Between Hopelessness and Despair: Afropessimism and Black Nihilism in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Works

Abstract

Most of the criticism that Ta-Nehisi Coates received in the aftermath of the publication of his work Between the World and Me orbits around its lack of hopefulness. Indeed, it is several times in the text that Coates tempers his son’s expectations about foreseeing an end to racial conflicts as he tells him that “I do not believe that we can stop [racists], Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves” (Between the World 151). Certainly, the previous contention has drawn critics into reading Coates’s work as an attack against black agency (Chatterton Williams n.p.). It is our contention that, far from being read as a manifestation of cynicism, Coates’s negativity also has a galvanizing dimension. In fact, by emphasizing the futility of hope, which for Coates traps black individuals in an “unending pursuit” of progress (Warren “Black Nihilism” 221), he provides readers with many alternatives to confront the rampant racism that still pervades U.S. society nowadays.