In the wake of his deeply powerful viral videos ("Before You Call the
Cops" and "Walking While Black"), Tyler Merritt shares his experiences
as a black man in America with truth, humor, and poignancy.
Tyler Merritt's video "Before You Call the Cops" has been viewed
millions of times. He's appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and Sports
Illustrated and has been profiled in the New York Times. The viral
video's main point--the more you know someone, the more empathy,
understanding, and compassion you have for that person--is the
springboard for this book. By sharing his highs and exposing his lows,
Tyler welcomes us into his world in order to help bridge the divides
that seem to grow wider every day.
In I Take My Coffee Black, Tyler tells hilarious stories from his own
life as a black man in America. He talks about growing up in a
multi-cultural community and realizing that he wasn't always welcome,
how he quit sports for musical theater (that's where the girls were) to
how Jesus barged in uninvited and changed his life forever (it all
started with a Triple F.A.T. Goose jacket) to how he ended up at a small
Bible college in Santa Cruz because he thought they had a great theater
program (they didn't). Throughout his stories, he also seamlessly weaves
in lessons about privilege, the legacy of lynching and sharecropping and
why you don't cross black mamas. He teaches readers about the history of
encoded racism that still undergirds our society today.
By turns witty, insightful, touching, and laugh-out-loud funny, I Take
My Coffee Black paints a portrait of black manhood in America and
enlightens, illuminates, and entertains--ultimately building the kind of
empathy that might just be the antidote against the racial injustice in
our society.
