Through The Mecca I saw that we were, in our own segregated body politic, cosmopolitans. The black diaspora was not just our own world but, in so many ways, the Western world itself. Now, the heirs of those Virginia planters could never directly acknowledge this legacy or reckon with its power. And so that beauty that Malcolm pledged us to protect, black beauty, was never celebrated in movies, in television, or in the textbooks I’d seen as a child. Everyone of any import, from Jesus to George Washington, was white. This was why your grandparents banned Tarzan and the Lone Ranger and toys with white faces from the house. They were rebelling against the history books that spoke of black people only as sentimental “firsts”–first black five-star general, first black congressman, first black mayor–always presented in the bemused manner of a category of Trivial Pursuit. Serious history was the West, and the West was white. This was all distilled for me in a quote I once read from the novelist Saul Bellow. I can’t remember where I read it, or when–only that I was already at Howard. “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” Bellow quipped. Tolstoy was “white, ” and so Tolstoy “mattered, ” like everything else that was white “mattered.” And this view of things was connected to the fear that passed through the generations, to the sense of dispossession. We were black, beyond the visible spectrum, beyond civilization. Our history was inferior because we were inferior, which is to say our bodies were inferior. And our inferior bodies could not possibly be accorded the same respect as those that built the West. Would it not be better, then, if our bodies were civilized, improved, and put to some legitimate Christian use?. TaNehisi Coates
About This Quote

The quote, “Through The Mecca I saw that we were, in our own segregated body politic, cosmopolitans,” was written by the African-American poet Sonia Sanchez. The statement was written during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. During that time period people of African-American descent were segregated into separate cities, towns, and even restaurants. This meant that black people were forced to live apart from white people.

Their culture was not celebrated nor did they have the same rights as white people. They were treated very poorly during this time period. However, there was also a great deal of pride in their culture and they strived to preserve it through music and art.

Source: Between The World And Me

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