Between the World and Me

I’ve been wondering what to say about this book. So much rightful praise has been written elsewhere, and there’s no need to repeat it.

I think what has stuck with me the most is the silence the book has prompted in me. Whatever else it does, this book drives a wedge between “race” and “racism,” forcing me to confront how different these two things are. “Race” is often a polite dodge. It enables talk, usually about black people, but misses the point. “Racism” names a problem to be confronted and makes the conversation about white people and concrete problems, which is a step forward.

Reading Coates’s book after a year spent reading antebellum history and literature situates its indictment of contemporary racism as a coherent piece of a two hundred year (and longer) history of racism in America. I remember of how little I knew about that history when I started reading and how much of what I didn’t know was purposeful—I was a product of my schooling—and I despair because after all this time (or perhaps because of it) I don’t think we know how to have a conversation about racism. I certainly know I struggle to confront or get past or ignore my anxieties and start one. But if we can’t even talk, how do we change things?

…then I read about members of the Supreme Court still wondering aloud if black students are ready for or benefit from a full-speed college experience and think, the bad old days haven’t gone anywhere.