Speaking in Ames, Ta-Nehisi Coates warns of Trump, urges vigilance

AMES — "This is not a game,' Ta-Nehisi Coates warned. 'This is catastrophic.'

That was one of the more dire messages that renowned author Ta-Nehisi Coates delivered on the Iowa State University campus on Monday night, peppering his speech with proclamations of hope, arguments for action and insistence on historic reflection.

'Elections have consequences,' Coates, a national correspondent at The Atlantic and author of 'Between the World and Me,' said during his hour-and-a-half speech before a packed crowd of more than 1,100.

'Elections are not always a choice between good or gooder or goodest. Oftentimes, it's a choice between not so good and really, really bad. And this is really, really bad.'

In fact, he said, 'this is catastrophic,' asserting President Donald Trump has sent the message in recent days — with his sweeping immigration ban, discussion of religious tests, and pursuit of a Mexican wall — that everything terrorist organizations stand for and promote is correct.

'And it's going to be a long, long time before we recover from that,' he said.

Coates talked about historical scars on humanity inflicted by lies — including the deep-seated lies at the heart of racism and bigotry.

'This notion that ... if you gave black folks civil rights, if you made them equal to anybody else, they would immediately go and perpetrate attacks on white women — this was the lie,' he said. 'If you got inclined to believing that kind of thing, it became easy to believe other lies.'

Coates talked about lies embedded in the economy of slavery and, more recently, the lies at the heart of the criminal justice system.

And then he identified lies driving Trump's recent executive order banning refugees and immigrants from seven countries that the administration says pose a threat to the United States.

'It's important to call it a lie,' Coates said. 'When Donald Trump was running for president, he said that he was going to enact a Muslim ban. And now we're being told that it's not a Muslim ban. That's a lie.'

Coates said Trump 'lies so much,' it's hard to keep track. 'But it's important to keep track. Keep track.'

He said the message has been the ban on immigrants will keep U.S. citizens safe.

'But, as I understand it ... the countries — there has not been a single terror attack on the United States coming from any of those countries,' he said.

After stressing the cycle of lies throughout history, one member of the audience asked if he thinks humanity can break free from the repetition.

'People don't have to be trapped,' Coates said, noting the importance of getting involved in elections and outside the electoral process.

He referenced the Black Lives Matter movement and its impact on policing across the country.

'Whatever you want to say about Black Lives Matter, they did have successes,' he said. 'I'm from Baltimore, and there were federal investigators that came in and looked at the Baltimore Police Department. That just would not have happened without Black Lives Matter.'

Referencing lies that he said dominated campaign rhetoric, Coates said the consequences are reverberating far beyond words, necessitating persistent vigilance.

'There are literally students who are in school who cannot come back because somebody's president,' he said. 'This is a real thing that's happening. I've seen families split apart. This is a real thing that has a consequence. This is not abstract. This is not a game.'

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