Between the World and Me: Empathy Is a Privilege [TheAtlantic.com]

Samantha Sangenito 9/29/154:00 AM

Don’t despair. According to Ta-Nehisi Coates, that’s what President Obama told him at the end of a White House meeting in 2013. Coates had criticized the president on his blog for favoring the rhetoric of black self-help over an honest conversation about structural racism. Having written and reflected extensively on race, Obama made it plain to Coates that he took exception to the critique, ending what must have been a tense conversation with his brief words of encouragement. The president reportedly took along Coates’s new book on his recent trip to Martha’s Vineyard. If he found time to read it, he knows the younger man didn’t take his advice to heart.

[For more of this story, written by John Paul Rollert, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...-a-privilege/407647/]

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