The Beautiful Struggle

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Back at the Mecca, Big Bill spent more time managing his herb stash than his accumulating studies. He was completely unprepared. He’d been dragged through his school years by parents, and the occasional teacher with whom he shared some mutual interest beyond the syllabus. But the study-sense that by then was natural to so many students was nowhere within him, and now unmoored and unchained from Dad’s discipline, he was free to indulge all the hedonism his parents had kept at bay.

  By second semester he’d assembled a collection of brothers who reflected the old West Baltimore values of loyalty and furious fists. All around him were people swimming in light, rising above the plagues that afflicted the untalented 90 percent. They were fifth-generation black bourgeoisie, project prodigies straight out Cabrini, Merit scholars waving off Harvard, progeny of black flight starving for a cocoon of their own kind. And while big trumpets heralded our Fall, these kids presented beats and rhymes to let the world know that the struggle was epic and continued, that the strugglers were immortal. Slowly Bill was creeping up on Consciousness again, seemed on the verge of awakening, but mostly he was trapped in the smaller war, the skirmish for identity and respect.

  His weekend nights were aimless. He would sit up drinking with his New York homeys, David and Mitch, and spark up a session. One night it was all dying down. David called his girlfriend and a dude picked up the phone. Everyone was hot with liquor, and in the background Bill and Mitch started blowing up this kid’s head, goading him and pushing him deeper until he ended the phone call with a Nigger I’m on my way, you better not even be in the same hemisphere when I step up.

  David gets off the phone. He is not a big or foolish man, and, if left solo, it would have died there. Words thrown into the air, while better sense prevails. Already he is shrinking back. But Bill and Mitch are in his ear, breaking out with the Nigger represent, and You ain’t no punk, inflating him until they are piling into David’s car and heading to his girlfriend’s dorm.

  In those days, the Howard Plaza Towers were hot. Dorms built in the style of apartments, they had kitchens, private bathrooms, and sleeping quarters. Outside there was a small plaza, and on weekends Howard students, drawn by the air of lush life, would assemble along the shallow wall, milling and waiting on mischief. Bill and his two friends parked out front, and beelined through the plaza, shit-talking the whole way. They flashed their ID to security and took the elevator up. Of course the dude was a man in his own right and was there waiting, and also more than what they’d pictured in all their big talk and ego.

  Nigger, he was stacked like Tony Atlas, I’m talking circa ’76, with the Q-Dog brand on his shoulder. He was down with the Omegas, known as an order of enlightened thugs and collegiate brawlers.

  David shrank back at the size of his opposition, and the Greek talisman burned into his flesh, which meant that help was always and already en route. He slipped into double-talk, got to stuttering, and light in his voice. Bill was in the back, shaking his head, and for the honor of his small unknown clan, he stepped up. At first he tried defusion, but the ruckus had recruited instigators and other boys who couldn’t find a party that night or had struck out with some chick. I told you Big Bill was rarely scared, would not back down, and now faced off, not even with the original adversary but just some other kid who wandered in thinking a brawl would make his Friday complete.

  They took it outside, but by now phone calls had been placed, and the opposition was deep, hopping out of Cherokees and removing their jewels. Bill and his crew were surrounded in the plaza, three against the horde, when Mitch yelled to Bill—Yo, end this. Bill reached in his dip, untucked the iron, and shot into the air.

  All the plaza scattered, ducked, screamed—Nigger’s shooting. One brave one adjusted his cape and stepped up.

  Mutherfucker, you ain’t shooting shit. You ain’t shooting a mutherfucking thing.

  Bill brought the gat level with his shoulder. Nigger, if you don’t back up right now, I’ma bust you in your mutherfucking chest.

  Brain chemicals kicked in, and the kid backed off, and by then Howard security had showed, just one rent-a-cop, but it was now all real.

  Young man, put down the gun. Put down the gun, please.

  I’m not putting shit down. I’m not putting nothing down.

