Critical Scrutiny

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a brilliant writer but his most recent article in The Atlantic made me cringe. People who are incapable of approaching their family history critically should just abstain from mentioning it altogether, in my opinion. Otherwise, it all becomes about justifying Mommy and Daddy (whom nobody has even accused of anything), and the whole piece turns into a dialogue of one’s terrified five-year-old persona with an older version of the self that is still too scared to break free.

Here are the paragraphs from the article that I’m referring to specifically:

My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. . . What I know is that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would then release them to streets where their boys employed, and were subject to, the same justice. And I knew mothers who belted their girls, but the belt could not save these girls from drug dealers twice their age.

You’ll say that the essay is not about this at all. But for me, the second I see child abuse mentioned, everything else fades away. And if you can’t find it in yourself to say “My father was a stupid piece of garbage who brutalized kids because he derived pleasure from torturing human beings,” it’s better not to mention it at all. These snippets poison the entire long article, making me think that it is all about justifying the child-beating daddy, and everything else is just fluff that hides this tragic truth.

I also hope that the article’s title of “Letter To My Son” is just a rhetorical device and isn’t directed to a real child.