Ta-Nehisi Coates at the NY Public Library

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Although “The Case for Reparations” is, perhaps, Coates’ most influential work of journalism, he found himself dissatisfied with the piece after its publication. This dissatisfaction, in part, led him to write a more personal text in the form of Between the World and Me:

“I felt like a number of historians had done the work of outlining the racism implicit in New Deal policies and twentieth century policies because the weakness with reparation is always people look at you and say, ‘Well, the slaves are long dead.’ But there are plenty of people around right now who were certainly affected by New Deal policies, so I pulled from the history and made that argument. But when I was done, I was somewhat displeased because I felt like the article did not explain how it felt to live your daily life under a system of plunder, under a system of theft. How does it individually feel to live that way? That was the main challenge for Between the World and Me.”

Listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates on the latest NYPL podcast.