Ta-Nehisi
Coates’
book is informative and engaging. The title
refers not to the Obama years, but to a
historical quote about eight good years in South
Carolina after the American Civil War when
blacks were elected and governed well. Then a
backlash re-wrote the state constitution to
block blacks from voting, to smear the legacy of
black rule and to “restore a despotic white
supremacy.” My complete unawareness of this
history was embarrassing. Coates feels the
election of Trump as “the first white President”
was that older South Carolina push for white
rule coming back in 2016 at a national level.
The idea of a good black President was too
disturbing to pervasive white myths.
Having
exposed my ignorance, Coates’ introduction goes
on to explain how his creative book works. He
has organized a series of eight of his published
Atlantic
articles, one for each of the eight years of
the Obama presidency. He introduces each article
by “Notes” to set the scene for that year in his
own life, and for the article that follows.
The
first article is about Bill Cosby, successful
black artist, and the black community. Cosby is
dubbed conservative. The writing is intriguing.
Coates is critical of the work of Bill Cosby
among blacks, of his ideas of blacks pulling
themselves up by their own bootlaces. At the
same time Coates conveys a respectful analytical
distance. He ends up quoting Cosby from an
interview of him.
A
distinctive reflective approach in the Notes 1
carries through all notes and each article. The
reader becomes part of Coates’ process of
analysis and weighing of things. This ability to
make a reader feel part of his own learning
process sets Coates apart. One encounters
another person, sits beside him and thinks with
him as he works through the subject material.
His notes add some personal biographical
information about his own life, his fears and
hopes without pushing “I” and “me.”
In
Notes 2 the reader learns about the black
migration to the North, the impact of racist
measures around mortgages on blacks, and about
housing discriminations, and the special history
of South-side Chicago. An enclave of
self-sufficient blacks led to Michelle Obama.
Coates tells how he first got requests for
articles from Atlantic magazine, and a
fellowship. The election of Obama was a
happen-chance boost to his hope to live by
writing. He reflects on his relationship with
his partner, his interests and hers, and the
kind of a partner he wants to be. He began a
blog, consulted and learned from others.
The
article about Michelle Obama, American
Girl, is a gem. There is a moving
reflection about being a black and being
American. He ends saying that if there is to be
such a thing as a ‘post-racial America’ then one
should look to the Obamas, who are part of a
group of people “with a sense of security in who
they are - those black or white, who hold
blackness as more than the losing end of
racism.”
In
Notes 3 he confesses he did not grasp the coming
tragedy of Trump and the full force of white
supremacy in US history in and following the
Civil War. That war was “inaugurated not
reluctantly but lustily by men who believed
property in humans to be the cornerstone of
civilization, to be an edict of God.” After the
war “the now-defeated God lives on, honored
through the human sacrifice of lynching and
racist pogroms.”
The
article Why
Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War shows
that the American civil war was first and
foremost about blacks, fought and lost to keep
slavery. Much written about the war has been a
re-writing of history that allowed President
Wilson’s segregated federal washrooms and the
films Birth
of a Nation and Gone with
the Wind and finding other meaning for the
Confederacy. Coates urges blacks to understand
“Our War.” Blacks played a role in that war. He
wants a move from “protest to production” so
that “our own departed hands … may leave a
mark.”
Notes
4 introduce Malcolm X and how Obama is X’s
successor. The article is from the time a
movement began trying to cast Obama as an alien.
Coates’ article is helped by a book review of a
biography of Malcolm X, a person Coates dubs
“the greatest 20th century skeptic of American
Democracy.”
The
essay Legacy
of Malcolm X is full of insights. Things
have changed. Intelligent and bright, Malcolm X
wanted to be a lawyer but was told blacks
couldn’t be lawyers. Bright Obama became one. But,
Coates adds, Obama lives in the America of
Malcolm X. Malcolm changed himself many times.
He is best known as the religious, ascetic,
vegetarian who debated at Oxford and elsewhere.
Malcolm X changed black America. Post Malcolm X,
it became OK to be black and have the hair and
lips you were born with. He projected a message:
you can transcend the streets. Coates’ criticism
of a conservative is gentle: “Among organic
black conservatives, this moral leadership still
gives Malcolm sway.” Coates ends reflecting on
his link to Obama - who declared the influence
of Malcolm X. At the very end, Coates confesses
he hung up the poster of Malcolm X from his
younger days in his new apartment.
