EXPLAIN AND RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING QUOTE
“But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy.
Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.” ― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
“Coates Is a Realist, Not a Pessimist”: Lester Spence Responds to Melvin Rogers
Rather than taking a pessimist’s approach with his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates is taking a realistic approach, grounded in American history.
Since its publication less than a month ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book-length letter to his son, Between the World and Me, has become a must-read and a must-teach text. It presents a particular (black, middle-aged, male, West Baltimorean, atheist) glimpse of race in the United States today, one that rewards multiple readings given its use of language, imagery, and history.
For Melvin Lee Rogers, the book serves as a powerful indictment of modern-day white supremacy. But Rogers also believes the book to be dangerous, particularly for black readers. He believes that Coates promotes a vision of white supremacy so powerful it cannot be escaped, only endured, and that Coates promotes a vision of American life so pessimistic, progress is impossible. There is no audacity of hope to be found here. And if there’s one thing black people can’t afford, it’s a life without hope.
Rogers bases his argument on Coates’s use of natural disaster metaphors to describe white supremacy and its effects: on his unwillingness to console his son, after the St. Louis County Prosecutor refused to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown, with anything more than a call to struggle; and on his inability to reflect upon how his own life reflects a certain type of progress.
The first time we see Coates refer to white supremacy using the metaphor of natural disaster is on page seven:
Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism—the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them—inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men. But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white. These new people are, like us, a modern invention.