There has been a lot of buzz around Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book “Between the World and Me.”
Published by Spiegel & Grau and deemed “required reading” by Toni Morrison, I became deeply interested in this book and decided to ingest the entire thing in one day. I was taken back by its weight. As a white person, reading and experiencing the world through Coates’s eyes was like taking off the pair of rose-colored glasses that colored my privileged world, revealing what is the truth for many marginalized Americans.
Coates’ argument rests on the idea of the Dream, something almost ineffable yet understood. It is, of course, the American dream, specifically the white American dream: a white picket fence in the suburbs, a two car garage, 2.5 children. This dream is dangerous because it is built on the backs of black bodies. I was profoundly moved by so much of this book, particularly Coates’ poetic and unabashed phrasing, but what took me by surprise was Coates’ movement from racism to climate change near the end of the book.
“Once, the Dream’s parameters were caged by technology and by the limits of horsepower and wind. But the Dreamers have improved themselves, and the damming of seas for voltage, the extraction of coal, the transmuting of oil into food, have enabled an expansion in plunder with no known precedent. And this revolution has freed the Dreamers to plunder not just the bodies of humans but the body of the earth itself. The Earth is not our creation. It has no respect for us. It has no use for us. And its vengeance is not the fire in the cities but the fire in the sky” (p. 150).
At this point in the book, Coates argues that not only have the Dreamers ravaged black bodies to build what they wanted, but now, the Dreamers are also ravaging the Earth to do the same thing. Anything, of course, in order to uphold the Dream and not be disturbed from slumber. Here, I imagine that Coates is referring to the unprecedented greed that overwhelms our world. It seems that as a society, we have become so set on sleeping that we refuse to acknowledge the realities of the damage we do. And the reality is cutting:
Ocean life is being threatened by mass extinction. The causes? Overfishing, run-off from factory farms and nuclear power plants. The world is warming, causing glacial melt and rising seas. In fact, coastal cities are predicted to flood permanently from rising sea levels. Acidification of coral reefs, vast deforestation in the Amazon to raise cattle and cattle feed, and so much more threatens life as we know it. But until these issues are put right in front of our faces, how long can we continue to ignore them? How long can we continue to ravage our planet? Where is the stopping point?
Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders was on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," speaking up about climate change. Sanders, who is on the environmental committee, stated that he has talked to scientists all over the world, and he can verify that climate change is real and it is cause by human activity. Sanders then reveals that no Republican presidential candidate is prepared to admit that, not because that belief is not shared, but because their campaign funding would be cut by the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industries.
This not only demonstrates how corrupt the presidential campaign finance system is (which candidate has which corporation’s interests at heart?), but it demonstrates something profoundly deeper: the level of greed in our society. A greed which demonstrates that a dollar is worth more than a safe, sustainable future.
How much longer can we stay asleep, idly dreaming, all while refusing to acknowledge the reality and wake up?
