Between the World and Me....

I love America more than any other country

in this world, and, exactly for this reason,

I insist on the right to criticize her

perpetually.

- James Baldwin, Collected Essays

Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me is an modern classic, a distillation of a singular African-American life relayed in breathtaking prose and indelible images ... and (too often for my taste) just f--cking depressing.  In part it's depressing because of its author's seemingly relentless chronicling of the impact of race on his life.  (As in, it's true that he's a Black Man in Modern America but it seems that his life has been almost exclusively defined by this and that the times when this was not the primary shaper of his experience were few at best and clearly far between.)  And it's depressing in part because it's so true, so real, so pathetically profound and so absolutely and outrageously unknown to far too many of our fellow citizens, especially those who "think that they are" or "consider themselves white."  (In a very beneficial way, perhaps this book's status as a New York Times best seller will address this latter reality.)

And, whether he likes it or not, he is very much a spiritual successor to Baldwin (if not the one...).  Both use the English language so beautifully and provocatively that, at times, the reader is breathless and disoriented.  I found myself re-reading whole passages because I couldn't believe how exquisitely Coates had turned a phrase or captured a feeling or moment, just as I often did with Mr. Baldwin's writing when I delved into it seriously a decade ago or more.  I'm still healing from finishing this book two weeks ago - and I know that a number of its most powerful images and/or passages will never leave me - but I am thankful for this legacy: despite the pain, the experience was exquisite, if for no other reason than I was reminded of how powerful and beautiful the written word could be ... even as I was reminded of how harrowing life can be as a Black Man in Modern America....

With greater detail and consideration, I've written a review on Goodreads.com
(https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1340424520), so I won't recap that here.  I'd rather explore a few of the lessons that I've learned as a result of this book, albeit briefly....

The first thing that I would say is that I've been more fortunate, apparently, than Mr. Coates because, even as a fellow Black Man in Modern America, I've enjoyed the luxury of having less of my life experience affected - and, seemingly, proscribed and defined - by race.  In other words, it seems that I've had more meaningful experiences and moments in life in which I was simply another human being transfixed by the transcendence of life.  To wit, though I nod knowingly at virtually all of the 'bitter fruit' experiences Coates relates - as in I, too, have experienced Driving While Black police stops with guns drawn (for absolutely no reason, of course) and the bewilderingly paternalistic racism both of those who have meant well and those who have not, etc. - I have not allowed them to dominate my worldview as they seemingly do his.  Oh, yes, I know that I'm Black - senior corporate executive though I may have been for most of my adult life, none of my white colleagues have ever been asked to be served by a guest at a function that they're hosting or been told ni--er jokes over the phone by a business associate (who had yet to meet me in person), or been asked to take their golf clubs to the first tee, etc. - it's just that this is not all that I am, or, alternatively stated, this informs but does not rule my world as much as it seems to do for Mr. Coates.

And I am thankful for this, truly, truly thankful ... 'cause bein' a Black Man in Modern America is a burden to be sure, whether one suffers its afflictions as a victim of the pre-school-to-prison pipeline or the less life-threatening assaults of being "the only one in the room" for most of one's adult life (as I have been).  And I was prepared for this life by my parents, especially my forward-looking teacher-mother, who worked overtime to pay for my private school tuition and exposed me to 'non-traditional' (read = mainstream white American) activities like skiing and the orchestra and the theater and....

In fact, I have spent my adult life swimming in the (upper) American Mainstream, valuing my Blackness because it both made me special and because it never let me forget that I was different and thus get too comfortable and 'forget my place.'  Because of this, it has not defined me as often, so it has been less of a burden for me than for all but a few.  And therein lies the huge value of Mr. Coates' book: it doesn't let any of us - African-Americans or our white counterparts - forget this difference, either.  Even though it has defined my life less than his, I have still been Black my entire life and everywhere that I've gone, Persian-carpeted though those places may have been of late.  And there have always been subtle reminders for and to me lest I be tempted to forget (which is something that I have rarely done).  This is the Black Burden that Mr. Coates chronicles so movingly ... and its absence is the White Privilege that so many of its beneficiaries dispute and/or deny....

