You're an asshole.
But your rant does raise one worthy question. Does Coates frame the book as an essay to his son in order to make it unassailable to critique? His work is certainly political - but the form of an essay to his son offers an angle of emotionality and fatherly love that makes it more than a political text. Is that layer of emotion a deliberate strategy on the author's part to make his political arguments more palatable?
I'm not as cynical as to believe that his intentions are that sinister but it is worth consideration.
I loved the book personally. I thought that Coates' love for his son was genuine and soaked through his words. It allows him to enlist the reader to his cause, because it is very difficult to say to yourself that one man's son deserves to live in fear while another's doesn't because of the color of their skin.
@
uh-oh - Coates doesn't say there is no such thing as black and white. He says that whiteness is only constructed as a way to position one class above the other. White people can know their heritage and their history and their lineage. Therefore, nothing makes them simply 'white' except for their relation to 'black' people, which is a relationship founded on slavery.
I take Coates' book as a perspective that I am thankful to have gained insight on. I think to simply compare it to your own personal experience as a means to dismiss it is really missing the point. Coates is simply reaching his own conclusions based on a life lived in what is considered the most powerful and "free" nation on earth. And if his is among the perspectives that arise from this so-called great nation, then that is very, very scary.