Race in the Age of Digital Media: A Lecture by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“It’s very difficult to know that it doesn’t matter what morals you instill in your children,” she said. “That there are certain people who will never see the value and know who they are.”

And yet African Americans raised in such circumstances understand that in so many ways they are not that far removed from the block. Many of them are just a generation away, and they still have cousins, brothers, and uncles struggling. Their country cannot see this complexity, and thinks of the entire mass as the undeserving poor—which is to say, in the language of our country, criminal.

—“To Raise, Love, and Lose a Black Child,” Oct 8, 2014 (http://theatln.tc/1rXJL4b)

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is also the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle.

In May, The Atlantic published “The Case for Reparations” in both their print edition and as a digital longform multimedia piece. It went viral and provoked discourse across the country. Another article by Coates, “This is How We Lost to the White Man,” explores the generational and ideological rifts in the black community; its title is a quote by Bill Cosby. Last year, Coates’s lively Atlantic blog—a lesson in how to thoroughly engage a community of readers—was named by Time as one of the 25 Best in the World.

Coates is a former writer for The Village Voice, and a contributor to Time, O, and The New York Times Magazine. In 2012, he was awarded the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism. Judge Hendrik Hertzberg, of The New Yorker, wrote, “Coates is one of the most elegant and sharp observers of race in America. He is an upholder of universal values, a brave and compassionate writer who challenges his readers to transcend narrow self-definitions and focus on shared humanity.”

In Fall 2014, Coates began a new position teaching at the School of Journalism at CUNY. He was previously the Martin Luther King Visiting Associate Professor at MIT.

Q & A to follow lecture, moderated by Emily Bell, Director of the Tow Center.

Sponsored by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Sevellon-Brown Fund With support from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation and the Columbia Journalism Association of Black Journalists.

A small workshop with Ta-Nehisi Coates will follow the lecture. This is open only to current students and faculty, and will be capped at 40. If you are a J. school student interested in attending, please send a short paragraph with the subject header “Coates Workshop” to [email protected] by Monday, October 13th, at noon. If you are faculty, you are welcome to attend–just us let us know your name with the subject header “Faculty Workshop” at [email protected].

Lecture is Free and Open to the Public.