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4.43 AVERAGE
4.43 AVERAGE
Every American should read this book. What an incredible insight into American culture and history. Coates has become one of my favorite writers. His voice is desperately needed in the "national conversation" of who we are and where we are heading as a country.
Please read this book. Not only is Coates an incredible writer but he has important things to share that every American should know about.
“Pointing to citizens who voted for both Obama and Trump does not disprove racism; it evinces it. To secure the White House, Obama needed to be a Harvard-trained lawyer with a decade of political experience and an incredible gift for speaking to cross sections of the country; Donald Trump needed only money and white bluster.”
A non-fiction book that I can hardly put down is a rare find. I’ve found just that in We Were Eight Years In Power.
A non-fiction book that I can hardly put down is a rare find. I’ve found just that in We Were Eight Years In Power.
I started this book months back and it takes time to sit with each essay and so I kept having to return it to the library and then the BLM protests happened and reading Coates was in vogue so I only recently got this back from the library to finish. Anyway, the essays in this book cover eight years of Obama and whew does it make me miss Obama, despite the legitimate critiques of respectability politics. Essays aren't my favorite art form, so I personally prefer [b:Between the World and Me|25489625|Between the World and Me|Ta-Nehisi Coates|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451435027l/25489625._SY75_.jpg|44848425]. But I also want to acknowledge how much Coates influenced my belief in reparations and it's always good to read and re-read that essay.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
This is an excellent compilation of essays from the Obama years, each one preceded by Coates' reflections and contextualizations of them at the outset of the Trump era. They represent a powerful body of work on Obama himself and the state of "race relations" and long road we've taken to get here. I appreciate that the collection includes both Coates' unedited work from 2007-2016, which shows both his evolution as a writer and our shifting national conversations, as well as his perspectives on the pieces in 2017 -- at times critiquing himself, at times noting that something would have been different now. In that way, this is also a tribute to the craft of writing, and Coates unveils the glories and the depths as well his process.
How to sum up my thoughts on this book? This book is powerful and gut wrenching, inspiring and and maddening. It covers a variety of topics, but one thing remains at the root of it all: the truth of how deeply seated racism is in America and all the ways we perpetuate it. I think this is an important read for all Americans. As a country, we have failed black America time and again. It's time to open our eyes to all those failings.
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye. Hence the old admonishments to be "twice as good."
We Were Eight Years in Power is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read. The individual articles, originally published in The Atlantic, are excellent, but what makes this book so fantastic is that we get to see not just those articles, but also the journey of the author, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Just reading the articles alone would give an interesting glimpse into his story. We see him beginning with fascinating and relatively brief essays on a range of topics related to race and blackness in America; and then he as he continues writing, we see his thinking develop and deepen, and his writing style takes on a breathtaking comprehensiveness and power. The final two articles in this collection, “The Case for Reparations” and “My President Was Black,” ought to be required reading for at least all Americans.
Coates has given us not just his original articles, however. He’s also written new introductory material for each one (and an epilogue), showing the reader what he was going through personally and thinking about at the time that he wrote each article. We learn where Coates came from, what becoming a recognized writer meant to him and his family, and how each new step forward in his life and career affected his writing perspective. We Were Eight Years in Power becomes autobiography, history, sociology, journalism, research, ethnography, politics . . . it’s a little bit of everything, presented in a very organic, genuine--and very vulnerable--way.
One of the reasons I value this book so much is that I was overseas during almost the entire Obama administration. This book has been a nice tour through some of what was happening in my home country at that time. Coates helps me see what was going on, with him and the country, as he wrote each article. Seeing America from afar during those years, I found it difficult to know what to think. I definitely saw increasing division and disagreement, but I didn’t have a framework to understand it. Coates has been helpful in suggesting frameworks.
Thematically, I was intrigued by two things particularly that recur throughout the book. The first is the interesting ebb and flow between individual responsibility and systemic considerations, for both blacks and whites. Early on, it seems that Coates not in favor of Cosby's blaming of individual people for letting go of traditional morality and responsibility. But then a little later, he's putting blame on individual black people for not studying the Civil War (this was in the article that I felt was his weakest). And other times, he looks at the behaviors and attitudes of white people as the root of racism in the US. And as the book goes on, Coates builds a crushing case for systemic racism that is hard-wired into the very foundations of the US. By the end, I felt that Coates had found a wise, mature balance amongst all of these aspects of race in America.
When I began We Were Eight Years in Power, I would have affirmed that racism is active in America today. That seems completely obvious. But still, in those early chapters, when Coates seemed to focus exclusively on racism and the history of slavery as the roots of everything, I wondered if this was giving racism too much power. On the lighter side, this focus led him to make some claims that I think are just altogether untrue--such as that "The Birth of a Nation is the most revered touchstone of all American film" (64). More seriously--though I don't disagree with him that slavery was the primary cause of the American Civil War, I also believe that once a war starts, there are all kinds of reasons that it continues. And the reasons that the explanatory narratives change over time include, yes, the desire to cover up slavery and racism, but there are other reasons stories change, too.
