Supposedly Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote his book, Between the World and Me for his son. But I’m not sure that’s accurate. In fact, I’m pretty sure he wrote it for me.
As I look back through my copy of Between the World and Me I can’t help but notice that I had underlined significant passages on almost every page. Because what Ta-Nehisi Coates has to say is extremely significant.
As I struggle with my role in this newly discovered world—a world where, it turns out, racism didn’t die with the end of Civil Rights era, where systemic segregation is alive and well and operating in our educational systems, where young black man are disproportionately incarcerated or gunned down in city streets, and where the gap between the rich and the poor is expanding at unprecedented levels, the world view of Ta-Nehisi Coates confronts me with an unfiltered gaze showing me how significant the challenges are and continue to be for my fellow Americans who happen to have a skin tone different than my own.
In his book, Coates highlights the fallacy of the idea of race, repeatedly calling people like me, “People who think they are white.” In this simple turn of phrase I was immediately confronted with the fact that, even though I work for justice, even though I believe myself to be “beyond racism,” even though I am a progressive-minded person, I am still a product of a system crafted and perpetuated by people who look like me to keep people like me in positions of power and control. And that scared the heck out of me.
Through his shared story, Ta-Nehisi Coates has lifted the veil of racism from our eyes and shown the world just how damaging the systems of racial oppression are and can be to every single one of us.
I hope you will pick-up a copy and grab one of our Readers Guides, and join us in taking this important first step as a family of faith as we seek to work towards racial justice in our local community, in our world, and in our hearts.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)