Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Unreconciled Contradictions

‘American history,” Elias Rodriques writes at The Nation, “has always been a weapon in the hands of Ta-Nehisi Coates.” He’s not wrong. Coates often uses history to undermine America’s idea of itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy. Sometimes he does this by narrating stories of horrible acts from the days of slavery or Jim Crow: a lynching, for instance, or a racist bank deliberately making a predatory loan, or a white mob running a black family out of the home it bought in a majority-white area. At other times he will simply state a historical fact and have it function as a moral indictment all on its own. “Antebellum Virginia,” he writes, “had seventy-three crimes that could garner the death penalty for slaves—and only one for whites.”

Coates in his historical work is a moralist through and through: His historical reconstructions are driven both by a fierce moral commitment to contemporary racial equality and by outrage at the horrors of America’s past. His essays on such topics as reparations and mass incarceration are peppered — and quite impressively so — with references to historians. Before making policy recommendations, he is always careful to consult historical scholarship and make connections between the racial issues of the present and the racist policies of the past.

About the Author

Christian Alejandro Gonzalez

Christian Alejandro Gonzalez is a doctoral student in political theory at Georgetown University and a former editorial intern at National Review.

‘American history,” Elias Rodriques writes at The Nation, “has always been a weapon in the hands of Ta-Nehisi Coates.” He’s not wrong. Coates often uses history to undermine America’s idea of itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy. Sometimes he does this by narrating stories of horrible acts from the days of slavery or Jim Crow: a lynching, for instance, or a racist bank deliberately making a predatory loan, or a white mob running a black family out of the home it bought in a majority-white area. At other times he will simply state a historical fact and have it function as a moral indictment all on its own. “Antebellum Virginia,” he writes, “had seventy-three crimes that could garner the death penalty for slaves—and only one for whites.”

Coates in his historical work is a moralist through and through: His historical reconstructions are driven both by a fierce moral commitment to contemporary racial equality and by outrage at the horrors of America’s past. His essays on such topics as reparations and mass incarceration are peppered — and quite impressively so — with references to historians. Before making policy recommendations, he is always careful to consult historical scholarship and make connections between the racial issues of the present and the racist policies of the past.