowadays, I suppose, Wright and Baldwin ARE “the old union hymns.” America has made so much progress in race relations since the “Amos and Andy Show” was the only authorized black presence on TV, and Jackie Robinson proved that a black man could play in professional sports. Some blacks are now “truffled” in my neighborhood. There is a Black Caucus in Congress, and then there is the matter of the President… Progress.But there is also the stagnation, and backlash. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book concerns the latter. His first name is derived from an old Egyptian word for Nubia, the area to the south of them that was inhabited by blacks. The New York Times review of this book underscored the similarities, and delineated the differences between this work and Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Both take the structure of an older black man telling a much younger black man the (racial) “facts of life” in America. In Baldwin’s case, it was to his nephew, in Coates, it is to his son.Coates grew up “on the wrong side of the tracks” in Baltimore. At least, that is what it was called in Baldwin’s time. Perhaps it still is. A tough neighborhood. A war zone, literal, and of sorts. A lot of psychic energy is spent just trying to stay alive… of watching for what is out of place on the “trail” to school, and does that bring danger? Coats quantifies this, in terms of brain time, at 33%. Cuts down on your time for writing the next “killer app.” Another quantification: “At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combine, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies – cotton – was America’s prime export. The richest men in America lived in the Mississippi River Valley, and they made their riches off our stolen bodies.” He provides no basis for the four billion figure… and for those who would dispute it, is it double or half? I recently read and reviewed Ghosts Along The Mississippi: The Magic of the Old Houses of Louisiana, New Revised Edition, with the subtitle that includes “magic”. There was nothing magically about it. Far more than an abstract four billion, those “ghosts” of old mansions quantify what was stolen.His is a staccato writing style; the “takeaways” of a 1000 page book. Concerning schools, quotes worthy of Paul Goodman: “I was a curious boy, but the schools were not concerned with curiosity. They were concerned with compliance…Schools did not reveal truths, they concealed them.” He questions the meek acceptance and embrace of the “tear gas” of passive resistance. He admires Malcom X. Coates names 10-15 black men who have been killed by the police, the police that he says are so instrumental in fulfilling America’s will on race relations. Coates went to the black “Mecca,” Howard University, in Washington, DC, and was dazzled by the variety that is encompassed by that word: “blackness.” He finds love on more than one occasion.Prince Jones, a fellow classmate of his at Howard was murdered by the police. He described this killing in detail, and has a heart-breaking visit to his mother, a medical doctor, who had worked her way up from scrubbing white people’s floors in Louisiana. His eulogy for Jones is haunting and beautiful. Accountability? There never is any. “And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of ‘race,’ imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. They typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the killer of Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force on nature, the helpless agent of our world’s physical laws.” Scathing, as good as Baldwin ever wrote.Coates seminal work is an update on the much “progress” that has NOT been made. Normally I would give it my special rating for an exceptional work, 6-stars. However, I did have some problems with it. He goes to France, his first trip abroad, and is enthralled… I’ve been there… figuring the 6eme arrondissement is the “center of the universe.” However, he never mentions an essential word for understanding France, “les banlieues,” literally, the suburbs, with such a different connotation than in America. A fellow reviewer has mentioned that he has become more critical after his first visit. And then I would also be critical of his use of the term “Dreamer,” of which there are many, for sure, but are not a monolithic block that seems to mean “non-black.” And he never develops the implications of the fact that the cop who killed Prince Jones was black also. Like “les banlieues,” “Tom,” of an avuncular nature, does not appear in his work either. Still, overall, a very important work, for America today, and for those still singing those “old union hymns.” 5-stars.

When I first heard about Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between The World and Me I criticized it (and the author) to a friend wondering what kind of father writes a book to a teenage son (the rhetorical answer being a bad one) admonishing their child to never believe in the aspirational narrative of the American Dream. "Read the book" I was told. Now that I have, I see my criticism as unfair and offensive. The rhetoric is powerful and the argument informed. The writing is beautiful and the intent quite loving. It is hard to do better for one's child--but tragic it needs to be written.Not since William Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves has their been a book about race quite so provocative and harsh in its condemnation of those who buy into the American Dream. The two authors approach it from different angles, I think perhaps for generational reasons but I really can't know. To Rhoden the Michael Jordan's of the world were sell-outs bartering their dignity and souls for a modern version of slavery. To Coates Dreamers are deceived or deluded: nobody at the bottom (and all blacks are 'bottom') is ever precious to those who call themselves white. At best they are props or exceptions that prove the rule that all blacks are fuel or fodder; grist in the mill that keeps the Dreamer atop our social heap. If their bodies can no longer be legally enslaved, black bodies--usually teenage sons-- are with relentless regularity "broken" by whites or those who serve them. The American Dream for black citizens is a dystopia.Coates uses the tradition of the slave narrative (Frederick Douglass' and Solomon Northrup's come immediately to mind) to tell a powerful story of an individual's physical, intellectual and emotional journey as a black man in America. From Western Baltimore to Howard University, NYC, and Paris Coates struggles to give discover an identity, then to debunk it, and then to refashion (quite brilliantly I thought) not as a series of truths but as a series of questions that are inherently mistrustful of Truth (particularly with a capital T). He most emphatically will not let Dreamers or those black believers in the Dream off the hook--and blame the black victims of violence. Trayvon Martin, Prince Jones, Michael Brown, Eric Garner et al., did nothing to deserve their deaths, and their deaths were not unfortunate: they were murdered.A handful of quotes: --60 percent of all young black men who drop out of high school will go to jail. This should disgrace the country. But does not... --'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. --the Dream is just and noble, and real, and you are crazy for seeing the corruption and smelling the sulphur. For their innocence they nullify youranger....and you find yourself inveighing against yourself. --and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong.Upon finishing The World And Me I found myself almost reflexively dismissing or beginning the process of refutation that would exonerate me or be mitigating factors. And then I stopped. I decided to just sit with Ta-Nehisi Coates' ideas and opinions for a while. To think about them. A few hours. A few days. I'm not sure how long. To let them percolate awhile and to simmer. I hope many many others will too.

