I highly recommend this book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s a letter to his then 15 year old son about his life and what he has learned concerning his position in the world as a black man in the USA.

Here are some excerpts that stand out to me:

“If my life ended today, I would tell you it was a happy life that I drew great joy from the study from the struggle toward which I now urge you. You have seen in this conversation that the struggle has ruptured and remade me several times over, in Baltimore, at the Mecca and fatherhood in New York, the changes have awarded me a rapture that comes only when you can no longer be lied to, when you have rejected the dream. But even more the changes have taught me how to best exploit that singular gift of study, to question what I see, then to question what I see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps more than the answers.”

“I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us, but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do.”

“Race is the child of racism, not the father.”

And profoundly, “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus.” Mr. Coates shares this quote early in “Between the World and Me” as he’s describing his time at Howard University. The impact this idea had on him was immense and frankly I can’t stop thinking about it myself.

The background, Saul Bellow once asked, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?” Which was latched onto by those looking for justification of white superiority. Ralph Wiley responded, “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus, unless you find profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.”

I am grateful Mr. Coates shared this letter with us. Understanding that “Race is the child of racism, not the father.” has tremendously aided the realization of my place in this world and how it should be used.

Silence is Complicit