Ta-Nehisi Coates has a way of leading the masses to confront their own belief systems. And the self-discovery scares the hell out of the types of conservatives who ban books on systemic racism and label any critique of Zionism as anti-semetic.
Coates’ storytelling compels readers and writers alike to identify with the oppressed. Many did in 2014 with his seminal 16,000-word essay, “The Case for Reparations,” where he humanized the unyielding cycle of poverty for Black Americans through unpacking the institutional violence of predatory housing contracts on Chicago’s West Side.
On Oct. 16, Coates returned to Chicago to make another case before a sold out crowd at the Humanities Festival. In promoting his new book, The Message, Coates wants readers to not only see but understand the interconnectedness of global suffering through the experiences of Palestinians, Black Americans and other oppressed peoples.
“This book begins with ‘The Case for Reparations,’ which begins in Chicago, and it ended in Chicago with Mr. Jaber who was a survivor of Deir Yassin,” Coates said, speaking about the 1948 massacre of Palestinians who were attacked by Zionist paramilitaries in a village near Jerusalem. [Prior to Israel’s establishment, Jerusalum was located in Palestine.] The Nakba, or the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, soon followed. That same year, the nation-state of Israel was established, with the support of U.S. President Harry S. Truman.
These series of events are often discussed deeply in all-Black thought spaces and solidarity organizing communities.
“I think in the Black imagination, there is this idea that if we had a state of our own, a place of our own, [an] army of our own, flag of our own, everything of our own, we would somehow be safe,” said Coates. “I think all of us have some exposure to that idea. It was one that I knew much about the history of, where it came from, how it came about. And, in fact, it actually is quite European and it’s actually quite modern.”
Coates continued.
“It is the idea that was at the root of much of Black nationalism in the 19th century and into the 20th [century]. It was also the idea that was at the root of Zionism.”
Coates was talking in response to a question asked by fellow professor, author and public intellectual Eve Ewing, who served as moderator for the event. Also joining them onstage was MacArthur Fellow, activist and professor Rami Nashashibi, the founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) based on Chicago’s South Side.
Ewing weaved through intricate, nuanced questions as Coates meandered through long but thought-provoking answers. Watching and listening to them felt intimate, like dropping in on a dinner conversation between good friends. In the wide-ranging discussion, they tackled everything from the idea of complicity, to the dangerous lure of the nation-state as an idea, and the role the average American plays in what they described as the “ongoing settler colonial project within which we live.”
Coates acknowledged it’s all an uncomfortable thing to think about.
“I mean, this is hard, man,” Coates said. “I get it. You’re carrying literally centuries of some of the worst atrocities ever inflicted onto people. It happens over and over again.”
The audience at Harris Theater for Music and Dance hung onto Coates’ every word, sometimes responding with deeply reflective mmm’s and quiet head nods whenever he struck a thunderous chord. Although Coates isn’t the first writer or Black thought leader to call out Zionism and the oppression of Palestinians, he is certainly widely respected.
“So you can understand how, for a lack of a better term or phrase, people basically conclude ‘f— this. I’m out. I’m done with this,” Coates explained in his long, but thorough, response to Ewing’s question about how nationalism has become an oppressed peoples response to loss, grief and displacement.
Coates spends time on this question because, as Ewing prefaced, his critique of nationalism is one of the threads of The Message. Ewing reminded the audience that Black nationalism was both promising and powerful when Coates was coming of age in 1980s Baltimore, a majority Black city.
“The problem is, that attitude must necessarily come at the expense of another people. It’s just no way around that,” Coates continued. In the case of Israel, which in the context of this question is not only a settler colonial project but also an oppressed people exercising their ideal of nationalism, “the people” are the Palestinians.
“I do think there’s a lesson for all of us who are oppressed peoples. The difficult work is, how do we take this thing apart and not reproduce it exclusively for ourselves?” Coates asked rhetorically, to the crowd’s applause. “How do you say ‘Slavery is wrong, and what is wrong with slavery is not that I was the slave, [but that] slavery is wrong.’ Full stop.”
In that moment, Coates reminded the audience of both the self-awareness and the selective mutism that must mutually occur to contemplate such a heady thought.
Depending on who you were in the audience, Coates’ conversation felt equivalent to holding up a mirror to your own inner politics and beliefs, a sentiment that has embodied much of his current press tour. Case in point: Fans and detractors alike are still talking about his comparison of the genocide in Gaza to South African Apartheid and American Jim Crow, and the vitriol those thoughts elicited from CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil on “Good Morning America.”
Coates didn’t directly acknowledge that viral TV moment, but he alluded to the outcome.
“I will end with the uncomfortable thing that I must say everywhere I go, and that is [this]: We are being tested right now, on that very point,” Coates said, referring to the 2024 presidential election buzz around the US’s support of Israel. He’s notably slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for her response to Gaza. Also, during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer, Coates documented the Uncommitted delegates movement lobbying to get a Palestinian American on the stage.
“I will just say that if all our dreams come true, and our name is on the erasure and the destruction of 2% of the population of Gaza, that will not sit right with me,” said Coates, to rousing applause. “I don’t know what it was for if the end of Black politics is that.”
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