I am further thankful that when I have written letters to my children over the years, while they have been necessarily parentally prescriptive, they have not been overly dominated by race.  My children, too, have grown up in the (upper) American Mainstream, so their experience of race is both different than mine (having grown up in the African-American enclave of inner-city Detroit in the '60s and '70s) and, truth be told, less than mine.  So, too, with Mr. Coates' son (to whom this book is ostensibly addressed).  His son's experience is not of growing up in Black inner-city Baltimore in the '80s, but in cosmopolitan New York City, which, though it's still a dangerous place, is much less so than the Charm City of his father's youth.  So my letters to my children don't read as depressingly as Mr. Coates' ... and I'm thankful for that, too.

Not that I haven't had to have 'The Talk' with my two African-American teenage sons (numerous times), imploring them to exercise extra (and, truthfully, deserved but unearned) caution when dealing with members of law enforcement, or had to explain to my eldest what his (white) classmate (whose father worked at Goldman Sachs) meant by using the word "ni--er" when he was in first grade, or....  But the good news is that these incidents, unfortunate though they may be, have been the exception and not the rule, a privilege that I have been sure to illuminate repeatedly and at length for them especially since so few members of their peer group enjoy it.

So while I appreciate Mr. Coates for calling out his true experience of being a Black Man in Modern America, I hope that we can appreciate that his is a representative though not defining one.  If I may critique the book at all, this is one of its few faults in my view: that despite a brief acknowledgement that his son's experience of being Black will be different than his own, he lapses back into being that 'lecturing geezer' whom we all waved off when we were young.  Not that what the elder said didn't make sense - it did, even then - just that we were too busy living our better, freer lives to be constrained (and, conceptually, informed) by his worse, warped one.

I wish that Mr. Coates could have spent a little more time 'doing the translation' in the sense of helping his son (and us other readers) understand how to apply his lessons in this slowly and irregularly improving world in which we all live and in which our own children are growing up.  My sons have grown up in Montclair, New Jersey, not inner-city Detroit when it was known as the "Murder Capital of the World."  Accordingly, my lessons to them are informed by my experience as a youth of their age, but focused on the world in which they live.  Were they not framed in this way, I doubt that they would be heeded as much as they are - which, I'll admit, is not as much as I'd like - and, I fear, lacking this, too many young people who read Mr. Coates' fine book may not heed his wisdom and warnings either.

Further, given that Mr. Coates is now an esteemed member of the mainstream intelligentsia, it's likely that his son's experience will reflect this, too.  Should this prove to be the case, while it is a triumphant gift to chronicle the past, wouldn't it be even better to encourage his son to envision a different - and ostensibly better - future?  Instead, Mr. Coates cautions against the very hope that his own life and experience represent.  While it's true that his son will have to continue The Struggle - given the realities of our world, it's unlikely that racism (or any of our other -isms) will disappear any time soon (or, at least, in his son's lifetime) - it's also true that he will likely be less defined by it, both by inclination and by experience.  I suspect that Mr. Coates values his success in some meaningful part precisely because it affords his son a different and likely better experience, so his prescription against hope strikes me as unnecessarily nihilistic.

This being said, I accept that we are all to some extent prisoners of our own experiences and pasts.  I will forever be more conscious of my Blackness than my sons are or will be because it has been a much larger part - and, earlier in my life, a more defining part - of my experience.  I'm happy that my struggles and (modest) contributions to The Struggle have helped it to be so, at least in the sense that Blackness is less of a burden for more of us, the fortunate few.  And The Struggle now mostly revolves around making this the case for the majority of us.

And Mr. Coates' book will help greatly to educate those who read it, especially those who are not African-American, and thus to help them understand the realities of the (structural) inequity that remains.  No, they won't find innovative policy prescriptions in its pages - it's a memoir after all - but they will find an undeniable recounting of the reality of being a Black Man in Modern America ... which is actually the story of one of the few and most fortunate of them.  Simply put, if it's this hard for one of the fortunate few like Mr. Coates, imagine how hard it is for an average (likely inner-city) African-American....

