Summary

Coates opens the sixth note by observing that both blacks and whites long for a happy ending to the question of how to address the burden of white supremacy and the aftermath of slavery. As a writer who has never seen giving hope as one of his responsibilities, Coates finds that audiences are frequently disappointed when he responds by saying that there may not be any hope for a resolution. Coates believes that providing such answers is not the job of black public intellectuals; those who do offer such answers he characterizes as "performance-prophets who live for the roar of the crowd" (152). Given the long history of white supremacy, Coates believes that it would take generations to come up with an answer, and the answer would likely seem "crazy" (152) at the moment.

Looking...