Ta-Nehisi Coates | |
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.jpg) Coates in 2025 | |
| Born | Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates (1975-09-30)September 30, 1975 (age 50) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Education | Howard University |
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| Spouse | Kenyatta Matthews |
| Children | 1 |
| Parent(s) | Cheryl Lynn Coates (née Waters) William Paul Coates |
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| Website | ta-nehisicoates |
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates[1] (/ˌtɑːnəˈhɑːsi/TAH-nə-HAH-see;[2] born September 30, 1975)[3] is an American author, journalist, and activist. He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent atThe Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans andwhite supremacy.[4][5] He is politicallyprogressive.
Coates's work has been published in numerous periodicals. He has published four nonfiction books:The Beautiful Struggle (2008),Between the World and Me (2015),We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (2017), andThe Message (2024).[6][7]Between the World and Me won the 2015National Book Award for Nonfiction.[8][9][10] He has also written aBlack Panther series and aCaptain America series forMarvel Comics.[11] His first novel,The Water Dancer, was published in 2019. In 2015, Coates received aMacArthur Fellowship.[12]
Coates was born inBaltimore, Maryland. His father,William Paul Coates (known by his middle name),[13] was aVietnam War veteran, formerBlack Panther, publisher, and librarian. His mother, Cheryl Lynn Coates (née Waters), was a teacher.[14] Coates's first name, Ta-Nehisi, is derived from an ancientEgyptian language name forNubia (reconstructed asnḥsj),[15] a region along the Nile river in present-day northern Sudan and southern Egypt.[16][17]
Coates's father founded and ranBlack Classic Press, a publishing company specializing in African-American titles. The Press grew out of a grassroots organization, theGeorge Jackson Prison Movement (GJPM), which initially operated a Black bookstore called the Black Book. Later, Black Classic Press was established with a tabletop printing press in the basement of the Coates family home.[2][18]
Coates's father had seven children collectively, five boys and two girls, by four women: His father's first wife had three children, his mother had two boys, and the other two women each had a child. The children were raised together in a close-knit family; most lived with their mothers and at times with their father. Coates has said that he lived with his father for the entirety of his upbringing,[2][16] and that, in his family, the important overarching focus was on rearing children with values based on family, respect for elders and contributing to your community—an approach to family that was common where he grew up.[2] Coates grew up in Baltimore'sMondawmin neighborhood[16] during thecrack epidemic.[2]
Coates's interest in literature was instilled at an early age when his mother, in response to bad behavior, would require him to write essays.[19] His father's work with the Black Classic Press was a huge influence. Coates has said that he read many of the books his father published.[2] Coates also enjoyed comic books andDungeons & Dragons during his childhood.[16][20]
| External videos | |
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 Panel discussion on "Crisis of the Black Male" atHoward University, featuring Coates while a Howard student, October 12, 1995,C-SPAN |
Coates attended a number of Baltimore-area schools, including William H. Lemmel Middle School and theBaltimore Polytechnic Institute, before graduating fromWoodlawn High School.[21][22] He attendedHoward University, leaving after five years to start a career in journalism. He is the only child in his family without a college degree.[16][23] In mid-2014, Coates attended an intensive program in French atMiddlebury College to prepare for a writing fellowship inParis, France.[24]
Coates's first journalism job was as a reporter atThe Washington City Paper; his editor wasDavid Carr.[25] From 2000 to 2007, Coates worked as a journalist with various publications, includingPhiladelphia Weekly,The Village Voice, andTime.[25] His first article forThe Atlantic, "This Is How We Lost to the White Man", aboutBill Cosby and conservatism, started a new, more successful, and more stable phase of his career.[26] The article led to an appointment with a regular column forThe Atlantic, a blog that was popular, influential, and had a high level of community engagement.[25]
Coates became a senior editor atThe Atlantic, for which he wrote feature articles as well as his blog. Topics covered by the blog included politics, history, race, culture, sports, and music. His writings on race, such as his September 2012The Atlantic cover piece "Fear of a Black President"[25][27] and his June 2014 feature "The Case for Reparations",[28] have been especially praised,[29] and won his blog a place on the Best Blogs of 2011 list byTime magazine[30] and the 2012Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism from TheSidney Hillman Foundation.[25][31] His blog was praised for its engaging comments section, which Coates curated and moderated heavily so that "the jerks are invited to leave [and] the grown-ups to stay and chime in".[32][33][34]
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| Washington Journal interview with Coates on "The Case for Reparations", June 13, 2014,C-SPAN |
Coates said he worked on "The Case for Reparations" for almost two years. He had readRutgers University professorBeryl Satter's bookFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America,[35] a history ofredlining that included a discussion of the grassroots organization theContract Buyers League, of which Clyde Ross was a leader.[36][37] The article focused not so much onreparations for slavery as on theinstitutional racism of housing discrimination.[36]
Coates has worked as a guest columnist forThe New York Times, having turned down an offer to become a regular columnist there.[25] He has written forThe Washington Post, theWashington Monthly, andO, The Oprah Magazine.[25]
