I was listening to a recent interviewee for an incoming department chair position when the teacher referenced Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. I had seen it on the book shelves of Barnes and Nobles snugged in between Ibram Kendi’s, How to be an Antiracist, and Michelle Alexander’s, The New Jim Crow. This social studies teacher said it changed her outlook on everything, so without knowing anything about it, I had it delivered to my home the next day.

This small book can leave you with more hours reflecting on its words, then time you spend reading it. That was the outcome for me.

In the book, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a letter to his son, the most important letter of his life, about coming to understand how one should live within a Black body, within a country lost in the American Dream (USA).

For the white community, Coates’ words may make the reader more aware of the eggshells on the ground for which a Black individual is constantly aware.

For the BIPOC community, Coates’ puts lived realities into words that might have gone indescribable.

Below are some of Coates’ lines that resonated with me most.

On American Exceptionalism

As the social studies/sciences struggle to make sense of current events for students, Coates’ words are not meant to create comfort for those hoping that justice and democracy will rectify wrongs.

“Americans deify democracy.” p.6

Coate’s tells his son that the Dream of democracy was built on the backs of his Black ancestors and that the Dream is hard to sell when it was never intended for them. The Dream isn’t being built of slavery anymore, it’s just taken on a new form, in new packaging that operates within the rules and laws created by those in authority.

“I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I prose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard.” P.8

The United States democratic dream has been cultivated as an exceptional ideal since its inception, but an ideal filled with caveats, exceptions, hypocrisies, and double standards for underrepresented voices. If the foundations of the building are weak, how strong can the skyscraper actually be? Is there a way that we can right the ship now? Perhaps we can create a new moral standard. What does that moral standard look like? So much needs to be dismantled to make it right.

“Schools did not reveal truths, they concealed them.” P.27

Is it the role of educators to tell our young people that the pursuit of the Dream is not equal for everyone? That for some, there is an expectation to work twice as hard and expect half as much. How do teachers break the heart of a young person?

Upon reflection, I don’t think this is necessary. It is not my role. I would not be telling my BIPOC students anything they do not already know or experience.

What IS my role, is to open the eyes of those who don’t see it, can’t see it, refuse to see it. They are the ones who need an education.

“But race is the child of racism, not the father.” p.7

One of my favorite things to discuss in the classroom is racism and where it all came from. I walk us back to the Enlightenment to find out where racial pseudoscience was born. Only then can we confront racism. Race was only conceived, justified, and perpetuated by those who desired to hold power. The hierarchy it created was purposeful. To Coates, it helped build the Dream, and the hierarchy continues to help in sustain it.

On culture

“I practiced a culture of the streets, a culture concerned chiefly with securing the body.” P.24.

In every geography class, it is a matter of time until we talk about culture. Why and where. We dissect what humans choose to cultivate and its role in the built environment. I connected with Coates when he spoke of “customs of war.” When he described how those who lived in the streets felt compelled to show their control over body and self, something that he tells us is a facade – a vain attempt to show control over one’s own Black body. I very much connected this idea with Beverly Tatum’s, Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Her chapters on Identity Development in Adolescence and Racial Identity in Adulthood, support Coates’ words.

“The fear lived on in their practiced bop, their slouching denim, their big t-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps, a catalog of behaviors and garments enlisted to inspire the belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired. I saw it in their customs of war.” P.14

Meanwhile, Coates tells us that those who “run the streets” in their customs of war, really don’t run the streets at all. No power. No control. No authority.

“We did not design the streets. We do not fund them. We do not preserve them.” P.22

A lack of ownership over place, authority over place, and ability to cultivate place. What can we really expect the outcome to be?

On schools

“Algebra, Biology, and English were not subjects so much as opportunities to better discipline the body, to practice writing between the lines, copying directions legibly, memorizing theorems extracted from the world they were created to represent. They were concerned with compliance.” P.26.

“…It seemed the schools were hiding something, drugging us with false morality.” P.26

I want so much more for my students. As a teacher, I am caught between needing to stay on pace with Advanced Placement expectations and state, district, school, and PLT standards – where can I find more space and time to have kids learn the things that they identify with? How do I find time to teach them the realities of inequities built in the system? How can I help students see hope and believe in our schools when the principles that built them excluded them in the first place? The daunting nature of these questions leave me in reflection of my classroom practices. If anything, I can hope to make change within myself and for my students within those four walls. I need keep finding ways for my students to see themselves in their work. That will be a constant goal until the day that I retire, a goal that I owe all of my students.

“It began to strike me that the point of my education was a kind of discomfort…and would leave me only with humanity in all its terribleness.” P.52

I felt this for the first time in my Latin American History class during my undergrad studies when we learned of conquistadors, encomiendas, and las castas razas. I needed to know more. It was filled with poison, but I did not want to be ignorant to the pain that humanity experienced. It angered me. More-so I was angry to learn that I am complicit in the history. I owed it to myself, my family, and my future students. And I REALLY felt it during graduate school where I began to understand systemic injustices for the first time, in utter disbelief. Injustices that continue today. My role is to learn as much as I can so that I can recognize it and grab my sword if I ever saw it coming.

Where does it go to from here?

In the end, Coates concedes that there is no certainty that the Dreamers will recognize and build a solution. The weight of feeling that in his words are heavy, heavy enough to wonder if we can ever crawl out. But he gives words of advise to his son to help lift the weight of burden to explain what an individual without complete control over their own bodies feels like:

“Plunder has matured into habit and addiction.” P.150 “I do not believe we can stop them…because they must ultimately stop themselves. Do not struggle for the Dreamers. Do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn the struggle themselves.” P.151

The struggle is never over, the work is never done. Keep going.