In ‘The Message,’ Ta-Nehisi Coates urges his students to see for themselves

When it comes to reading personal narratives, one thing remains true in my experience: There are memoirs you read and memoirs that read you.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest offering, “The Message,” is the latter. Like his 2015 National Book Award-winning “Between the World and Me,” written as an impassioned letter to his then-teenage son, “The Message” is framed as a letter to his writing students at Howard University. “The Message” is a collection of commentaries about African ancestry and identity, political power and polarity, and finally, a damning assessment of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The book, and especially Coates’ visit to the South Carolina capitol, hit especially close to home for me, as an alumnus of a historically Black university and a native South Carolinian.

When Coates writes about the influence of his father, publisher Paul Coates, it reminds me of how my dad unfurled newspapers in front of me and sharpened my young mind with Afro-American history – Black facts. In some ways, Coates’ charge to young journalists is a hereditary one. He’s a second-generation media powerhouse, after all. But it does Coates a disservice to limit his purview or presence singularly through the Black experience. Within the first 20 pages of “The Message,” he reminds everyone who takes on the arduous task of being a journalist of their burden of responsibility: “I’ve addressed these notes directly to you, though I confess that I am thinking of young writers everywhere whose task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world.”

If it seems like heady stuff, that’s because it is.

“The Message” is also a barometer of the current political and social climate, a welcome return to form for Coates. In December 2017, he left Twitter after a vicious and viral back-and-forth with philosopher and professor Cornel West, the same year Coates released “We Were Eight Years in Power,” a set of essays about the presidency of Barack Obama. Coates spent the next several years writing about the fantastical, in the “Black Panther” comics series and in the supernaturally themed 2019 novel “The Water Dancer.”

In “The Message,” he describes for his students three recent, seminal trips, including his first visit to the African continent – to Senegal.

His grasp of detail is made evident in his description of that country, and in how he juxtaposes Black identity with the white gaze. He deconstructs the “science” of 19th-century anthropologist Josiah Nott, an enslaver who sought to justify slavery by assigning racial hierarchies. Coates cuts through the ethos of white supremacy:

“The problem of ‘common origin’ was the problem of ‘common humanity,’ and common humanity invalidated the warrant for African enslavement. For if we were all descended from the same parent, why, then, was one branch made solely for enslavement?”

We see the consequences of second-class citizenship, from violent policy to how Africans across the diaspora view themselves and others.

The book takes a transatlantic turn as it settles into greater Columbia, South Carolina. Coates notes two key conflicts – the school-board battlefield amid calls to ban “Between the World and Me,” and visiting the campus of the South Carolina state legislature, replete with relics of the Confederate past.

I’ve walked that same campus on a crusade of my own in the past – the removal of a racist monument.

Coates toes the line between journalism and advocacy with candor. It reminds me of the iconic Ida B. Wells, whose anti-lynching narratives were not without fiery conviction and a sense of personal responsibility. “Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so,” she famously said.

Coates meets with Mary Wood, a white teacher in Chapin, South Carolina, who risks dismissal from her job for teaching his book. When he discovers a contingent of support for her efforts, it reminded me of another Wells quote: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

“The Message” has quickly become a bestseller and also ignited controversy, largely due to Coates drawing a parallel between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and Jim Crow segregation in the United States. Coates, who visited Israel and Gaza in May 2023, has told interviewers he felt “lied to” by the mainstream American press, which he says has a bias toward Israel. He argues that the voices of Palestinians are largely if not wholly absent from Western coverage of the Middle East.

The theme of seeing for oneself is central to the book. It is prominent in Coates’ media analysis and training, and also gives weight to his perspective on the year-long conflict in Gaza. “The Message” feels like an extended version of an interview Coates did with Democracy Now just weeks after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas: “The most shocking thing about my time over there was how uncomplicated it actually is,” he has said. “There’s no way for me, as an African American, to come back and stand before you, to witness segregation and not say anything about it.”

Coates’ latest book says so much about conflicts here and abroad – and also says a lot about us. As Martin Luther King Jr. has said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” To that end, Coates’ message resounds.