Israel felt like an alternative history, one where all our [Marcus] Garvey dreams were made manifest. There, ‘Up Ye Mighty Race’ was the creed. There, ‘Redemption Song’ is the national anthem. There, the red, black, and green billowed over schools, embassies, and the columns of great armies. There, Martin Delaney is a hero and February 21 is a day of mourning. That was the dream—the mythic Africa . . . What I saw in the City of David was so familiar to me—the search for self in an epic, mythic past filled with kings.
There you have it. The problem with Israel is that it shames him. How can it be that the Jews carved their Israel out of the desert, and yet no place in Africa, least of all Liberia, remotely resembles Wakanda?
Not to mention that Coates is a total fraud, as a writer and an intellectual.