Between the World and Me

It is a view into another world and culture. When you reside or grow up in cosmopolitan cultures like those of the Arabian Gulf, it is hard to know the kinds of lifelong fears and doubts that many African Americans experience from a young age.

Nice book. Well written and very relatable.

I admit I have read very little so far, concerning the issues people of color are facing worldwide and in the US specifically. This is not fiction, yet quite gripping. It's a good starting pointo to dicover a whole new world of emotions. I'll recommend this to anyone interested in understanding.

I’ve put off writing this review for a while. I find, as a straight, white, middle-class dude, conversations about race feel thorny. As I walk along this journey toward racial justice, however, I’m learning to embrace my feelings of discomfort and to not hesitate to speak up. I won’t let my sweaty palms stop me from pecking out notes about what I’m learning. Stumbling through a conversation about race is one of the best ways to learn sensitivity and empathy. Additionally, I was encouraged by the vulnerability of the author to describe his own failings and his progress as he learned about the role that race plays in this country. Sometimes I think reckoning with the complexities of race is a uniquely white problem for which I do not have any good answers. I’m encouraged to know that people of color walk this path of dawning understanding, horror, and aching for change. This insight may be remedial. In fact, I’m sure most of mine are. But I take pride in these tiny ignorances dispelled and in these small steps toward justice and equality. I know that I too can walk this bumpy path forward keeping an open heart and an eye toward my own missteps.Beyond the author’s honesty in his growing racial understanding, the book is poignant, insightful, and beautifully written. I particularly appreciated the author’s emphasis of what is really at stake when we talk about racial injustice: black lives (or, as Coates puts it in relating to the African American’s ongoing fight to escape from the historical chains of slavery woven into our society, the “black body”). He places preservation of the black body as the highest priority. This is no political point. It’s about ending pointless death based on nothing other than skin color. There is no abstraction here. The black body is what is at stake because the black body is what is most grievously endangered by racism and social injustice. Coates writes, “All our phrasing--race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy--serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body” (10). Coates’ focus on the real-world realities rather than intentions drives home the pervasive presence of racial oppression built into our modern world.Another important point is the power of forgetting. Denial and forgetting are key in upholding unequal power structures. We can advocate for equal treatment while forgetting that our ancestors (and even our younger selves) have already rigged the system in our favor. It’s a point I consider especially trenchant as I watch protests slowly waning across the country. Will we remember George Floyd in a year? Will we remember the gut-punch of black bodies destroyed needlessly on the streets? Or will we allow it to fade with time? We must, if we’re serious about our commitment to equality, remember. Remember every galling episode of racial injustice you can, keep it at the forefront of your mind, let your memory guide your actions toward change. I’m fumbling and bumbling to try to articulate points that Coates draws beautifully and with deep empathy. He often writes in the second person as a letter to his son to prepare him for the world: “You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold” (71).Coates’ story helped me to realize how very different my upbringing was because of my whiteness and social class. He expresses thoughts that I never had to consider because of the insulated childhood I enjoyed. For example, he writes, “When our elders present school to us, they did not present it as a place of high learning but as a means of escape from death and penal warehousing” (26). Again, “My father beat me for letting another boy steal from me. Two years later, he beat me for threatening my ninth-grade teacher. Not being violent enough could cost me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body. We could not get out” (28). And, “All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to ‘be twice as good,’ which is to say ‘accept half as much” (91).Coates weaves history, personal experience, and informed insight beautifully. His story is honest and visceral and convicting and horrifying and encouraging. This is an important book that ought to be read with an open heart willing to listen and believe.A