  Young man, please put down the gun. I’m not going to ask you again.

  It was then that Bill recovered some of himself. He put the .38 on the ground. The cop approached and grabbed his arm. Bill pointed at some of his former combatants, now across the street watching, and yelled out—What about them?

  The cop looked over, and Bill jerked his arm free, broke out. He darted across Banneker field, icy in winter, and then ran through the darkness to the apartment my two sisters shared. He spent the night on the floor. The next morning Mitch and David came through with clothes. That was when he found out—the chick wasn’t even David’s girlfriend, just someone he’d claimed and talked big about.

  The stupidity of it all hit Bill square in the face. Here he was at the great capstone of all Negro education, and on a jenny he barely even knew he had placed his life. That shook him. He could not analyze it all. He did not know what this meant about where he should be bound for next. But he knew that the old ways, the old customs and styles of being, the Knowledge which had saved him, steeled him against the scourge, could not help him here. This was not Murphy Homes. He was in another world. He was playing by alien rules.

  At home, I struggled through Poly. The spell of the enchanted city had now worn off. After summer school, I spent the year flailing again. I look back now, and I know something had to be wrong. I could not sit still without talking. I could not concentrate longer than fifteen minutes. In class I’d watch the clock until I fell asleep or spend the entire period working on rap lyrics. My head was Penn Station, and every half hour a train arrived dropping off a new batch of thoughts and possibilities, pushing out everything else that was old.

  By then Kier was at Poly, too, and inserting himself into the mix. Halfway into the year, someone popped his lock and made off with his hooded Raiders Starter. I caught up to Kier in the hallway, punching his fist into his palm. Somebody had to take a loss. By the end of the day he’d assembled his crew. I was there, laughing with a group of other knuckleheads, egging Kier on.

  We stood on the number 33 bus stop, brazenly in front of the school. Across the way were two white kids, one in a red Chiefs Starter, the other in one from the Raiders. It was not their whiteness that marked them, so much as the fact that their whiteness made them a minority in this part of Baltimore, and thus unlikely to have a sizable team that could hit back. We hyped Kier up—Nigger, you ain’t going do shit. He raised his eyebrows. Bet. Then ran across the street.

  Yo, can I see that? Can I see that jacket? Yo, that look like mine. Yo, where’d you get that from?

  And then he was swinging at the kid in the Raiders jacket. The kid’s friend backed off, like he wanted no part. I stood across the street stupidly laughing with the rest of them. It was all another mask. Inside, I felt flashbacks to my year of terror. But I would not let it show here. Better to move with the sentiment of the crowd and act like I never caught the Rodney King myself.

  I failed three classes that year. I got a letter of exile from the magical city. In the old days, Dad would have gone straight for the belt. But I was almost sixteen, and he was counting on the lessons kicking in, the books, the work, the bees and wax, the Ankobia initiation, the Rites, the Knowledge, Consciousness. He was waiting for me to finally police myself. He only looked at me after he saw the report card and shook his head.

  I knew I was humiliating everyone I loved. They believed I was different and boundless, that when I looked out on a summer street, I may not have seen what was needed, what was the essence of survival, but what I saw was special and unique. They watched me absorb books about my own, and further, about foreign places and geographies. They knew I’d taught my brother Menelik the theory of the big bang. T
hey believed I was a curious boy. And yet whenever someone threatened to put a grade on it, I fell asleep and lost interest.

  In this, Big Bill and I were one. Our folks understood that there was war upon us and that school was a weapon that outdid any Glock. Yet the whole process—with its equally spaced desks, precisely timed periods and lectures, with its standardized pencils and tests—felt unnatural to me. But much as I hated their terms, having been impressed into them, I hated more the failing. So I was left with a great unconscious sadness, an emptiness which, even when I was alone, I was not fully aware. But it worked on me like an invisible weight, altered my laughter, posture, my approach to girls. Fuck what you have heard or what you have seen in your son. He may lie about homework and laugh when the teacher calls home. He may curse his teacher, propose arson for the whole public system. But inside is the same sense that was in me. None of us ever want to fail. None of us want to be unworthy, to not measure up.

