One of the first things I learned in middle school [..] is that any sort of physically violent threat has to be responded to with force. You cannot tolerate anybody attempting to threaten or intimidating your body.
In middle school Ta-Nehisi Coates got suspended for threatening his teacher. The teacher had yelled at him in front of the class and Coates could not tolerate that because he felt that the teacher disrespected him.
Explaining his behavior in the interview he says:
“All you have is your dignity. The point is not that teachers yell loudly at kids from time to time. If you live in an environment like the one I grew up in, all you have is your basic physical respect, you do not have anything else to lean on. That is very serious.
Now I have certain things: I have a family, I feel great personal value in myself and in my work, I feel loved. I would not perceive being yelled at as necessarily communicating to other people around me that they too could disrespect me at any time.”
This excerpt is taken from an NPR interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates that touched me deeply. Many articles including Coates cover article “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic helped me understand the issues. Still, it is the personal interview, maybe the spoken language, that helps me develop empathy for his behavior that I – as a white and privileged European woman – have no way of relating to otherwise.