We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

Coates opens his essay collection with a series of critiques designed to debunk myths about Black Americans, America, and American politics. Using both scholarly and more personal genres, Coates launches his first attack on Black respectability politics and identifies White supremacy as the defining feature of American democracy.

Coates open his discussion in the Introduction with a quote from Thomas Miller, a South Carolina congressman in the late 19th century, that serves as the source of the title of the book. Coates’s use of that historical document establishes his credibility early on, as document-based arguments are the standard for scholarly work on serious topics. Coates also relies upon other kinds of sources and genres. He explains, for example, that each introductory note before a given essay is essentially an “extended blog post” and that his collection is also a “loose memoir” (xvii). The Introduction therefore signals that Coates is willing to blend formal and informal genres to tell a larger story about American politics and race.

Thematically, what connects all three of these pieces is Coates’s critique of Black respectability as the antidote to White supremacy and the myth of inherent Black inferiority. Coates defines Black respectability as the:

[…] basic assumption in this country, one black people are not immune to, which holds that if blacks comport themselves in a way that accords with middle-class values, if they are polite, educated, and virtuous, then all the fruits of America will be open to them (xvi).

In the Introduction, Coates uses the harsh attacks on Obama to show that earning one’s way into full citizenship is virtually impossible because America’s White supremacy runs deep. In “Note from the First Year,” Coates uses a more personal, informal mode to show how his own efforts to be a respectable Black writer were fruitless until sheer luck—not hard work and merit alone—provided him a chance for success.

Coates’s confident, surehanded critiques of Black respectability and White supremacy in the Introduction and first note are in marked contrast to the tone and approach in “This Is How We Lost to the White Man.” In 2008, when Coates was a fledgling writer and Bill Cosby was not yet known primarily as a sexual predator, Coates hedged his bets when writing about Cosby’s politics. He is willing, for example, to call Cosby’s politics wrongheaded and ahistorical, but he softens the critique somewhat with his attention in the final paragraphs to Cosby’s rags-to-riches life story, philanthropy, and good intentions.

In fact, Coates gives the last words in the essay to Cosby (Cosby talks about his desire for Black Americans to have their own myths, including the myth of self-created success). Coates’s decision to end the essay there shows his deference to and respect for the man. Contrast that approach with the latter essays, when Coates lobs harsh critiques at Obama, and one is able to see that this early Coates was still finding his authority as a writer.