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brenden_odonnell 's review for:
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates writes to his son: "I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what you grandparents tried to tell me: that this is you country, that this is your world, that this is you body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it" (11-2). This is not a book that taxes itself with the burden of making people feel better. Rather, it shows the many ways life is more dangerous, unfair, painful, complex, and beautiful than may be immediately evident.
In a helpful metaphor that spans the entire book, Coates refers to the people who "believe they are white" as "the dreamers," who maintain and benefit from an imagined, essential distinction between people with and without power. Black people, meanwhile, are responsible not only for keeping their own black bodies safe, but also must account for the worst actions of other people who look like them. Yet, while their place in the world is more precarious than that of those who believe they are white, at least, when they wake up in the morning, they truly wake up, while the dreamers dream on.
Once again, this is not consolation for the violence against black bodies and the unfair responsibilities thrust upon them. Rather, it is a way of framing black power. Despite living in reality in the context a society dominated by a dream, despite substantiating the "below" that gives meaning to a hypocritical "sacred equality" (104), "We have made something down here" (149).
In a helpful metaphor that spans the entire book, Coates refers to the people who "believe they are white" as "the dreamers," who maintain and benefit from an imagined, essential distinction between people with and without power. Black people, meanwhile, are responsible not only for keeping their own black bodies safe, but also must account for the worst actions of other people who look like them. Yet, while their place in the world is more precarious than that of those who believe they are white, at least, when they wake up in the morning, they truly wake up, while the dreamers dream on.
Once again, this is not consolation for the violence against black bodies and the unfair responsibilities thrust upon them. Rather, it is a way of framing black power. Despite living in reality in the context a society dominated by a dream, despite substantiating the "below" that gives meaning to a hypocritical "sacred equality" (104), "We have made something down here" (149).