If the results of the 2016 election are any indication, racism is still a relevant issue in our country. Though few will admit it, having a black president in the White House horrified many people for a very superficial reason: the simple fact that he was black. For this reason, I decided to pick up Ta-Nehisi Coates' modern classic, Between the World and Me, just to get a sense of the mindset of black America in post-segregation society.
Written as a series of letters to his son, Coates provides a wonderfully written catalog of experiences that highlight his fight for social justice as a student and journalist. Wisely he avoids crossing the thin line between whiney and provocative. His insights show few traces of anger and serve more as a beacon for hope against police brutality, incarceration, and any reversions to pre-1960s social norms. He uses the American Dream as a platform for white suburbia's rejection of the slums, using references to the black body to prove his point. The black body has been beaten black and blue in white America's efforts to keep segregation a reality, despite all the civil rights laws that were passed to try and eradicate it.
He is spot on. I grew up in the suburbs, and only one black kid went to our school. Any notion that our races have been united is an illusion. Though we may be slightly more tolerant, the laws haven't done enough to erase the memory of our bleak past. We are reaching a dangerous point in American history, similar to the time when Rome feasted so much on its glory that it reverted to vilifying social groups as scapegoats for its inner turmoil. We should know better than that, but we clearly don't.
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