A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Reddit, killing some time before doing whatever it was I should have been doing, when I came across some candid, first-person video of black Americans involved in a brawl in a Walmart. There was much pulling of hair, breasts popping out of tank tops, sucker punches, etc. It went on and on. These types of videos abound online, generally with some line of thought in the comments section that goes something like “What are these people doing? And why? What is wrong with these people?” My suggestion to the Reddit group thread was to go read this book for some answers.
As described multiple times and in multiple ways in Coate’s childhood memoir, when your very survival depends on your ability to pull together your crew, have each others’ backs, not back down, and not turn the other cheek, this is (one of the ways) that scenes like the Walmart brawl can come to be. If you’ve ever wondered how the conditions came to be that would foster such an environment, go read this book.
And if you aren’t keen on reading the book (or even if you are), I’d also recommend watching HBO’s The Wire. With the book set during Ta-Nehisi’s childhood in the mid to late 80’s Baltimore, just as the crack epidemic blossomed in black neighborhoods, The Wire follows black Baltimore through the early 2000’s. Just as Baltimore was clawing its way out of the crack fiasco, the heroin epidemic landed in town. Between Coates and the HBO series, the how and why of Walmart brawl videos comes into focus.
Is any of this uplifting? Yeah, in a testimony to human grit and determination sort of way, I guess. But also… yeah.
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