Between the World and Me: A Searing Account of American Reproductions of Racism
My name is Georgia Jaye Zacest. I was born in New Zealand and moved to the United States, in December 2015, to pursue my undergraduate career and compete as a member of the Boise State swimming and diving team. As the daughter of a Latvian refugee and having lived—and studied—in New Zealand, France, the United States, and Switzerland—I have come to understand how global experiences can shape one’s empathy and global citizenship. Not only has this contributed to my passion for diversity and inclusion, but also my choice to pursue a B.A. in English Literature and History, with a Human Rights Certificate, to better appreciate the power of silenced voices. In Fall 2020, I will be starting law school with a focus on international human rights and public interest law and the hopes of working with local or international organisations to promote social change.
Between the World and Me: A Searing Account of American Reproductions of Racism
Speaking to his literary career, Ta-Nehisi Coates admitted that “When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I’m always surprised. I don’t know if it’s my low expectations for white people or what” (Chotiner). While such a comment speaks directly to Coates’ dedication to use Between the World and Me to provide an honest account of the psychological and social realities of the African American experience, it dismisses the simultaneous power of his work to awaken white society’s conscience to violations of the African American body as an intended result of policy, embedded in the historical tendency of erasure to preserve the sanctity of the American dream. The result is a powerful work of literature which is unsparing in its portrayal of the United States’ constant reinvention of race, with the same violent outcome on the African American body.
Intended to address the most intimate concerns of an African American father for his son, Coates’ presentation of unfiltered and unconventional truths are intentionally unsparing in their portrayal of what it is like to inhabit a black body in the United States. By analysing how Coates’ reliance on personal narrative influences his approach to the reinvention of American racism, and by placing this discussion within the realm of other notable African American authors—notably, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, and Michelle Alexander—Between the World and Me becomes a medium that captures black reality while, unwittingly, revealing the inherent racism of white America.
Despite this duality, the greatest virtue of Between the World and Me is that it is not addressed to a white audience. While this manifests in the book’s form—a letter addressed to Coates’ “Son”—one must not dismiss how this intimate audience choice sanctions the use of raw, honest diction to disclose, to his child, the constant violations of the black body (6). This becomes particularly evident in Coates’ depiction of the “nakedness” (18) that results from racism as a “visceral experience… [that] dislodges brains, blocks airways… cracks bones, breaks teeth” (10). By establishing a reliance on charged diction to emphasize the racial violence that occurs “In other cities, indeed in other Baltimore’s,” Coates asserts his intimate knowledge of the ubiquitous nature of African American vulnerability (23). Although this candour may be unsettling for a white reader, combined with the repetitious use of “You and I” pronouns (9), such diction allows Coates to suggest that his experiences are reflective of community pain and trauma, thus confirming that he sees himself as “writing for African-Americans who are like you” (Green 70).
With this explicit audience, Coates’ bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history removes the usual hedging, softening, and overall distortion that seems to colour general discussions about race. Rather than shying away from violence and discriminatory policies as reflective of systematic social negligence, Coates continually seeks to illustrate that racism, throughout the United States’ history, has been the “correct and intended result of policy” (Coates 17). While the word choice of “correct” is unusual, particularly coming from a man who has personally experienced racial violence, it allows Coates to sardonically emphasize that white America relies on the arbitrary category of ‘race’ to implement policies that maintain social inequality and contribute to the reduction of the black body. Given this transparency, Coates’ honesty becomes a heavy comment on the inherent discrimination that has coloured American history and permits the nation’s dependable reproduction of racism.
Speaking to Coates’ engagement with American reproductions of racism, Charles Green explains in “Remaking Relations: Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates Beyond James Baldwin,” that Between the World and Me hopes to make “his [Coates’] son understand the unoriginality and cyclical cruelty of American racism” (70). This “cyclical cruelty” is revealed in Coates’ retelling of the death of Prince Jones; an intentional police murder of a black man. To introduce the centrality of this death to the work, Coates relies on his first epigraph:
And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly
upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks
and elms
And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves
between the world and me… (Coates 1).
Taken from Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me”—which imagines the scene of a lynching and inspired the book’s name—this epigraph exposes the brutality of lynching to illustrate how paralysing it can be to stumble upon such a horrible “thing.” For Coates, this “thing” lies at the origin of the book: the killing of Prince. Considering this, Coates’ epigraph not only establishes powerful parallels between the history of lynching and that of police brutality in the United States but also draws upon this parallel to present the gulf “between the world and me;” a gulf maintained by the violent reinvention of American racism (Coates 1).
