Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

they are outing TNC for wearing a hair piece and he won't own up to it

but it looks so natural!

Well, Steve Harvey faked having the freshest line-up in America for damn near a decade. If not him, then who can we trust?

omg dying at the "controversy" there.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations-an-intellectual-autopsy/371125/

And this lobs a point that's right in my wheelhouse

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/05/coming-to-terms-with-difficult-history-japan-china-germany-and-the-united-states/371401/

genuinely considering subscribing to the Atlantic for a year just to give props to that article.

omg dying at the "controversy" there.

― wat is teh waht (s.clover), Thursday, May 22, 2014 5:50 PM (4 hours ago)

this goof on twitter who "started this" (NB i have no idea if anyone has paid attention to his tweets outside of the people itt) has like 2000 followers, i really doubt anyone GAF

What is considered to be a "blue period" on this blog, is considered to be a survey course among academics. Which is not to say everyone, or even mostly everyone, agrees with me in the academy. It is to say that I've yet to engage a historian or sociologist who's requested that I not be such a downer.

o t m

this goof on twitter who "started this" (NB i have no idea if anyone has paid attention to his tweets outside of the people itt) has like 2000 followers, i really doubt anyone GAF

I found out about it from Jamelle Bouie's twitter

thought the abrupt conclusion on the subprime stuff worked, like he's preempting the standard cognitive urge to assign an ending to the story since huge part of his point is that in no way is this history over, it's all one long horrible continuum running unbroken right up to the present.

Coates on Chris Hayes' show tonight.

Yeah I was waiting for him to drop the subprime stuff - when he started mentioning it I figured it was the equivalent of the lights going on at the end of a show xp

http://billmoyers.com/episode/facing-the-truth-the-case-for-reparations/

^^ Interview on Moyers doesn't add much, but I like watching him talk.

PFT Commenter with the closest thing we're going to see to a rebuttal: http://kissingsuzykolber.uproxx.com/2014/05/reparations-http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG-mark-cuban-essay-race-three-parts.html

aha, my first hatcat, achievement unlocked.

anonanon otm, found the circling back around to (and leaving off in the middle of) flat reportage after the article's emotional climax (but now it wasn't 1790 or 1865 or 1946 or 1980) devastating honestly.

He was interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered last night too

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117869/ta-nehisi-coates-reparations-article-sparks-conservative-outrage

This is about the reaction on 1 conservative talk show when liberal writer Isaac Chotiner (who had written about the Coates article) was invited on to discuss reparations

PFT Commenter with the closest thing we're going to see to a rebuttal

I think I deserve reparations for even starting to read that.

John McWhorter's response.

aaaand Kevin Williamson's, which is measured and civil for a NRO article.

That second piece is pretty interesting, I think, and worth a read, whether one agrees with it or not, and/or distrusts the platform.

Personally looking forward to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC ... next year? Is that right? If done right, and I assume it will be, it will not only be a massive success but should also spark debates/discussions like this on a weekly basis. Plus attract/agitate the usual assholes.

http://nmaahc.si.edu/

I would assume, if nothing else, a conservative could take from the TNC article some ammunition for their next article about how the New Deal and FDR were racist.

Well, they kinda were! TNC read Ira Katznelson; his book's pretty great.

And more Reagan love:

Black households saw stronger income growth than did white households during the Reagan boom,

Would like to read more on this with some context

When you're at the bottom, there's nowhere to go but up?

That's how I felt when I finished Williamson.

That there is some question-begging going on there — whether “white supremacy” really describes a significant motive force in American public life —

lol fuck this guy

Williamson, for those who don't remember, fought Jonathan Bernstein over the question of Democratic racism; the guy could not accept that "Democrats" and "liberals" were not synonymous for most of the twentieth century.

that Williamson article is the ultimate "don't read the comments" piece.

Now you tell me...

ha ha yeah, I got to the 2nd one--which was like maybe we should just let black people mug white people to collect their reparations--and I was out.

Doesn't even come close to the wall of shit under this.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/23/the-case-for-reparations?

the huge backlash from racist reactionaries that we're seeing just bolsters coates's argument that the end of slavery and jim crow hardly saw the end to institutional racism in the US.

they are kind of making his argument while trying to rebut his argument

Otoh this is in fact what a conversation about race looks like in America.