Coates left his position as a national correspondent forThe Atlantic in 2018 after a decade with the magazine. In a memo to the staff, the editor-in-chief,Jeffrey Goldberg, said: "The last few years for him have been years of significant changes. He's told me that he would like to take some time to reflect on these changes, and to figure out the best path forward, both as a person and as a writer".[4] In November 2025, Coates was announced as a senior staff writer forVanity Fair.[38]
In 2008, Coates publishedThe Beautiful Struggle, a memoir about coming of age in West Baltimore and its effect on him.[39] In the book, he discusses the influence of his fatherW. Paul Coates, a former Black Panther;[40] the prevailing street crime of the era and its effects on his older brother;[6] his own troubled experience attending Baltimore-area schools;[41] and his eventual graduation and enrollment in Howard University.[21] The lack of interpersonal skills and the complexity of Coates's father sheds light on a world of absentee fathers. AsRich Benjamin wrote in a 2016 article inThe Guardian, "Fatherhood is a vexed topic, particularly so for an author such as Coates", and Benjamin continued by saying: "The Beautiful Struggle makes an enduring genre cliche—the father-son relationship—unexpected and new, as well as offering a vital insight into Coates's coming of age as a man and thinker."[42]
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| Presentation by Coates onBetween the World and Me, October 15, 2015,C-SPAN |
Coates's second book,Between the World and Me, written as a letter to his son Samori,[43][44] was published in 2015.[45][46] The title is drawn from aRichard Wright poem of the same name about a black man discovering the site of a lynching and becoming incapacitated with fear, creating a barrier between himself and the world.[47] Coates said that one of the origins of the book was the death of a college friend,Prince Jones, who was shot by police in a case of mistaken identity.[48][49] One of the book's themes is what physically affected African-American lives, such as their bodies being enslaved, violence that came from slavery, and various forms of institutional racism.[15][50][51] The book won the 2015National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2016Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.[52][53] It was 7th onThe Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.[54]
In 2016, Coates wrote the sixth volume ofMarvel Comics'Black Panther series, which teamed him with artistBrian Stelfreeze.[11] Issue #1 went on sale on April 6, 2016, and sold an estimated 253,259 physical copies, the best-selling comic for the month.[55] He also wrote a spinoff ofBlack Panther—Black Panther and the Crew—that ran for six issues[56] before it was canceled.[57] In Coates's first storyline, titledA Nation Under Our Feet, T'Challa faces a popular uprising against his monarchy. At the conclusion of the story,Wakanda is reformed into a constitutional democracy, with the Black Panther continuing as a figurehead king rather than a ruler.[58] This series introduces a new version ofThe Crew, now includingStorm,Luke Cage,Misty Knight, andManifold.[59]
Critic Todd Steven Burroughs called the story "ultra-cerebral" and suggested that some of the previous authors of the character may have found it pretentious.[60] He interprets the story as a fascinatingdeconstruction of Wakanda that removes "what [Coates] might call the intellectual crutch ofBlack nationalism" from the mythos of Black Panther.[61]
In Coates's second storyline,Avengers of the New World, Wakanda's mythology was expanded, showing the panther goddessBast as a member of a pantheon known as The Orisha, the termorisha, aYoruba word for spirit or deity fromYoruba mythology, the pantheon is composed ofEgyptian gods and other origins, such asKokou, an orisha fromBenin.[62]
Coates also wrote a six-issue series calledBlack Panther and the Crew that addresses the problem ofpolice killings and also suggests that the Marvel universe includes a number of previously unknown superheroes from theBandung Conference.[63]
In 2018, Coates announced he would be writing a ninth volume of theCaptain America series, teaming him with artistsLeinil Yu andAlex Ross;[64] in that volume, he depicted the Nazi supervillainRed Skull espousing the writings of the Canadian clinical psychologistJordan Peterson. Peterson said his work was used out of context to portray him unfavorably, calling it an attack on himself.[65]
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| Presentation by Coates onWe Were Eight Years in Power, October 9, 2017,C-SPAN |
Coates's collection of previously published essays on theObama era,We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, was announced byRandom House, with a release date of October 3, 2017.[66] Coates added essays written especially for the book bridging the gaps between the previously published essays, as well as an introduction and an epilogue. The book's title is a quote from 19th-century African-American congressmanThomas E. Miller of South Carolina, who asked why white Southerners hated African Americans after all the good they had done during theReconstruction Era. Coates sees parallels between that period and the Obama presidency.[67]
Coates's first novel,The Water Dancer, was published in 2019. It is a surrealist story set in the time of slavery and centers on a superhuman protagonist, Hiram Walker, who has a photographic memory but cannot remember his mother. Walker is also able to transport people long distances by "conduction", which involves folding the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways.[68] The novel is also anOprah's Book Club selection.[69]
Coates's most recent nonfiction book,The Message, reflects on his visits toDakar, Senegal;Chapin, South Carolina; and theWest Bank andEast Jerusalem.[70] The latter trip left a deep impression on Coates. In a 2024New York magazine profile, he said: "I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel."[10] According to the profile,The Message "lays forth the case that theIsraeli occupation is a moral crime, one that has been all but covered up by the West".[10] The book is dedicated to Coates's sons, Samori and Chris.
