civility: what ta-nehisi coates taught me

Ta-Nehisi Coates came to Nashville this week. His first novel, The Water Dancer, was released this fall, so he came to talk about it. Coates is a truth teller of our time, and his voice has become a trusted translator-of-history for so many of us trying to understand how the biases and beliefs and policies and norms of our past determine how we move in our present world. His 2015 book, Between the World and Me, explicitly tries to explain the implications of American history and habits for the body of his son. Toni Morrison called it “required reading” because she understood our collective need for a voice to explain not just how we got here, but what our responsibility is to ourselves and each other now that we have arrived. 

 As a white person reading, I benefit from eavesdropping on this important and familiar father-son chat. Coates helps me understand more intimately how America’s disdain for and abuse of black bodies built the foundation of wealth we now enjoy. At the same time, we erase and diminish those very bodies who made America great. He educates me.

 As an American reading, I am confronted with the reality of our predatory past. Coates helps me understand my own responsibility in carrying this past with me in 2019. While the book is for his son, he gives us all the gift of his honest lament: Reading eyes and lips join his chorus as we confess what we have done and grieve what has been done to us/for us/against us/in our name.

It is easy to leave such lessons to historians, but Coates allows no such thing. For him, history is cyclical, living, breathing and informing our every moment. Indeed, The Water Dancer, set in early 19th century America, centers around memory as an invitation to mourn and as a conduit to power. Memory inspires action, ever present, ever affecting.

 In the compelling interview he gave in Nashville this week, Coates was asked about his research for the book. He visited Monticello and other plantations that once belonged to famous founders or lesser known influencers in our history. He spoke specifically of time he spent in Tennessee, and of a tour he took of various Civil War sites across the South. He told of a long day that ended at a site where they planned to fire a canon for the guests’ education and edification. Feeling the weight of all he had seen and witnessed that day already, Coates said he quietly slipped away to his hotel. Knowing why he had come, he also knew the cost such a tour took on his mind, body and spirit. Our American history is a story of pain and loss, even as it also tells of resilience and hope. That evening, he had seen and heard enough of pain and violence, and decided to avoid witnessing more.

 The next morning as he joined the group, Coates shared that the other guests began to stammer apologies, to express their concern that he had been made to feel uncomfortable, to extend their warm welcome to him as a full participant in the tour. On stage in Nashville, he explained, “For them, it’s a civility thing.” His fellow guests could not or would not grapple with the evil parts of American history and their implications on the belonging and safety of a black man. They could not or would not imagine how they share the weight of responsibility for this history, that a person like Coates should not be alone in feeling the awful trauma of our collective past. They could not or would not openly acknowledge that this history of white supremacy lives on, that it damages and divides us still, shaping the way we view the worthiness or belonging of non-white people. They could not or would not speak to the horrific and long-term injustice of the majority of our past. Instead, they apologized for their bad manners, for their incivility.

 On this tour, Coates had seen slave quarters and cotton fields, plantation houses and dim, crowded kitchens. At gas stations and restaurants he had seen rebel flags and Lost Cause memorabilia. The other guests took it all in at his side, compartmentalizing this present history, perhaps? Maybe they did not see the connection between the tour sites and the windows proudly displaying images of white supremacy. They approached Coates that morning not to comfort a body and spirit still impacted by this history; instead, they kindly reached out in an effort to be civil.

 As another election cycle ramps up, so do calls for our lost civility. We decry the meanness of so many of our public figures, their rants on Twitter offending our notions of respectful discourse. We want civility! As The Water Dancer and the movie Harriet show, however, even slave owners sometimes treated the bodies they owned with civility. Consider this: If we each stay committed to civility without confronting the deep disdain, abuse or indifference that thrives underneath our “civil” surface, we have refused to carry the burden our country—built on notions of white supremacy—offers us. Even worse, if we train our mouths to be civil while our policies exclude or even destroy the bodies we undervalue, we can claim innocence even as we destroy the lives of others.

 Our problems with history are not with the way we retell it or how uncomfortable it makes us feel. Our problems with history are that we have ignored the greed and abuse of the folks who owned it, and we continue to deny the implications of such a foundation. For each of us, it can’t just be “a civility thing”; it has to be a justice thing.

 Civility is helpful, but if we are to learn from our nation’s history, we need to offer more. Each of us has the choice to carry, and thereby share, the burden of our white supremacist history. If we each carry our part of the load, we will begin to understand America’s historical and present approach toward those whose lives were necessary but abused. If we each carry part of the load, we will embody civility by acknowledging our wrongs and pursuing justice to correct them. If we each carry part of the load, we will realize that we no longer have to live as an us and a them, but as a people with a broken past who must constantly work to create a more perfect union.