Three Journeys into Sites of Racial and Imperial Conflict
Dakar, American Schools, and Israel/Palestine
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Czechia
Ta-Nehisi Coates is best known in the Czech Republic — if he’s known at all —for his essay The Case for Reparations. A text most Czechs have probably never read. The idea of seriously reckoning with historical injustices — „we were harmed, and we deserve redress“ — is commonly accepted here in cases like political dissidents or property restitution. But applying that same logic to racial groups? That still raises eyebrows. And yet, it’s an intellectual exercise that has a lot to teach us. I recommend reading it—it’s about 16 000 words, so not a biggie checking it out.
Journey One: Dakar
Coates’s book isn’t a tightly argued policy paper about racism and how to prevent it. Instead, it’s a personal, almost lyrical journey. His trip to Dakar is threaded with reflections on family, heritage, and Africa as a shared cultural legacy.
Some questions are universal and could resonate even here: how do we create narratives that give meaning to our place in the world? How do you write or speak when your baseline life experience is “you’re probably going to end up another failure or inmate”?
The perspective of someone who, through a mix of luck and coincidence, made it from a disadvantaged background into circles of significant cultural and economic capital — that’s something that’s hinted at more than spelled out. But it’s useful.
Take his view on Egyptology. In our Western civilizational context, it’s often seen as „Western“ science. But Coates shows how science and society build stories that have real-world effects — like the way Egypt is symbolically removed from Africa. It becomes part of a white civilizational legacy, posed against „black barbarism.“ This now-outdated narrative once supported the idea of a „clash of civilizations“ and still fuels today’s culture wars over „who was what color,“ which conveniently ignore how radically different ancient Egyptian and modern Western cultures actually are.
It’s hard to relate to this as a Central or Eastern European. The experience of a Black person in the U.S. versus that of a Central European in Europe are entirely different games, where most of Coates’s references and metaphors simply don’t land.
Coates also reflects on how reading and writing opened up worlds that were initially closed to him. He doesn’t shy away from hard truths, either: the desire for power and dominance isn’t limited to those in charge. Even the oppressed can desire control. He rejects revenge and retribution.
Journey Two: The American School
The second chapter focuses on the conflict over book bans in U.S. schools. This is a fight about who gets to decide what’s read — one that involves the state, parents, politics, culture, and core values.
Here, Coates explores what it’s like when your book ends up on a banned list. Should you engage in the debate? Try to explain that being critical of racism isn’t crazy?
This part feels much closer to home. While Czechia doesn’t have a strong tradition of banning books outright, there is growing pressure to control tone and topics — especially from self-proclaimed anti-establishment voices who, paradoxically, often hold the reins of power.
Journey Three: Israel and Palestine
The final journey is the most cutting: a visit to Israel/Palestine. Coates confronts the horror and vast suffering of the Holocaust —never minimizing it, in fact making it more human — and simultaneously explores what building a Jewish national state meant for the people already living there.
He doesn’t dive into every detail or complexity (though, for example, his mention of Israel’s ties with apartheid-era South Africa is welcome), but his reportage leads to a clear conclusion: Israel holds real power over that land. Israel builds the settlements.
And that word —“settlements“— does a lot of rhetorical work. It evokes images of noble explorers arriving in desolate places, taming nature, carving civilization from stone. The reality, of course, is different: these are modern towns guarded by military force, built in places where people already live.
It’s through writing and narrative construction that we create parallel realities — and shift what’s considered acceptable.
As an analysis of how we (especially in the Czech Republic) talk about Israel, it’s devastating — but also deeply empathetic. Coates manages to express anger at how the anti-Netanyahu protests help sell Israel as a perfectly equal democracy — while also standing among the protesters and acknowledging: „These people are sincere, they mean it. They have blind spots, but they’re not evil.“
Where he does see evil and apathy is in the silence surrounding the conflict.
Silence and Its Consequences
But Coates’s book fails where silence is loudest. He says nothing about the massacres and horrors of October 7, about today’s realities in Palestine, about the West Bank, Hamas’s brutality, or the bombings and displacements in Gaza.
Given the book’s theme — „we don’t talk about it enough, we don’t build enough stories“— this omission feels not only baffling but borderline cowardly. Over the course of a single year, terrifying and unprecedented things happened. And instead of at least acknowledging them, the book offers silence.
As a result, it becomes a collection of lyrical essays about a world that no longer exists.
Given its publication date — October 1, 2024 — that’s a serious flaw. And it’s not that the book suddenly becomes useless. But when the author rightly demands moral clarity and narrative accountability from those in power, we expect him to apply those same standards to himself.
Coates’s writing style is undoubtedly powerful, lyrical, and personal. But by avoiding the present moment, he misses a crucial opportunity. Instead of engaging with current realities, the book remains locked in the past.
Honestly, I wouldn’t care how Coates responded to the new situation — any stance, even extreme, would have been better than silence.