For me, Coates’ Between the World and Me rendered me to an unrelentingly uneasy place; a place that asked me as the reader to constantly bear witness to the uncovering of sides of our democracy that are uncomfortable and ugly.
Whether recognized by the masses or not, higher education civic engagement is now operating in the Post-Ferguson Era. It means that we are staring at an unfiltered and uncomfortable truth; that racial oppression and inequity are dominant threads of change-initiative conversations in our country’s urban core neighborhood communities.