By Ayesha Munawar
Race is a social construct and racism is just about power, says Ta-Nehisi Coates, an American author and journalist.
“There has to be some sort of public accounting for what happens to Black people in this country,” Coates said in a livestreamed event last Tuesday. “And I am not terribly hopeful for that.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me won the 2015 National Award.
UC Santa Barbara welcomed Coates, a MacArthur Fellow and author of the National Award-winning book Between the World and Me, in an event sponsored by the Center for Black Studies Research and UCSB Arts and Lectures.
The talk, part of a series called Race to Justice, took the form of a conversation between Coates and UCSB professor Terrance Wooten of the Department of Black Studies.
Coates said the vastly different power positions of whites and blacks in America was on clear display in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building in Washington D.C., and it makes it hard for the races to work together.
“I don’t know how much of a place white people have in a world trying to heal,” Coates said. “You saw that when they stormed the capitol, which was the whitest riot you can imagine.”
UCSB Black Studies professor Terrance Wooten (left) and guest author Ta-Nehisi Coates (right) at last week’s Race to Justice virtual event.
He and Wooten also examined the representation of Blacks in America through the lens of their shared interest in Marvel comics. Coates is currently the author of the Marvel comic Captain America.
Superheroes such as Captain America and Black Panther give underdogs the opportunity to feel heard in a world where they often feel as if they do not have a voice. “You’re drawn to a story of the outcast, and Marvel was created by outcasts as well,” Coates said. “Overwhelmingly, Black fans tended to be Marvel fans.”
The largest similarity between writing fiction comic books and nonfiction stories is the tremendous amount of research that goes into both, Coates said, adding that he enjoys the research process since it gives him an opportunity to continually learn more about his subject.
After a mass protest movement last summer, both Wooten and Coates are concerned about how to keep justice for Black Americans high on the agenda in public discourse, as the news focus shifts to recent events at the United States Capitol and the new administration.
Wooten addressed the gap in status and lived experience among whites and Blacks by asking, “How can we have conversations about race with white people who are sincere in their desire to affect change?” Coates responded simply: “I don’t know.”
Ayesha Munawar is a fourth year UCSB student majoring in Communication. She is a web and social media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.