Using Wright’s poem to immediately insert Between the World and Me into the tradition of African American literature, Coates sharply reinforces that black writers have long spoken to the destruction of the black body as incidental to the preservation of order; a service to white America “and all the fears that have marked it from birth” (78). Thabiti Lewis corroborates this in “How Fresh and New is the Case Coates Makes?,” arguing that “Coates reveals nothing new… but the truth and power and emotion he conjures stokes the passion, pain, and trauma of the current generation” (193). This becomes particularly striking given that Prince—a “good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good” (Coates 81)—was shot by an undercover police officer who had followed him from Prince George county to visit his fiancé; the officer, never charged, falsely claimed that Prince had rammed his Jeep into his patrol car. By emphasizing how a constructed act of black violence can justify the murder of an exemplary man, Coates illustrates how state-endorsed police violence—much like lynching—remains an act of terror to serve the broader social purpose of maintaining white supremacy by ‘saving’ white America from the (often) manufactured violence of African Americans. Consequently, it is inevitable that Coates articulates the pain and trauma of his community by labelling police officers “destroyers” (9). By demonstrating how those with authority have always had the power to murder with impunity, Coates projects how one form of systematic violence and oppression is replaced by another.
Given this faithful depiction of the reproduction of American racism, it is unsurprising that Toni Morrison described Between the World and Me as “required reading… [by] the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” (ta-nehisicoates.com). Arguably, Morrison – a Nobel laureate in Literature – assumes this position herself; however, her praise of Between the World and Me would appear to stem from the shared value the authors place on the legacy of American racism. Much like Coates, Morrison’s novel Beloved commemorates American slavery as a constitutive historical trauma, evident in the epigraph: “Sixty Million and more” (xi). By dedicating the novel to the estimated number of African Americans who died during the Atlantic slave trade, Morrison asserts her intention to speak for the silenced victims of slavery whose humanity and culture have historically been devalued. While Morrison’s decision to include “and more” could be a reference to the unknown victims of slavery; it equally enhances the novel’s elegiac tone—and decision to evoke a ghost of slavery—by acknowledging that the after-effects of slavery continue to produce broken communities and a fractured sense of self. Considering these parallels, Morrison’s praise of Between the World and Me should be seen as indicative of Coates’ willingness to present slavery as a cross-generational trauma that persists through the reproduction of racism.
While Coates’ form and content illustrate the permeance of racial injustice in the United States, Morrison’s choice to label Coates as “the single best writer on the subject of race” is likely a reflection of his work’s pervasive, honest tone. Although Prince’s death asks the reader to infer the parallels between lynching and police brutality, Coates also makes the decision to explicitly instruct his son that the “the price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined” (96). Relying on the diction of “always,” Coates elects to present his experience as an incisive commentary on racial violence since slavery. As Lewis further explains, “by speaking directly to them [the African American community],” Coates affirms his community’s humanity while simultaneously drawing white attention to the unjust policies that maintain their struggles (193). Considering this, the emphasis placed on “real or imagined” error allows Coates to assert the African American belief that violations against the black body do not require vindication. In reality, these violations are rooted in the assumed inhumanity and criminality of the African American community –two traits attributed to this group to preserve the Dream.
The intersections that Coates establishes between violations of the black body and the preservation of the Dream become his primary vehicle to speak to white readers. This becomes clear in Coates’ meditation that “for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies” (111). Where Prince’s death provides concrete evidence for the reproduction of racism, this metaphor accurately depicts how the persistent oppression of the African American community provides a platform for white supremacy. This becomes particularly evident in Coates’ observation that “The same hands that drew red lines around the life of Prince Jones drew red lines around the ghetto” (111). By extending the reach of white “hands,” Coates reconstructs history through the African American perspective rather than that of the dominant white social classes, allowing Between the World and Me to engage directly with white connivance in the reproduction of racism.
