We had a change of venue due to our wanting to support the Oscar nominated film series at the library. Annie, Christe, Ellen, Judy, and Nanc attended the movie, Florence Foster Jenkins, and then Kathy joined us at the Trempealeau Hotel for our meeting to discuss Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates.
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| Our water view meeting place was the Trempealeau Hotel this month |
I was struck by the following while reading this book - the idea of 'black body' and that the schools are at fault. Being white, I have no clue about his existence. Being an educator, I've always hoped/trusted that we are doing what's noble and good... but realize we have a long way to go. Here are some passages that speak to this...
"Yeah, nigger, what's up now?" I recall learning these laws clearer than I recall learning my colors and shapes, because these laws were essential to the security of my body... I practiced the culture of the streets, a culture concerned chiefly with securing the body. I do not long for those days. I have no desire to make you "tough" or "street" perhaps because any "toughness" I garnered came reluctantly. I think I was always, somehow, aware of the price." ~ Ta-nehisi Coates
"The streets were not my only problem. If the streets shackled my right leg, the schools shackled my left. Fail to comprehend the streets and you gave up your body now. But fail to comprehend the schools and you gave up your body later. I suffered at the hands of both, but I resent the schools more. There was nothing sanctified about the laws of the streets - the laws were amoral and practical. You rolled with a posse to the party as sure as your wore boots in the snow, or raised an umbrella in the rain. These were rules aimed at something obvious - the great danger that haunted every visit to Shake & Bake, every bus ride downtown. But the laws of the schools were aimed at something distant and vague. What did it mean to, as our elders told us, "grow up and be somebody"? And what precisely did this have to do with an education rendered as rote discipline?" ~ Ta-nehisi Coates
"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." ~ Ta-nehisi Coates
Because I was born white in Wisconsin, I am privileged. The law of the streets doesn't affect me. I will never have to deal with the prejudice Coates speaks of. Ever. Not quite sure what to do with that reality...
~ Annie Larkin
Truly thought provoking. It struck me at the time, that much of what Coates is saying, although not identical, applies to what was, and still is, happening with regard to our Native Americans in general and to the Water Protectors in particular.
Excerpts (and I admit to cherry picking):
“... white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white,” ~ Ta-nehisi Coates
Americans deify democracy in a way that allows for a dim awareness that they have, from time to time, stood in defiance of their God. ---and America’s heresies – torture, theft, enslavement - are so common among individuals and nations that none can declare themselves immune. ~ Ta-nehisi Coates
Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism . . . inevitably follows from this inalterable condition.
But race if the child of racism, not the father... ... Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence... ...is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up... ...to believe that they are white. ~ Ta-nehisi Coates
~ Liz Webster
I have to read for awhile and then think about words that Coates says to his son. To me, he reveals how important it is to know your history to truly understand who you are but at the same time how difficult that has been for the black-American culture with so little written and available to them during their public school education. It makes me realize, as well, how we write what we want in our history books and many times leave out the horrific things we do to our fellow man. The reality of how hard it was to find out his own history due to the fact that most text books in school didn’t share the ugly truths or beautiful truths of his cultures past. Our country likes to talk about how great and free it is but it doesn’t want to discuss or talk about so many of the awful ways we treated people of other cultures in our history; Native Americans, African Americans, Japanese, Irish, and more. Also, it seems to me we are just beginning to celebrate great things people of color have contributed to our society via books, movies and art. In conclusion, to me it is a very thought provoking book that opens my eyes to more compassion, understanding and awarenesses.
~ Linda Jenkins
These are Coates' words but not all direct quotes.
His life had been limited by fear of harm to his or his son's body. This book describes his odyssey to discover the broader more inclusive humanity, not skin color definitions, or life goals narrowed by focusing on "the Dream." - The dream of pot roast and pie and safe neighborhoods.
The black body had been a tool of the industrial revolution for sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold. The cotton through their chained hands started the destruction of the Earth. The industrial age created the automobile which is the noose around the neck of the Earth.
Humans habitually seek to preserve a hierarchy or establish a group to stay at the bottom. Thavolia Glymph stated, "The mountain is not a mountain with nothing below."
Prince Jones was not murdered by a single officer but killed by his country and all the fears that have marked it from its birth. The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.At the end of the book, Coates has relative privilege, but I feel a profound sadness that I live with such privilege while so many humans are so threatened and insecure.
~ Ellen Bowles
Next Book: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Location: Annie's
Date: Thursday, March 9, 2017
Time: 6:30pm
Upcoming meetings:
April 13, 2017 Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger at Kathy's
Books we've read so far:
May 11, 2017 Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier at Jo's
June 8, 2017 TBA at Linda's
Books we've read so far:
January 2014 - Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
February 2014 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
March 2014 - Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
April 2014 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
May 2014 - The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
June 2014 - Breaking Free by Marilyn Sewell
July 2014 - The Orphan Train by Kristina Baker Kline
August 2014 - The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
September 2014 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
October 2014 - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
November 2014 - The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
December 2014 - No book. Holiday gathering.
January 2015 - No book. Watched The Book Thief
February 2015 - The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
March 2015 - Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
April 2015 - The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
May 2015 - The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
June 2015 - The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
July 2015 - Still Alice by Lisa Genova
August 2015 - The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
September 2015 - Ruby by Cynthia Bond
October 2015 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
November 2015 - No book. Watched To Kill a Mockingbird
December 2015 - No book. Holiday gathering.
January 2016 - All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
February 2016 - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
March 2016 - Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
April 2016 - Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
May 2016 - Jewelweed by David Rhodes
June 2016 - One Woman's River by Ellen Kolbo McDonah
July 2016 - Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
August 2016 - Deep Water Passage by Ann Linnea
September 2016 - This Road I Ride by Juliana Buhring
October 2016 - The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
November 2016 - No book. Watched The Boys of '36
December 2016 - No book. Holiday gathering.
January 2017 - About Grace by Anthony Doerr
February 2017 - Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates
