Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

xp 'critical models' is generally more readable, with lots of talks and essays prepared for general audience, radio appearances, etc.; you can pick and choose a relevant topic. i like the ones on teaching.

When D-40 gets off that plane it's all over for me. Goodbye friends, I am soon to be crushed beyond the possibility of reply.

I think just the bare concept of ‘equal human rights’ would often be insufficient as a tool against racist brutality. Most of these cops probably agree that black people have/deserve equal rights but will nonetheless say it’s necessary to be more aggressive/circumspect when dealing with them. This is based on observation of their behaviour, and doesn’t infringe their ‘rights’ per se. So it’s necessary to convince these people that they should treat everyone as harmless until they prove otherwise. They have to be convinced to go against their own prejudice which they believe to be rational and necessary for self-preservation.

Ultimately you can argue for this this in terms of a human right not to be pre-judged on the basis of race etc, particularly not by a representative of the state, particularly not by a white person, but it’s not as simple as a simple civil right.

oh shit that’s garbled - I mean, it’s necessary to convince cops to go against their self-preservation ‘instinct’. There’s not only the other person’s right, but also a conflict between their right and the cop’s own right to his perceived self-preservation.

Oh yeah, you need to fo beyond a civil rights model to fight racism. I was just saying that human rights is not necessarily a "compromised" paradigm. The only people seeming to claim this mentioned on this thread btw are the afro-pessimists, who argue that black people will never be recognized as human, that race is an intractable "antagonism" rather than a "conflict." I think I disagree with this.

Also, none of this has to do with Ta Nehisi-Coates. Sorry for the role I played in driving this thread off track.

Or maybe that paradigm is compromised. It definitely is worth interrogating, like everything else. I just don't think it's bankrupt.

I wanted to read the new book in barnes and noble today but they didnt have it

I kind of think it does have to do with Coates!

(Still on phone. Just leaving airport )

Also on the topic of insufficiency - human rights operate when they are backed up by some form of oversight. I have a right to clean water because ultimately if I think the tap water is dirty someone will come and test it etc. But in these extreme cases of murder by police the only process of oversight is the cop's own completely subjective, sometimes split-second process of risk assessment. If the case later goes to court then it will be re-assessed on the basis of some objective factors, but often mostly of the cops own reported subjective feelings.

The same could be said for hiring decisions, the ultimate quality-assessment process is often inside the black box of s single person's mind. We can look at the overall racial make-up of a company but proving discrimination in any given decision is going to be difficult, and how could we even introduce oversight?

so if black people depend on white (and non-black) people's largesse in these situations, and we have no idea how to introduce objective oversight to the moment of decision, do they really have rights?

I think it’s cases like these that lead people to dismiss human rights talk as a form of pleading with white people and turn to focus on balance-of-forces instead - although I think some possible demands for power like ‘black cops for black neighbourhoods’ could be addressed in a liberal framework.

http://i.imgur.com/1nNEPmP.jpg

http://www.buzzfeed.com/shani/between-the-world-and-she#.fvOBvlJeG9

Cornel West has decided to out-wrong everybody who is wrong about Ta-Nehisi Coates

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKDsT96WcAAimln.png

as in jazz

Tony Morrison

Liking the idea of Dr. West and Freddie DeBoer hunkering down over a cup of coffee and commiserating about this tbh

lol

Omg perfect

https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/621398935626756096

the first comment on West's post is so otm

Colette Ficklin
Dr. West, much love to you. Please receive that the dogmatic grip you have on the prophetic black fire may cause burgeoning flames of consciousness to...smolder. The "Race Matters" Cornel has given way to the present day, unapologetic soldier. Let's allow others to find their voices and their way through. We need all levels of conscious thought and engagement to reach the masses at the same. I.e., let's chill a sec on the philisophical implosions of internal critique. Let's be about the business of LIGHTING pilots not snuffing them out. ♡ ‪#‎SandraBland‬ ‪#‎pilotlighter‬
115 · Hide · 1 hour ago
11 replies

def think it's time to retire the term "neoliberal."

I don't get the commenters on websites claiming Coates is endlessly blaming the past, constantly cynical and negative, and that we'll never progress with that viewpoint. To me, he's optimistic -- acknowledging the past and the present as they are, but it's not in the context of blame per se, just acknowledgment. This is where we were, we are here in part due to the past and in part due to present policy, but we can address that and make things better.

