“If you see black identity as you see southern identity, or Irish identity, or Italian identity–not as a separate trunk, but as a branch of the American tree, with roots in the broader experience–then you understand that the particulars of black culture are inseparable from the particulars of the country.”
She is not a victim of poverty, but a product of a “proto-middle-class group of blacks who held the community together.” She can remember her South Side Chicago neighborhood with pride and nostalgia, just as other ethnic groups can remember neighborhoods they may have left behind in their moves to the suburbs. In his essay on Michelle Obama, “American Girl,” he describes her story less as a distinctively black story than as part of a common American story. From that perspective, it seemed possible that the success of one man really could alter history, or even end it.” Looking back on that phase now, he says, “In those days I imagined racism as a tumor that could be isolated and removed from the body of America, not as a pervasive system both native and essential to that body. At first, he expresses some optimism that Barack and Michelle can rise above the racial divide and help bring about a post-racial society.
One of the areas in which Coates’s views have evolved is the nature and significance of the Obama presidency. Sometimes Coates uses his introductory remarks to express doubts about what he has previously written, especially in the earliest essays.
This format requires the reader to work a little to understand the author’s current thinking. Coates introduces each essay with a “notes” section written for this book. We Were Eight Years in Power is a collection of essays published by Coates over the course of the Obama presidency. We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.
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