A Writer, Cop, Victim & Howard University
****In my original post, I made the error of saying that Coates never mentions the officer’s race in his book, Between the World and Me. There have been some tellings of the story in other formats where Coates doesn’t mention the officer’s race but not this book. I have corrected the text below.
Hey all,
Many of you follow race politics and I thought you would be interested in this exceptionally well-written article, “Howard Men,” by Adam Gussow for Quillette Magazine.
What makes this article fascinating is that Ta-Nehisi Coates is at the heart of it. For those who don’t know, he rose to fame over a decade ago when he published “A Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic. A gifted writer, his argument revived the reparations debate to the point that cities and states today have launched investigations into this matter. But that is not the heart of this article.
In 2015, he published a National Book Award-winning memoir, Between the World and Me, where he writes about how his close friend, Prince Jones, was gunned down by a cop. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and other blacks had just lost their lives and the narrative of white supremacy was strong in the air. And by telling the story of Prince in his new book, Coates was tapping into that nerve. There was just one problem: the officer is black, a fact that inconveniences Coates. In some tellings of the story, Coates finesses the question of the officer’s race or leaves that fact out altogether. In his 2015 book, Coates leaves out the officer’s race in the section where the story is told. It is not until several pages later that he mentions the officer’s race.
What is fascinating is the question of why the the race of this officer was such an issue for Coates, a question that Gussow explores in depth. This question also reveals much about the times that we live in and how pursuing narratives, especially a racial one, forces us to omit, compromise, or bend the truth(s). What Coates never mentions is that all three men went to Howard University at one point in their lives, a fact that vexes Coates for in his world there is nothing more “black” than a Howard University man.
The reason why I thought of bringing this article to you all is because it, at its heart, is an investigation into what really happened — similar to “What Killed Michael Brown?”
Here’s a brief excerpt:
We know, too, the grim details of the fatal shooting itself: 16 shots fired from a 9mm Beretta in what one expert witness estimated to be four seconds. Five of those shots struck Prince in the back. Was this a desperate act of justified self-defense, as Carlton maintained? Or was it an unjustified act—a “racist act,” Prince’s mother told Coates—of cold-blooded murder against a black man presumed to be guilty of something that would license such an excessive response from a Maryland cop with no police powers in this Virginia jurisdiction? Or does neither of those framings fully accord with the facts?
The story’s complexity lies in the fact that Coates had a racial and political agenda he wanted to pursue and the blackness of the officer was a complication. Had the officer been white, Coates would have had the easy proof he needed to charge America with systemic racism.
This is not a problem that affects just Coates. Eric Holder was faced with a similar situation with his Department of Justice report on Ferguson. There was a rogue cop within the Ferguson Department that harassed blacks, including a multiracial family. In his quest to prove the systemic racism narrative, Holder neglected to mention that the officer was black, an omission most Americans are unaware of to this day.
I’ve always been fascinated by the black identity vs. the white identity. When whites kill whites, there’s really no racial politics involved. It’s usually written off as a tragedy. However, the black identity always carries with it the baggage of race — an understandable reality given the history of blacks in America. But what is the cost to society when a racial narrative is pushed at the expense of truth?
I do have to warn you that Gussow’s article is a long read — something you might read on a lazy afternoon or over a morning coffee. Gussow rarely repeats himself and it is to his credit that he does not shy away from the hard questions or the deep imperfections of all three men involved. We used to read old school magazine articles like this in the 80s and 90s, and we were better off then.
As always, would love to know your thoughts.
Eli