Ta-Nehisi Coates' 'Between the World and Me' (Book Review)

I recently finished reading 'Between the World and Me' (2015) by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I don't often review the books I read, but I felt like this one deserved a few comments in consideration of ongoing events.

The book is well written, and I even teared up a few times while reading. However, it's a transparent attempt to rework the American racial problem into a form of Marxist class struggle. As a Christian, I obviously reject any attempt to interpret the world through a dialectically materialist ideology.

Coates is an atheist, and he thinks the systemic abuse of black people's bodies is evil because it represents physical exploitation and oppression. He rejects the African American religious tradition that permeated the 1960s civil rights struggle, he never references Rev Martin King positively anywhere in the book, and he talks about the black church from the perspective of an anthropologist. Coates has no concept of sin or redemption as Christians typically understand it. He says we must fix racism because this is the only life we have, and we can't allow people to experience this one life while being oppressed.

Coates refuses to acknowledge any genetic reality to race, and he constantly refers to white people as "those who think that they are white" or "those who believe themselves to be white." He thinks of white people as being a class defined by the oppression of minorities and exploitation of "black bodies" to fuel its selfish dreams.

The product of Coates' toxic new tonic of Marxism and racial grievance is an ideology that advocates the geocide of the white race while still being able to plausibly deny this by claiming "white people" is just a term for those who oppress others. This Marxist redefinition of race is how rioters can tear down statues in an effort to dismantle "whiteness" without admitting that they're committing cultural genocide against white people.

This new way of thinking corners white people into either denouncing their own race in an effort to attain holy "wokeness" or identifying themselves as active members of an oppressor class and embracing evil. The only way to be white and righteous is to disavow one's "whiteness" and reidentify with the minority oppressed. This is how any attempt by moderate white people to protect their own existence can be referred to as "racist." The protection of white people has become the protection of an oppressor class.

Everything ideological about Coates' book is absolutely toxic, but he redeems it somewhat by interspersing ideology with stories about his experiences growing up in ghetto Baltimore and attending a Historically Black College. I would recommend this book to anyone seeking more insight into the New Left and Black Lives Matter movement as they continue their cultural revolution and rewrite history for a rapidly diversifying America.