The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

My father thinks he can fix the date of the sketch’s creation. It is long before your time—1978. He is five years out of the Black Panther Party, and it is now clear that the revolution will not be televised, because the revolution will not be happening at all. We live in a row house up on Park Heights, which my parents rent by the week, and making that weekly rent is the hardest thing they will ever do. My father has worked all kinds of jobs—training guard dogs, handling bags at the airport, and now, down at the docks, unloading salt boats. But this day, the day of the portrait, he has been told that there has been some sort of misunderstanding with the union and he will not be paid. He comes home with the weight of it all upon him. He is thirty-two, and maybe now he can feel the dread that strikes you at that age—a realization that the years really can slip away, like all those dreams of revolution, without leaving a trace. And his response to all that weight is incredible: He picks up a book. Daddy says he reads to learn. But what was Daddy trying to learn?

Ugh