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oldsouls_lovebooks 's review for:
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Some parts were a bit repetitive but I'll give it a pass because this book is a collection of essays/articles Coates wrote in the 8 years of Obama's presidency, so they weren't originally telling a singular story therefore the repetition wasn't repetitive in its individual publishing.
In this Coates discusses mass incarceration, redlining, the Civil War, reparations, Obama, Black Power Movement, Trump, and also debunks the newly-created and annoying myth that white America has always loved MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. All in all great read but incredibly frustrating and disheartening. Although that is to be expected. The pessimism of Coates might be off putting for some, but I think what he does is take the rose-colored whitewashed glasses off America, and instead speaks about the way it is and has always been rather than the sanitized version that absolves the sins and tells black ppl the only "true patriots" are ones who wrap themselves in a flag that suffers from dual personality disorder. I'm similar to Coates in that I don't have much optimism or faith. Also, I don't want to misrepresent the book as solely opinionated. He does point to some historical/present-day evidence and statistics, in some articles more than others (e.g. The Case for Reparations). I hadn't read these essays before except for the last one entitled, The First White President. That one was published pretty recently, so I'll admit that I skimmed the last couple of pages.
Reading this made me think of when President Obama was still in office, and how I sometimes imagined going up to him and shaking him saying, "Quit being so damn positive all the time. F****** tell them off! Even when it was their own white children being murdered they still refused to work with you. They rolled their eyes over you crying for them. Stand up for yourself! If they're going to be hypocritical; lying racists then go ahead, be the angry black man. Lord knows we've had our fill of the angry white man. If that's what they expect then that's what they deserve. Why do we have to put up with it all the time? They can yell and scream and stomp their feet for 8 yrs and tell you to put your mouth on their gun with no repercussions but we can't so much as take a silent knee?!" Of course Obama could and would never do that. As Coates discusses in the book, he doesn't have that generational grief and anger that most African-Americans have (after all his black side isn't a product of slavery like the rest of us), and in a way, I'm glad for him. Although, he does bare some blame in regards to playing to the "culturally depraved" and "respectability politics" narrative about black people that conservative, neoliberal, and black elites often use to absolve themselves of systemic problems they aren't interested in fixing. His politics aren't exactly in the progressive spirit of what we know black liberation, Civil Rights, and the Poor People's Campaign struggles to have been in.
I'm not going to go into an in depth review, but just know I'd highly recommend it, and this is coming from someone who still hasn't read Between the World and Me. Just keep in mind this isn't going to make you happy lol. Get ready for a lot of ignorant; bigoted quotes from average citizens to ppl holding political power that craft/uphold bigoted policy. And don't even get me started on Cosby and his ilk (Pound Cake speech). Ugh...
In this Coates discusses mass incarceration, redlining, the Civil War, reparations, Obama, Black Power Movement, Trump, and also debunks the newly-created and annoying myth that white America has always loved MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. All in all great read but incredibly frustrating and disheartening. Although that is to be expected. The pessimism of Coates might be off putting for some, but I think what he does is take the rose-colored whitewashed glasses off America, and instead speaks about the way it is and has always been rather than the sanitized version that absolves the sins and tells black ppl the only "true patriots" are ones who wrap themselves in a flag that suffers from dual personality disorder. I'm similar to Coates in that I don't have much optimism or faith. Also, I don't want to misrepresent the book as solely opinionated. He does point to some historical/present-day evidence and statistics, in some articles more than others (e.g. The Case for Reparations). I hadn't read these essays before except for the last one entitled, The First White President. That one was published pretty recently, so I'll admit that I skimmed the last couple of pages.
Reading this made me think of when President Obama was still in office, and how I sometimes imagined going up to him and shaking him saying, "Quit being so damn positive all the time. F****** tell them off! Even when it was their own white children being murdered they still refused to work with you. They rolled their eyes over you crying for them. Stand up for yourself! If they're going to be hypocritical; lying racists then go ahead, be the angry black man. Lord knows we've had our fill of the angry white man. If that's what they expect then that's what they deserve. Why do we have to put up with it all the time? They can yell and scream and stomp their feet for 8 yrs and tell you to put your mouth on their gun with no repercussions but we can't so much as take a silent knee?!" Of course Obama could and would never do that. As Coates discusses in the book, he doesn't have that generational grief and anger that most African-Americans have (after all his black side isn't a product of slavery like the rest of us), and in a way, I'm glad for him. Although, he does bare some blame in regards to playing to the "culturally depraved" and "respectability politics" narrative about black people that conservative, neoliberal, and black elites often use to absolve themselves of systemic problems they aren't interested in fixing. His politics aren't exactly in the progressive spirit of what we know black liberation, Civil Rights, and the Poor People's Campaign struggles to have been in.
I'm not going to go into an in depth review, but just know I'd highly recommend it, and this is coming from someone who still hasn't read Between the World and Me. Just keep in mind this isn't going to make you happy lol. Get ready for a lot of ignorant; bigoted quotes from average citizens to ppl holding political power that craft/uphold bigoted policy. And don't even get me started on Cosby and his ilk (Pound Cake speech). Ugh...