Speaking further to white America’s systematic denial of African American rights, Roberto Montoya, Cheryl E. Matias, and Michele McBride argue, in “Between the World and Me” that, because the Dream is not offered or available to African Americans, they “endure in a space that is between reality, longing, and idealism” (54). While it is valid to conclude that the African American community longs for access to the Dream, if you analyse Coates’ engagement with this topic, this argument is rendered void. Instead of espousing idealism, Coates is unnervingly realistic: “the Dream. Here is what I would like for you to know: in America, it is tradition to destroy the black body—it is heritage” (103). By emphasizing the fact that the United States was not built on a foundation of freedom and equality, Coates argues that the black body will always be seen as a “natural resource of incomparable value,” as it has historically assured white supremacy and economic prosperity (132).
By arguing that the exploitation and oppression of African Americans is deeply implicated in white aspirations for security and material success, Coates asserts that the Dream cannot exist without racial injustice. Despite Coates’ poised tone, this discussion of the Dream further discredits Montoya, Matias, and McBridge’s argument by confirming that African Americans do not believe that it is “just, notable, and real,” (106) as they are continually experiencing “the corruption and smelling the sulphur” (106). With such negative connotations, Coates’ diction accentuates the impact of Prince’s death by revealing that racial violence has always been the product of democratic will. This heightens the power of Coates’ depiction of the Dream “over my head… a blanket,” (111) by illustrating how America’s exploitation of democracy acts as a white comfort by maintaining a “brightly rendered version” of America which neglects the constant horrors of exploitation and violence (99).
Having established the Dream’s inherent issues, which contribute to incessant racial injustice, Coates acutely asserts—much like Morrison—that “Enslavement is not a parable… It is the never-ending night… whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains” (70). Although intended to validate the continued oppression of the African American community, Montoya, Matias, and McBride are astute to note that “the beauty of the book is that it makes you [a white audience] feel extremely uncomfortable; however, uncomfortable in a way that needs to be felt” (53). Rooted in the assumed inhumanity of the African American community, Coates’ chain metaphor suggests that African Americans have never truly been free, that “On the outside black people controlled nothing, least of all the fate of their bodies” (62). This diction is enhanced by Coates’ choice to discredit Enslavement as a “parable,” which establishes white America’s complicity in the erasure of the black body. By asking the United States to acknowledge that the racism that was drilled into their country in its infancy remains a default setting, Coates asks for a reinterpretation of African American history. Although uncomfortable, this discussion asks white readers to confess the oppression of African Americans and turn the Dream into “something murkier and unknown” (Coates 99).
This discomfort can, and should, be attributed to the way in which Coates engages with a white audience. By discrediting the Dream, Coates cynically comments that “There are no racists in America, or at least none that the people who need to be white know personally” (97). Given his audience, Coates’ comment has the intention of educating his son on white America’s refusal to admit its complicity in the reproduction of racism. However, by describing whiteness as a necessity, Coates indirectly addresses how the oppression of the African American community secures the privileges that are afforded to those who are white. In doing so, Green convincingly contends that Coates is asking his audience to admit their “own complicity in the comfort of my whiteness and, in turn, the pain of blackness” (70). By speaking to how white perceptions of self can result in a diminished sense of black worth, Coates deconstructs racism to suggest that such attitudes warrant the need for racial consciousness to humanize the African American community and their struggles.
Coates’ introduction of racial consciousness provides the framework for Section III of Between the World and Me which opens with a James Baldwin quote: “and we have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white” (Coates 133). Much like Coates, Baldwin bore articulate witness to the consequences of American racial strife. Given this, Baldwin’s curious phrasing—which suggests that white America has become unconscious to its pervasive racism—allows this epigraph to affirm Coates’ knowledge that the Dream has become a blanket; a blanket that provides white material comfort while African Americans “do not have the privilege of living in ignorance” of the consequences of racial injustice (Coates 107). While this appears despondent, one must not disregard the possibility of hope. By asserting that race is based on perceptions, Baldwin suggests that whiteness, like blackness, is a category subject to manipulation. In this sense, while Coates asserts that white privilege is real and blinds white America, he also seems to acknowledge that change is dependent upon white refusal to be complicit in the reproduction of racially constructed categories.