Let me start off by saying that Toni Morrison has said, this book is required reading. So get yourself a copy! It's necessary reading for the current climate that we are in that is only portraying a single, skewed narrative and on the same side of that coin damaging and manipulating a narrative that needs to be heard.As you may know, this book speaks about race in America, starting from the days of slavery till now, to provide us with this viewpoint that makes the reader understand ‘what it is like to inhabit a black body.’It's almost like a personal diary from Coates to his son explaining how it is we have come to the state we are in, and to offer consolation to his son through it.This is such a beautifully written book. I love that the author was able to write with such clarity that enabled the reader to really be put in a black person's shoes. To understand their culture and to comprehend that the root cause of it all is fear that is driving these people forward as it is their only means of survival. Terrifying fear where your guard is up 24/8 because you know that as soon as you step out into that world you have a target, set and ready, on your back, which translates to a harshness and power within an individual that is at its essence, fear. And Coates lets the reader (and his son) view this fear through his eyes, his upbringing and experiences and understanding of the world.I was just on the constant verge of tears, whether it was out of anger or sadness, because what else are you meant to feel when you know that a specific group of people are completely broken down due to the colour of their skin? Yet, he speaks on understanding the 'white’ mentality. This book is full of empathy, it seeps out of every word, every sentence that is constructedHe speaks on identity, the social construct of races, the all American Dream that is a facade and build on the back of slavery, police brutality and the concept of whiteness.It's not all doom and gloom. There is hope, there has to be and he shares beautiful moments in his life where barriers within himself are broken and clarity poured in, that the world is much more than America and its toxic narrative/lifestyle and the simple wonders of life that we take for granted.I know that this is a book that I'll casually flick through every now again. I've filled it with my thoughts, which I'll probably have to add to as my perspective of this world changes and my own understanding grows. It was truly an an eye-opening read. I feel invigorated and my mind is more curious, hungry and eager to find out more.

The author writes a letter to his son in order to show how his social environment, education and family background have influenced him, how all this history and memory around have shaped his personality and character, how it is to grown up in America being part of social minority.Coates describes the fear, the discrimination, the prejudgment because of belonging to a minority (Afro-American) in the US. He writes also about how unfair the rule “you have to be twice as good” is, because this rule is a justification of the way things are and make people think it is their own fault, they are guilty in some way.But these thoughts could be applied to any western society or any social group; the quote people who think they are white” is not only a reference to a book american classic, it is also a reference about how much we guilt ourselves for not getting what we fight for. We may believe many times it is our own fault, we may think maybe if we do it better next time we will get there, maybe the future will be different for us if we improve, maybe our children will get there if they are better than we are… and we justify and accept the status quo of the present situation.You may be white, like I am, but maybe you are from a small town, trying to get thought a career in a big city; maybe your parents did not go to university and you feel you are not well accepted in some educated groups, maybe you start a small business, a professional such as lawyer or architect and you are not into some social elite groups, lobbies or economic establishment groups of any level, and you feel you have not the same success some others do because they got there some decades or centuries before… maybe you think you are white, but the truth is you are not. Power and social elites discriminate us all.He describes the social dysfunctions that he has learned and his fears about them. Fears about their prevalence over time, about they can influence his son’s condition him and about how telling them or not, may how determine his existence.I am a 45 year old, white (well I mean I think I am white), European citizen who lives far away from that environment and society. However I believe this book is not about America’s racial discrimination, it is about the lack of implementation of our western values in any democratic country around the world.English is not my mother tongue and I am not familiar with some characters and references, such as leaders, characters and civil rights activists that are mentioned in the book. However I believe most of the message of the book could be applied to any social rights movement, to any social, gender, sexual orientation discrimination in any western country.Besides the author's pessimism about change or about the future, the book is full of love, fatherhood guidance, acceptance of difference, respect, hope and tolerance for the values that he is claiming for: we were all created equal.

Cet essai se présente comme une lettre de l'auteur à son fils de 16 ans sur les dangers qui guettent les jeunes hommes noirs aux Etats-Unis, dangers contre lesquels il veut le prémunir. C'est un constat sans complaisance dressé par un journaliste engagé et rigoureux doublé d'un père aimant et responsable qui ne craint pas d'analyser ses propres peurs. A lire par toutes et tous ceux qui s'intéressent de près ou de loin à la paternité, au mouvement pour les droits civiques, à la diversité, au combat contre le racisme, la discrimination et le machisme, contre toutes les formes de colonialisme, à l'identité, aux relations de pouvoir entre les différentes communautés. Il y a dans cette "Colère noire" (c'est le titre retenu par l'éditeur français) des accents du" Indignez-vous" de Stéphane Hessel et du "Racisme expliqué à ma fille"de Tahar Ben Jelloun mais aussi parfois du Michael Moore de "Stupid White Men" ("Mike contre-attaque" en Français). On peut aussi y voir une mise à jour désabusée des constats de l'écrivain Barack Obama dans "De la race en Amérique" (2008) deux mandats après l'élection du premier président noir aux Etats-Unis. A lire absolument!