The Books of Ferguson

After the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, blew the lid off race relations, three black men wrote books.  The first, published only a few months after Ferguson, was Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Kudos to Mr. Coates for using the grammatically-correct pronoun in his title (“between the world and I” is one of my grammar peeves), but once past the title page his thoughts are disturbing, especially to white readers.  He writes out of an upbringing and experience that’s unique to the United States: that of a race of people who were once enslaved and forever after live at the mercy of white overlords who can’t stop thinking of themselves as overlords.

I don’t doubt that these are his true feelings.  What disturbed me was that he seems to mistake his feelings for facts, especially when it came to describing the attitudes of white people.  My truth is THE truth–none of his statements are open for debate.  The overarching despair came to feel like reading in a closet, with the walls closing in.  Early in the book (which he began as a long letter to his infant son), he confesses to being an atheist.  Aha, I thought–that’s one reason for the hopeless, angry tone of his letter to White America.

Yesterday I finished reading Tears We Cannot Stop, a current bestseller by Michael Eric Dyson, political commentator and ordained Baptist minister.  He’s not an atheist, obviously, and he expresses himself in warm, ecclesiastic terms.  I looked forward to learning from him, and yet much of what he says sounds like an echo of Coates, with the same blanket indictment of “whiteness” and its refusal to own up to vast injustice.  Dyson’s key term is white innocence, the bland assumption he ascribes to mainstream majority: everything is okay now and racism is over even if we can’t help thinking of our black neighbors as lazy and violent and the n- word always lurks at the back of our minds.  After finishing the book, it struck me: I don’t think Dyson ever mentioned Jesus, except once or twice, in passing. That’s what I missed.

Both Coates and Dyson speak from the heart and they speak powerfully.  The problem is, hearts are not all that articulate.  They make an emotional argument, but rationality takes a back seat.  I know much of what they say about the system is true: unless they have a rap sheet, white people don’t have to worry about getting pulled over by police for no reason or caught in inner-city crossfire.  The seniors among us (I’m one) don’t remember having to walk past empty seats on the bus in order to squeeze in at the back or bypass the nearest restroom because we’re the wrong shade.  The grievances are real and the roots are long; I get that.  I disagree that the US was founded on racism and its wealth owed everything to slave labor, but we can set that aside for now.  The question is, how do we go forward?

Coates has made a case for cash reparations for descendants of slaves.  Dyson is not against that, but until the politics line up he recommends “Individual reparations accounts,” where white people reach out to low-income black families and neighborhoods to provide tutoring, mentoring, computers, books, jobs—a genuine hand up.  (Here’s a clip where he argues that notion with Tucker Carlson.)  I’m all for that, but I can’t shoulder the additional burden of guilt he wants to lay on me, because his description of me is not accurate.

My World column about Between the World and Me ended like this:

“If there were some way to make real reparations for slavery and bigotry, we should not hesitate to pay the cost, shake hands, and go forward.  But Coates’ atheism misleads him: there’s no material compensation for spiritual harm.  The greatest reparation was made on a cross.  If he could meet me there, I would gladly ask his forgiveness for any perceived harm on my part, because that’s the only place he could forgive me.  Otherwise, resolution seems forever out of reach.”

The subject is relevant to me because I have several bi-racial relatives, including my oldest granddaughter, age ten.  There’s no question about it when you look at her.  Her eyes are so beautiful they knock me out: huge, and such a deep brown you can barely make out the pupil.  Before she was born my daughter fretted about how strangers would react to her.  I brushed it off—who makes a big deal about race these days?  Now I’m starting to get a little worried.

But I would be very worried if it weren’t for that cross.  Long ago I read a story about Frederick Douglass during his days on the abolitionist lecture circuit before the Civil War.  At one of those meetings, he made a speech that reflected the depression he was feeling: How long before the shackles were broken? How long before the bondsman’s stripes could be healed?  The gloomy atmosphere thickened until a piercing voice piped up from the back of the room.  It was Sojourner Truth, the feisty little suffragette and former slave: “Frederick!” she called out.  “Is God dead?”

I can hear her in my imagination.  Is God dead?

No, he’s not.  That brings me to the last book inspired by Ferguson, Under Our Skin by Benjamin Watson.  Watson knows what it is to be pulled over by a cop for no reason; he knows the pain of being sized up and rejected because of his color.  But he also knows Jesus, and that makes all the difference.  I wrote more about the book for Redeemed Reader this week, so check out the review if you’d like to know more.  And then read the book!

I wish I could persuade Ta-Nehisi Coates not to give up hope.  I wish I could show Dr. Dyson that I don’t have to become a white liberal to be sympathetic.  But God isn’t dead, and it’s going to be all right.