Baldwin’s epigraph introduces Coates’ intentional and curiously ambivalent approach about the prospects for racial progress, evident in the instruction that his son must “not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them… But do not pin your struggle on their conversion” (151). Not only does this statement suggest both hope and fatalism, but it collaborates the arguments that Sheena Myong Walker presents in “Empirical Study of the Application of Double-Consciousness Among African-American Men.” Speaking to the mental conflict that exists among African Americans, particularly as it relates to double-consciousness, Walker explains that “’Being Black’ is defined… by the social process in a pluralistic world” (207). Understanding this—that a proportion of black identity is based on assumptions, attitudes, and expectancies of the white society—justifies Coates’ ambivalence. However, for many critics, this ambivalence remains challenging. Michelle Alexander—author of The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness—speaks directly to this, in a review for The New York Times, expressing her belief that “Coates’ book is unfinished. He raises numerous critically important questions that are left unanswered” (Alexander). While this may be true, given Alexander’s book’s subject matter, one would imagine that the black author would understand the complexity of race that Coates speaks to. By placing Between the World and Me alongside Alexander’s work, it becomes evident that African American writers continue to wrestle with the same issues of white awareness of, and complicity in, racial injustice.
Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, much like Coates’ work, speaks to the heart of America’s tangled racial history. By using her book—and involvement in the Netflix documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay—to explore the intersections of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States, Alexander contends that slavery has perpetuated since the end of the American Civil War through criminalizing black behaviour. From this, Alexander asserts that disenfranchisement, lynching, Jim Crow, the “War on Drugs” and mass incarceration are all restatements and retrenchments of the same problem: white America’s reliance on the reinvention of racism. Given this thesis, Alexander’s work seems to seamlessly align with Coates’ belief that African Americans are “a human turned to object, object turned to pariah… You cannot forgive how much they took from us” (55-71). With these parallels, both authors present their awareness that the United States did not criminalise a select group of black people. It criminalised black people collectively, a process that, in addition to destroying lives, effectively transferred the guilt for slavery from the people who perpetuated it to the people who suffered through it.
Coates explores this transfer of guilt by recounting an experience with his son in New York. In response to a white woman pushing his son, Coates replicated the same heated vocal “reaction of any parent when a stranger lays a hand on the body of his or her child” (94). However, given white America’s established racial biases, Coates’ action was distorted from an act of parental care to one of violence. Meditating on this experience, Coates explains to his son that “more than any shame I feel about my own actual violence, my greatest regret was that in seeking to defend you I was, in fact, endangering you” (95). In speaking to shame and regret, Coates provides a personal experience to declare that while this white reaction was not his fault, it was his responsibility. Not only does this confirm, as Green further asserts, that Coates “argues against the notion of progress needing to be built by black people,” but the experience corroborates Alexander’s work by asserting that white America’s biases are ultimately responsible for the continuation, or end, of the fragility of the black body (69).
Given this shared understanding of African American vulnerability, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that Alexander does not understand the challenge of resolving the United States’ reinvention of racism. However, if one analyses 13th it would appear that Alexander’s issue with Between the World and Me is that it does not give her the answers that she seeks; answers that both her book and documentary struggle to arrive at. Speaking to 13th, DuVernay explains that “The idea behind 13th is to give people the context so that we don’t make uninformed statements, that we can all work from a place of knowledge to try to get to a place where we just do better as Americans” (NPR). With this goal, 13th appears to reproduce
Coates’ concomitant hope and fatalism. The “place of knowledge” that DuVernay speaks of would ask white America to acknowledge the true outcome of its policies and racial violence; a process that would require the abstinence from “forgetting… [a] habit, … another necessary component of the Dream” (Coates 137). Given Alexander’s understanding of the constant reproduction of American racism, it is likely that she shares Coates’ reluctance to assume that the Dreamers will acknowledge the corruption of the Dream.
As Alexander and Coates respectively assert, racism in the United States constantly reinvents itself to maintain the intended destruction of the black body. Due to this evolution, the prospects for racial progress are largely dependent on white America’s decision to bracingly confront the intended results of their racist policies. Given the apparent impossibility of determining under what conditions the Dreamers will wake up, it should be understandable why Coates’ questions are left unanswered, for “you cannot arrange your life around them and the small chance of the Dreamers coming into consciousness” (146). If Coates knew—if the African American community knew—the answers to the questions that black authors repeatedly explore in their literature, then American racism would not continue to have such a profound impact on African American lives. It is this essential fact that likely causes Alexander to comment that, while Coates’ did not do what she had expected “Maybe that’s a good thing” (Alexander). Unable to provide concrete answers, Coates makes the apt decision to wrestle with his experiences to prepare his son for the racial consciousness required to navigate American racism.
