Between the World and Me (2015)

“Race is the child of racism, not the father”

‘‘The great tradition of black art, generally,’’ he started again,
‘‘is the ability — unlike American art in general — to tell the
truth. Because it was formed around the great American
poison, the thing that poisoned American consciousness and
behavior: racism. And black culture, such as it is, was formed
around a necessary resistance to this fundamental lie. That’s
the obligation. And this is the power that black art has

‘‘I want to protect the writer, of any race, from the dishonesty
of racism, and how it can inflect any kind of work,’’ he said.
‘‘And, for writers who are trying to challenge the pandering of
the white gaze, if you have to go through a series of
gatekeepers who are uniformly white, you’re going to end up
with something that’s’’ — here came a considered pause —
‘‘it’s going to be tough to preserve the integrity in the end.’’

Chris Jackson
Between the World and Me
by Richard Wright
Partisan Review (July/August 1935)

And one morning while in the woods I stumbled

suddenly upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly
oaks and elms
And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting
themselves between the world and me....
And a thousand faces swirled around me, clamoring that
my life be burned....
And then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth
into my throat till I swallowed my own blood.
My voice was drowned in the roar of their voices, and my
black wet body slipped and rolled in their hands as
they bound me to the sapling.
And in a blaze of red I leaped to the sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs
Panting, begging I clutched childlike, clutched to the hot
sides of death.
Now I am dry bones and my face a stony skull staring in
yellow surprise at the sun....
Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage”
“That there was hardly room ’tween-decks for half
the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;
that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh
and sucked the blood:

“That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest

of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:

“That when the Bo’s’n piped all hands, the flames

spreading from starboard already were beyond
control, the negroes howling and their chains
entangled with the flames:

“That the burning blacks could not be reached,

that the Crew abandoned ship,
leaving their shrieking negresses behind,
that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:
“The Fire Next Time” was first published
in 1963, a time when the prevailing
racial order was being challenged by
young activists on a scale and with a
fervor not seen since the Civil War. The
first several pages of the book are styled
in the form of a letter to Baldwin’s 15-
year-old nephew, offering advice about
how to navigate the world he has been
born into with black skin. Baldwin
implores his nephew to awaken to his
own dignity, humanity and power, and
accept his responsibility to help “make
America what it must become.”
 ON BEING " W H I T E " AND OTHER L I E S
published originally in Essence in 1984
James Baldwin

America became white—the people who, as they claim, "settled"

the country became white—because of the necessity of denying the
Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation. No community
can be based on such a principle—or, in other words, no community
can be established on so genocidal a lie. White men—from Norway,
for example, where they were Norwegians—became white: by slaughtering the
cattle, poisoning the wells, torching the houses, massacring
Native Americans, raping Black women.
The Dream and the Dreamers
• Historians conjured the Dream.
• Hollywood fortified the Dream.
• The Dream was gilded by novels and
adventure stories.
• Dreamers are the ones who continue to
believe the lie, at black people’s expense.
• Here is what I would like for you to know: In
America, it is traditional to destroy the black
body — it is heritage.
Kara Walker
• The biggest question for Coates is rooted in the hidden
connection between the American Dream as lived in the
suburbs and the violence that ruled his daily life growing up
in Baltimore.
• “Fear ruled everything around me, and I knew, as all black
people do, that this fear was connected to the Dream out
there, to the unworried boys, to pie and pot roast, to the
white fences and green lawns nightly beamed into our
television sets. But how? Religion could not tell me. The
schools could not tell me. The streets could not help me see
beyond the scramble of each day. And I was such a curious
boy.”
White Americans may need to read this book more urgently
and carefully than anyone, and their own sons and daughters
need to read it as well. This is not to say this is a book about
white people, but rather that it is a terrible mistake for
anyone to assume that this is just a book about nonwhite
people. In the broadest terms Between the World and Me is
about the cautious, tortured, but finally optimistic belief that
something beyond these categories persists. Implicit in this
book’s existence is a conviction that people are
fundamentally reachable, perhaps not all of them but
enough, that recognition and empathy are within grasp, that
words and language are capable of changing people, even if
—especially if—those words are not ones people prefer to
hear. Coates has written a book about immense and ongoing
failures of humanity that is a triumph of humanism in itself, a
book that renders the injuries of racism brutally near and
real. Jack Hamilton
And yet I cannot pretend to be entirely satisfied. Like Baldwin, I
tend to think we must not ask whether it is possible for a
human being or society to become just or moral; we must
believe it is possible. Believing in this possibility — no matter
how slim — and dedicating oneself to playing a meaningful role
in the struggle to make it a reality focuses one’s energy and
attention in an unusual way. Those who believe we are likely or
destined to fail — because the Dreamers hold all the power
and our liberation is up to them — can easily tell themselves
they are “in the struggle” when they show up at a rally with a
sign, or go on Twitter or Facebook to rant about the police,
then do no more. When meaningful change fails to come, they
can say, “We tried, but of course nothing happened.” But those
who are in it to win it, and who believe in their own power and
understand their responsibility to use it wisely, cannot so easily
lie to themselves about the utility of random or halfhearted
gestures of resistance, rebellion, organizing or consciousness-
raising. Greater precision of thought and action is required.
MICHELLE ALEXANDER
New York Times Review of Books