Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

So once again, a TV show interview intrigued me enough to read the book featured. A bit late, you say? Yes, I know. Am I the intended audience? Probably not, but I learned some things anyways and isn't that the point?

Part I

Part II

Coates wrote this (granted as a literary device) to his son, to try and explain why things are the way they are for African Americans. I remember being disgusted over the cases he talks about in the book, like Michael Brown, but I am fairly certain I won't end up in the same fate. As a woman, I probably have a different fate, but as a white woman, an even different one. I have never read anything that gave such perspective of growing up black in America. Then, in Coates' time and now, in his son's time.

This is a short audio book, around 3 hours, but so well worth the read. I cannot imagine trying to defend your child, who was shoved by a white woman, and being told that the white man could "Have you put in jail" and know that what he said is true. Coates would have went to jail without defense even though he was watching out for his kid.

To read about his friends dying because they were "driving while black", how cops, very crooked cops, got away with it and were put back on the street, how terrified he was at being pulled over because it could have meant his life. That's a world most of us do not live in, and one we really do not understand.

Basic rights and decency from others are not extended to African Amercians. And yet, people wonder why they are "so angry at everything". Wonder no more. In his eloquent way, Coates explains it to you. So you really need to listen.