The Message

In The Message, Coates explores the impact of historical narratives on the lived realities of individuals, communities, and nations. In “Journalism Is Not a Luxury,” he focuses on how Black American history impacts the work that he and his students do as writers and journalists. In “On Pharaohs,” he focuses on how communal history impacts personal identity, and in “The Gigantic Dream,” he focuses on the role of nationalism in the stories that states tell about themselves.

In “Journalism Is Not a Luxury,” Coates tells his students that they belong to a literary tradition rooted in the history of Black Americans, a people “whose humanity is ever in doubt” (4). This history means that students must always be aware that their work is “in service to that larger emancipatory mandate” (4). That “emancipatory mandate” is to reveal how dominant groups have constructed historical narratives to maintain their control over the oppressed. To be a writer is to construct counternarratives that allow people to see the world as it is. If writers can be successful in that task, they will have the power to “save the world” (20).

In “On Pharaohs,” Coates thinks more broadly about the impact of history and historical narratives on Black American identity. In traveling to Africa, Coates discovered powerful historical narratives that enabled those responsible for slavery to rationalize their enslavement of human beings. This racist discourse shows the power of historical narratives to underwrite their authors’ grossly unjust acts against others. At the same time, Coates uncovers a long history of Black writers and thinkers critiquing and undermining these false narratives. This “vindicationist tradition” shows that Black writers and thinkers actively constructed counternarratives that granted Black Americans a more glorious African past and endowed Black Americans with a dignity not possible under racist historical narratives (33).

After encountering actual Senegalese people, all Coates is able to say definitively is that one should be suspicious of any historical narrative that doesn’t match facts on the ground. Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the narrative of “Redemption” and the defeat of the South as a noble “Lost Cause” are such powerful narratives that the powers-that-be would do anything—including banning books that counter the narrative of a glorious Southern past—to maintain that false narrative. Historical narrative is dangerous when it relies on myths.

“The Gigantic Dream” shows the impact of the construction of historical narratives on a national level. Coates reviews the literature of Zionism and historical narratives associated with the founding of Israel as a nation. He juxtaposes those historical narratives with what he sees on his travels and discovers that Israel’s construction of its history has a negative impact on its present, contributing to the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people. Ultimately, historical narratives, even ones not rooted in specific facts, are dangerous and powerful tools for determining what constitutes reality.