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In The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates travels to locations around the world and describes his experiences with different people and cultures. Throughout the book, Coates recalls his own life experiences and tries to frame each of his new experiences with past events. The book starts with a chapter that is written almost as a long-form letter to the students in Coates’s past writing classes at Howard University. In this chapter, Coates describes his early fascination with writing, ranging from poetry and song lyrics to a specific article he read in a magazine that has stuck with him ever since.

Read a brief essay about the writing style and presentation of The Message.

The article was in Sports Illustrated magazine, and was about Darryl Stingley, a professional football player who was left paralyzed after being tackled in a game. The article forced the young Coates to consider that the world is inhabited by tragedy. The story lingered in his mind. As he puts it, the story haunted him. As Coates became increasingly interested in writing, he sought to haunt those who read his work. The chapter ends with a statement that Coates has been traveling (to Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine) and that the book is the overdue essay he promised his writing class two years prior.

Read an explanation of a quote (#1) from Coates meant to encourage writing students.

In the second chapter, Coates travels to Senegal. He recalls the remnants of his parents’ involvement in the civil rights movement that he had in his home as a child. Before describing his time in Senegal, Coates talks about 19th-century anthropologists who used pseudoscience to justify slavery, claiming that Africans were genetically inferior to Europeans. Coates then reflects on the romanticized image of a Black civilization flourishing in ancient Egypt.

Read about Main Idea #3 from the book: Oppressors often seek to justify their actions.

When Coates arrives in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, he reminisces about living in Baltimore and looking out across the water from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He spends time with friends and travels the city, learning about the cultures and trying to avoid typical tourist activities. He discusses the different cultural views of race between people in Senegal and the United States. In what he feels is a sort of pilgrimage, Coates visits Dakar’s Gorée Island, where he feels that he faces an ancestral legacy. Before he leaves Senegal, some of his friends organize an evening with writers and activists. Coates enjoys the discussions and tries to understand the differences between himself, a descendant of enslaved Africans, and his friends in Senegal, who suffered under colonialism.

In the third chapter, Coates travels to South Carolina. Before explaining the purpose of his trip, Coates discusses his childhood experiences in public school. He believes he should have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and talks about how his classes focused on behavior and attentiveness instead of the exploration of knowledge. Coates discusses the American education system and compares it to the “banking system” described by the Brazilian philosopher and education theorist Paulo Freire. In such a system, students are trained to store and recall information instead of thinking critically. The goal of such systems is to further oppressive systems by making students more obedient.

Read more about the background of The Message author Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Coates then describes the debate that erupted in American higher education in the summer of 2020 over “critical race theory.” Coates is notified of a specific struggle in the ongoing battle of critical race theory in which a teacher in South Carolina has been ordered to stop teaching one of his books. After talking with the teacher, Coates decides to attend a school board meeting to support her. Coates then tours the State House in Columbia and remarks on the statues of white supremacists (such as Benjamin Tillman) that surround it. Coates states that American culture is controlled by conservatives and supremacists.

The long fourth chapter comprises the second half of the book. In it, Coates travels to Palestine. The beginning of the chapter opens with Coates on the last day of his trip, visiting Yad Vashem–The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. He is overwhelmed by what he sees and what he learns, particularly about the sheer number of people killed during the Holocaust.

Coates then describes his trip to Palestine from the beginning, starting with his plan to attend the Palestine Festival of Literature. Coates focuses on his observation that Palestinians have fewer rights than Jewish people. Once he arrives at the Festival, held on an estate outside of Ramallah, he enjoys his time among other writers and artists. Coates considers similarities he sees between Israel and the Jim Crow South. The next day, Coates travels to Hebron with a Jewish guide who is a former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldier. The guide describes some of the IDF’s methods of subduing the Palestinian people. Coates offers the reader an account of the origins of Israel and the Zionist movement, including early plans to displace the Palestinians.

In the second half of the fourth chapter, Coates travels to Jerusalem. Initially, he enters the Old City (where Muslims are allowed in), with limited access. He spends time in the City of David within Jerusalem, which he describes as an “archeological amusement park” that he says is used to reinforce Israel’s claim to the region. After leaving, Coates returns as a tourist with a Jewish guide and has a vastly different experience. While visiting the Western Wall, he describes the destruction of the Moroccan Quarter that was important to Muslims which was previously at the site. Coates compares the destruction of the Moroccan Quarter to violent episodes from American history, such as the Tulsa Race Riot in 1921.

Read about how much of the critical reaction to The Message focused on Coates’s comments about Israel.

Coates returns to the United States convinced that Israel has a new form of apartheid, designed to minimize and eliminate the Palestinians. After he returns home, he learns about a town name Deir Yassin that was destroyed by Israeli militia in 1948 and was close to the site where Yad Vashem was built. Coates finds a survivor from the Deir Yassin massacre and visits him in Chicago. After their talk (and discussion with other writers), Coates states that there should be more stories published about Palestine, by Palestinian writers. He admits that with his limited experience of Palestine he is poorly qualified to write about it, but he wants a future Palestinian body of work to help change the world for the better.

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