In one of his most controversial statements, Ta-Nehisi Coates describes to his son his reaction to watching the New York City police and fire fighters rush into the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11. “They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could—with no justification—shatter my body”12 (italics added). Here you see not only Coates’s inability to see people as individuals—as fellow human beings. His worldview reduces them to subhuman representatives of oppressive groups.