By asserting the need for racial conciseness, Coates also unwittingly reveals harsh truths about white America; truths that are often silenced and erased from American perceptions of self. It is the presence of these truths, and the absence of an answer, that leaves a void that Coates asks the reader to fill by observing their practices and identifying the persisting, and ever-changing face, of American racism. Given this, although—as Morrison and Alexander confirm—most critique of Between the World and Me has come from an African American audience, Coates clearly, albeit unintentionally, invites white engagement with his work by talking about race in a manner which asks a white audience to examine their own experiences and tendencies in light of persisting racial politics.
Despite this white engagement, Between the World and Me is, at its core, written for African Americans. Lewis speaks further to this audience, explaining that Coates “does not give an argument or a fix, is not prescriptive, and focuses on constantly humanizing black bodies” (195). While Lewis shares Alexander’s critique that Coates’ essay promises more than it delivers, she is correct to draw attention to Coates’ eventual emphasis on the black body introduced by an epigraph excerpt from Amiri Baraka’s poem “Ka’ba:
Our world is more lovely than anyone’s
tho we suffer
We are beautiful people
With african imaginations…
With african eyes, and noses, and arms
Though we sprawl in grey chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun. (Coates 73)
Through this juxtaposition of coldness and warmth, Baraka summarizes Coates’ discussion of black beauty in the face of racial violence and, more importantly, the consequent need for racial consciousness to distance yourself from the limited self-worth that white society attributes to you. By weaving the rich diversity of black beauty and empowerment at Howard University into his discussion of violations of the black body, Coates speaks to the “control, power, joy, warmth” of the black spirit (62); a spirit that ensured that while white America “made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people” (149). Considering this description of the black community—a description which is drawn near the conclusion of Between the World and Me—Coates work should be seen as an affirmation of black struggles and assertion that the black community is not responsible for racial violence and injustice; that guilt falls upon white America’s failure to acknowledge the reality of the Dream.
By articulating the poetics of real life, and identifying the racialist structures that govern the common experiences of African Americans, Between the World and Me moves beyond the descriptive and autobiographical to highlight Coates’ intimate understanding of the logic of white supremacy and its inescapable restraints. The awakening of a society’s conscience is never pleasant; however, Coates’ analysis of the black experience is necessary wisdom. By highlighting the salient problems of race relations with devastating precision, Between the World and Me asserts itself as a powerful medium to guide a discriminatory America to bracingly confront the reality of democracy in the United States.
Works Cited
Alexander, Michelle. “Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between the World and Me’,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/books/review/ta-nehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me.html. Accessed 6 October 2019.
Chotiner, Isaac. “Perspective: America’s black story” Tampa Bay Times, https://www.tampabay.com/news/perspective/perspective-americas-black-story/2237736/. Accessed 2 October 2019.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York, Spiegel & Grau, 2015.
Green, Charles. “Remaking Relations: Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates Beyond James Baldwin.” Journal of Nonfiction Studies, vol.2, no.2, 2017, pp. http://www.assayjournal.com/uploads/2/8/2/4/28246027/3.2_green.pdf
Lewis, Thabiti. “How Fresh and New is the Case Coates Makes?” African American Review, vol. 49, no.3, Fall 2016, pp.192-196, Project MUSE, doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2016.0032
Montoya, Roberto, et al. “Between the World and Me.” Multicultural Perspectives, vol.19, no.1, Jan. 2017, pp.53-57. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/15210960.2017.1267517
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York, Random House Inc., 2004. ta-nehisicoates.com. “Between the World and Me,” ta-nehisicoates.com, https://ta-nehisicoates.com/books/between-the-world-and-me/. Accessed 4 October 2019.
NPR. “Documentary ‘13TH’ Argues Mass Incarceration Is An Extension of Slavery.” NPR, https://www.npr.org/2016/12/17/505996792/documentary-13th-argues-mass-incarceration-is-an-extension-of-slavery. Accessed 12 October 2019.
Walker, Sheena Myong. “Empirical Study of the Application of Double-Consciousness Among African-American Men.” Journal of African American Studies, vol.22, no2/3, Sept. 2018, pp. 205-217. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s12111-018-9404-x.