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, Notes from a Native Son (1955)
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a singular talent. Not quite yet the James Baldwin of our era, but certainly moving in this direction, which is a very good thing for us all. Because, like Baldwin, he records our experience lyrically and indelibly, even though that experience seems of late to be decreasingly lyrical and ever more indelible. His latest book, We Were Eight Years In Power, is the latest example of a lost art, the calling and ability to Speak the Truth to Power elegantly and urgently. For those of us who care about our country and especially for those who care about their fellows who have not always had a full experience of its better aspects, this is truly a must-read.
The interesting thing is that what Coates does in this book is not so much criticize America (as Baldwin suggests), although there is some of this, to be sure, as to hold a mirror up to it so that we can see just how great the gap is between who we claim to be and who we are. It is a damning reveal....
The technique is a bit unusual in that Coates shares one of his signature essays from each year of the two Obama Administrations preceded by an often wistful and always incisive and indicting commentary. He then finishes with an Epilogue that serves as prologue for the life we are living in the current administration, which reflects just how frayed are the bonds of our commonweal. It's telling and powerful that even though we've read these essays before, they seem even more trenchant today and Coates' commentary is similarly searing. To put it kindly, America's willful blindness is as frightening as it is costly, especially to those who have already experienced the downside of its putative Dream. And Coates' is yet another clarion call for us to examine ourselves, to own our dysfunction and to organize to change our ways, lest we be treated to a regression that mocks our espoused yet rarely practiced cardinal freedoms.
(And, no, the title does not refer to the time of the Obama presidency, but to another time of American triumph that ended in tragedy and shame, the post-Civil War Reconstruction, which saw our country cede dearly won progress to the forces of evil and darkness that lasted, in the main, for another century [and, many including Coates would argue, to this very day].)
The fireworks begin in the Introduction in which Coates traces the roots of today's Obama-era racism. He quotes the prescient W.E.B. DuBois, who noted of the South Carolinians of the Reconstruction, "If there is one thing that (they) feared more than bad Negro government, it was good Negro government." In this context, then, it's perhaps less surprising but even more saddening that the Obama-era critics, most often couching their racism in more acceptable terms (though sometimes not), evidenced a similar pattern:
But when it becomes clear that Good Negro Government might, in any way,
empower actual Negroes over actual whites, then the fear sets in,
the affirmative-action charges begin, and the birtherism emerges.
And this is because, at its core, those American myths have never been colorless.
...
And as much as we can theoretically imagine a seamless black integration into the American myth,
the white part of this country remembers the myth as it was conceived.
...
The symbolic power of Barack Obama's presidency -
that whiteness was no longer strong enough from preventing
peons from taking up residence in the castle
- assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy
and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries.
...
But the argument made in much of this book is that
Good Negro Government - personal and political -
often augments the very white supremacy it seeks to combat.
It is an argument that proves persuasive by the Epilogue, if for no other reason than the backlash with which Coates began the book - the abandonment of full Black inclusion in the civic life of our country after the Civil War - reappears so eerily in our time in the election of a man who embodies so many of the -isms that continue to infect our country that he can personally be described as the Ugly American.
As I read each of the essays and their preceding commentary, I became paradoxically more angry and more calm: angry that in my lifetime so much of what we thought to be true was, in fact, the mirage of progress in our society and calm in that my resolve to finish this critical work has never been greater. It felt good to believe the soothing myth that we were much better than we used to be, but never again: though we may be a little better than we used to be - to which President Obama's very being attests so tangibly and powerfully - we are still way too far away from living our professed creeds for so/too many of our fellow citizens, especially those who have traditionally found themselves as the Other frequently if not constantly in our history. It's time to stop telling fairy tales about who we claim to be and to deal in hard truths of who we are (with acknowledgment of progress, to be sure, but not excessive celebrations thereof until this becomes the rule and not the exception).
And that Epilogue, entitled "The First White Presidency," is a fitting capstone to an exceptional effort. More than simply an indictment of 45 himself, it's grounded in the modern history of race and other exclusions in our society and, as much as I want to disagree with the author, demonstrates the near inevitability of the current occupant of the White House. It's the antidote to the modern liberal tendency to declare victory before we've reached the finish line: celebrating the breakthroughs as if the limits broken are dashed for all time when, invariably, they reappear immediately (if less obviously).
Think about it: do you ever really expect to see a Black president again in our lifetime? And not as the second such exception, but as the next of many to follow? That's the point: that exceptionalism exists in every group, so the triumph of one does not inherently inure to the benefit of all. The true test of the equity in our society is not when the next exceptional African-American or woman or ___ can become president, but when ones as average as so many of their white predecessors can repeatedly. The true test of equity and Diversity is in the middle, not at the top....
So, to follow the brilliant and sorely missed MLK, where do we go from here: chaos or community? At the risk of being (too) political for a moment, I see the GOP urging us toward the former (especially because when the people are fighting amongst themselves the rich and powerful don't have to be involved) and the progressive among us negotiating how to effect the latter.
But this will not be easy work, as Coates reminds us (as did Baldwin before him). If we're able to stay grounded in the searing reality captured in this difficult but elegant and transcendent work, we just may be able to make meaningful progress together, all of us. Not just Blacks or members of the LGTBQ community or victims of sexual assault or immigrants and Dreamers or.... All of us, united in pursuit of a pure quest: to live out the inclusive professed creeds of our Constitution.
Yet this will not happen if meaningful progress doesn't happen across the board: we will be little better off if too many powerful men stop sexually harassing women but some of these cannot marry and live happily and fully with others of their own gender (especially free of the influence of fake-religious bigotry). It will not matter that much if we elect our first female president, but Latinos and the poor continue to be demonized, excluded and actively harmed by state and local governments and too many of their fellow citizens. Etc.
In sum, we must take up the quest on which Coates ends his piercingly analytical jeremiad:
I see the fight against sexism, racism, poverty, and even war
finding their union not in synonymity
but in their ultimate goal -
a world more humane.
