Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates is an American writer, journalist, and educator. Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about cultural, social and political issues, particularly as they regard African-Americans. Coates has worked for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, and other publications. In 2008 he published a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth30 September 1975
CountryUnited States of America
One of the things that's really, really present in 'Between the World and Me' is, I am in some ways outside of the African-American tradition.
There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.
The president of the United States is not a king. You know? Barack Obama was elected by the American people.
There are African-American families around this country - a large, large number of African-American families - that operate out of complete fear that their kids are going to be taken from them and will do anything to prevent that.
When I see Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, it's only a picture. My imagination has to do some of the work there, to impute feeling and everything. We're talking about something that's so surreal, it's just not possible within the world as we know it. So that requires a form that is not so literal.
We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with their sweatpants dangling, however, with their hoodies on. And folks think that this is a show of power or a show of force. But I know, because I've been among those kids, it ultimately is fear.
When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it.
We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others...
What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through--that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.