Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates at the University of Virginia in 2015
Born	Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates (1975-09-30) September 30, 1975 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Education	Howard University
Occupation	Writer journalist
Spouse(s)	Kenyatta Matthews
Children	1
Awards	2014 George Polk Award for commentary 2015 MacArthur Fellows Program 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction
Website	ta-nehisicoates.com

Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates (/ˌtɑːnəˈhɑːsi ˈkoʊts/ TAH-nə-HAH-see-_-kohts; born September 30, 1975) is an African-American author and journalist. A black supremacist, Coates gained attention during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.

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. His second book, Between the World and Me, was released in July 2015. It won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a nominee for the Phi Beta Kappa 2016 Book Awards. He was the recipient of a "Genius Grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2015. He is the writer of a Black Panther series for Marvel Comics drawn by Brian Stelfreeze, as well as a Captain America series illustrated by Leinil Francis Yu and Adam Kubert.

Early life

Coates was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, William Paul "Paul" Coates, was a Vietnam War veteran, former Black Panther, publisher, and librarian. His mother, Cheryl Lynn (Waters), was a teacher. Coates' father founded and ran Black Classic Press, a publisher specializing in African-American titles. The Press grew out of a grassroots organization, the George Jackson Prison Movement (GJPM). Initially the GJPM operated a Black book store called the Black Book. Later Black Classic Press was established with a table-top printing press in the basement of the Coates family home.

Coates' father had seven children, five boys and two girls, by four women. Coates' father's first wife had three children, Coates' mother had two boys, and the other two women each had a child. The children were raised together in a close-knit family; most lived with their mothers and at times lived with their father. Coates said he lived with his father the whole time. In Coates' family, he said that the important overarching focus was on rearing children with values based on family, respect for elders and being a contribution to your community. This approach to family was common in the community where he grew up. Coates grew up in the Mondawmin neighborhood of Baltimore during the crack epidemic.

Coates' interest in books was instilled at an early age when his mother, in response to bad behavior, would require him to write essays. His father's work with the Black Classic Press was a huge influence: Coates has said that he read many of the books his father published.

Coates attended a number of Baltimore-area schools, including William H. Lemmel Middle School and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, before graduating from Woodlawn High School.

After high school, Coates attended Howard University. He left after five years to start a career in journalism. He is the only child in his family without a college degree. In mid-2014, Coates attended an intensive program in French at Middlebury College to prepare for a writing fellowship in Paris, France.

Career

File:Ta Nehisi Coates 2 BBF 2010 Shankbone.jpg

Coates at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival

Journalism

Coates' first journalism job was as a reporter at The Washington City Paper; his editor was David Carr.

From 2000 to 2007, Coates worked as a journalist at various publications, including Philadelphia Weekly, The Village Voice, and Time. His first article for The Atlantic, "This Is How We Lost to the White Man", about Bill Cosby and conservatism, started a new, more successful and stable phase of his career. The article led to an appointment with a regular column for The Atlantic, a blog that was popular, influential, and had a high level of community engagement.

Coates became a senior editor at The Atlantic, for which he wrote feature articles as well as maintaining his blog. Topics covered by the blog included politics, history, race, culture as well as sports, and music. His writings on race, such as his September 2012 The Atlantic cover piece "Fear of a Black President" and his June 2014 feature "The Case for Reparations" have been especially praised and have won his blog a place on the Best Blogs of 2011 list by Time magazine and the 2012 Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism from The Sidney Hillman Foundation. Coates' blog has also been praised for its engaging comments section, which Coates curates and moderates heavily so that "the jerks are invited to leave [and] the grown-ups to stay and chime in."

In discussing The Atlantic article on "The Case for Reparations", Coates said he had worked on it for almost two years. He had read Rutgers University professor Beryl Satter's book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, a history of redlining that included a discussion of the grassroots organization, the Contract Buyers League, of which Clyde Ross was one of the leaders. The focus of the article was not so much on reparations for slavery, but was instead a focus on the institutional racism of housing discrimination.

In December 2017, the philosopher and activist Cornel West published an editorial in The Guardian with the title: "Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle". The premise of the article was that Coates "fetishizes white supremacy" and represents a "narrow racial tribalism and myopic political neo-liberalism" by wrongly casting former President Barack Obama as a successor to figures as Malcolm X as an African-American hero. West believes that Obama should never be compared to civil rights activists, such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., who in their fight against white supremacy spoke out against systemic biases in predatory capitalism and war; according to West, this is because Obama, while he is of the same racial class, is part of the system that the activists should fight against. The same day, West shared the article on Twitter, attracting tweets in response from many others, including hundreds of supporters of Coates. The next day, West's tweet was retweeted by the alt-right white supremacist, Richard Spencer, who indicated tacit agreement with the criticism of Coates. Shortly afterwards, Coates, who had enjoyed a following of over 1.25 million Twitter users, deactivated his Twitter account.

