The New York Times' David Brooks, in his latest column, reviews a book - Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. Coates describes being a black person in the U.S. and he doesn't like the experience one bit.
I haven't read the book and probably won't, but I trust Brooks has captured its essence fairly. If Coates truly feels as negative about his U.S. experience as Brooks reports, one wonders why he stays?
We have no Berlin wall, no ban on going expat or emigrating to wherever. Every year a few hundred people completely renounce their U.S. citizenship and become, perforce, citizens somewhere else.
Could it be that, terrifying as the U.S. seems to Coates, everywhere else seems worse? That is hard to credit, but not impossible.
Perhaps Coates truly believes there is no place on this planet where he would be treated as he should be. Could he be correct? If so, his problem is bigger than the U.S., it's world-wide.
