Between The World And Me

By Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Genre: Personal letter from a generation’s great essayists to his teenage son grappling with the issue of white supremacy and the ways in which he will encounter it and how he will need to arm himself with the knowledge of recent history.

Recommended for: Anyone willing to read a clear-eyed account of the state of things from someone whose perspective has only become more crystallized over the 10 years since.  

When Between The World And Me came out in 2015, there were people willing to claim that it was the most important book of this century. It’s a big, broad claim that doesn’t really need to be made. That said, it probably rings truer in 2025, given the 10 years that followed after its release. 

Coates wrote the book as a letter to his teenage son. It’s a love letter, but it’s also a warning. And it’s an instructional guide. Really, it’s preparation, and an attempt at an explanation for why he has to be prepared for something that not everyone has to be prepared for: the literal threats of white supremacy.

And don’t get me wrong. White supremacy affects everyone of all backgrounds and races. It touches just about every place on the globe and largely shaped and defined America. White people cannot escape the rot it brings to a society that could otherwise achieve so much more for its people. They still have to explain this to their children and hope they can navigate a world tainted by that bubbling, active problem.

But Coates’ son, and every Black child, grows into an adult needing to navigate literal fears to their body alongside grappling with the psychological reality of white supremacy. Coates’ book can’t protect his son from any of that. It can only provide context and, maybe, channel the reader’s anger into the proper targets. 

It’s also worth pointing out the degree of difficulty in writing this book. It's structured like James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. It feels so deeply personal. It reads like a moment in time and yet it feels eerily confident in the years to come.

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I gave this book to a friend of mine when he was expecting a son. It’s a letter from a father to his son from one of our best writers. It felt appropriate. A few months later, I found out I was expecting a son. 

It’s a heavy read under the circumstances, but it also makes you feel emboldened to help your child through what they will spend their life taking on. Any decent father reading it will note things they will someday tell their child. I also just plan on giving the Between The World to my son when he’s about 14. 

You ultimately should just read the book if you haven’t, and I don’t want to try to articulate those messages as well as Coates does, but there is another topic other than white supremacy that modern parents have to protect their parents against: technology, and I’m comfortable taking a moment writing about that for a moment. 

Loneliness. Jealousy. Fear. Stasis. A puncture in curiosity. Ignorance. Inability to be present. 

All of these qualities get rooted in a person by social media. Every millennial knows this. To be intentional in modern society takes effort now. It takes doing things and undoing things and having a firm understanding that inertia has been created by tech companies.

Looking at social media often makes me less happy. I don’t think that’s a particularly unique statement. I try to limit it, as does my partner. We met on social media, but at this point in our lives, we know what makes us happy, and we know we can connect with people we love without much time scrolling.

The apps will change, but generally, social media dynamics will remain, and our child will do what he wants (when he’s old enough to be able to), but while we still have some influence over him, we’ll try to relay that we came up on this social media stuff, and it drained us. We saw it drain people. We noticed when it made us less happy. It can’t not do that. That’s how it works, even if it has practical purposes. He should try to avoid it or try to limit it. Be someone outside of it. Know who you are away from it. 

But how could we reasonably tell him that if he could look back at our accounts and see pictures of him that were posted on these apps/sites without his consent? I can’t quite square a way where that’s reasonable. I really want all my friends to see how cute my son is. And I want them to see how adorable it is when the dog interacts with him. And I want them to see all the milestones. And there’s an efficient way to do that, but I don’t want my child’s image to be on social media. It’s just not something I’m OK with. 

It’s more than just principle. These are bad companies with bad intentions. They set insidious goals, and they largely achieve them, and no one notices because it is all framed around shifting algorithms and what you do or don’t see on your feed. Ultimately, it is social conditioning, and that’s something that no person is too smart to be affected by. 

Meta (Instagram) hired anti-woke and anti-DEI influencer Robby Starbuck as an advisor to help it “avoid bias” in its AI. It also has added UFC CEO Dana White to its board. 

At some point while my child is still legally a child, I imagine there will be a reckoning with technology’s overreach when it comes to data, AI, privacy, and its effects on social behaviors. Reckonings are tricky, though. How much can you push back at something you let happen? 

When I read about the simultaneous helplessness and strength summoned when needing to protect your child, I think about what is actually needed from me. I want to try to model behavior that can keep him happy and peaceful. I want to try to detangle his family from the companies that will ruin our society. 

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3 More Things You Can Read Today:

-Shake The Lurch (Basketball Feelings)

-Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?

-I Protest His Protest Song, or Why Jesse Welles Is Bad—And Bad for Us