Notes
5 begins with memories of being beaten up at
ages 9 and 12 – experiences that taught him
there is no divine intervention, no cosmic
justice. Coates is with others who reject
enslavement and the manufactured history that
aims to sanctify it. His focus on race has not
been limiting. Writing about “the force of white
supremacy” was writing from the heart of
American society. Was it worth it to have a
black president – warts and all? Coates notes
all black victories have been partial and
finally answers “yes,” yes at the time he was
writing! And so his lens segues to his article.
Fear
of a Black President
opens on the problems for Obama from latent
white supremacy values when as a black president
Obama suggested an investigation around the
killing of unarmed black youth, Trayvon Martin,
“in self defense” by a white man in Florida.
There follows an account of the premature forced
resignation of Shirley Sherrod, an enlightened
Obama appointment to the US Department of
Agriculture, on account of what turned out to be
erroneous video clips. They appeared on the web
page of a conservative commentator. The essay
ends with an account of the pre-Obama era
killing of Prince Jones by an undercover police
officer who followed him in an unmarked car. It
too was said to be self-defense. No charges were
brought. Jones was a personal friend of Coates.
Has anything changed from the Jones killing to
the Martin killing? Coates says society’s
initial response was more heartening in the
later Martin case – before the first black
president spoke. Obama was conservative on race.
His success relied on soothing race
consciousness among whites. It reveals a
compromised “infantile” integration. Yet the
symbolism of a black president is affirmative
for blacks. In his last lines Coates tells that
Shirley Sherrod granted him an interview with
“great trepidation.” She didn’t want to do
anything to hurt the president!
Notes
from year 6 leads to the article The Case
for Reparations. Blacks are at the bottom
of every socio-economic indicator. There is a
popular theory that as industrial high-paying
low skill jobs disappeared young black men were
left unemployed. Some have said that blacks
themselves caused their problems. Coates’ began
examining facts and his experience of the force
that caused the terrible Civil War. Slavery and
post war terrorism are central to American
history and a unique black experience. The post
WWII “new deal” excluded blacks. And classes are
different for blacks. “So thick was the barrier
of segregation that upper-class blacks were more
likely to live in poor neighborhoods than poor
whites.” Reparations are not limited to slavery,
but to issues continuing for persons alive
today. How can such a scale of robbery spanning
generations be addressed without acknowledging
the scope of it and without recompense?
The
article The
Case for Reparations makes a devastating
read for a white person. It is a researched
account of brutal discrimination from slavery
before the US Civil War. In the 1920s’ Jim Crow
Mississippi, there was supremacist lynching,
robbery, forced labour and disenfranchisement
that forced blacks to flee North seeking
protection of the law. It was a bit better, but
in the1930s blacks faced housing scams when
trying to buy a house in the North – the example
is about a Chicago suburb. The Federal Housing
Authority deemed any area with blacks unsafe so
that blacks were blocked from the mortgages that
helped whites join a middle class. A black
Contract Buyer’s League tried to get reparations
before the courts in 1968 on account of these
scams. The case lost to a jury in 1976. The
racism was not subtle. Blacks moving into a
house or apartment deemed a white area faced
vigilante mobs that threw stones through windows
– in places like Chicago in the North. Poor
black neighborhoods are not just poor – they are
“ecologically different” – high homicides, high
infant mortality, almost half the people below
the poverty line, half the people on food
stamps. Even rich blacks lack the wealth and
economic security enjoyed by rich whites. He
cites Christian scriptural references that imply
forms of reparation. He gives examples of
reparations. And more disturbing facts add to
his case for reparations. Blacks were particular
hurt in the 2009 housing crash and had a
successful law suit against Wells Fargo bank
that had targeted them for predatory loans.
By
Notes 7 Coates understood that “to be black in
America was to be plundered. To be white was to
benefit from … this plunder.” The reader
witnesses his understanding of himself more as
part of that community and of its writers. He
describes his first meeting with Obama in a self
critical way. At the same time he shows how his
admiration of the writing of James Baldwin
turned into his desire to write like that. His
major work Between the
World and Me emerged. At the same time he
was working on The Black
Family in the Age of Incarceration
commissioned by Atlantic.
The
article sets its scene on the “grey wasteland of
incarceration” with a fulsome account of the
dominant background sociological thought of the
white Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Initially
Moynihan seemed to understand the historic
plundering of blacks, but he focused on family.
His paper “The Negro Family: The Case for
national Action” led to failed efforts for a
national family assistance under Nixon. And the
reaction to race riots and increasing crime at
that time became increasing incarceration. The
incarceration rate doubled from the mid 70s to
the mid 80s and again to the mid 90s. US
incarceration is unprecedented historically and
by comparison with other countries.