Coates has worked as a guest columnist for The New York Times, having turned down an offer from them to become a regular columnist. He has also written for The Washington Post, the Washington Monthly, and O magazine.

Coates left his position as a national correspondent for The Atlantic in July 2018 after a decade with the magazine. In a memo to the staff, the editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said: "The last few years for him have been years of significant changes. He’s told me that he would like to take some time to reflect on these changes, and to figure out the best path forward, both as a person and as a writer."

Author

The Beautiful Struggle

In 2008, Coates published The Beautiful Struggle, a memoir about coming of age in West Baltimore and its effect on him. In the book, he discusses the influence of his father, a former Black Panther; the prevailing street crime of the era and its effects on his older brother; his own troubled experience attending Baltimore-area schools; and his eventual graduation and enrollment in Howard University. The lack of interpersonal skills and the complexity of Coates's father figure in the book sheds light on a world of absentee fathers. As Rich Benjamin states in a September 2016 article in The Guardian, "Fatherhood is a vexed topic, particularly so for an author such as Coates" and continues with "The Beautiful Struggle makes an enduring genre cliche—the father-son relationship—unexpected and new, as well as offering a vital insight into Coates's coming of age as a man and thinker."

Between the World and Me

Main article: Between the World and Me

Coates' second book, Between the World and Me, was published in July 2015. The title is drawn from a Richard Wright poem of the same name about a Black man discovering the site of a lynching and becoming incapacitated with fear, creating a barrier between himself and the world. Coates said that one of the origins of the book was the death of a college friend, Prince Carmen Jones Jr., who was shot by police in a case of mistaken identity. In an ongoing discussion about reparation, continuing the work of his June 2014 Atlantic article on reparations, Coates cited the bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers called "H.R. 40 – Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act" that has been introduced every year since 1989. One of the themes of the book was what physically affected African-American lives, e.g. their bodies being enslaved, violence that came from slavery, and various forms of institutional racism. In a review for Politico magazine, conservative pundit Rich Lowry stated that while the book is lyrical and powerfully written, "For all his subtle plumbing of his own thoughts and feelings and his occasional invocations of the importance of the individuality of the person, Coates has to reduce people to categories and actors in a pantomime of racial plunder to support his worldview." In a review for Slate, Jack Hamilton wrote that the book "is a love letter written in a moral emergency, one that Coates exposes with the precision of an autopsy and the force of an exorcism".

Black Panther

Main article: Black Panther (comics)

Coates is the writer of the comic book series about the Black Panther drawn by Brian Stelfreeze and published by Marvel Comics. Issue #1 went on sale April 6, 2016, and sold an estimated 253,259 physical copies, the best-selling comic for the month of April 2016.

He also wrote a spinoff of Black Panther, Black Panther and the Crew, that ran for six issues before it was canceled.

We Were Eight Years in Power

Main article: We Were Eight Years in Power

Coates' collection of previously published essays on the Obama Era, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, was announced by Random House, with a release date of October 3, 2017. Coates added essays written specially for the book bridging the gaps between the previously-published essays, as well as an introduction and an epilogue. The book's title is a quote from 19th-century African-American congressman Thomas E. Miller of South Carolina, who asked why white Southerners hated African Americans after all the good they had done during the Reconstruction Era. Coates sees parallels between that earlier period and the Obama presidency.

Teaching

Coates was the 2012–14 MLK visiting professor for writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He joined the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism as its journalist-in-residence in late 2014.

In 2017, Coates joined the faculty of New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute as a Distinguished Writer in Residence.

Upcoming projects

Coates is currently working on several projects. These include America in the King Years which is a television project with David Simon, Taylor Branch, and James McBride about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, based on one of the volumes of the books America in the King Years written by Taylor Branch, specifically At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968. The project will be produced by Oprah Winfrey and air on HBO. He is working on a novel about an African American from Chicago who moves to Paris.

Coates is also set to adapt Rachel Aviv's 2014 New Yorker article "Wrong Answer" into a full-length feature film of the same title, starring Michael B. Jordan with direction by Ryan Coogler.

Continuing his tenure with Marvel Comics, Coates continues to write the Black Panther title, as well as a new Captain America title with artist Leinil Yu and Adam Kubert.

Personal life

Ta-Nehisi in hieroglyphs
t3-nḥsj

Coates' first name, Ta-Nehisi, is derived from an Ancient Egyptian language name for Nubia. Nubia is a region along the Nile river in present-day northern Sudan and southern Egypt.

As a child, Coates enjoyed comic books and Dungeons & Dragons.

Coates lived in Paris for a residency. In 2009, he lived in Harlem with his wife, Kenyatta Matthews, and son, Samori Maceo-Paul Coates. His son is named after Samori Ture, a Mandé chief who fought French colonialism, after black Cuban revolutionary Antonio Maceo Grajales, and after Coates' father. Coates met his wife when they were both students at Howard University. He is an atheist and a feminist.

