Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Reviewed by Chris Caldwell

I just finished reading Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It would surprise few who have read it that, upon putting the book down, I was compelled to pick my pen up.

The book, written as a letter to the author’s son, is intimate—so intimate that a pastor such as I instinctively worries a bit about the wellbeing of any author so intently circling such a painful flame. The book is intimate, but not inviting, which is a unique combination of traits. Most intimate books invite the reader to have a seat beside the author. Coates’ book doesn’t feel that way to me and, although it may be because I am white, I think not. Coates is many things as an author: eloquent, to be sure, probing and strong. But he is not charming and does not pretend to be. Some will say the book is “in your face;” but I would say it simply bears the straightforward manner of its author.

At one point, Coates speaks fondly of a phrase spoken by one black man to another: “We straight.” One senses, from beginning to end, that the relationship between author and reader is “straight,” not in the sense of “We’re square” as “We straight” conveys, but more in the sense of “Straight up,” as in, “Let’s be straight up with one another.” The genius of the book, it seems to me, stems from a soul-bearing text written by an author who keeps everyone—especially white readers—at arm’s length, and at an arm’s length maintained by a strong arm. Coates invites us in, but he also keeps us out.

I don’t totally “get” this book. And if Coates would give me credit for anything as a white reader, it might be that. Coates consistently—or, perhaps I should say insistently—uses James Baldwin’s damning phrase for whites: “The people who think they are white.” Fair enough. And if fellow white readers don’t like the phrase, I’m sure Coates doesn’t care. The book wasn’t written for whites, although we’re the lurking presence throughout. I certainly think Coates would be glad to see his book prompting whites to think, and maybe even to think differently. But we are not his concern. As he says to his son about us near the end of the book, "Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion."

Coates is not a person of faith, and it would be inaccurate to say he is a respecter of people of faith. He is, however, a respecter of the role faith plays in others’ lives, and one gathers that he would not be too terribly disappointed if his son—who is about the same age as my younger son—should choose the way of faith. My faith makes me more hopeful (or, perhaps naïve—your choice) than Coates; but I try to maintain a faith that squares with the realities of the real world we live in, not the neurotic version of the world many preachers want us to live in. Coates’ book helps me do that.

Coates paints a necessarily unbalanced picture of our pervasively imbalanced world. For those like myself, still trying to make it more balanced—and clearly Coates, despite his cynicism, is in that number—his book offers frank observations that are a necessary part of any real conversation about race in 2015 America. I hope and pray his son and mine will write and read less painful books someday. But someday ain’t today.

Chris Caldwell is senior pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky and is an instructor at Simmons College of Kentucky