  My parents could not bank on this, but I was their son, and they were bound to do all they could on my behalf. Dad got real short with the words, but my mother still talked. I remember her pissed as hell that summer, having to cut another check for makeup classes. Still in all we’d be riding down Liberty, and in the midst of another lecture she’d get silent for a second and then start quoting Bob: Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind. She fought to the end so I’d have my shot to do just that. My mother appealed my expulsion to the dean of Poly, stressed my virtues and their belief that someday soon, I would decide to be more than my grades had shown. I was a lucky child, and while in small things I caught a series of bad ones, in the epic sweep, time was on my side. The dean was new, had his own thoughts of reforming Poly so that it stood up to its epic tradition. He began with an act of mercy, waved his hands, and my transcript was spared.

  I came back that year resolved to make Daniel Hale manifest. I’d been saved from exile, and for all my antics, I still believed in the Poly name, knew in some sense that this was more opportunity than most of the brethren received. I could not conceive laughing that off. I thought of improving my grades enough to qualify for football in my senior year. I started hitting the school gym with some friends. I only failed one class my first quarter—it was my best quarter since Lemmel.

  Months earlier, my father left his job at the Mecca. That was the year he took me to see Boyz n the Hood, the touchstone film of our time and manifesto of endangered hominids the world over. Dad had spent the past ten years moving between the Press and his full-time job. The two complemented each other, and through the collections of the Moorland-Spingarn library he lived with a wealth of forgotten arcana, turn-of-the-century pamphlets, the papers of forgotten mystics. But his love was the Press, and for the first time ever, he had built enough to consider making his love his sole income. He gave me a say in his decision. If he left, my brother would still have tuition guaranteed, but since I hadn’t been admitted, my free ride to the Mecca would evaporate.

  He sat me down and made sure I understood the consequences. Son, he told me, if I leave, you’re on your own. You’ve not been a great student. If I leave, you’ll have to find your own way in, and I don’t know how much of your schooling we can pay for.

  I don’t know how much of what I said affected anything. But even as my grades improved, inside I felt the True Me waiting. I did not want my father tied to that. He left later that year, and began living his dream. He was more of a presence in my school life, and his proximity was just more reason to improve my grades. I was still, as always, scared silly of him. Once I was beefing with my shop teacher over the sort of thing that really boils down to my small right to talk back. Still, it was enough that when I walked past him and bumped into his arm, he cried assault. I was sent to the office. I’d already been suspended for assaulting a teacher in my freshman year. The disciplining principal Mr. Brown, a brother who was well regarded by the kids, explained that I had a mandatory suspension in store, and called my father up to school.

  He showed up with that perpetual grim look on his brown face, and I had no idea what torment he had in store. But before he could hatch his plot, he was taken aside by Mr. Brown and they spoke outside of my earshot. On the way home, Dad addressed me in a manner so unthreatening that I was certain it was some sort of verbal trap. I was big by then—over six feet and about 180 pounds, but my awkwardness remained. Was like my brain had not grown into the body, and whereas before my clumsiness was limited, I was now a threat to more than just the pitcher of juice on the table.

  Son, you’re growing into a big man. You’re going to have to be more conscious of yourself. You are not a mean kid, but because of your size you will do things that will be seen as a threat. You need to be conscious especially around white people. You are big, and you are a young black man. You need to be careful about what you do and what you say.

  I spent the next three days at home, working for the Press but unpunished. I could feel us entering our last stages together. My parents were reaching the limits of their ability to impose their will, which always had been anchored by a physical threat. But Dad believed in the animal nature of us all, that at a certain age the boy becomes man, must be addressed as such, and then pushed out. I was raised with that understanding, with the sense that closer I got to the blessed number eighteen, the more my folks would pull back in preparation for my great ushering into the world.

