Chapter 2 Summary

Chapter 2 begins with an epigraph, an excerpt from the poem “Ka?Ba” (1972) by the American writer Amiri Baraka. The poem’s title almost certainly alludes to the Kaaba, the large stone “cube” that is the focal point inside the Grand Mosque at Mecca in Saudi Arabia, regarded by Muslims as the holiest place on Earth. In the poem, Baraka celebrates the beauty of Black culture.

Coates recalls that, shortly before Samori’s birth, he was pulled over by an officer from the police force of Prince George’s (PG’s) County, Maryland. At the time, PG police officers were known for firing their guns with terrifying frequency. Soon after, Coates reads a newspaper account of a Howard student’s violent killing by PG County police. To his shock and sorrow, Coates finds out that the victim is Prince Jones. Inexplicably, an undercover officer had tailed Prince from Maryland into northern Virginia, where Prince was shot yards from his fiancee’s home. The police officer, who was Black, claimed that he took action because Prince had tried to run over him with his jeep. Despite this claim’s unlikelihood, Coates feels that prosecutors will likely exonerate the officer.

Continuing the plot thread exploring his relationship with Prince, Coates tells how he and his wife attend his memorial service. Coates reflects that Prince was killed not so much by a single officer as “by his country and all the fears that have marked it from birth.” For Coates, Prince Jones’ death served as a catalyst for expanding his interest and work in journalism. In the summer of 2001, Coates and his family move to New York City, where they witness the September 11 terrorist attacks. In Manhattan, Coates observes a liveliness similar to the atmosphere he had so enjoyed at Howard. Yet there are similarities with the Baltimore setting, too, relating to fear and conflict. Coates illustrates the latter with an anecdote recounting his anger when an impatient white woman pushes toddler Samori in a movie theater in the Upper West Side.

Coates next turns to his interest (he calls it an “obsession”) in the Civil War. He tells of a visit with Samori to a battlefield in Petersburg, Virginia. Coates points out that, when the Civil War began in 1861, the “stolen bodies” of the enslaved were worth four billion dollars, more than all the other American assets at the time, combined. Coates admonishes his son to remember that American destruction of the Black body is part of the country’s heritage. He uses images of “below” and “above” to illustrate this idea. People like the Coates family are the “below” of the nation, propping up the people “above” who, whether they are rich or poor, “[need] to believe themselves white.” The only compensation Coates can offer is the reminder that the struggle must continue, since it is the only action that endows a person with “an honorable and sane life.” Study and struggle, Coates tells his son, are what have made his life happy.

In the concluding pages, Coates reflects on a further expansion of his viewpoint triggered by his wife’s dreams of Paris, which she visits for her 30th birthday. Following a trip there by Coates, alone, the two visit Paris together. French resistance to racism offers a contrast to the hypocrisies of the “Dreamers”—the materialistic, exclusionary, bigoted Americans who close the door on Black people whenever and wherever they can.

Chapter 2 Analysis

Coates uses the seemingly minor plot point of being pulled over by the Prince George’s County police as a subtle foreshadowing of the shocking murder of Prince Jones. The officer who killed Jones had been periodically cited and reprimanded for misconduct. Coates will follow up on this narrative strand in Chapter 3, which focuses on Prince’s bereaved mother, Dr. Mable Jones. The account of Prince’s death in Chapter 2 acquires special poignance and significance, considering Coates’ words of praise and affection for him in Chapter 1.

The Coates family’s move to New York City expands on Coates’ appreciation for cosmopolitanism. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the well-nigh universal hostility toward, and destruction of, black bodies. The anecdote about the white lady in the movie theater is both suspenseful and emotional, illustrating the vulnerability and anxiety Coates feels as a Black man. His descriptive imagery is forceful: she invokes her “right over the body of my son.” Once again, Coates’ concern with the protection of the Black body is prominent.

The pages Coates devotes to the Civil War also feature his concern with the Black body. When Coates refers to “our stolen bodies,” he captures a stark reality of enslavement. The bodies of Black slaves were not regarded as the possession of those human beings. They literally belonged to the slaves’ owners. Thus, they could be bought, sold, used, abused and commodified. Coates points out that slaves were the most valuable of all the nation’s assets at the outset of the Civil War in 1861—including industries, railroads, workshops and factories. Black bodies produced America’s most valuable product, cotton, which was the nation’s primary export.

Despite the outrageous human rights violations inflicted by slavery, the Civil War engendered a series of romantic and religious myths, especially about the South. Chief among these was the “lie of innocence,” which Coates links to the illusion of “the Dream.” Fortified by Hollywood and numerous novels and television series, such as The Dukes of Hazzard, this comfortable narrative obscured the horrendous truth that destruction of the black body became entwined with American heritage. In scalding prose, Coates writes of “the body that fed the tobacco” and “the blood that watered the cotton.” “These were the first fruits,” he says, “of the American garden.” Coates is dismantling the religious idea of reward in the afterlife for enduring hardship. For Coates, the body is all there is—so, effectively, it is the soul.

The accounts of Paris provide a notable contrast in tone with the author’s reflections on the Civil War and its carnage. Coates acknowledges that the French capital was a refuge for Richard Wright and James Baldwin, both of whom lived in Paris for extended periods. But he does not think of these authors much here; instead, Coates reflects on the release from fear Paris offers him.