Quote-a-Day... 8-16-16

From Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. As you probably know already, this is a collection of essays addressed to his 15 year old son.

That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free. The men who had left his body in the street like some awesome declaration of their inviolable power would never be punished. It was not my expectation that anyone would ever be punished. But you were young and still believed. You stayed up till 11 P.M. that night, waiting for the announcement of an indictment, and when instead it was announced that there was none you said, “I’ve got to go,” and you went into your room, and I heard you crying. I came in five minutes after, and I didn’t hug you, and I didn’t comfort you, because I thought it would be wrong to comfort you. I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it. I tell you now that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life, and the pursuit of this question, I have found, ultimately answers itself.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi (2015-07-14). Between the World and Me (pp. 11-13). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

I am simply listening at this point. My lips are sealed, and I'm trying to read with my eyes, ears, heart and mind wide open.