The collection of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the challenges of black people during the tenure of Barack Obama as the US president. In the first essay, This Is How We Lost the White House, Coates gives details of how he was struggling financially. The author had a young family and he was the breadwinner. When Obama won the election, Coates was hired as a blogger by The Atlantic magazine. Fortunately, readers loved his articles because he offered a critique of Bill Cosby’s conservative racial politics. During that time, people wanted to read more about racial politics.
In the second essay, American Girl, Coates discusses Michelle Obama and how she contributed to her husband’s clinch of the presidency. Coates alludes to Michelle’s use of her biography to plead with voters to elect her husband. Subsequently, the author discusses the civil war. Coates admits that only a few blacks are concerned with studying civil war. The essay proposes more study of the civil war by black Americans so as to comprehend what transpired.
Moreover, Coates discusses the legacy of Malcolm X and why he believes his vision lives on in Barack Obama. According to the author, the US is a country entrenched in segregating African Americans. However, his career succeeded because he raised issues that affected black people. While the whites were privileged to get favored by the system, blacks suffered from injustices and inequalities created by the same system.
