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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BOOK OF THE MONTH: AUGUST: Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
 
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Bhaal
Jul 13, 2001
I ain't going down alone

Dr. Infant, MD

thehomemaster posted:

Well I don't know that analogy so do go on?
E:F,B To crassly paraphrase, a family is seated around a dinner table, food is passed around and dished out, but for one member food is neither passed to them nor dished onto their plate. They sit with nothing while the rest of the family tucks in. They say, "I should have food", to which they are chided by others at the table, who respond in a corrective tone with, "Everyone should have food".

This is more applicable to the "All lives matter" counterpoint that gets made. BLM didn't become a thing because a bunch of people just thought it'd be cool to reinforce something everyone knows and agrees with, it became a thing because it's highlighting a problem. Responding with "All lives matter"--like with the dinner table--is taking their specific, happening-right-now problem, ignoring it, and broadening what they said into a pithy ideal that helps nobody and dithers the focus of their message.

I will be honest I mostly skimmed that link but as others have said he washes his hands of the whole thing by pointing out that black people can not only be aggressive and angry, but also can and do kill each other(!). If anyone takes those points and arrives at a conclusion of, "so, there you go", that person is called--sorry but I'm showing off my erudite knowledge of sociology tech words--an "rear end in a top hat".


I listened to this book on audio during some air travel I took in july. I think the first half struck me much more profoundly than the second. His accounts, from his own voice, of his youth & upbringing, and how he came to understand his world, the world of his parents, neighbors, older kids, and so on, all told through this prism of constant fear and bodily threats (each manifesting in a variety of ways), taken in altogether it left me totally speechless for some time. I didn't grow up in the roughest neighborhoods or anything but I had some exposure to actual street gangs and things like that, and I feel like I identified with a that fear he described. But only a flake of it, just enough to appreciate how much heavier, constant and confining it would have been for him.

Perhaps my largest take-away was his brilliant way of establishing fear as the common root. Showing it as a fuel for anger, killer for motivation & expectations, and a permanent warp the psyche that ultimately turns you onto others and yourself. And it's man made, and reinforced by man each generation. Not always intentionally, maybe, but far far too often it is so. Anyway, he was masterful in sharing a glimpse of what that's really like for those of us who didn't have to grow up through it ourselves.


EDIT: I don't know if it's been mentioned, but the book title and pretty much the entirety of the content reminded me so much of this clip from The Wire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba5SeHo7vbQ In particular, that line at the end, "I wish I knew" is just so devastating.

Bhaal fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Aug 20, 2015

* # ¿ Aug 20, 2015 02:23
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# ¿ Jan 17, 2026 06:07
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Bhaal
Jul 13, 2001
I ain't going down alone

Dr. Infant, MD

coyo7e posted:


Apologies however which "link" are you referring to, and by whom?
My bad, it was this one from the first page:

thehomemaster posted:

Interesting points about 'black lives matter' http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/06/15/genosuicide-and-its-causes/

I mean interesting in terms of it being a male thing, not a race thing, where males fight for their rights, and die in droves.
Like I mentioned I didn't read the whole thing, but felt I got far enough into that article to get the sense that its goal was to blame the victim, or at the least muddy the waters enough so that they could absolve themselves and their readers of having to take BLM seriously, as well as arrive at conclusions like "The heavy hand of the police in inner cities, despite its frequent brutality and disregard for legal niceties, saves black lives."

* # ¿ Aug 24, 2015 18:54
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BOOK OF THE MONTH: AUGUST: Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates