The Beautiful Struggle

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  By then I had met the great lion, Afeni Shakur, most famous of the Panther 21. She’d moved to Baltimore some years earlier, and among the Conscious she was legend. Afeni was an old comrade of my father’s, but when the Panthers went to war with one another, they came down on different sides. They had comrades who’d killed their comrades, but, still in all, through another decade, the human touch pulled them back together.

  I had heard the tales, and measured against the everyday sameness of my father, Afeni was large. But the legend was human—she smiled when she saw me, cooked spaghetti, and found my baby brother amusing. Her son and daughter spent time among us. Bill and Tupac traded lyrics. I took Sekyiwa to see Snow White. But even then their clan was glamorous and of that final faction that held out a Marxist hope of the empire’s ruin.

  Here is how it all came together: Bill, Sekyiwa, all of us, we knew who we were, in the rote manner of knowing where two streets intersect. But anything more than that, a feeling for why any kid would grab a black beret, guns, and law books was only partially there. I was slowly coming to a dawning, and then one afternoon Sekyiwa and me sat on my bedroom floor pumping “Rebel Without a Pause”—“Hard—my calling card / Recorded and ordered—supporter of Chesimard.”

  Sekyiwa looked up. That’s my aunt. Rather her aunt’s slave name. But Sekyiwa only partially understood how the name Chesimard had come to Chuck D.

  The next day I went to my father for the story. The story was all of two sentences, and then Dad reaching up to his bookshelf for the Knowledge of Self. On the cover, her face was off center. She wore an Afro and glanced over her shoulder. On the cover was her name—Assata Shakur. I’d started down this path a few months earlier, burrowing through African Glory, a book my father republished. But now I truly became a seeker. This was not my father’s story and then it was; for there, inside the tale of one Panther, was the story of them all. The cowboy impulse took me first—the thought that I, for all my awkward hands and Krazy-Glued glasses, was rebel blood; and that thought filled me with a stupid, childish pride. But all of us need myths. And here out West, where we all had lost religion, had taken to barbarian law, what would be our magic? What would be sacred words?

  I took to Consciousness because there was nothing else, no other sorcery to counter death for suede, leather, and gold. My father bet his life on change. For the glory of ex-cons, abandoned mothers, and black boys lost, he had made peace with his end. I was a coward, mostly concerned with getting from one day to the next. How could I square my young life with this lineage? What would I say to the theology of my father, which held that the Conscious Act was worth more than sex, bread, or even drawn breath?

  There were no answers in the broader body, where the best of us went out like Sammy Davis and spoke like there had never been war. I will avoid the cartoons—the hard rocks loved Billy Ocean, Luther was classic, and, indeed, I did sit in my seventh period music class eyeing Arletta Holly and humming “Lost in Emotion.” But you must remember the era. Niggers were on MTV in lipstick and curls, extolling their exotic quadroons, big-upping Fred Astaire, and speaking like the rest of us didn’t exist. I’m talking S-curls and sequins, Lionel Richie dancing on the ceiling. I’m talking the corporate pop of Whitney, and Richard Pryor turning into the toy. Was like Parliament had never happened, like James Brown had never hit. All our champions were disconnected and dishonored, handing out Image Awards, while we bled in the streets.

  But now the word turned Conscious, De La refused to scowl and Stetsasonic shouted across the Atlantic gap. First, Chuck, then KRS, and then everywhere you looked MCs were reaching for Garvey’s tricolor, shouting across the land, self-destruction was at an end, that the logic of white people’s ice had failed us, that the day of awareness was now.

  Across the land, the masses fell sway to the gospel. Old Panthers came out in camouflage to salute Chuck D. Cold killers would get a taste of “Raise the Flag,” drop their guns, and turn vegan. Brothers quoted Farrakhan with wine on their breath. Harlots performed salaat, covered their blond french rolls in mud cloth and royal kente. Dark girls slashed their Apollonia posters, burned their green contacts, cut their hair, threw in braids. Gold was stashed in the top dresser drawer. The fashion became your father’s dashiki, beads, and Africa medallions.

  The music boosted the words of my father, though he only partially understood. He was frustrated by me, even as my Consciousness bloomed. He kept a notebook chronicling my slow progress: Ta-Nehisi came to work ten minutes late today. He then spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom. He worked for ten minutes. He then spent fifteen more minutes in the bathroom. He came out and played with Menelik. He was trying to shape us before the winter age of eighteen, and change, though coming, was never fast enough.

  But we were changing. Big Bill was touched by the transformation, trading the everyday struggle for the Struggle. The same music that pulled me out of my fog, left him reeling. Again and again he went back to the lab, reveled in mourning bass lines, and crafted sweeping images of the great Satan’s fall. They added Joey on the keyboard, changed the group’s name to the Foundation, and switched their sound until it was holy and urging rebellion. I played his tapes along with all the others, and began to understand.

  I was twelve, but when I heard “Lyrics of Fury”—“A horn if you want the style I possess / I bless the child, the earth, the gods, and bomb the rest”—I put away childish things, went to the notebook, and caged myself between the blue lines. In the evenings, that summer, I would close the door, lay across the bed, and put pen to pad.

  At first I felt the words of others pulsing through me—my reforming brother, the esoteric allusions of The God, the philosophy of KRS-One—and in truth, in many years of trying, I never completely touched my own. My hand was awkward; and when I rhymed, the couplets would not adhere, punch lines crashed into bars, metaphors were extended until they derailed off beat. I was unfit, but still I had at it for days, months, and ultimately years. And the more ink I dribbled onto the page, the more I felt the blessing of the Jedi order of MCs. I wrote every day that summer, rhymed over B-side instrumentals, until my pen was a Staff of the Dreaded Streets (plus five chance to banish fools on sight) and my flow, though flicted and disjointed, a Horn of Ghetto Blasting. The words were all braggadocios, but when done with the recital, even though I was alone, I felt bigger.

  I’d walk outside, and my head was just a little higher, because if you do this right, if you claim to be that nigger enough, though you battle only your bedroom mirror, there is a part of you that believes. That was how I came to understand, how I came to know why all these brothers wrote and talked so big. Even the Knowledged feared the streets. But the rhyme pad was a spell book—it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. That summer, I knew what Fruitie was trying to say, that when under the aegis of hip-hop, you never lived alone, you never walked alone.

  I harried Big Bill until he took me up to Wabash to spit a sloppy verse. Marlon had cordoned off his father’s basement. He presided over the 1200s, spinning breakbeats. Joey played with the keys until he found a riff he liked. I just sat on the couch going over my rhymes, while Bill stood blessing the mic behind what was once a bar.

  By then I had raided the tall box of my father’s old collection of Black Panther newspapers, devoured them during off-hours in Dad’s office, and scribbled allusions to them in my book of rhymes. Dad no longer had to assign readings. My comics collections lapsed. Cartoons felt nonessential. I plunged into my father’s books of Consciousness that he’d shelved in nearly every room in the house. That was how I found myself, how I learned my name. All my life Dad had told me what I was, that Ta-Nehisi was a nation, the ancient Egyptian name for the mighty Nubians to the south, but I could not truly hear. Where I’m from, Tamika is an American name. But Ta-Nehisi was hyphened and easily bent to the whims of anyone who knew the rudiments of the dozens. But seeing that handle among the books of glorious Africa, I knew why I c
ould never be Javonne or Pete, that my name was a nation, not a target, not something for teachers to trip over but the ancient Nubians and the glorious Egyptians of the 25th.

  I felt a light flowing through me. I awoke, excited, hungry to understand this immediate world, how we had all fallen to this. Now I knew Lemmel in a fuller sense, that it was troubled because all things worth anything ultimately are. That my world, though mired in disgrace, was more honorable than anything, was more beautiful than the exotic counties way up Reisterstown and Liberty Road. All the Mondawmins of the world—with their merchant vultures, wig stores, sidewalk sales, sub shops, fake gold, bastard boys, and wandering girls—were my only home. That was Knowledge and Consciousness joined, and when I grabbed the mic, that was the alchemy I brought forth. When I was done, I emerged taller, my voice was deeper, my arms were bigger, ancestors walked with me, and there in my hands, behold, Shango’s glowing ax.

  Big Bill was gone much more now. He’d done a little better in school, and Dad rewarded him with leave time at his mother’s. No more veggie sausage. No more books. No more yard work. He yelled, I’m out of here! as he walked out the door. More frequently I found myself alone. Menelik was four and not allowed to play beyond our brick front porch. My brothers Malik and John were entering their last years of high school. So I went out on my own, and in search of whatever else I did not know, pedaled my double-gooseneck dirt bike up Burlief to the alley and observed.

  The boys would be picking up for three on three, and I was always picked last or not picked at all. On the short granite wall, off to the side, I’d sit next to the boom box, rapping and pantomiming along. I had spent so much time in my room that by now I had the lyrics, pacing, and breath control down. I could untangle the meaning and many syllables of “The Symphony” or deliver the sick monotone of “I’m Housing.” This came to be known, among the boys my age, as a talent and they would gather around and request various renditions. Then we’d spend the next few hours debating Kane versus The God.

  And then there was basketball, my people’s national pastime. I was more enthralled by the violent grace of Steve Atwater and Ronnie Lott. I’d joined the cult of Len Bias, but after he fell—dead from a coke-induced heart attack at twenty-three—I left the rock alone. But Magic and Kareem were still paragons in the alley. Niggers would throw the blind pass or sky hook and call out their names like a spell that could conjure the proper spin on the ball.

  There was no magic for me. I couldn’t take two dribbles without a carry or walk. My jumper careened over backboards. My foul shots were all left of the rim. That was a cause for much laughter and jokes. But so was something about everyone, in everything else. Most of us had something wrong, and all it took was the right Larry Young, David Pridgett, or Big Bill to call out your girl feet, enlarged nose, busted shape up and summarily cut you to pieces. What I came to understand was the great democracy in this, and that what mattered to these boys was not so much what you came to the street with but how you carried what you were given.

  So I took control. I stopped letting Dad cut my hair and instead took seven bones to the barbershop over at Mondawmin, avoiding old men and women, and came back with a tight fade. I stood out in the alley, called next, chose up, snatched boards and kicked it back out, put a hand up, and moved with my man. I talked less and watched more. I assessed the mood of every area I walked through, then altered my bearing to the action which seemed most likely to unfold. I got down with the local clique. Leroy, who saved me from the Hilton-Beys, was the nominal head. There was Bo, who lived further up Liberty, close to Community College of Baltimore. Brock and Dante, the lucky ones, whose parents sent them off to private school. There were two other half brothers, whose names I will not mention, because we thought their mother was on crack. They lived in a large, crumbling house. Rats creeped out the back. Mostly they all were the products of single parents, and in the most tragic category—black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world.

  But from them I acquired large portions of the Knowledge. We set out into Baltimore. We’d catch the bus up to Reisterstown for the movies, and bust out the No Home Training, laughing and talking louder than normal, in that stupid teenage manner. We’d catch the subway downtown to yell rude things at honeys near the harbor. I became secure in the numbers, and noticed that if I walked like the boys around me, smiled only when essential, it all became a little easier. Over at Mondawmin, soldiers caught solo would see our numbers, and though we were still a nameless crew without a rep, they turned and headed the other way. Still, I was a stepchild here. I never pulled tool and went Larry Davis. I had no ill visions of Nino Brown. But now I knew that this was not chaos, that the streets were a country and like all others, the streets had anthems, culture, and law. I was not bred a patriot. But that summer I became a soldier. In September, I stepped off the porch with a new swing and bop. Lemmel, fed up with brawls and stickup kids, mandated uniforms and transparent knapsacks. I bought a blue net bag, which was a statement of cool among us, placed a thin canvas binder inside, then slung it over my shoulder. The declaration of uniforms made all gear equal, except for kicks. I turned to my mother, who was never adverse to the style of the day, and emerged in Travel Fox and Rockports.

