Between the World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Peacemakers Team Book Review
Wednesday, May 22
5:00-6:00 p.m.
Conference Dining Room
Ta-Nehisi Coates, respected author and correspondent for The Atlantic, writes Between the World and Me in the form of a letter to his 15-year-old son.
It is important to realize that Coates is not addressing white people. There is no filter as he recounts his life beginning in the streets of Baltimore and his subsequent experiences and insights at Howard University and beyond.As he writes to his son, he shows no need to debate racism nor to really offer comforting hope. Some have described this book as pessimistic. It is certainly clear-eyed and bleak. But the truth can be bleak and hard to accept!
The dominant and recurring theme is his discussion of “the Dream.” He asserts that we as white people are lost in this “gorgeous dream” in America wherein we willfully ignore the realities of racism and fail to acknowledge the systems and institutions that perpetuate blatant racial injustice. Coates states that “how to live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life.” He concludes that there is “a small chance of the Dreamers coming into consciousness.”
What is our response as privileged white Americans? Do we ourselves even acknowledge the Dream and its repercussions? Coates tells his son that that as a black man he cannot awaken the Dreamers. “The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves.” He does not tell us how. We will determine how and whether we will struggle.
Written by Hugh Greene.