How Palestine changed Ta-Nehisi Coates's view of justice

Two powerful themes emerged for me from Ta-Nehisi Coates's latest book, The Message.

The first pertains to Coates's intellectual journey, as this book, in my view, marks his first public step towards internationalism.

It is a leap on the path that Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee forged before him to connect the political, historical, and emotional threads that run through points of oppression and supremacist ideologies.

The second emerges from his observations, ideas, and meditations - namely, the centrality of the "origin story" in what grounds both the personal and collective sense of self, and in what animates both empathetic solidarity and genocidal violence.

Coates offers a piercing critique of colonial mythologies and assumptions from Senegal to South Carolina to Palestine.

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