I hope TNC doesn't take time refuting a bunch of lame responses--I feel like he should turn this article into a documentary.

agreed

Jun 12, 2014 • 7:00 pm
Just days before the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, will sit down with Jeffrey Goldberg to discuss Coates’ provocative June cover story making the case for reparations.

At 6th & I synagogue in DC

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/05/27/coates_reparations_response_free_market_economist_says_discrimination_made.html

Oh Tyler Cowen & your free market libertarian economics

With the caveat that yes, Fredrik DeBoer is, as they say, a gaping asshole, there's a lot of truth here.

I can't decide about that DeBoer piece. I recognize what he's talking about. On the other hand, Coates consciously employs a tragic/poetic voice ... to talk about extremely tragic shit. We're not supposed to be affected by that?

Basically (I swear to god I'm not trolling) isn't this a kind of tone policing? If this supposed reverence for Coates is leading to bad thought, bad writing and bad action, talk about that.

I agree. The feeling I get from reading Coates is like that I get from reading good creative non-fiction, rather than from standard articles I happen to think are otm.

Basically (I swear to god I'm not trolling) isn't this a kind of tone policing?

Kinda, but like you said, the phenomenon is clearly there - the minute Coates publishes anything, even a half-thought-out blog entry, the pundit/journalist community pitches forward on their faces as one, chanting "We're not worthy!" And in a way it keeps people from honestly engaging with what he's talking about; they can just say, "He's a genius - go read what he has to say" and feel no obligation to actually contribute to a discussion themselves.

I don't think Coates is as clear a thinker, or as good a writer, as he's being sold as being. He's very hammer-meet-nail in his thinking (all white supremacy, all the time), and whether I agree with the substance of what he has to say or not, I think John McWhorter is a better prose stylist. And I find Coates' newfound humorlessness (and it is newfound; his blog used to offer pop-cultural digressions, but those are apparently beneath him now; he's too busy shoving America's history under our noses to admit to ever having any fun) tiresome. The temptation to despair at the misery of human existence is always there, and very strong (assuming you give a flying fuck about humanity in the aggregate, which I mostly don't). But you gotta lighten up sometime. I'd like to see The Atlantic assign him a profile of some utterly innocuous celebrity, just to see what he'd do with it.

The cover story was more interesting as history and reporting than an argument for reparations. These days he often treats his blog as a place to post thoughts on the books he's reading, and although he sometimes doesn't finish those reviews he'll often provoke me into rereading. Do you remember when he wrote about Tony Judt's Postwar? When I read it a few years ago I filed it away; TNC made me reread the bits about West Germany and the collapse of Communism. Which is to say: I don't mind the approach! It's what a blog is for, even a blog attached and sponsored by a magazine.

"he's too busy shoving America's history under our noses to admit to ever having any fun" sounds like criticism I've read at NRO

Coates is kind of a hero to me because he's the one journalist I can think of who, rather than complain about inaccessible academics, actually goes out to read them and bring their insights into public debate. I think that's a vital public service.

i think most ppl are saying "read this" and not really engaging w/ the material bc a) coates is obv reading more than 98% of other 'pundits' and therefore b) the chattering class is not educated or well-read enough to respond.

re humourlessness, does the world really need more pop culture speculation? coates is fulfilling a vital function that neither av club nor chait or touching on.

"he's too busy shoving America's history under our noses to admit to ever having any fun"

^ What other writer is doing this, though? It's not like this is getting taught in schools

And it's not like there isn't a point to it either; the whole point is that this is still happening now in the present, which I'm not surprised you missed, Phil

But you gotta lighten up sometime. I'd like to see The Atlantic assign him a profile of some utterly innocuous celebrity, just to see what he'd do with it.

― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, June 4, 2014 11:20 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yuck.

i think most ppl are saying "read this" and not really engaging w/ the material bc a) coates is obv reading more than 98% of other 'pundits' and therefore b) the chattering class is not educated or well-read enough to respond.

Exactly. It's almost like he's doing his fucking job.

the uncritical adoration is just a faux-humble backhanded admission of how shitty they are at theirs.