But then I read “The Case for Reparations,” and it just about tore me apart. From that point on, what could I say but that racism is so deeply embedded in our society that we wouldn’t know our country without it, and we can hardly begin to imagine working through it to real solutions? "The Case for Reparations" is simply a tour de force of research journalism, and utterly crushing. We Americans just aren't taught this history, and so we tend to argue about the wrong points. Reading the details about the housing schemes in Chicago reminded me, of course, of A Raisin in the Sun--except that I now realize how sanitized and easy that story is, compared to the real-life experiences of so many black families in Chicago during that era (and also compared to the story of Lorraine Hansberry's own family, which inspired her play).
I still wonder, though, about people that Coates refers to in the final article and epilogue. Those people who, in voting for Trump, played right into a racist America but did not do so consciously thinking, “I’m a racist”; people who launch harsh criticism and even mockery at Obama, but believing the reason they do so is his policies, or his liberal slant, not because he’s black. How much do we blame race on decisions that people believe they’re making for entirely other reasons? It’s challenging for me, because I know (and am related to) so many people who probably voted for Trump, but if I challenged them with the issues of race that Coates raises in his book, they would recoil and take great offense. How can we have this discussion together as families, communities, and a nation? How do we all get on the same page so that we can start that discussion?
My only disappointment is that Coates does what he inevitably has to do: he shies away from wrestling with possible answers, putting down his pen just before he starts giving specific steps forward. When he first talked about his surprise that people expect him, as a public intellectual, to have answers, I was a little amused. Saying that expecting answers from him is "like telling doctors to only diagnose that which they could immediately and effortlessly cure" (152) . . . Well, sure--people do expect that of doctors. Most people wouldn't have much respect for a doctor who heard their symptoms and then said, "That's an interesting case. I don't have an answer for you, but I'm sure just talking about it has some benefits for society."
But when Coates concludes “The Case for Reparations” with "No one can know what would come out of such a debate. . . . But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as--if not more than--the specific answers that might be produced" (206-207), I found that anticlimactic. That wrestling, and its possible outcome, is almost unimaginable to me (and I agree with Coates that it is vital), and I'd really like to know what Coates thinks about it. At the end of the book, there is a sense that this has all been, as the subtitle suggests, a tragedy. Coates shows us that Obama maintains his optimism, but for Coates himself--and, honestly, for me, too--there is an overwhelming sense of “What happened here? How could this be going on, here, now?” Maybe thinking seriously through answers and solutions is something that just can’t happen until we’re on the other side of the Trump years.
I find Coates's spiritual journey, as presented throughout the book, quite fascinating. It makes me sad when he asserts that there is nothing after this life, that all we have is our own lifetime. Adopting that posture, he feels, justifies his defiance, but then it pushes him to do the research and thinking for "The Case for Reparations." And then, near the end of that piece, he writes, "What I am talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal" (202). And I wonder: What does that mean to him? What is the "spiritual," in his worldview that admits nothing beyond what's provable to our senses in a single lifetime? I hoped that he would grow further by the end of the book, maybe think differently about faith and God; but he remains an atheist. It does seem at some moments that he longs for the comfort that a religious faith might bring him, and I’m sorry that he hasn’t found that path yet.
I could write and write and write about We Were Eight Years in Power. It made me ashamed of how much I don’t know, of how much I’m part of the system that oppresses. But it also enlightened me, and, I hope, will help me even just glance at people of other races in a way that builds bridges rather than confirms the worst assumptions. Reading some books about race this year has taught me that every look I give while I’m out in public says something--and between people of different races, a look can make an enormous difference. I’m not racist, and I long for equality and peace among all people--but I also now realize that there have been times when my non-racist “neutral” posture has probably been read as negative and hurtful. I need to change that in myself, so that what I communicate externally is what I believe and feel internally. If only that were as easy to do as it is to write. One step at a time . . .
Coates has given us not just his original articles, however. He’s also written new introductory material for each one (and an epilogue), showing the reader what he was going through personally and thinking about at the time that he wrote each article. We learn where Coates came from, what becoming a recognized writer meant to him and his family, and how each new step forward in his life and career affected his writing perspective. We Were Eight Years in Power becomes autobiography, history, sociology, journalism, research, ethnography, politics . . . it’s a little bit of everything, presented in a very organic, genuine--and very vulnerable--way.
One of the reasons I value this book so much is that I was overseas during almost the entire Obama administration. This book has been a nice tour through some of what was happening in my home country at that time. Coates helps me see what was going on, with him and the country, as he wrote each article. Seeing America from afar during those years, I found it difficult to know what to think. I definitely saw increasing division and disagreement, but I didn’t have a framework to understand it. Coates has been helpful in suggesting frameworks.
Thematically, I was intrigued by two things particularly that recur throughout the book. The first is the interesting ebb and flow between individual responsibility and systemic considerations, for both blacks and whites. Early on, it seems that Coates not in favor of Cosby's blaming of individual people for letting go of traditional morality and responsibility. But then a little later, he's putting blame on individual black people for not studying the Civil War (this was in the article that I felt was his weakest). And other times, he looks at the behaviors and attitudes of white people as the root of racism in the US. And as the book goes on, Coates builds a crushing case for systemic racism that is hard-wired into the very foundations of the US. By the end, I felt that Coates had found a wise, mature balance amongst all of these aspects of race in America.
