Between the World and Me.

The first time I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, I was a senior in college. Trump had just gotten elected, and later, I’d know how permanently worldbending that would feel, like I couldn’t quite trust anything to be what I expected it to be, like for as long as he was the leader, I was unsafe (and maybe afterward and maybe also before this latest bad thing happened), but at the time, it was still brand new. I was 21 and would graduate from college soon, and I couldn’t quite figure where I’d go from there. Because of a variety of factors (mainly a really intense church) for most of college, I’d felt kind of like my head was underwater. Now that I’d come up, now that I could breathe, who knew where I should go?

I’d dropped out of school, worked at a bookstore, gotten even more involved in the really intense church, and now, I was back. I was curious again. I had grown a lot more skeptical, a lot more race-oriented, and as I was learning the extent of America’s history with race, here we were, with Trump.

I know it’s not a new thing to say, but this felt acutely painful. I was finding it hard to breathe again. Thought, How could I trust anyone around me if this many people had chosen him? 

I don’t know who recommended Coates’ book to me or if I’d just stumbled upon it, but I do remember listening to the audiobook, which Coates reads himself, and how the cadence of his Baltimore accent made me feel comforted, how his words made me feel both seen and justified in my anger. He wrote this book for his son. He gave him advice on how to be Black in America without feeling like you’re drowning, and walking around Baylor’s campus, where plenty of people were happy that Trump got elected and some were even wearing shirts that declared that they were “Trump’s Girls,” Coates’ words brought me some relief.

I’m studying for some exams for grad school now and so read Coates’ book again. This time, I read it alongside James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Frederick Douglass’ slave narrative and Malcolm X’s autobiography and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and it scares me, how in a lot of ways, they’re all saying the same thing. How do you survive here? How, when you finally get to come up for air, do you not get plunged down again? 

Instead of facing the guilt of America’s history, many people are doing whatever necessary to keep the skeletons out of sight. Coates calls it “the Dream,” the sleepy, unaware place that some people go to so that they can continue to feel safe. It’s not everyone, obviously, (and in a way maybe it’s all of us) but I’m awed at the extent of denial by some. If people would just stop reading books, stop being trans, stop saying “gay,” stop saying I did something wrong, then everything would be great again. Can we do that, legally? And okay fine, they can go to school, but if I can’t have my student debts paid off, no one can. If my son can’t go to this school, I’m suing, I’m blaming race, affirmative action, the minority kids who are stealing his place, as if all the change meant to even the scales has come out of nowhere, as if there’s no context to consider, as if everything has been even steven for a long time and any attention to diversity, to equity, makes no sense because we never did anything wrong. 

I know that none of us wants to be the villain. I know that it’s easier sometimes to go a long winding way around so that you can continue feeling decent about yourself instead of facing the conflict head on. But at the same time, it is really unfair to ask people to be quiet so that you don’t feel like a bad guy instead of working through the painful consequences your lifestyle has had on other people. 

It’s hard for me to accept how unwilling America is to face her own demons, how unwilling she is to acknowledge that the history of this place is racist (homophobic, transphobic, and so on), that because that’s never been thoroughly confronted, the present is prejudiced too. Coates says, “[T]he people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures if not a tobacco-spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic—an orc, troll, or gorgon.” We don’t have to call it racist if it’s too triggering, but we do have to face this country’s history if we’re going to get anywhere, if anyone (including the privileged) is ever going to feel safe here.  

Image: Spiegel & Grau