Ta-Nehisi Coates and Mayor Bill De Blasio

I just finished Ta-Nehisi Coates’ short but powerful volume Between the World and Me. It’s a deeply provocative meditation on the phenomenology of being black in the US, with all the threats and fears that go along with it, that most white people (or in his words, “people who believe themselves white”—which dislodges the category) are unaware of. I’ve been involved in the Black Lives matter movement for almost 3 years, but this gave me a much deeper perspective.

So put this together with the article in today’s Times that notes that Mayor De Blasio’s popularity is sinking among whites. The majority feel less safe in the city, though crime statistics are down.

What this says to me is that there is a deep residual racism abroad in "those who believe themselves to be white.” Worse, the injustice and illegality of it notwithstanding, they felt safer in a city that countenanced the stop-and-frisk policies that Bloomberg permitted (and the Times railed against, and the outright murderous repression of a Giuliani. One could deplore that stuff, but deep down one felt more “safe.”

Disgusting. But a fact of life in these corporate-controlled United States, and one that makes Coates’ message all the more urgent.





Here are some images from the Rise Up October march, October 24, 2015:

 Cornell West, who had spoken earlier at the rally in Washington Square Park, was in the march.