I found Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book We Were Eight Years in Power surprisingly engaging. It combines a calm, friendly voice with a message of cold extremity. The message is that the sin of white supremacy is the true plot of US history. By trying to cure it, Obama exposed its true torrential force.
The geniality of the voice makes the message oddly persuasive. Coates uses memoir with great skill, presenting himself as a normal struggling bloke who had an amazingly lucky break. Writers normally sound as if it’s their absolute right to hold forth, that they deserve every column inch they get, and far more money. This humbler attitude (or pose, if you’re cynical) feels very fresh.
And it opens one to his radical reading of American history. In particular he makes this point with great force: the new nation’s egalitarianism did not just happen to be accompanied by racism.
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