Tonight's guest on The Daily Show is Ta-Nehisi Coates and on The Nightly Show panelists Jordan Carlos, Christina Greer, and Mark DeMayo will be discussing the Sandra Bland case.
Ta-Nehisi Coates writer, journalist, and educator. Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, and blogger for that publication's website, where he writes about cultural, social and political issues. Coates has worked for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, and other publications. In 2008 he published a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. He joined the City University of New York as its journalist-in-residence in the fall of 2014. He is on tonight to promote his latest book Between the World and Me.
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
There is a very good extended interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates on Democracy Now that is worth checking out.The book is very topical and sounds interesting.AMY GOODMAN: You write it as a letter to your son, Samori. Tell us why.TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, I hate to disappoint you guys, but mostly as a literary technique, I began Between the World and Me after I finished the draft of "The Case for Reparations," and I was actually somewhat frustrated with that piece, because it’s a very, very empirical piece, very, very much based in the tools of journalism, reportage, very, very evidence-based. But I thought, at the same time, it made what it meant to live under a system that made reparations essential in the first place abstract. There was a distancing effect about talking about people as numbers, you know, about talking about people across history.
And what I wanted to do with this book is to give the reader some sense of what it meant to live under a system of plunder as an individual, to express that, to take it out of the realm of numbers and to take it directly into, you know, individual people. How does it feel every day in your life to live under such a system? How do you cope with that? How is it warping? What is it perverse? What sort of effects does it ultimately have on you? And how do you, you know, as much as possible, make your peace with it?
TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, one of the things that—you know, this theme of the book of living under a system of plunder and about surviving and how you deal with that and how you struggle against it, within that are the beautiful things that black people have forged, you know, even under really, really perilous conditions. For me, Howard University is one of the most loveliest, for me personally.To try to explain this, Howard is one of several historically black colleges and universities, is, I think, rather unique in terms of its size and in terms of its scope. It is a beacon point, the Mecca, as I call it, as it calls itself, you know, in the book, for the entire black diaspora around the world. And so, to come to Howard University at the age of 17, as I did, and to see black people from Montreal, to see black people from Paris, to see black people from Ghana, to see black people from South Africa, to see black people from Mississippi, to see black people from Oakland, to see biracial black people, to see black people with parents from India, to see black people with Jewish parents—you know, things that I had not encountered in West Baltimore—to see black people who took semesters off to go to other countries and live, to see black people with deep interests in other languages, it was tremendous.
And really what it showed me is, even within what seems like a narrow band, which is to say, you know, black life, is in fact quite cosmopolitan, is in fact a beautiful, beautiful rainbow. And to see all of these people, you know, of all these different persuasions, and to have that heritage—you know, Toni Morrison went to Howard. Amiri Baraka went to Howard. Lucille Clifton went to Howard. Ossie Davis went to Howard. And I was aware of that when I was there. Charles Drew went to Howard. Thurgood Marshall went to the law school. Being aware of that and having all of that brought to bear, again, it’s one of those things that I can’t really separate from my career as a writer.
Tonightly: @jordancarlos, @dr_cmgreer, and @markdemayo join Larry on the panel! 11:30/10:30c.
— The Nightly Show (@nightlyshow) July 23, 2015Jordan Carlosis an American stand-up comedian who played a recurring character on The Colbert Report and is a co-host on the Nickelodeon kids' show Me TV. He currently appears as a panelist and reporter on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.
Christina Greeris an assistant professor of political science at Fordham University-Lincoln Center campus. Her research and teaching focus on American politics, black ethnic politics, urban politics, quantitative methods, and public opinion. She is the author of the forthcoming book Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream (Oxford University Press). Prof. Greer received her B.A. from Tufts University and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.
Mark DeMayoMark DeMayo is hilarious. He has been one of the best comedians on the East Coast for over a decade. He is a regular at the top Comedy Clubs in NYC & Tri‐State area. He headlines Casino Resorts and has toured College Campuses throughout the country. Mark worked his way to the top of the comedy business. All the while continuing to fight crime as a NYC Police Detective.Recently retired from The NYPD, Mark DeMayo is now free to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about what its really like to be a NYC Cop. “People always ask Cops for directions, and you gotta give something, otherwise they look at you like a your a douche. If
I didn’t know the answer, I would just point and say, go down two blocks and make a right. Hey its NYC, they’ll be something interesting waiting for ‘em over there, hopefully a smarter cop”.
Next Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
Mo 7/27: Sen. Ted Cruz
Tu 7/28: Tom Cruise
We 7/29: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Th 7/30: J.J. Abrams