Between the World and Me: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Body and the American Dream

In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates brings up for conversation once more the danger suffered by the black body and the futility of the American Dream; only this time, this conversation is not friendly as many previous discussions. Seen as a fitting heir to James Baldwin’s thought-provoking essay, The Fire Next Time, addressed to his nephew, Mr. Coates’ essay takes the form of a letter to his son about how the American state is poised to plunder, destroy and vandalize his body.

In a period that has marked the murder of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and many more, Mr. Coates reminds his son of how quickly his body can be extinguished without justice. He takes no prisoners as both black and white officers are blamed for the demolition of the black body. He recalls the murder of his friend whom he met at Howard University, Prince Jones and how class and educational pedigree do not exempt his son from the death sentence passed on his body from decades of injustice.  

Mr. Coates raises many questions but gives few answers. He also raises age-long arguments about the right path to salvation for the black body. He pitches his tent with Malcolm X whom he sees as uncompromising, unapologetic and pragmatic. “I loved Malcolm because Malcolm never lied, unlike the schools and their façade of morality, unlike the streets and their bravado, unlike the world of the dreamers. …Malcolm was the first political pragmatist I knew, the first honest man I’d ever heard.  He was unconcerned with making people who believed they were white comfortable in their belief. If he was angry he said so…He would not turn the other cheek for you.“

He throws in some spanners in the works of those who believe in the American Dream, calling it a dream for the whites alone, built on oppression, deceit, and violence against the black body: “and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong.”

“America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists…I propose to take our country’s claim of American exceptionalism seriously… I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much”

Between the World and Me also presents a paradox of the black neighborhood. The streets are dangerous for the black body in the same way the school is dangerous to the black mind. While many may see the school as a way to escape the brutality of the streets, Mr. Coates disagrees and even calls it a faithful partner in the oppression of the black body. “ I came to see the streets and the schools as arms of the same beast. One enjoyed the official power of the state while the other enjoyed its implicit sanction. But fear and violence were the weaponry of both. Fail in the streets and the crews would catch you slipping and take your body. Fail in the schools and you would be suspended and sent back to those same streets, where they would take your body.”

Indeed, Mr. Coates’s approach to the issues at stake is more combative than James Baldwin’s. While Baldwin is hopeful that the world could still be made a better place, “if we- and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others- do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world,’’ Between the World and Me does not pursue this idea one bit. Mr. Coates clearly instructs his son that the task of making the world a better place is ‘not ultimately up to you, though I know, each day, there are grown men and women who tell you otherwise.’’

On the exclusivity of Western Civilization, Mr. Coates tackles this question: Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? This was a question posed by Saul Bellow. Mr. Coates believes that the same Tolstoy can be shared by both civilizations and it is inappropriate to think that Africans should be excluded. This is similar to James Baldwin’s assertion during a debate with William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University about America’s racial ambiguities. Baldwin noted that Western civilization will either be opened for all to enter or face the prospect of being demolished by those excluded.

His generalization of the American police and firefighters as forces of evil, even the first responders at the September 11 attack makes him come off as an anarchist. He states that there is no difference between the terrorists and the police who have superintended years of violence against the black body.

Sometimes, the cynicism in Mr. Coates’ meditation does not only rain; it pours even when he claims not to be a pessimist. ‘’I am not a cynic. I love you, and I love the world’’ he writes to Samori his son, ‘’But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know.’’ His tone in this 2015 book does not give much credit to the changes that have taken place since the birth of the civil rights movement down to the first African-American president of the United States. For all we know, he may be saying that more structural and institutional changes should have taken place between the 1960s and 2015, but his despair in the power of America to remake itself suffocates any suggestions that he believes things will ever change. But what he fails to get in optimism, he gains in his tight prose and careful and beautiful turn of phrases.  

Known and Strange Things 1

There is fatalistic disappointment that comes with seeing life as a race to the finish line, only to be beaten to the lesson again and again that there is never truly a finish line. There are times when we are at a fix and we think that this is the end of it, or when we are in the wraps of a certain excitement and we think that this is the end of all our troubles.

I had one of these moments recently- I always have these moments when life comes tumbling and it seems like I should raise the white flag of surrender, and I also have those moments when I get my way with life and I feel like years of inner darkness are over. There is this friend I haven’t seen for years and recently we got talking online, chatting from Instagram where we first hooked up again after almost ten years down to Whatsapp where we made the first voice call. It was as if there was a lot to catch up on and we will never stop talking. S. said she would be flying into Nigeria and would like us to hang out. Then the chatting continued ceaselessly with taunts and teasing over past events that now seem very awkward to remember. Like when S. misread my affections for her friend and thought she was the one I was hitting on each time I tried to impress the group, until I blurted it out and it almost caused a storm between them.

S. came to Lagos; and after two or three times of meeting up, small talks started becoming conversationally delicate, and because we frequented many bars in the course of the bonding, the chatting started feeling like a flat beer that won’t go down any further because either of us was already full.

My time with S. reminds me of many things I have rushed into in life, especially the many conclusions of pure bliss or eternal disaster. It also reminds me of Barack Obama. In 2008 when the Obama fever was high, when the possibility of a first black American president reached its highest crescendo of reality, many people thought this would be the end of all the racism in America. The references to Martin Luther King Jr prophetic speeches were intoxicating. Obamania was what it was called and people lined up to elect him and wish that it would vanish years of racial tension. But did it?

Surprisingly, America baked in the heat of racial tensions during his administration that many question if truly this was the messiah or they should wait for another.  Trayvon Martin happened under him and many more like him and he failed to mention race as a factor in these killings until towards the end of his second term. This man turned Libya upside down.

Another scenario is the Trump ascendancy. Because of his vulgarity and his indecency, many painted his walk to the White House as both political and economic doom for the nation.  A particular case in point is Paul Krugman, a political economist who wrote tirelessly about the negative economic effects of a Trump presidency. I read almost everything he wrote on Trump, admired the clarity of his arguments and how he could explain complicated economic terms to an outsider like me. While the jury is not yet out on the political doom, Americans have seen more jobs created in the Trump era that CNN and the New York Times are finding it hard to report.

But it’s not the ambiguities that bestride the American politics that is of particular concern to me as much as how this applies to humans personally. We often see life in terms of finish lines; let me graduate and I will rest. But the rest never comes, and soon it is the time for job-hunting and when the great job comes, the rest is also put on hold as the stress of the job sets in.  

Most times, a personal upheaval that threatens to milk our joy away sets in and we trouble ourselves to death that this is the end, this is the period when the river stops flowing or the sun stops shining because of this embarrassment.  It could be another rejection, job loss, bad investment, the most unexpected betrayal or even the loss of a loved one to sickness or death. The truth is that just like the happy and sad feelings that came with Obama and Trump or even Buhari, or more personally, with S., there is truly no finish line. The river will flow the next morning in the same gait it has flowed for years; the sun will rise and fall when it is time; the clouds will chase after each other at night while the stars watch in sparkling silence. Do not lose a minute’s sleep. There is always a morning after.