A White Look at The Black World

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, an open letter to his son about what it means to live as a black man in the United States, won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction for portraying the brutal reality of racial discrimination. But is this reality current, or is it that of Coates’ own adolescent memories? It is undeniable that there are societal boundaries regarding race in the United States; police violence against the black community is atrociously common, national arrest rates of blacks are on average three times higher than whites and social bias still abounds in a nation that claims to be in a progressive era. People will continue to debate the legitimacy of generalized reasoning for racial tensions such as these, but will specificity put to rest any refutation? Over and over again we hear the names of unarmed black men such as Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown who were shot and killed. Stories like that of Wes Moore and Wes Moore, two black boys with the same name living within two blocks of each other, one ending up a Rhodes scholar, combat veteran and White House Fellow while the other ending up in jail convicted to a life sentence for felony murder based on such falsified evidence that the other Wes Moore could have easily been the one rotting away in prison.

In no way can these events be overlooked. They are our current reality, but where I question Coates’ assertions are in his judgments of people different from him and in whom he characterizes as being “his people.” The mindset that develops from living in the isolation of a black community is no different than the mindset from living in that of a white one. Each is its own microcosm that forms unrealistic stereotypes and predispositions of others living in an unknown world. Coates grew up in 1980’s Baltimore, a place where seeing a boy on the street carrying a handgun under his belt did not faze community members. But his perception of the other side was limited. He remembers “watching the golden-haired boys with their toy trucks and football cards, and dimly perceiving the great barrier between the world and me.” I am concerned by this viewpoint. Surely not all white boys living in Baltimore lived in the abundance of materialism surrounded by toys and games. Although I acknowledge his perception, I find it naïve of him to come to such a profound generalization even as a young person.

Coates broadens this thought of “white security” when recounting his experiences of traveling to France. I had faith that this worldly perspective would broaden his lens of what it means to be white, but I find it narrowed it even more. He thinks back to a night in Paris “watching the teenagers gathering along the pathway near the Seine to do all their teenage things.” Immediately he embodies what he believes these adolescents must be feeling. “I remember thinking how much I would have loved for that to have been my life, how much I would have loved to have a past apart from the fear.” How does he know these teenagers are expelled of fear? His own “fear,” losing his body as a black man, may be different from these kids, but desiring their life over his own is extreme. There is no context; he does not know these young people and the hardships they deal with. Why are their fears any less significant than his? Different, yes, I do not think those adolescents are necessarily concerned with their complexion, but I do not believe their daily fears can be categorically dismissed as being less prominent than that of being black. Each person’s circumstance is unique and Coates will never fully understand those French teenager’s struggles as they will never understand his—but he does not address racial barriers in this manner. Instead, to him, whites seem to be dismissed as being unable to have any fear or societal injustice greater than that which the color of one’s skin has determined.

But even this becomes complicated. Skin color does not identify heritage; therefore, the doctrine Coates preaches is not even applicable to a significant amount of black people living in the United States. Transfixed over slavery, Coates continues to make it clear to his son that blacks have been enslaved longer than they have been free in the United States. He makes an extended comparison between education in the United States and slavery stating, “It does not matter that the ‘intentions’ of individual educators were noble.” He continues, “No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction… Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved.” Our mistakes are of the past, and acknowledging them is essential to prevent recapitulation. But the past does not pertain to everyone Coates is referring to when speaking about being black in the United States. What about the Haitians? Ugandans? Turks? Those who have immigrated to the United States for their own dream and do not have ancestors with ties to American slavery? Society acknowledges their heritage only by their skin color, yet their fathers are not telling them to remember the years of enslavement their ancestors were subjected to. If blacks identify as one single conglomerate, as Coates asserts, then my heritage is no different than a first-generation immigrant from Hungary with a light skin tone.

Interracial dialogue is necessary in the United States, but too often it turns into aggression. We quickly judge others based on a specific scenario and are funneled into a tunnel of singularity. Currently this dialogue seems unfeasible without violence and protest, but it is the emergence of a new generation--one that has grown up with a black president, that has always gone to school with children of all colors and is brought up in an innocence where skin color is a nonfactor in social interaction—that will actively change our current problems regarding race. Police officers will not see skin color when considering a suspect. Teachers will not generalize by appearance but by character. People will see each other as fellow humans venturing into a great unknown that encompasses all of humanity. ♥