Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates says he long felt the pull to visit Africa — and yet it was a trip he kept putting off.
“When you’re Black in this country, Africa — or the story that’s told about Africa — is a weight,” Coates says. “I always knew it was a trip that I had to take. But I think, in the back of my mind, I knew that I would have to confront some things, that it would not be a vacation.”
When Coates did finally travel to Senegal, he says it felt like a pilgrimage. As the plane descended into Dakar, he was so overcome with emotion that he uttered a profanity.
“It came out of nowhere, and I was shocked at myself,” he says. “But I think it was evidence of some things that I really had been burying that had to be confronted.”
While in Dakar, Coates visited the island of Gorée and the fort in which people were held before being forced onto ships that would take them to enslavement in the United States. There he says, “What I imagined was my many, many, many, many, many grandmothers who were taken in that way. That was what I saw. … That hit hard.”
Coates won the 2015 National Book Award for Between the World and Me, which was written in the form of a letter to his 15-year-old son about what it means to be a Black teenager and a Black man in America. In his new book, The Message, he reflects on his time in Senegal, as well as trips he took to South Carolina and to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He describes it as a book about nationalism and belonging.
“It is about the nationalisms of people who are told that they are nothing, that they are not a nation, that they are not a people … that the only place in the world that is fit for them is as an underclass or maybe not in the world at all,” he says. “And the stories that we construct to fight back against that.”
Interview highlights
On staying on a beach in Senegal, contemplating the people who were taken to enslavement in America
The Message
There were people very clearly vacationing with their kids and frolicking in the water. And there was one of those really fancy pools that was kind of level with the ground and people serving drinks. And there was a DJ. And I went and I sat down in the restaurant … and where I was seated, I could look out onto the Atlantic Ocean. And I knew that what I was feeling at that moment was not what everybody else there was feeling. It was like I was at a funeral. And everybody else was at a wedding. That’s what it felt like.
On his parents naming him Ta-Nehisi as a way of connecting with their African roots
I think what my parents sought to do from the moment I was born was inure me against the racism of culture that pervades American life and really takes Africa and the story of Africa as its root. And what they sought to do was throw it back. And what they picked for me was an ancient Egyptian name that refers to the ancient kingdom of Nubia in the south, the place of ostensibly Black kings and Black kingdoms and Black queens and great deeds that were done by Black people. And to root me in that as a counter to the racist narrative that I would undoubtedly hear as I went through my life.
On being stopped by a guard while traveling to the old city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
There are both Palestinians who live in Hebron and also there are Jewish settlers on the West Bank who live in Hebron also. They are not accorded the same rights. And this was made viscerally clear to me as I walked through Hebron with the group that I was with. There were streets that we would encounter where we were allowed as non-Palestinians to walk and Palestinians were not allowed to walk. …
I was on my way to support a vendor, and a guard came out and he stopped me and he said, “What’s your religion, bro?” And I said, “I don’t really have a religion. I’m not a particularly religious person.” He said, “Come on, don’t play. What is your religion? … What is your parents’ religion? … What was your grandmother’s religion?” I said, “Well, my grandmother was a Christian.” And he said, “OK, you can go past.” And it was so blatant. It was so clear. … I wouldn’t have been allowed to pass [if I was Muslim]. That was clear.
On differences he observed between the ways that Palestinians and Israelis are treated in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
I was being made aware of the fact that if a Palestinian is arrested on the West Bank, they are subject to the military system of justice, whereas if a Jewish settler is arrested on the West Bank, they’re subjected to the civil system. … I was made aware of the differing water laws that govern [access] depending on who you are, an entire separate system of justice that was … separate and unequal. As a descendant of someone who was, or peoples who are, born into a system of governance that was separate and unequal, it was very hard for me to not be struck by that emotionally.
On the ways in which victims can become victimizers
I am part of a community that fought in the Civil War to free themselves as members of the Union Army, and we praise that effort, and we talk about that effort. And some of those soldiers went West and fought wars against the Indigenous people of this country. They became victimizers. I’m part of a community that, in an effort to free itself and liberate itself from white racism in this country, bought into the dream of Liberia, which meant going over to Africa and subjecting Africans to Western civilization … and “Christianizing” them and “civilizing” them. That is victims becoming victimizers.
What is uncomfortable is for us to see that the victimization and oppression, even at its highest point, may not necessarily be ennobling. … In the most cliché terms — I’m sorry to use this — but to be a hurt person who hurts people [is] certainly possible. And that’s a dark thought … because I think we want to believe that having that oppression is some sort of card, you know, a moral high ground that is automatically conferred. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s not. And I think as much as I saw the connection between Black people and Palestinians when I was over there, it was not so hard for me to see myself in the Israelis.
On the need for more Palestinian voices to be heard
We need more Palestinians to be enshrined to tell their story and to tell their perspective. … The people who are enduring, from my perspective, this system of apartheid have not been enshrined to speak about what future they would envision. … It would be as if we were trying to figure out segregation … and we completely sidelined Black people and deprived them of the ability to articulate what they felt the world should look like. Imagine a world where there can’t be an “I Have a Dream” speech because nobody will cover it and nobody will give the opportunity for that message to get out in the first place.