Between the World and Me

June 23, 2016

Over the last few weeks, both Jason and I read the book called Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Coates is a brilliant African American author and writes this book in the form of a letter to his 15 year old son as he is trying to make sense of blatant racial injustice in the US and come to terms with his place in the world that denies him the freedoms that so many others take for granted. 

While this book is talking about the racial issues in the US, it brought up some profound questions for us to consider as we are here in Africa. 

As we are confronted daily here with inequalities around the world, it challenges us to think about race, class and gender issues in a new perspective.

Anna and Taylor both have been given attention as a white minority here. While we have spotted a few other “mazungus” here (white people), there are no other white children that we have seen so they are certainly an anomaly.  Sometimes the attention is no big deal, but sometimes it has been challenging for them. At one school visit on Monday, a bunch of girls were touching Anna’s hair as we walked through the school yard, and she got frustrated because she was not feeling very good and was extremely tired on top of that. 

At the football match we attended on Sunday afternoon, many kids were fascinated by Taylor’s haircut and wanted to shake his hand. He just wanted to watch the game and did not want all the attention. 

I have tried to explain to them that no one means any harm by any of these things and that a simply gentle response is all that is needed. We’ve talked about how this kind of attention is all generally positive (although sometimes it wears on them). Being the minority here is very different than being the minority in the US since being the minority is not a privileged place there.  Reading a book like Between the World and Me certainly opens up so many windows into what is like to be black in America and the battle many people face in our society there because of deep racial injustices and inequalities. 

Coates raises numerous critically important questions that he does not really answer in the book. He leaves us to continue to wrestle with the questions on our own and try to understand what our place is in it all.  I know I have so much to learn and I want these questions to keep swirling around in my mind and heart. I do not want to settle into what is comfortable but want to keep questioning, searching and struggling. 

a sign in a principal's office near Kakuma