On the heels of the release of his latest book “The Message,” his first nonfiction work for seven years, the award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates joined ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ to discuss the book’s focus on Palestine, and the reception it has received from the mainstream media – including a shocking interview on CBS. In their discussion, Coates discusses topics for the first time since the start of his book tour – including his view of President Biden’s Zionism, and his advice to Vice President Kamala Harris on arms sales to Israel.
For his new book, which explores how mainstream narratives shape and sometimes distort our experience, Coates traveled to Senegal, South Carolina in the US, and the occupied West Bank.
“What I'm trying to do with this book is get out of the way. I'm trying to clear space, hopefully for Palestinian narrators and storytellers, and in a larger sense, you know, for Arab storytellers at large,” he tells Mehdi.
The Palestine section of his book was under attack early in the tour, with one interview on CBS going viral for the bigoted framing and aggressive nature of the questions that Coates was asked by host Tony Dokoupil.
“I was a little surprised, and then I realized what was going on, I was in a fight,” he says, about that interview. “So it was right there, you know, as a pop quiz, but I had studied.”
Mehdi asks Coates about the Biden administration and its steadfast support for Israel - while silence on Palestinian suffering. “[Biden] basically said to a Jewish audience ‘We know you wouldn't be safe without Israel’… That's your job, Joe… Are you saying that you're not going to protect Jewish Americans, who are Americans?” asks Coates, referencing remarks made by the president during a White House meeting with Jewish-American leaders last October.
As for Kamala Harris, the jury is out, he says, but the hope is there. “I hope Kamala will be better… the struggle is not just our skin color, it’s principle also. This is extremely, extremely important… it's a kind of soul death for the struggle to just say, hey, we're just going to go along with this,” Coates explains.
Watch the full interview above to discover why Ta-Nehisi Coates decided to come back from his break on nonfiction writing, what it took for him to publish a book critical of Israel at a time like this, and what he says that makes Mehdi “feel seen.”
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