Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each … What eventually elected Trump was the “eight-year campaign” against Obama. Racism, Coates says, is nothing more than “banditry.” Police shootings of black people, lengthy prison sentences for black people, the astronomical rates of black people in prison ought to be cause for concern for all of us, but since they are built out of white fears of black people they are not.
“Trump did not spring out of nothingness but from the eight years of crazy, from the hawking of Obama-waffles to shouts of ‘You lie,’ from WHITE SLAVERY banners to Obama-phone plots, from chimpanzee memes to watermelon-at-the-White-House jokes. I read several of these essays when they appeared, often in shortened form in The Atlantic, but the second time around I recognized even greater depth and honesty in their analysis of our country’s original sin: racism.“The Case for Reparations”—clearly the most threatening essay in the volume, i.e., threatening to white people—is also an ironclad argument for why those reparations (misunderstood to be only for slavery) are justified. "We were eight years in power" is a quote from South Carolina state congressman Thomas Miller, an African-American who was elected at the end of Reconstruction. A collection of eight essays first published in The Atlantic, We Were Eight Years in Power reflects on the deteriorating state of race relations in America during the Obama presidency. And the essays—that are often quite historical, since Coates realizes that so few Americans are familiar with our country’s own history—run from one about Michelle Obama, to an essay titled “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” to an essay on Malcolm X’s legacy, to the three major essays exhaustively researched and published during the final years of Obama’s presidency: “The Case for Reparations,” “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” and “My President Was Black.” Read in this order, they also demonstrate Coates’ growth as a writer/public intellectual, whose closest antecedent (as many people have recognized) is James Baldwin.
That choice garners his pure admiration. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Newt Gingrich called Obama the ‘food-stamp president’—and he was said to be one of the smart ones. We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each … We Were Eight Years in Power: A Journey Through the Obama Era by Ta-Nehisi Coates available in Compact Disc on Powells.com, also read synopsis and reviews. Whatever time it was, Coates has become a figure frequently interviewed and listened to—probed by others about his opinion on current issues—one of the most important being our last sane leader: President Obama.