I understand the impulse to start at this very moment and only move forward from there, but without the context of how things got the way they are, you'll never address a way to make things right, imo. The people who start at the present day, claiming they want to make a difference, always seem to jump straight to the "pull up your pants, stop shooting each other (black people), use these resources (that have purposefully been built to exclude you) to get ahead"

Yeah he addressed that quite thoroughly here and throughout the course of his back and forth with Chait
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/other-peoples-pathologies/359841/ (still think this is among the best things he's written)

Chait thinks this view is "fatalistic." I think God is fatalistic. In the end, we all die. As do most societies. As do most states. As do most planets. If America is fatally flawed, if white supremacy does truly dog us until we are no more, all that means is that we were unexceptional, that we were not favored by God, that we were flawed—as are all things conceived by mortal man.

I find great peace in that. And I find great meaning in this struggle that was gifted to me by my people, that was gifted to me by culture.

namaste

I'm not about to join in some unsupported anti- Cornel West thing, he is owed at least a systematic takedown of specific points in his argument, not just some typical ILE "oh how obvious, I don't even have to make an argument here" snark. Just going to lump him with de Boer, that will prove it.

West has earned more than that, get busy.

Not saying you can't make the case! But internet discourse is so lazy now, like "oh I'm just going to sneer, I don't have to actually make coherent arguments because sneeeeeeeeeeer" At least there is something to talk about then, not just another tedious pile-on and you're-either-with-us-or-against-us thread.

west's comments are too stupid to deserve a detailed response, but the idea that TNC has avoided criticizing obama is especially dumb

is west making any well-considered arguments to be refuted? or is he just lazily repeating a shtick?

How is saying he's wrong or limited in his scope of analysis of Coates being anti-Dr. West? His criticism might have some legs when limited in scope to Coates' recent book, and some of the way Coates frames his viewpoint don't necessarily ring true with me, but I still appreciate his approach and can differ with West on some of those criticisms.

The sneering, as you see it, is taking aspects of West's argument in this particular case and saying that he's off base on some legs of his criticism. There are plenty of other criticisms, some of which he brings up, that are valid.

this is a p good takedown of West's recent schtick from awhile back (altho personal motivations of the author don't do it any favors)

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall-our-most-exciting-black-scholar-ghost?utm_content=bufferd4fd7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I get that there is always a segment looking for a single "correct" voice but there are so many points where Coates has said he doesn't say that, but even framing it as "taking down" West is exactly the sort of binary thinking you're claiming you dislike, VP!

http://www.poemhunter.com/i/p/21/11621_b_498.jpg

That New Republic article was utter shit! I read it when it came out.

The West/Dyson spat is a whole nother thing but West invariably comes off as embittered and irrational when it comes to Obama.

i like c west but he gives little impression of having read anything by coates. but i recall coates endorsing that (i thought pretty unfair) new republic article on west, so hey tit for tat

TNR article has a point about West eschewing any kind of deep critical discourse for cheap celebrity imo

good on Dr. Cornel West for being the uncompromising person he is, but you have to question what rock he's standing on

and then there's Vic Perry resolutely blasting an entire article as "utter shit" in total

the writer of that article has earned more than "utter shit" as a rebuttal, get busy!

(is "get busy" the 2015 "do your research?"

the stuff west has said about obama is so deplorable that i have a hard time taking anything he says seriously anymore.

I'm all for critiques of Obama but West gets p hystrionic

Just checked and I stand by my assessment of that New Republic article, from the preposterous illustration of "cuh-RAY-zee" Cornel West on down to such sentences reducing all crit of Our Beloved President as

It is a sad truth that most politicians are serial rhetorical lovers and promiscuous ideological mates, leaving behind scores of briefly valued surrogates and supporters. West should have understood that Obama had had similar trysts with many others. But West felt spurned and was embittered.

Surely ILE is PC enough to notice the sexist bizarreness of this opening line:
"Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” is the best-known line from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride."

Man, that Cornel West is like some kind of CHICK or something....

the next sentence begins with "But"

lemme know when you get there

did you even make it to the second sentence

xpp

Oh gee let's not notice the bizarre sexism of the New Republic article or anything, we have an agenda here.

*farts*

the bit you quoted is a non-gendered critique fyi

xp

ha ha ha okay carry on toadies

haven't you read anything, Obama is a secret homosexual muslim, obviously West is literally a spurned lover

who the f are we toadies for?!?

just to make it absolutely crystal fucking clear here, here's the full passage:

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” is the best-known line from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride. But I’m concerned with the phrase preceding it, which captures wrath in more universal terms: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.” Even an angry Almighty can’t compete with mortals whose love turns to hate.

and this:
It is a sad truth that most politicians are serial rhetorical lovers and promiscuous ideological mates, leaving behind scores of briefly valued surrogates and supporters. West should have understood that Obama had had similar trysts with many others. But West felt spurned and was embittered.

is not gender-specific