And yet, in an unexpected way, the book gives me hope, that thing against which its author counsels.  The greatest source thereof is in the writing, as it is truly a tour de force and a work of art.  Few I've read have moved me as much as Mr. Coates, as his gift for and use of the English language are often breathtaking in their effect and, for this reason, inspiring.  After reading Mr. Coates, it's hard not to be inspired by his soaring prose, damning though it may be in content.

For example, in commemorating and mourning his slain college friend he observes,

There are people whom we do not fully know, and yet they live

in a warm place within us, and when they are plundered, when they

lose their bodies and the dark energy disperses, that place become a wound.

Further reflecting on his friend's loved ones' grief, he continues,

Prince Jones was the superlative of all of my fears.  And if he, good

Christian, scion of the striving class, patron saint of the twice as good,

could be forever bound,who then could not?  And the plunder was not just

of Prince alone.  Think of all the love poured into him. ...

And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and

all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to earth.

And then he both personalizes and universalizes the insight:

Black people love their children with a kind of obsession.

You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.

I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you

killed by the streets that America made.  That is a philosophy of

the disembodied, of a people who control nothing,

who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the

criminals among them but the police who lord over them

with all the moral authority of a protection racket.

It was only after you that I understood this love,

that I understood the grip of my mother's hand.

She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that

all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy

spilled upon the curb like bum wine.  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. ...

This entire episode took me from fear to a rage that burned

in me then, animates me now, and will likely leave me on fire

for the rest of my days.  I still had journalism.

My response was, in this moment, to write.

And write he has....

His guidance to his teenage son rings true, even to us suburban African-American dads:

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. ...

History is not solely in our hands.  And still you are

called to struggle, not because it assures you victory

but because it assures you an honorable and sane life.

That this comes in response to his re-consideration of his own behavior in a situation in which his young son was pushed by a (white) adult adds to the pathos.  One can't help but feel for both father and son ... and, if you're African-American, understand that this could happen to you, too....

And we are also moved by his shared realization that,

You are going into consciousness, and my wish for you

is that you feel no need to constrict yourself

to make other people comfortable. ...

I would have you be a conscious citizen

of this terrible and beautiful world.

We all want our children to become who they truly are, to find what makes them unique in all the world and live this truth and the life that it engenders to their fullest.  And, as African-American fathers, we want our young men to be aware, aware that they are different, aware that, though some of them have been sheltered from many if not most risks, this protective cocoon can evaporate in a heartbeat ... as it did for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis and so/too many others.

Truth be told, my white friends will never quite understand the 'extra anguish' that African-American parents feel every time our young people leave the house for the evening to hang out with friends or go to a party.  All parents share a fear of the tragic vagaries of fate like a car accident or some other most unfortunate event.  Those of us of the darker hue have an added anxiety for our children, especially our young men: an interaction - no matter how innocently engendered - with the police.  "Why?" my white friends may be tempted to ask, in their earnest lack of awareness or temporary amnesia.  And then when the names of Trayvon and Jordan and Eric and Walter and... are cited, they fall into a knowing, empathetic and sad silence....

This, too, is part of the still vibrant and potentially lethal burden of being Black in Modern America: that our children are not safe, either from the mean streets of our largely abandoned and crumbling major cities or from the random risks of supposedly safer climes.  To be a Black parent today is to hope more than your counterparts because you have to....

My parents have been gone for years now, but I never told them of my worst experience with The Burden because I didn't want them to worry thereafter.  As too many of these potential tragedies do, it all started innocently: back in the early 1980s, my summer roommates and I rented a car to drive from New York City to Long Island to attend a cookout hosted by friends from college.  Just a few blocks from our rented apartment, the four of us drove under an elevated train pass and soon thereafter saw the flash of lights and heard a blaring siren and a stern command to "Stop the car!"  Of course, we pulled over right away and waited for the officers to approach us and explain why they had done so.  A minute later, one of them walked to the driver's side window and began to question us with an air of officious seriousness.  So far, we were calm and, anticipating the fun to be had at the cookout, jovial.