Coates was the 2012–2014 MLK visiting scholar for writing at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.[25][71] He joined theCUNY Graduate School of Journalism as its journalist-in-residence in late 2014.[72] In 2017, Coates joined the faculty ofNew York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute as a Distinguished Writer in Residence.[73] In 2021, he joined theHoward University faculty as writer-in-residence in the College of Arts and Sciences and holds the Sterling Brown chair in the English Department.[74]
In 2015–16, Coates was awarded a visiting fellowship at theAmerican Library in Paris, during which he worked on an unpublished novel about an African American from Chicago who moves to Paris.[75]
As of 2019, Coates was working onAmerica in the King Years, a television project withDavid Simon,Taylor Branch, andJames McBride.[76][77] The project is aboutMartin Luther King Jr. and theCivil Rights Movement, based on one of the volumes of the booksAmerica in the King Years by Branch, specificallyAt Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968.[78] The project will be produced byOprah Winfrey and air onHBO.[79]
Coates is set to adaptRachel Aviv's 2014The New Yorker article "Wrong Answer" into a full-length feature film of the same title, starringMichael B. Jordan and directed byRyan Coogler.[80]
In February 2021, it was reported that Coates had been hired to write the script of a newSuperman feature film fromDC Films andWarner Bros. Pictures, withJ. J. Abrams producing, although the project was temporary paused sometime in 2022 afterDavid Zaslav rejected a screenplay that involved the project featuring a black version of Superman fighting injustice during theCivil Rights era. The project resumed development afterJames Gunn agreed to co-leadDC Studios with him offering support to the project and expressed interest in reading the script, although Gunn stated that the film wouldn't be greenlit unless the screenplay was impressive. He later confirmed that it would become aDC Elseworlds film if it was produced and that it was still in development in January 2024.[81][82][83][84][85]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding missing information.(October 2024) |
In an interview withEzra Klein, Coates outlined his analysis that the extent ofwhite identity expression in the United States serves as a critical factor in threat perceptions of certainEuropean Americans and their response to political paradigm shifts related toAfrican Americans, such as the presidency ofBarack Obama.[86]
In an interview withAmy Goodman, Coates criticizedIsrael's behavior toward Palestinians in theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict and the United States' support for Israel. He compared thesegregation between Palestinians andIsraeli settlers in theoccupied Palestinian territories toJim Crow laws in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[87]
On September 30, 2024,CBS Mornings anchorTony Dokoupil discussed the Israeli–Palestinian conflict with Coates during the latter's appearance onCBS Mornings to promote the bookThe Message.[88] Dokoupil implied that the book "reads like the work of an extremist" and questioned Coates about Coates's view ofIsrael's right to exist. Some CBS staffers were angered by the interview, and CBS executive Adrienne Roark said that an internal review found that it did not meet network standards. Dokoupil was defended byParamount chairShari Redstone and other CBS staffers, including chief legal correspondentJan Crawford, who said that a journalist is obliged to ask tough questions when interviewing someone presenting a one-sided view.[89][88][90]
In 2009, Coates lived inHarlem[2] with his wife, Kenyatta Matthews, and son, Samori Maceo-Paul Coates.[25][91][92] His son's name is a reference to three people:Samori Ture, aMandé chief who foughtFrench colonialism, black Cuban revolutionaryAntonio Maceo Grajales, and Coates's father, who was known by his middle name, Paul.[93] Coates met his wife when they were both students atHoward University.[93] He is anatheist and afeminist.[94][95][96] With his family, Coates moved toProspect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, New York, in 2001.[97] The family purchased abrownstone in Prospect Lefferts Gardens in 2016, although they did not move into the brownstone due to media attention that accompanied the purchase.[98] In 2016, Coates was made a member ofPhi Beta Kappa atOregon State University.[99]
The name derives from the Egyptian name ofNubia,nḥsy, for which the vowels are unknown.
I think those who perceive a threat symbolically from Barack Obama are kind of correct because kids are going to grow up and they're going to remember as a great authority figure this guy who was African American. And if it matters that all the other presidents before him were white, then it has to matter that he is black. So ifwhite identity is important to you, then that might be threatening to you.
3. Contemporary feminist critiques (40s–60s) would be awesome, but basically taking what I can get now. #twitterstorians
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