Between the World and Me (One World Essentials)

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

America’s problem is not its betrayal of “government of the people,” but the means by which “the people” acquired their names.

But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization.

Not being violent enough could cost me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body. We could not get out.

The point of this language of “intention” and “personal responsibility” is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. “Good intention” is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream.

I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.

The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.

Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket.