Play Book Tag discussion

Between the World and Me is framed as a letter to the author's young son, on the dangers in the world for black men. The author is eloquent, passionate, and angry. He is occasionally apologetic for the effect that his own fear and anger has had on the life of his son, and on his ability to be a loving father. The book is also a memoir, a love letter to Howard University and "The Mecca," and a treatise on the dangers to black bodies. I appreciated his passion and the quality of his writing, but this is not a pleasant book to read. The author eloquently narrates the book himself. When he is speaking more directly to his son, I can hear the sadness in his voice. It seems that he wants to be optimistic for his son's future, but that's very difficult.

He ties much of his treatise to the death of Prince Jones, a fellow student at Howard University, who was erroneously followed and killed by a black police officer in Prince Georges County (a county with a high number of shootings by police officers). PG county is a largely black middle class community, with black leaders, which made the case even more painful. He keeps referring back to that case, linking it to causes that don't seem remotely relevant. For instance when discussing government and banking practices (such as red-lining) that kept black people locked in ghettos, he blamed them for Prince Jones' death. Prince Jones came from a very well off family, not a ghetto, and he was killed in a suburban area, not a ghetto.

Coates frequently derides "people who think they're white" and "the Dreamers." Neither term is clearly defined, but after a while I concluded that he is not just criticizing white people, he's also criticizing black people who buy into the dream that they can overcome hundreds of years of history. I saw an article by a black columnist who found the book pessimistic and dis-empowering. He overstates evidence to support his case, and ignores information that doesn't.

Coates met Barack Obama several times and has written about him elsewhere, but Obama is conspicuously absent from this book. I suspect Coates would put Obama in the category of the overly optimistic Dreamers (or the category of blacks who speak and act white).