  I thought that this was how everyone came up, and those who did not were not worth consideration. I had no skills, and in the one thing all children are judged upon—school—I had always disappointed. Still, I had that ignorant confidence derived from the encouragement of mothers. I had no idea how I could do it, but the thought of my parents retreating was love to me, was admission that my independent time was approaching.

  They were changing too. They were always smart, and kept their arguments mostly hidden from public view. Still, I noted that each of them would disappear for days at a time. My mother would call and check in. Dad would explain that she was taking a break. I put nothing into it. I had so little by which to gauge their marriage. Most of my friends’ parents were single, but what struck me more were the legion of fathers on the lam. From my own father, I got the picture that people meet all the time, think they’re in love, and then it just goes bad. But I esteemed my father so much, even at odds with him as I was constantly, that I could not see anything else.

  I was making my way through school, not quite up to standard but better than ever before. I paid attention in my math classes, made an honest stab at homework. After class was out I’d hit the gym and then the track. In March I did a few days of spring football practice, in anticipation of trying out my senior year. I was turning the corner, and I might have made it around, if it all hadn’t come out.

  These things are always so stupid when armed with hindsight, but in the moment it seems like all your existence converges in a moment, is out there on the table, and your options are limited. This day, I had a paper due. It was finished but late, and my entire English grade was held in the balance of getting it in. I was in my history class, a period before lunch, when it happened. My teacher was Mr. Stoddard, the sort of liberal white guy who showed us Ken Burns’s Civil War and took a whole period to discuss the impact of Rodney King. I was a fan, and took great pleasure in our back-and-forth. This morning, we were debating the morality of the American Army and the recently concluded Desert Storm. Most of the class went with the country and argued for both. But I was black as Edmondson Avenue and AFRAM, and stood my solo ground. I wouldn’t fight in any American Army against anyone close to my color.

  What came next must have been simple clowning, the sort of comment a kid would yell out because he had nothing to offer except the possibility of sparking a good laugh. When I said I would not fight for America, skinny Shawn yelled from the back—

  That’s cause you a punk.

  He got no laughter, but I felt an old burning in my chest. No one a
t Poly had ever said anything like that to me. I’d been tested a couple times, but I’d learned how to walk, when to smile, not talk too much, and though I lacked an ill pedigree, I still looked like a kid who knew the rules. I turned around, at the time not knowing who said what, and yelled in typical sixteen-year-old fashion—

  Whoever said that ain’t going say it to my face.

  The class was absorbed by all the instigating ooohs, and Mr. Stoddard took control and calmed everyone down. But after class my nigger Brady told me it was Shawn who’d made the crack, and this made it worse. He was out of Fallstaff, the softest middle school in the city, where in my hated weaker days, I’d thought I wanted to attend. Shawn was a joker to me, would sit in the back of the class with a stupid grin, dressed like Kwamé. Whatever, I told Brady. Shawn don’t want nothing to do with me.

  But a few minutes later, Brady returned, hyping up the whole affair, Yo, Shawn said he want to see you. He said you could see him in the bathroom right outside the cafeteria at lunch.

  I walked down with five or six other boys, all hyped on my own scent, and found him standing there with his best friend, Tyrone. I started barking soon as I walked.

  Nigger, you wanna see me? You got something you wanna say to me, mutherfucker? What’s up, nigger? What’s up?

  He was not so much afraid as stunned by the vehemence of things. We had never beefed before, and here I was off, one inane comment escalating and lobbying for war. Neither of us was built like that, the exploding of fists was unnatural to us, only adopted when it was felt that something precious was at stake. But I was of my time, and this was it. Painfully I’d come to know that face must be held against everything, that flagrant dishonor follows you, haunting every handshake with all your niggers, disputing every advance on a jenny. Shawn was, at first, true to his better nature, and backed down and held up open hands. But I’d come too far to be gracious. I stuck my finger in his grill—