This all changed fifteen seconds later when the second officer got out of the squad car and approached our vehicle.  One of my friends turned his head and noticed something that he whispered immediately and softly yet forcefully enough for us to comprehend: the second officer had his gun drawn and was pointing it at us!?!  Suddenly, a routine traffic stop had turned potentially lethal.  Our good humor turned to adrenaline, dread and the early pangs of fear.  Why on earth would were we being detained at gunpoint?!?

To make a long and harrowing story short, we were eventually released by the officers after we were given a ticket for running a red light.  (To this day, I'll tell you that this wasn't true - the light, though partially obscured by the overpass, was indeed green - but, of course, this fact meant precious little in the moment or now.)  Yet three things have never left me since:

First, I will never forget the arrogance with which the first officer treated us.  He was the very stereotype of a white NYC cop drunk on his power.  To say that he was dismissive would be too kind; he was a true jackass and a purposely menacing and threatening one at that.  If he were convinced that we had actually run a red light, why were we threatened with arrest, with the search and seizure of the car "because you probably have drugs on you," etc.?  Because he held the power and we were just four scared Black dudes pulled over on an almost empty block in Harlem, that's why....

Second, I will never forget the youth and fear of the second officer, the one pointing the gun at us.  After the situation was diffused, we studied him carefully: he was probably our age or, possibly, a year or two our junior.  Further, it's hard to believe that he felt threatened enough to draw and aim his gun without permission and/or direction from his partner.  And, we concluded, he appeared to be Hispanic, a cruel irony that we processed angrily thereafter.  We could very well have been his cousins or friends or classmates from high school....

Third, I will never forget how very randomly Black I felt at that moment.  I was just one of four "Black youths" in a car in Spanish Harlem, I could hear the news reports saying.  Never mind that we were four Ivy Leaguers, the least educated of whom - a Harvard junior - was me: one of my friends had just graduated from Yale and would receive both his MBA and law degrees from Harvard a few years thereafter before becoming a successful private equity investor (and whose early-career mentor was Michael Bloomberg ... yes, that Michael Bloomberg); another of our number had also just graduated from Yale and was entering Howard University's dental school en route to a distinguished career as an orthodontist; and the driver was a rising senior at Harvard who would go on to win a Rhodes scholarship later that academic year and study at Oxford before going on to graduate from Boalt Law School and enjoy a distinguished career in business and the law.  Between us, we would eventually earn seven Ivy League degrees ... but that evening we were just four potential suspects on the side of the road (or, to put it more bluntly and accurately as one of our group did, "four ni--ers chosen at random who fit the profile").

Suffice it to say that we were shaken by our brush with fate (and, possibly, death), so much so that we rehashed the incomprehensible incident over and over and over again as we drove to our cookout, at which we arrived sufficiently subdued to elicit a hearty "What the hell's wrong with you guys?" from our as yet unsuspecting host (who spent the rest of the evening consoling us and assuring us that this wouldn't recur).

Though everyone now sees me as a pillar and leader of the community and a successful executive and family man, I've been that ni--er by the side of the road ... and I pray every time that my sons go out for the evening that they never will be....

This is The (continuing) Burden.  This is the (continuing) reason for The Struggle.  This is the reality of being a Black Man in Modern America.  This is Ta-Nehisi Coates' fear for his son (as it was James Baldwin's for his nephew a half-century before) ... and it is also mine.  This is what is Between the World and Me, too....

This must seem strange to you.  We live in a "goal-

oriented" era.  Our media vocabulary is full of hot

takes, big ideas, and grand theories of everything.

But some time ago I rejected magic in all of its forms.

This rejection was a gift from your grandparents, who

never tried to console me with ideas of an afterlife and

were skeptical of preordained American glory.  In

accepting both the chaos of history and the fact of my

total end, I was freed to truly consider how I wish to

live - specifically, how do I live free in this black body?

It is a profound question because America understands

itself as God's handiwork, but the black body is the

clearest evidence that America is the work of men.