Elle: "Why White Women Should Read Ta-Nehisi Coates' Book, Between The World And Me"

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"Ta-Nehisi Coates' Case Against American Exceptionalism"
The Week

http://theweek.com/articles/568897/tanehisi-coates-case-against-american-exceptionalism

WHY WHITE WOMEN SHOULD READ TA-NEHISI COATES' BOOK

That Between the World and Me was explicitly not written for white people (like me) is exactly why we should read it.

The most important book of the year, if not the decade, may be Between the World and Me, Atlantic staff writer Ta-Nehisi Coates' letter to his son about racism and being black in America today.  Speaking about the launch party for his book, held at the Union Baptist Church in Baltimore, Coates told the New York Times, "It was very, very important, as far as I was concerned, that the book be launched in an African-American space. I wanted to be very clear about who the book was written for, how it was written, what it came out of."

In other words, this is a book by a black author for black audiences about black reality, identity, and outrage.  Also true: White people can and should read it. 

Here's a news flash: Most books in our so-called literary canon are written by white authors. In 2011, 88 percent of the books reviewed by the New York Timeswere written by white authors. In 2015, 100 percent of the books recommended as "summer reads" by the New York Times were by white authors. Implicitly, they're also written for white readers. A twist on the old adage—don't just write what you know, write for who you know. A 2014 survey found that 75 percent of white Americans have all-white social networks. Want to break out of the reality of modern racial segregation? Start with your bookshelf. And hopefully expand your mind.

That Between the World and Me was explicitly not written for white people (like me) is exactly why we should read it. Because part of the ideology of white supremacy and racial hierarchy is the idea that everything white is better, and that people of color should learn from how white people dress and work and raise their kids and write. Want to subvert that subtle, implicit bias?  Tweeting #BlackLivesMatter is good, but expanding your intellectual as well as actual interpersonal relationships is even better. And especially if you live in a very white part of America, a book is a great place to start.

Plus Coates' book is a challenging one.  This is not some multicultural "Kumbaya" edition. This is all hard truths and sharp edges. Coates forces white people—those he calls "people who believe themselves to be white" or "Dreamers"—to face the brutal reality of black oppression in America's past and present:

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our body's became this country's second mortgage.  In the New Deal we were their guest room, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resources of incomparable value.

It is impossible to read his text without wincing. And it should be. As the writer Rebecca Carroll has suggested, white discomfort is progress. "In my experience, white people can stand to feel badly, ashamed, annoyed, uncomfortable for about 25 seconds," Carroll has written. "But the right track is to feel all of that and then some for, say, 25 weeks. To start."

To pluck out a recent example from pop culture, when Nicki Minaj tweeted about her lack of Grammy nominations ("When the 'other' girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture they get that nomination"), she was critiquing the lack of recognition for artists of color in the music business. But Taylor Swift took it personally and got defensive. Minaj later clarified on Instagram that her comments had nothing to do with any of the other artists and "everything to do with a system that doesn't credit black women for their contributions to pop culture as freely/quickly as they reward others." Swift, to some credit, later tweeted, "I thought I was being called out. I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke. I'm sorry, Nicki." Though it would have been great if Swift also lent her voice and power to Minaj's point—recognizing that white privilege plays a huge role in why artists like Swift and Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber get rich and famous for appropriating culture originated by less-recognized black artists. Swift and others don't need to feel guilty for that; they didn't create racial bias. But they do need to acknowledge it and feel uncomfortable about it and start speaking up to name and validate that reality.

After all, it's not Nicki Minaj or Ta-Nehisi Coates' responsibility to undo systemic racism. Those of us who, by virtue of our white skin, have benefitted from white supremacy and racial hierarchy are the ones who must destroy it. As Coates writes:

[W]e cannot will ourselves to an escape on our own. Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement: to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need to be white, to talk like they are white, to think that they are white, which is to think that they are beyond the design flaws of humanity, has done to the world.

But, Coates adds, "I am convinced that the Dreamers, at least the Dreamers of today, would rather live white than live free." If that assertion also makes you uncomfortable, good. Read all of Between the World and Me and get even more uncomfortable. Discomfort, self-critique, and self-awareness are progress. Then try to spend the rest of your life helping yourself and the world around you get free.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, $14.40, amazon.com