We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017)

An article from The Atlantic for each year of the Obama administration.

Book Review: We Were Eight Years in Power embodies my mixed feelings when I hear the name Ta-Nehisi Coates. The first dozen or so times it was being thrown in my face, variations on "even that Coates guy? He thinks Obama's a joke." I didn't enjoy having to simultaneously debate America's favorite intellectual and some random dude's efforts to de-legitimize the first black president. But that's okay, because these eight articles (and even more valuable epilogue) are necessary, educational, and (mostly) riveting; the book's subtitle is "An American Tragedy." In just two books (haven't read his first, yet) and a series of stellar articles in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates has become required reading. His insights change how readers see the world, and the next time there's something in the news, something about the Civil War, something from the President, the reader will think about it a little bit differently. Even those who don't agree with everything Coates espouses will still hear his voice saying, "Yeah, but ... ." While he's opening eyes, he's opening minds.

Coates has done much valuable reading and research, but at times the endless statistics and unrelenting litany of racism, discrimination, violence, and other barbarity in his articles becomes numbing (as with some Holocaust literature). Emotional overload. After a while I simply can't assimilate another crime or instance of savagery without saying, "Yes, I'll stipulate that American history consists of horrors piled on horrors, but then what?" As President Obama is quoted: "Yeah, we can talk about this. But what are we going to do?" Coates seemingly enjoys research -- rather than simply including the strongest anecdote or most convincing statistic, he tends to include all of them (most notably in the "Reparations" and "Incarceration" articles). But his greatest strength lies in his insights and analysis, as when he finds inconsistencies in prevailing theories, contradictions in carefully constructed arguments, exposes when politicians are trying to defend the indefensible. Fortunately, We Were Eight Years in Power has many examples of this strength. He destroys the myth that blue-collar whites supported Trump due to economic displacement; deconstructs the national response to the opioid and crack epidemics; identifies black cultural conservatism (what he calls "the organic black conservative tradition"); explains why Obama particularly appealed to white America; and provides a short but devastating contrast of the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Coates also notes that not all who voted for the current president are white supremacists, but they all voted for one.

As noted above, although he now regards Obama as "one of the greatest presidents in American history," Coates was not above challenging President Obama: he's "written several blog posts criticizing" him, and records that due to his criticism the Obama camp believed he was the "wrong journalist" to interview the President. But Obama and the author have more in common than Coates will admit: Obama was white America's black president; Coates is white America's black intellectual. Obama was acceptable to white America as long as he didn't act black; so far, Coates has been unable to offend the white reading public. Coates himself raises the question: "Why do white people like what I write?" He provides no answer (someday there should be a book aimed at a black audience). We Were Eight Years in Power is just as accessible as Between the World and Me (maybe more so), just as valuable, and entirely different.  [4★]