This month, the book group at St.
Andrew’s Episcopal Church read Between
the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, an author and journalist whose career
has ranged from serving as national correspondent for The Atlantic to writing the Black
Panther comic book series that has become a major motion picture. Coates is African-American, and Between the World and Me is his
account—told through a series of letters to his son—of the experience of being black
in American society. The book won the
National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for a Pulitzer.
The
book is an eye-opener. While I have read
other books about the African-American experience, this was the first time that
I had experienced an author speaking directly, intimately, and at length about
the many facets of being black in American society. A powerful writer, he brings home the
intensity of that experience, which comes into sharp focus when a good friend
is gunned down by a policeman.
Between the World and Me contains many
references to people who go about their lives, in Coates’ words, “as if they
were white.” His point is that race is
socially manufactured, that Europeans and European-Americans justified their
enslavement of Africans by creating the idea that there are separate
races. In other words, they created the
idea of “black” as an inferior race and, in the process, created the idea of
“white” as a superior race. “Difference
in hue and hair,” he writes, “is old.
But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these
factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper
attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new
people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe
that they are white” (p. 7).
His
comments reminded me of a discussion during the planning of an international
conference in Canada a few years back. The
discussion centered around the U.S. ideal of a “melting pot” versus the
Canadian ideal of a social “mosaic” in which each individual brings his/her own
unique characteristics to society.
During the Book Group discussion, I noted the common rule of thumb that
it usually takes three generations for an immigrant family to fully blend into
the general U.S. population—to fully melt in the pot. At that point, people tend to privatize their
historical roots and live publicly simply as unhyphenated Americans. Perhaps Coates has a similar idea in mind
when he says to his son, “You can no more be black like I am black than I could
be black like your grandfather was” (p. 39).
Each generation lives in a somewhat different context that defines how
they see themselves and how they are seen.
Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans—despite rough, often violent
resistance to their ancestors when they first arrived—fully blend into the
crowd after a few generations and use their hyphen as a point of familial pride,
not as a public label. But clearly, the
value that Americans place on the idea of race as a differentiator of power has
made that difficult for African-Americans.
As Coates writes, “There will surely always be people with straight hair
and blue eyes, as there have been for all history. But some of these straight-haired people with
blue eyes have been ‘black,’ and this points to the great difference between
their world and ours.”
It
remains true that racial distinctions both flow from and reinforce the fact that “whites” enslaved “blacks,” creating a
lasting social disparity between the two groups. In the long run, we need to eliminate these
artificial distinctions. However, it may
be worth noting that it has only been two generations—since the black rights
movement of the 1960s—that African-Americans have gained their full rights as
citizens in the U.S. Clearly, racism
still exists, but, increasingly, it is recognized for what it is.
It
has been good in recent months to see the melting pot ideal increasingly featured
in television advertising. It is not
just that black families are more visible as representatives of the purchasing
public, but that mixed race couples and mixed race families are now often seen
as models. It is a sign that the mosaic,
if not yet the melting pot, is at work. Perhaps
Generation Z—the third generation since the civil rights achievements of the
1960s—who have already begun to step up for social change in light of school
shootings, is the generation that will see the end to this struggle. It is an ambitious dream, but one worth the
effort. It remains for all of us to to embrace
all varieties of American as our neighbors, our friends, our extended family. The recent shooting death of Stephon Clark is
a haunting reminder of how far we have to go; the news coverage of this tragedy,
though, may be a sign that we are nearing a point where racism—and race,
generally—is no longer an acceptable excuse for the misuse of power.
