Suddenly rich and famous.

Ta-Nehisi Coates provokes people. Sometimes, this causes them to think.

White people are not just reading [Between the World and Me] but have also gotten behind it. Is that hard to comprehend?

It’s easy. The number of white people who read books is really small. I mean, what are we, a country of 300 million? Two hundred million white folks? They haven’t read Between the World and Me.Another thing: A lot of the shit people think is crazy is not crazy at all in academia. If you talk to historians or sociologists and ask, “Is racism one of the most consistent themes in American history, without which you would have trouble conceiving of the country at all?” they say, “Hell, yeah. I would go further than that.” Is this country reading its own historians? It was really radical in my folks’ home, and I thought some of that shit was crazy. Then I started reading these historians. A lot of it wasn’t crazy, and a lot of it was true. There are enough “elite” people in academia who can provide the evidence for it. You might not like how it sounds, but the consensus in academia is pretty clear. When I saw that? I ain’t got to fight you with what’s on 125th. I can fight you with your own people. That’s Harvard and Yale. I’ve got your history department. Like that great Chuck D line, “You check out the books they own.”