  Plus I was not alone. We would start off only five or six deep, trooping down Tioga, down Gwynns Falls, and then up the grass hill. But all of us had boys from other districts, and as we traveled you would see a homeboy from summer camp or elementary, whose clique would be assimilated, and in this way we would expand until, atop Dukeland hill, dap was exchanged, and we were many deep. We’d front at the top of the concrete steps, talking shit, cultivating rage until we were ice grilled, until our movements were warning flares and bared teeth.

  Then I was alone again, because initially none of my crew was gifted and talented. I soloed into the next level of the Marshall Team—8-16, fewer boys this time, and that meant trouble. Our army was smaller now and could not tolerate pacifists. I remembered who I’d been just a year earlier, spaced out and ready to run, and wanted no part of it. I thought of walking in, smacking the first fool I saw, and taking a suspension like a badge. But that was just the voice of my intelligent armor. I was still a dreamer, if now repressed, was still cupcakes and comic books at the core.

  My teachers were more intense, because this was the first big year of our lives, the year that decided which high school we’d get into. In English class, we sat in rows five deep. My counselor Mr. Webster—white, bespectacled, and kind—handed out booklets filled with all our possibilities. Inside were the descriptions of all of Baltimore’s magnet schools, their profiles, requirements, and varying spheres of specialty, running the gamut from music to English to ROTC to engineering and math. I was, still am, a scientist at heart, and aimed for Baltimore Polytech, best school in the city and home to all our future Garrett Morgans and Charles Drews. But there were bigger reasons—in all things, our first concern was security and what we saw in the citywide schools was not great academics but cessation of gun law, a place of reprieve if only because everyone there had come by choice. The classroom came second.

  In the new year we shared our gym period with our inverse, 8-07. They walked in with a mean slouch and sat on the other side of the gym bleachers. There was not one girl among them—they were thirty deep, bigger, seemed that they had failed many grades many times. I just sat back silent, Nobody Smiling, told myself I was not afraid. We shared lockers and so as soon as I saw them, I knew 8-07 would try to test us in the locker room. My buddy Jermaine pulled me off to the side and gave me the briefing—Tana, you better not go out like no punk.

  I was one of the tallest boys in my class by now, and had acquired enough Knowledge to know that 8-07 would step to me first. My height made me the symbolic head of our squad, even if I had sought no such title. After class, while I got dressed in the locker room, I was awaiting one of the big kids, one of the ones who seemed that he
should be off enlisting or driving a truck. Instead, they sent a bizarro, a tall awkward freak with thick glasses and an unfortunate head. He was not a natural, and loped around the locker room like he’d spent the previous year dusting off his jeans and taping his glasses. I understood his bearing, how feeling like you’d do anything to avoid a repeat makes you snarl a little quicker than what, even by the standards of the streets, is reasonable.

  But this kid had gotten it worse.

  They gathered and he advanced my way. I’d been preparing for this all summer. In my mind I heard the 808 kick and did not speak but raised my dukes. This was my first scrap, the first time I’d felt anger as lighter fluid. This kid was disrespect, an attempt to show that the weakest among them could dominate the biggest among us. And, too, there was the fact that in his weakness I saw a self that I wanted to erase. I swung.

  What followed was not glorious and triumphant but a blind rolling around, many badly aimed blows striking steel lockers. It ended in mutual choke holds. Our camps pulled us apart. 8-07 grabbed their net bags and filed out before us.

  It wasn’t long before Big Bill was duly deposited back to Tioga. That was the pattern of things. He would steady his ship for a while, earn a reprieve, then return to his earlier self and be condemned to Dad’s care. Linda, Dad, and Ma were all trying to drag him toward the promised land. He was still caught in between, juggling the new Consciousness with everything the streets had told him since he first stood on a corner. Either way, he was about the girls, the mic, and the need to be loved by immediate people, places, and things.