When I began We Were Eight Years in Power, I would have affirmed that racism is active in America today. That seems completely obvious. But still, in those early chapters, when Coates seemed to focus exclusively on racism and the history of slavery as the roots of everything, I wondered if this was giving racism too much power. On the lighter side, this focus led him to make some claims that I think are just altogether untrue--such as that "The Birth of a Nation is the most revered touchstone of all American film" (64). More seriously--though I don't disagree with him that slavery was the primary cause of the American Civil War, I also believe that once a war starts, there are all kinds of reasons that it continues. And the reasons that the explanatory narratives change over time include, yes, the desire to cover up slavery and racism, but there are other reasons stories change, too.
But then I read “The Case for Reparations,” and it just about tore me apart. From that point on, what could I say but that racism is so deeply embedded in our society that we wouldn’t know our country without it, and we can hardly begin to imagine working through it to real solutions? "The Case for Reparations" is simply a tour de force of research journalism, and utterly crushing. We Americans just aren't taught this history, and so we tend to argue about the wrong points. Reading the details about the housing schemes in Chicago reminded me, of course, of A Raisin in the Sun--except that I now realize how sanitized and easy that story is, compared to the real-life experiences of so many black families in Chicago during that era (and also compared to the story of Lorraine Hansberry's own family, which inspired her play).
I still wonder, though, about people that Coates refers to in the final article and epilogue. Those people who, in voting for Trump, played right into a racist America but did not do so consciously thinking, “I’m a racist”; people who launch harsh criticism and even mockery at Obama, but believing the reason they do so is his policies, or his liberal slant, not because he’s black. How much do we blame race on decisions that people believe they’re making for entirely other reasons? It’s challenging for me, because I know (and am related to) so many people who probably voted for Trump, but if I challenged them with the issues of race that Coates raises in his book, they would recoil and take great offense. How can we have this discussion together as families, communities, and a nation? How do we all get on the same page so that we can start that discussion?
My only disappointment is that Coates does what he inevitably has to do: he shies away from wrestling with possible answers, putting down his pen just before he starts giving specific steps forward. When he first talked about his surprise that people expect him, as a public intellectual, to have answers, I was a little amused. Saying that expecting answers from him is "like telling doctors to only diagnose that which they could immediately and effortlessly cure" (152) . . . Well, sure--people do expect that of doctors. Most people wouldn't have much respect for a doctor who heard their symptoms and then said, "That's an interesting case. I don't have an answer for you, but I'm sure just talking about it has some benefits for society."
But when Coates concludes “The Case for Reparations” with "No one can know what would come out of such a debate. . . . But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as--if not more than--the specific answers that might be produced" (206-207), I found that anticlimactic. That wrestling, and its possible outcome, is almost unimaginable to me (and I agree with Coates that it is vital), and I'd really like to know what Coates thinks about it. At the end of the book, there is a sense that this has all been, as the subtitle suggests, a tragedy. Coates shows us that Obama maintains his optimism, but for Coates himself--and, honestly, for me, too--there is an overwhelming sense of “What happened here? How could this be going on, here, now?” Maybe thinking seriously through answers and solutions is something that just can’t happen until we’re on the other side of the Trump years.
I find Coates's spiritual journey, as presented throughout the book, quite fascinating. It makes me sad when he asserts that there is nothing after this life, that all we have is our own lifetime. Adopting that posture, he feels, justifies his defiance, but then it pushes him to do the research and thinking for "The Case for Reparations." And then, near the end of that piece, he writes, "What I am talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal" (202). And I wonder: What does that mean to him? What is the "spiritual," in his worldview that admits nothing beyond what's provable to our senses in a single lifetime? I hoped that he would grow further by the end of the book, maybe think differently about faith and God; but he remains an atheist. It does seem at some moments that he longs for the comfort that a religious faith might bring him, and I’m sorry that he hasn’t found that path yet.
I could write and write and write about We Were Eight Years in Power. It made me ashamed of how much I don’t know, of how much I’m part of the system that oppresses. But it also enlightened me, and, I hope, will help me even just glance at people of other races in a way that builds bridges rather than confirms the worst assumptions. Reading some books about race this year has taught me that every look I give while I’m out in public says something--and between people of different races, a look can make an enormous difference. I’m not racist, and I long for equality and peace among all people--but I also now realize that there have been times when my non-racist “neutral” posture has probably been read as negative and hurtful. I need to change that in myself, so that what I communicate externally is what I believe and feel internally. If only that were as easy to do as it is to write. One step at a time . . .
Well researched and thought out journalism/essays by Coates. Written through a wide, personal, historical, and political lens, the essays provide great context to the Barack Obama presidency.
I had read the final essay “The First White President” when it was published and it was poignant to read it again following his other essays.
I had read the final essay “The First White President” when it was published and it was poignant to read it again following his other essays.