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Re-Presenting Black Masculinities in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Re-Presenting Black Masculinities in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me by Asmaa Aaouinti-Haris B.A. (Universitat de Barcelona) 2016 THESIS/CAPSTONE Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in HUMANITIES in the GRADUATE SCHOOL of HOOD COLLEGE April 2018 Accepted: ________________________ ________________________ Amy Gottfried, Ph.D. Corey Campion, Ph.D. Committee Member Program Advisor ________________________ Terry Anne Scott, Ph.D. Committee Member ________________________ April M. Boulton, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School ________________________ Hoda Zaki, Ph.D. Capstone Advisor STATEMENT OF USE AND COPYRIGHT WAIVER I do authorize Hood College to lend this Thesis (Capstone), or reproductions of it, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. ii CONTENTS STATEMENT OF USE AND COPYRIGHT WAIVER…………………………….ii ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................................iv DEDICATION………………………………………………………………………..v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………….....vi Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………….…2 Chapter 2: Black Male Stereotypes…………………………………………………12 Chapter 3: Boyhood…………………………………………………………………26 Chapter 4: Fatherhood……………………………………………………………....44 Chapter 5: Conclusion…………………………………………………………...….63 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………….69 iii ABSTRACT Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir and letter to his son Between the World and Me (2015)—published shortly after the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement—provides a rich and diverse representation of African American male life which is closely connected with contemporary United States society. This study explores how Coates represents and explains black manhood as well as how he defines his own identity as being excluded from United States society, yet as being central to the nation. Coates’s definition of masculinity is analyzed by focusing on his representations of boyhood and fatherhood. By analyzing Coates’s projection of his own role as a man and as a father as well as his complex and multifaceted representations of black manhood, I demonstrate how Coates promotes a caring masculinity and, most importantly, how he presents resistance to hegemonic notions of masculinity. Thus, the goal of this study is to examine the ways in which Coates asserts models for progressive masculinities through his portrayals of boyhood and fatherhood. Coates’s depiction of his adolescence and of black youth in the streets of Baltimore, and his descriptions of fatherhood, particularly of his own role as a father and the depiction of his parents, are key in assessing Coates’s rendering of a caring masculinity. Keywords: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, black masculinity, stereotypes, boyhood, fatherhood, caring masculinity, progressive black masculinities. iv DEDICATION To my father, Boughaleb Aaouinti v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to Dr. Hoda Zaki, my capstone adviser, for her diligent support and mentorship. Her thoughtful and incisive comments on earlier drafts have been extremely valuable for this thesis. Without her continuous encouragement and guidance, this thesis would not have been the same. Her support at each step of the process has been heartening. I am also grateful to Dr. Amy Gottfried and Dr. Terry Anne Scott for agreeing to serve on my thesis committee, and for their thoughtful readings and constructive suggestions on earlier drafts to help me improve the writing in this final version. Furthermore, I owe thanks to Dr. Teresa Requena-Pelegrí (Universitat de Barcelona) for her support and advice and for providing useful bibliographical references—some of the most interesting and innovative scholarship—on the field of Masculinity Studies. I also extend thanks to Dr. Corey Campion, director of the Master of Arts in Humanities program at Hood College, for encouraging me to pursue this thesis and for kindly guiding me throughout the process. Research reported in this document was originally published in a master’s degree Thesis (Capstone) sponsored by the Department of Humanities and submitted to The Graduate School of Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. vi Re-Presenting Black Masculinities in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION “And you know now … that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body” (Coates 9). Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me was published on July 14, 2015. The time of its publication was marked by two events happening in the United States: on the one hand, the visibility of police brutality against African Americans and, on the other, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Months prior to the publication, the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, sparked protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri. The subsequent acquittal of Wilson intensified the Ferguson protests which lasted until August 11, 2015. The Ferguson protests caused national and international debate about the relationship between police brutality and African Americans. Coates decides to write the letter to his son on his fifteenth year because it is the year he has witnessed more destruction of black bodies. It is the destruction of black bodies in the United States that leads to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013: a social movement organized by three women—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—and conceived as a twenty-first century Civil Rights movement, that campaigns against violence, systematic racism and the destruction of black lives at a national and at a global level. My choice of author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, is largely based on the fact that he, as an emerging voice, has become a leading public intellectual on race who transcends United States audiences. In an endorsement of the back cover of Between the World and Me, Coates has been defined by Toni Morrison as the writer who has filled “the intellectual void” left by James Baldwin. Most importantly, Coates has become a bridge of understanding between the larger communities—national and international 2 audiences—and a plural and diverse African American community. Coates’s significance as a writer is reflected in the great deal of thought and discussion that his book Between the World and Me has generated by leading scholars in African American Studies such as Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, and Robin D. G. Kelley as well as white audiences and moderate conservatives such as David Brooks. Brooks acknowledges the significance of Coates’s work, yet he disagrees with his depiction of American history. Brooks described the book as a “mind-altering account of the black male experience” and as a “great and searing contribution” to the “public education” concerning the killings of African Americans in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston, among other cities. While Brooks encourages all “conscientious American[s]” to read Coates’s Between the World and Me, he takes issue with Coates over his representation of American history. According to Brooks, Coates “distort[s] American history” in that he presents violence as the predominant force of the United States. Moreover, Brooks disagrees with Coates’s depiction of the American Dream, given that, for him, the Dream is a unifying element which signifies democracy and hope for the future: “By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future” (Brooks, “Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White”). In a different way, Michelle Alexander also references to Coates’s lack of hope, particularly in relation to James Baldwin’s 1963 work The Fire Next Time. Alexander distinguishes between Baldwin and Coates. For her, Baldwin’s effort to convey a belief in “revolutionary change” and to emphasize his nephew’s “power and potential” stands in opposition to Coates’s emphasis on “the apparent permanence of racial injustice in America, the foolishness of believing that one person can make a change, and the dangers of believing in the American Dream.” Alexander explains 3 that because Coates poses questions throughout the book which remain unanswered, she regards the book as “unfinished.” Nevertheless, although Alexander favors Baldwin’s encouraging message, she acknowledges that Coates’s focus, unlike Baldwin’s, may not be to urge people to take action, but rather to challenge the readers to “wrestle with the questions” individually (Alexander, “Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between the World and Me’”). Cornel West also expresses discontent at Toni Morrison’s comparison of Coates and Baldwin. A day after the publication of Between the World and Me, West used his social media platform to claim that, while Baldwin’s work encouraged “collective action,” Coates’s work conveys individual inaction: “Baldwin’s painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements. … Coates’s fear-driven self-absorption leads to individual escape and flight to safety” (“In Defense of James Baldwin”). Most importantly, West takes issue with what he considers Coates’s omission of an examination of power structures interconnected with racial inequality in the United States: “without an analysis of capitalist wealth inequality, gender domination, homophobic degradation, Imperial occupation (all concrete forms of plunder), and collective fightback
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