Incarceration is racialized. In 2000, one in10
black males was incarcerated. Incarceration increased
as crime rates fell after 1990. Coates shows
that the impact on the economic viability of
black families is enormous – and continues to
harm employment chances after release. Coates
describes life in jail, the problems on leaving
and the problems for families of the
incarcerated. He tours Motown Detroit with a
black who holds fond memories of the times
before jobs moved away – memories of “community”
that run counter to Moynihan’s analysis. Coates
is not pushing any solution. Incarceration is
just set out as something done to the black
community.
Notes
8 opens with reference to a meeting with Obama
where Obama thought – as he did - that Trump’s
election wouldn’t happen. There is more
reflection about the luck element in Coates’
success leading up to that interview granted him
by Obama that made possible the final article My
President was Black. For this article, he
turned away from his blog approach, away from
saying what had to be said, whether heard or
not, and he turned to introspection, to his own
voice and to being led by “the story.”
Coates
sets My
President was Black alongside The Case
for Reparations as the best two articles
in his book. It opens with the Black
Entertainment Television concert hosted by the
White House in late October 2016. “The ties
between the White House and the hip-hop
generation are genuine.” Obama genuinely enjoyed
and supported black entertainers. “This would
not happen again … not just that there might
never be another African American president …
this particular black family … represented the
best of black people … incomparable in elegance
and bearing.” But “Whiteness … is a badge of
advantage.” Coates reminds us of “insidious
rumours” to denigrate the first black White
House.
Going
to the White House to meet the president Coates
notices the inclusive mix of staff. He reminds
us of Obama’s speech to the 2004 Democratic
National Convention (DNC) adding “Over
the next twelve years I came to regard Obama as
a skilled politician, a deeply moral human
being, and one of the greatest presidents in
American history.” Despite resistance from the
moment he arrived, Obama remade healthcare,
revitalized the Justice Department and
investigated police brutality and discrimination
and began dismantling the private prison system.
Obama’s 944 commutations of sentences fell
woefully short of the 10,000 possible but that
944 was more than those of the past 11
presidents combined. Coates spoke with Obama
about his early years and adds discussions he
had with others. He concludes Obama’s early good
experiences with whites allowed him to see
things differently and to see the possibility of
becoming a president. He could offer whites
“trust.”
The
president chats on the way to a rally for
Clinton and they stop to listen to young men in
the organization that began at the president’s
initiative My Brother’s Keeper. One pointed out
that they (?) still had to go back to “the hood”
– the ghetto environment they came from. Obama’s
programs were for all, but they benefitted a
greater fraction of blacks. The most troubling
part of Obama’s routine speech on race was to
call on blacks to eat less junk food and stop
blaming whites. What mattered about the
difference between blacks and whites was not a
difference in work ethic but a system engineered
to put one race on top. Initially opposed to
reparations, towards the end, Obama seemed open
to “large aggressive investment” to close the
gulf in wealth, education and employment
separating black and white America.
There
is discussion with the president about the
reasoning behind Black Lives Matter’s deciding
not to meet him. Obama is not a protester by
temperament – he is a consensus builder. There
is discussion of Obama’s hope that universal
programs could see black kids graduating and
going to college like white kids. There is
discussion about the obstruction of Obama’s
presidency and racism in the campaigns. There
was the birth certificate issue and “During his
first term, Tea Party activists voiced their
complaints in racist terms.” In 2011-2012
nineteen states enacted voting restrictions
making it harder for blacks to vote. Obama won
anyway.
Coates
went with Obama when he gave a good commencement
address at Howard University Spring 2016 -
receiving a rapturous reception. After Trump’s
election the two of them have an exchange.
Coates concedes that Obama’s decency, faith, and
improbable trust in his countrymen made him feel
for the only time in his life, proud to be
American.
The Epilogue
contemplates Trump. There is concern with
liberal “raceless anti-racism” and liberal
sympathy with the plight of the white working
class. “Not every Trump voter is a white
supremacist. But every Trump voter felt it
acceptable to hand the fate of the country over
to one.” Trump enjoyed majority or plurality
support from every branch of whites. His
strongest support, 61%, came from whites making
$50,000 to $99,000 whereas only 24% of Hispanics
and 11% of Blacks supported him. The plurality
of all voters making under $50,000 voted for the
Democratic candidate.
“What
is needed now is a resistance intolerant of
self-exoneration, set against blinding itself to
evil.” … “I see the fight against sexism,
racism, poverty, and even war finding their
union … in their ultimate goal – a world more
humane.” So the book ends.