The Message

Ta’ Nehisi Coates (1975-) is a Black American writer whose journalism and other writing have made him an important voice in the ongoing discussion of race and history in the United States. In The Message, he engages in self-critique while making an argument about the connection between reality and narratives. Initially, Coates presents himself as a teacher, one who is an expert in his craft but who sees himself in comradeship with his students; to be a comrade is to be engaged as co-equals in a struggle or movement. There is thus a certain humility about that teacher persona: Coates admits that he has plenty to learn. He frames his subsequent account of his travels as homework owed to his students.

Coates continues in this vein in “On Pharaohs.” Coates the traveler is one who initially struggled to make sense of his own emotions and thoughts as he encountered a country that was likely the point of entry into slavery for many of the ancestors of Black Americans. He was by turns lonely, ecstatic, overwhelmed, and uneasy with each encounter in the country. As described later in the essay, he also visited the Door of No Return—a site that has long been misrepresented as the point of departure for millions of newly enslaved Africans. His strong emotional reaction to what he knew was a distorted narrative is a case study for his readers in the seductiveness of historical narratives grounded in myth rather than fact.

In “Bearing the Flaming Cross,” Coates reconsiders his own early education, built on false narratives about those in power and those they dominate. He also describes his travels to South Carolina, where his book Between the World and Me had been banned from public school curricula. This controversy suggests that the education system remains invested in narratives that bolster the power of dominant groups, just as when Coates was a child. In South Carolina, however, he met many parents and educators who are committed to academic freedom and to literature that challenges the status quo. These encounters forced him to reconsider his initial, pessimistic view. His willingness to seek out ambiguity and rethink initial positions is a hallmark of the book as a whole. 

In “The Gigantic Dream,” Coates is once again both a student and a journalist. As a student on a trip, he learned about Israel and Palestine and took in details that he could not process in the moment. As a reporter looking back on the trip, Coates draws conclusions, some of them quite controversial, about what he has seen in Palestine. It is this persona that marshals facts, novels, Zionist literature, and historical narratives to contextualize his direct experience. As Coates makes clear at one point, all this reportage comes together after his trip, not during his time there. Aside from being knowledgeable, the journalist persona is one who is deeply contrite about not having been a good student of the situation between Palestinians and Israel. In the end, that contrition shifts to anger and a sense of righteousness as Coates calls all journalists to task for their erasure or misrepresentation of Palestinians.