Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those journalists treated by the left-of-center establishment more like a prophet than a writer. There are few accolades he hasn’t been granted, few prizes he’s yet to win. He’s received a “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Foundation and a National Magazine Award. Oprah is his producer. And when Coates publishes a book, it’s an event.
His second book, Between the World and Me, won the 2015 National Book Award and spent over one-hundred weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. His 2014 Atlantic essay, “The Case for Reparations,” became so influential that it almost single-handedly made reparations for slavery an issue in the 2020 election. (In 2019, Coates and I both testified before Congress regarding the same issue.)
Since then, Coates has focused mainly on fiction and comic books, most notably Black Panther—an inspiring fantasy about an ancient African kingdom guarded by brilliant high-tech warriors rooted in tradition and ringed by envious enemies trying to destroy it. He conspicuously sat out the frenzied period of identity politics that followed George Floyd’s death.
That silence has now broken—though this is hardly something to celebrate. His new essay collection, The Message, is a masterpiece of warped arguments and moral confusion. But it is important to take it seriously, not because Coates’s arguments are serious, but because so many treat them as if they are.
Coates’s overarching themes are familiar: the plundering of black wealth by the Western world, the hypocrisy at the heart of America’s founding ideals, and the permanence of white supremacy. If The Message departs from his earlier work in any way, it’s that his desire to smear America has been eclipsed by his desire to smear Israel—an exercise that takes up fully half the book. (More about that, which Coates has declared “his obsession,” in a bit.)
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