Doloroso y triste, pero al mismo tiempo hermoso, en esta carta hacia su propio hijo, Coates analiza la situación racial de Estados Unidos desde un enfoque muy personal. El libro escrito de manera magistral te hace sentir la rabia sobre las injusticias vividas por los afroamericanos solo por el color de la piel. Recomendadisima.

I admit I have read very little so far, concerning the issues people of color are facing worldwide and in the US specifically. This is not fiction, yet quite gripping. It's a good starting pointo to dicover a whole new world of emotions. I'll recommend this to anyone interested in understanding.

I loved it. It changed my life.I also wrote about this book for my Postcolonial Literature course at the University, and it was a great pleasure to analyze it as an academic person.Great book!

Let me start off by saying that Toni Morrison has said, this book is required reading. So get yourself a copy! It's necessary reading for the current climate that we are in that is only portraying a single, skewed narrative and on the same side of that coin damaging and manipulating a narrative that needs to be heard.As you may know, this book speaks about race in America, starting from the days of slavery till now, to provide us with this viewpoint that makes the reader understand ‘what it is like to inhabit a black body.’It's almost like a personal diary from Coates to his son explaining how it is we have come to the state we are in, and to offer consolation to his son through it.This is such a beautifully written book. I love that the author was able to write with such clarity that enabled the reader to really be put in a black person's shoes. To understand their culture and to comprehend that the root cause of it all is fear that is driving these people forward as it is their only means of survival. Terrifying fear where your guard is up 24/8 because you know that as soon as you step out into that world you have a target, set and ready, on your back, which translates to a harshness and power within an individual that is at its essence, fear. And Coates lets the reader (and his son) view this fear through his eyes, his upbringing and experiences and understanding of the world.I was just on the constant verge of tears, whether it was out of anger or sadness, because what else are you meant to feel when you know that a specific group of people are completely broken down due to the colour of their skin? Yet, he speaks on understanding the 'white’ mentality. This book is full of empathy, it seeps out of every word, every sentence that is constructedHe speaks on identity, the social construct of races, the all American Dream that is a facade and build on the back of slavery, police brutality and the concept of whiteness.It's not all doom and gloom. There is hope, there has to be and he shares beautiful moments in his life where barriers within himself are broken and clarity poured in, that the world is much more than America and its toxic narrative/lifestyle and the simple wonders of life that we take for granted.I know that this is a book that I'll casually flick through every now again. I've filled it with my thoughts, which I'll probably have to add to as my perspective of this world changes and my own understanding grows. It was truly an an eye-opening read. I feel invigorated and my mind is more curious, hungry and eager to find out more.

The author writes a letter to his son in order to show how his social environment, education and family background have influenced him, how all this history and memory around have shaped his personality and character, how it is to grown up in America being part of social minority.Coates describes the fear, the discrimination, the prejudgment because of belonging to a minority (Afro-American) in the US. He writes also about how unfair the rule “you have to be twice as good” is, because this rule is a justification of the way things are and make people think it is their own fault, they are guilty in some way.But these thoughts could be applied to any western society or any social group; the quote people who think they are white” is not only a reference to a book american classic, it is also a reference about how much we guilt ourselves for not getting what we fight for. We may believe many times it is our own fault, we may think maybe if we do it better next time we will get there, maybe the future will be different for us if we improve, maybe our children will get there if they are better than we are… and we justify and accept the status quo of the present situation.You may be white, like I am, but maybe you are from a small town, trying to get thought a career in a big city; maybe your parents did not go to university and you feel you are not well accepted in some educated groups, maybe you start a small business, a professional such as lawyer or architect and you are not into some social elite groups, lobbies or economic establishment groups of any level, and you feel you have not the same success some others do because they got there some decades or centuries before… maybe you think you are white, but the truth is you are not. Power and social elites discriminate us all.He describes the social dysfunctions that he has learned and his fears about them. Fears about their prevalence over time, about they can influence his son’s condition him and about how telling them or not, may how determine his existence.I am a 45 year old, white (well I mean I think I am white), European citizen who lives far away from that environment and society. However I believe this book is not about America’s racial discrimination, it is about the lack of implementation of our western values in any democratic country around the world.English is not my mother tongue and I am not familiar with some characters and references, such as leaders, characters and civil rights activists that are mentioned in the book. However I believe most of the message of the book could be applied to any social rights movement, to any social, gender, sexual orientation discrimination in any western country.Besides the author's pessimism about change or about the future, the book is full of love, fatherhood guidance, acceptance of difference, respect, hope and tolerance for the values that he is claiming for: we were all created equal.