on a reading of Ta-Nehisi Coates's "Between the World and Me"

I heard about this book through a tech podcaster I listen to, Casey Liss. I recommend you read it. And if you haven't done anything here yet: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/. Why not?

This is not meant to be a book report or a discussion of the facts at hand. The facts are obvious—our country has a serious problem with systemic racism, much of which is enforced by the policing system, but which also goes much deeper than that. That has always been clear. Rather, I want to use this space to interrogate some of the ideas presented in this book, as well as my own feelings about it. This is not, and is not intended to be, an interjection to the narrative presented by Coates', which is exceptionally powerful and much more well-constructed than anything I can write at this time. It is an examination of a personal response to such a narrative and an outlet for deeper introspection about such a response.

An examination of such a response must first begin with an analysis of the initial position of the reader. I come from a position of relative privilege. I am not an expert, and will never claim to be one. I have had some previous exposure to critical race theory and, growing up Asian in a predominantly white community, have had to think about what effect my race has had on my life. That, however, is grossly insufficient to understand the experience of Black Americans, and if I have any regrets in this regard it is that I have not sought out this perspective so strongly until now. It is like cramming for a test after you have failed it. There will, however, be more tests in the future, and although it is perhaps inevitable that you will continue to fail for some time yet, it is imperative that you learn more and fail less badly.

The fundamental hypothesis of Coates' text—if one can excuse the reductionism—is that the root of this systemic violence is the concept of American Dream; i.e. the American Dream has been, and continues to be, fundamentally built upon the subjugation of and violence against Black bodies. This Dream presents certain "standards of civilization and humanity." It is something sought out by "the people who believe they are white", as Coates repeatedly refers to them—as is occasionally touched on in history classes, this class of people has always been changing, initially excluding Southern and Eastern Europeans, the Irish, and so on and so forth, until somehow this totally heterogenous group melded into one cohesive "race."

These assumptions are propagated throughout all acts of society, but particularly in policing, as the current crisis attests. Note, however, that such a propagation has a directionality. Coates states that "the problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs," and that "people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration." I feel like these particular points have been lost in a lot of the present discourse, and, to be honest, in my own thoughts.  It is important to remember that even as we dismantle or reform policing in the status quo, the underlying problem is not that the police system is racist. It is that we are racist in ways that are difficult for us to grasp at first, and the police reinforce these notions. The goal of acting, of signing petitions, of donating, of protesting, is not to show that you are a good ally, nor is it to exonerate you of any crimes. You have never been innocent. This much is clear.

Coates notes explicitly that "the writer...must be wary of every Dream and every nation....perhaps his own nation more than any other." If one will permit me to make a detour here, I think a lot of what this book puts forth ought to be considered seriously by the communities of middle class and upper-middle-class Chinese-Americans. I limit my discussion to this group because it is one I am familiar with and I am not sure how much of this generalizes.

What I am about to say is something derived from observation, and may not apply to individual cases or even be entirely true, in reality. Personally, however, I think a lot of this group (of which I am a member) has bought heavily into the American Dream. As the "model minority", they have been lulled into a false sense of security by mentally including themselves into the ingroup, into the "people who believe they are white." This is why we say that much of this community is anti-Black—by siding with present power structures, buying into the idea of the American Dream, not to mention much of the rhetoric of Chinese culture in the first place, we have already chosen a side. To respond to a recent argument by an MIT student, this side is fundamentally the side of injustice, that is, continued violence against Black bodies.

The risk of choosing a side, is that, of course, the "people who believe they are white" do not actually believe that we are so. Coates states of the "people who believe they are white" that "the fact is despite their dreams, their lives are also not inviolable," in relation to the fact that state-sanctioned violence inevitably affects one of their own, inciting a level of previously unseen outrage. This can only be more true when it comes to the lives of Chinese-Americans. Consider the following passage:

"Perhaps it was because she was raised within the physical borders of such a place, because she lived in proximity with the Dreamers. Perhaps it was because the people who thought they were white told her she was smart and followed this up by telling her she was not really black, meaning it as a compliment...Your mother never felt quite at home, and this made the possibility of some other place essential to her."

This kind of alienation is not unique to Black individuals, although no doubt it is more strongly felt by them. Rather, it is felt by all matter of people who are not considered white. I speak to this because it is a feeling that I have felt throughout my as-of-yet relatively short lifespan and a feeling I have written about over and over again in various forms and thoughts. We may be the same as them—that is, human—but we are not viewed that way, and we cannot buy into their framing. The powers-that-be will not include us fully, and that means we must fundamentally reject that structure of society. This is not just a matter of choosing a more just side, but also a matter of rejecting a state where our lives, along with others, are especially violable.

There are a lot of uncomfortable concepts here in regards to intentions. Why do I frame this as a matter of self-preservation as well as one of justice? I contend that, in this case, intentions do not matter. What matters is whether or not we reject the system as it stands. Coates explicitly notes this in the following statements: "what any institution, or its agents, 'intend' for you is secondary" and "what one 'means' is neither important nor relevant." It is a question of whether or not you reject the powers-that-be and, more critically, whether you will act in a way that is consistent to that mindset.

Of course, one of the most important points which Coates makes is that the processes he describes are ongoing and difficult. There is no immediate solution to the problem, no matter how one chooses to frame it. Coates specifically rejects "magic in all its forms", including "grand theories of everything." It is too easy to "[limit] the number of possible questions, [to privilege] immediate answers." This process will require "gnawing discomfort...chaos...intellectual vertigo." This kind of fundamental cultural change always involves a struggle to understand the status quo and to know that some of the questions we ask are "unanswerable, which is not to say futile." By questioning ourselves and the status quo, and by observing the questions we are asking, we work towards developing a new understanding.

For individuals, one method of cultivating understanding to expand one's perspectives, by reading books, "pushing [oneself] away from secondhand answers", and seeking out novel experiences. The goal is an expansion of a human understanding at one's core; Coates describes how his experiences "assaulted [him] and expanded [his] notion of the human spectrum." At some level, the human experience is unique and impossible to convey in its entirety—Coates himself notes that "all are not equally robbed of their bodies, that the bodies of women are set out for pillage in ways [he] could never truly know." It is evident that I will never truly know the experience of Black Americans in the status quo. That is not a reason to give up, nor is it a reason for the inevitability of structural racism.

This is just as much an indictment of the reader as much as it is an indictment of myself. I struggle with this, and I hope to struggle with this for some time yet, because the other option is complacency. To make meaningful changes to a status quo which is so entrenched is difficult. There are policy changes which perhaps are obvious—abolition of the carceral state, for one—but ultimately to effect them we must restructure the thought structures which characterize the American public. As Coates describes, we must understand that:

"...I was part of a world. And looking out, I had friends who too were part of other worlds....worlds stitched into worlds like tapestry. And though I could never, myself, be a native of any of these worlds, I knew that nothing so essentialist as race stood between them."

We must not only understand this, but we must also feel this at our core. Developing such an emotional understanding is difficult, but "consciousness can never ultimately be racial; it must be cosmic."

There is still much work to do.