My first book of 2025 (I actually began reading it on 12/30/24) and it Is a doozy.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message is primarily interested in the ways that language shapes power and resistance. The introductory section, “Journalism Is Not a Luxury,” addresses just that: the essential role in language and journalism, recording history, in fighting injustice. Coates addresses an unnamed “you” in this section, but this part seems to serve as a thesis statement about writing: “You cannot act upon what you cannot see. And we are plagued by dead languages and dead stories that serve people whose aim is nothing short of a dead world” (18-19). It is a call to action, to remember the power of language and The Message under systems of oppression.
Most of the book is the remaining three parts, recounting visits to Senegal, to South Carolina, and to Palestine. Coates uses rich detail and anecdotes to explain the emotional cadences of his experiences. I’m a fast reader, but I made myself slow down to absorb the connections Coates made among all three places and their histories. These connections became most poignant in the final section, his visit to Palestine, and his observations of a people colonized by another people who were themselves subjugated. Coates traces the separate but unequal nature of Israeli society–even license plates are different colors and settlements are policed by citizens with weapons. It sounds familiar from our own US history; and yet “it occurred to me that Israel had advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself” (128).
I still have some thinking to do about the entirety of The Message, and I’m not sure it all connects neatly to Coates’ argument about bearing witness through language. But I’m also not sure it has to fit perfectly. I’m content to place The Message in a long line of urgently needed reflections upon the nature of oppression and dehumanization.