With his family, Coates moved to Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, New York, in 2001. He purchased a brownstone in Prospect Lefferts Gardens in 2016.

Coates said he would vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries.

In 2016, he was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Oregon State University.

Awards

• 2012: Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism
• 2013: National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism for "Fear of a Black President"
• 2014: George Polk Award for Commentary for "The Case for Reparations"
• 2015: Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice for "The Case for Reparations"
• 2015: American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship
• 2015: National Book Award for Nonfiction for Between the World and Me
• 2015: Fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• 2015: Kirkus prize for nonfiction for Between the World and Me
• 2018: Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Nonfiction for We Were Eight Years in Power
• 2018: Eisner Award for Best Limited Series, for Black Panther: World of Wakanda (with Roxane Gay and Alitha E. Martinez)

Bibliography

Monographs

• Asphalt Sketches. Baltimore, Maryland: Sundiata Publications, 1990. OCLC 171149459 Book of poetry.
• The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2008. ISBN 978-0-385-52684-5 OCLC 638193286
• Between the World and Me: Notes on the First 150 Years in America. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. ISBN 978-0-812-99354-7 OCLC 912045191
• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. One World, October 3, 2017. ISBN 978-0-399-59056-6

Comics

• Black Panther vol. 6 #1–18, #166–171 (2016–2018)
  • A Nation Under Our Feet (collects issues #1–12)
    • A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1 (tpb, 144 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-3029-0053-6)
    • A Nation Under Our Feet Book 2 (tpb, 144 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-3029-0054-4)
    • A Nation Under Our Feet Book 3 (tpb, 144 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-3029-0191-5)
  • Avengers of the New World (collects issues #13–18, #166–171)
    • Avengers of the New World Book 1 (tpb, 144 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-3029-0649-6)
    • Avengers of the New World Book 2 (tpb, 136 pages, 2018, ISBN 1-3029-0988-6)
• Black Panther: World of Wakanda #1–6 (2016) (with Roxane Gay, Yona Harvey)
  • Vol. 1: Dawn of the Midnight Angels (tpb, 144 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-3029-0650-X)
• Black Panther and the Crew #1–6 (2017) (with Yona Harvey)
  • Vol. 1: We Are the Streets (tpb, 136 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-3029-0832-4)
• Black Panther vol. 7 #1– (2018–)
• Captain America vol. 9 #1– (2018–)

Selected articles

• "Promises of an Unwed Father". O: the Oprah Magazine. January 2006.
• "American Girl". The Atlantic. January/February 2009. Profile on Michelle Obama.
• "A Deeper Black". Early, Gerald Lyn, and Randall Kennedy. Best African American Essays, 2010. New York: One World, Ballantine Books, 2010. pp. 15–22. ISBN 978-0-553-80692-2 OCLC 320187212
• "Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?" The Atlantic. The Civil War Issue. February 2012.
• "Fear of a Black President". Bennet, James. The Best American Magazine Writing 2013. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. pp. 3–32. ISBN 978-0-231-53706-3 OCLC 861785469
• "How Learning a Foreign Language Reignited My Imagination: Pardon my French". The Atlantic. Vol. 311, Issue 5. June 2013. pp. 44–45
• "The Case for Reparations". The Atlantic. June 2014.
• "There Is No Post-Racial America". The Atlantic. July/August 2015.
• "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration". The Atlantic. October 2015.
• "My President Was Black". The Atlantic. December 2016.
• "The First White President". The Atlantic. October 2017.
• "I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye". The Atlantic. May 2018.

Fiction

• The Water Dancer. One World. September 24, 2019. ISBN 978-0399590597.

Short Fiction

• "Conduction". The New-Yorker. June 3, 2019.

Multimedia

• with Richard Harrington, Nelson George, and Kojo Nnamdi. Hip Hop. Washington, D.C.: WAMU, American University, 1999. OCLC 426123467 Audio conversation recorded January 29, 1999, at WAMU-FM, Washington, D.C.
• with Stephen Colbert. "Ta-Nehisi Coates". The Colbert Report. June 16, 2014.
• with Ezra Klein. Vox Conversations: Should America offer reparations for slavery?" Vox. July 18, 2014.
• The Case for Reparations. Middlebury, Vt.: Middlebury College, 2015. OCLC 904962550 Video of lecture delivered at Middlebury College on March 4, 2015.
• with Amy Goodman. "Between the World and Me: Ta-Nehisi Coates Extended Interview on Being Black in America". Democracy Now!. July 22, 2015.
• with Jon Stewart. "Exclusive – Ta-Nehisi Coates Extended Interview" "Pt. 1" and "Pt. 2". The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. July 23, 2015.
• with Amy Goodman. Ta-Nehisi Coates: "Joe Biden Shouldn’t Be President". Democracy Now!. June 20, 2019.

See also

• Leonard Jeffries
• Kamau Kambon

External links

• Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic
• Appearances on C-SPAN