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Ta-Nehisi CoatesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
We Were Eight Years in Power is an essay collection, but the presence of Coates’s eight introductory notes and frequent use of autobiographical detail in his writing make Coates a dynamic figure in the book. Over the eight years of the Obama presidency, Coates evolves from struggling writer to Black public intellectual and respected writer.
Early in the collection, Coates presents himself as the child of parents who embraced Black nationalism and who insisted that he learn to stand up for himself as he confronted bullies in West Baltimore. Coates later represents himself as a budding writer who reveled in the defiant and irreverent voices of hip-hop artists of the 1980s. Coates spent some time as a student at Howard University, where he was exposed to formal study of Black writers such as James Baldwin. These early experiences were pivotal in shaping Coates into a person and artist who embraced a pessimistic view of America’s racial politics, who valued his autonomy, and who understood himself to be part of an artistic tradition that required skillful, beautiful writing created in the service of one’s vision and the needs of the Black community.
From 2008 to 2015, Coates’s self-representation is one of a man who had a steep ascent that Obama’s presidency accelerated. In the early essays in the collection, Coates is a down-and-out writer who is deferent and not particularly confident in launching critiques at respected Black figures like Bill Cosby and Barack Obama. By the fifth year of the Obama presidency, Coates begins to experience some financial stability and becomes a person whose work on The Atlantic and his blog have made him more confident in his critiques of America and the president.
With the publication of Between the World and Me and “The Case for Reparations,” Coates becomes a highly respected, award-winning writer who is financially stable, recognized as a peer of cultural observers such as Toni Morrison, and whose intellectual depth is such that he has the enviable problem of fending off requests for comments on topics related to Black American culture. The Coates who appears in the final pieces of the collection is able to both criticize and be proud of Obama, and who has the esteem needed to get access to Obama for a coveted assignment. Although Coates would likely reject attempts to cast his story as a rags-to-riches one, his unlikely success illustrates the impact of both luck and talent on the success of the writer.
Coates uses Barack Obama’s presidency as a frame for his essay collection. Over the course of the collection, Coates’s representation of Obama evolves from a person who makes Black Americans feel proud to one whose seeming inability to overcome his trust in White innocence prevents him from being effective on issues that are important to Black Americans.
In the Introduction, Coates describes Obama as a symbol of good Black government and Black excellence. In “The Legacy of Malcolm X,” Coates represents Obama as a person who embodies an old Black political tradition of service to one’s racial community as a means of self-fashioning. In “Fear of a Black President,” Coates is less deferential and complicates Obama’s representation by pointing out how his belief in White innocence is a political handicap. Obama’s aspirational rhetoric seems to Coates to be a vision of America that prevents Obama from answering the realpolitik of his opponents with the same.
By the sixth year of the Obama presidency, Coates’s representation of Obama is still more complicated. When Coates describes Obama in the last few pieces in the book, he suggests a man who is accomplished, extraordinary, and much beloved by Black Americans who admire his almost perfect representation of Black excellence. In “My President Was Black,” however, Coates represents Obama as a man and politician rather than a symbol and an idol who exists outside the realities of politics. This shift in attitude is also a means by which Coates represents his own credibility as a writer.
Moynihan, a 1960s White liberal associated with both the Johnson and the Nixon presidencies, appears in “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” Coates represents Moynihan as a well-intentioned intellectual whose failure to account for the enduring plunder of Black Americans led him to blame Black Americans—particularly Black women and the families they headed—as the source of a pathology that would doom Black Americans to underclass status despite civil rights legislation. Coates’s story of the evolution of Moynihan from child of a single mother to White liberal to apologist and part-architect of the carceral state allows Coates to argue that even White liberals have contributed to the failure of American democracy on matters of race.
Donald Trump, who succeeded Obama as president of the United States, is present in the Introduction to the collection, “Fear of a Black President,” “My President Was Black,” and the Epilogue. Coates represents Trump as an extreme incarnation of White privilege, a loud, bigoted man whose only qualifications for the presidency are his Whiteness, his wealth, and his willingness to violate norms of civility. In the Epilogue, Coates describes these qualities as ones that make Trump a demagogue and a danger to the nation and world.
James Baldwin, whom Coates studied in earnest during his years at Howard University, was an influential Black writer whose mastery of his craft and commitment to truth telling inspired Coates to become a writer in that tradition. Coates notes that Baldwin exercised control over his self-representation to gain greater influence on the conversations that were important to him. Coates calls this public persona “Baldwin the Legend” (219). Coates is not interested in emulating this figure nor his takedowns of the prior generation of Black writers.
Malcolm X, a convict turned member of the Nation of Islam, appears in “The Legacy of Malcolm X.” Coates represents Malcolm X as a man whose insistence on Black self-love and self-fashioning made him a significant figure during his political career and after his death. Coates contrasts the myth of Malcolm X as a symbol of Black defiance and rejection of White allies with the post-Nation of Islam Malcolm X who was more interested in cross-racial encounters and Black accountability for crimes within the community. This move—contrasting the persona with the real person—is a consistent one in Coates’s approach to representation of famous Black figures.
In 2001, Prince Jones, a close friend of Ta-Nehisi Coates, died during a traffic stop after police shot him multiple times. He was unarmed. Coates does not substantially develop Jones as a figure in this book, but Jones is significant because his death was a pivotal moment in Coates’s decision to write about race and his understanding of the dangers of the carceral state to Black America.
Coates profiles Michelle Obama, first lady of Barack Obama, in “American Girl” and mentions her several other times as a symbol of Black excellence. In “American Girl,” Coates describes Mrs. Obama as a Black person whose racial identity is grounded in an assumption of its Americanness, one that does not require code switching because she has not internalized the idea of Black identity as somehow inferior.
There are two representations of Bill Cosby in the essay collection. In “Notes from the First Year,” there is the fallen idol whose sexual predation makes him a reviled figure. In “This Is How We Lost to the White Man,” there is the more beloved Cosby whose turn as respected actor and comedian eventually gives him a platform to embrace an ahistorical Black conservatism. This Cosby is harshly critical of Black Americans, and Coates represents him as well-intentioned and worthy of respect but deeply flawed.
Coates’s father embraced Black nationalism as a Black Panther is the 1960s, and his activism brought him to the attention of the FBI. Coates’s father was the first major influence in Coates’s life to teach him about the harshness of life for Black Americans. William Coates’s ideas about the importance of strong public presentation as well as his financial support of his son during Ta-Nehisi’s early career are key elements that enabled Ta-Nehisi Coates to be successful.
Coates’s mother appears in “The Legacy of Malcolm X” as a Black woman who evolves from straightening her hair in a bid for Black respectability to embracing her natural texture to represent her recognition of how worthy of love Black people and Black culture are.
Matthews appears in the collection as a person who inspires Coates to embrace his desire to emulate James Baldwin and whose efforts to pursue her own dreams of community work and medical school push Coates to make a financial and artistic success of himself.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates