Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

"He is pretty nuanced on this question. Which is why this second review is such horseshit. Of course there is agency, but it's constrained. It's why Coates' father beats him up for every little infraction, because Coates has to act perfectly in order to succeed, every little misstep can be his last. And even then, there's no promise of reward. Death might strike from The People Who Belive They Are White at anytime, as shown in the story of Prince Jones, who was killed by a (black) plain-clothes cop who followed him to his house, and shot when confronted."

this reminds of the chris rock anecdote, when he tries to justify black parents hitting their kids.

but i think there is a kind of damaged, cynical romanticism in giving white supremacy all the power. note that i am not denying that white supremacy exists. but i am saying that white supremacy does not control everything, seductive as that notion might seem.

"It's precisely because TNC is such an influential revered voice at the moment that there should be countervailing views."

and the reasons why he might be revered also should be interrogated, by all sides.

See this is the thing. StillAdvance writes:

'but i think there is a kind of damaged, cynical romanticism in giving white supremacy all the power. note that i am not denying that white supremacy exists. but i am saying that white supremacy does not control everything, seductive as that notion might seem.'

Right after I write that Ta-nehisi Coates doesn't give white supremacy all the power. I say that there is agency but it's constrained, according to Coates, and therefore of course white supremacy doesn't control everything.

And Treeship: This is why the review is horseshit. Not because it's some reactionary Cosby-shit (though I might call it that, if 'Cosby' wasn't the new Goodwin's law in this kind of discussion) but because it misrepresents Coates' book. It's simply factually wrong. It doesn't 'nuance' anything, it misleads. Coates does not say what Chatterton Williams says he says.

Btw, how many of you saying the review seems 'thoughtful' and 'nuanced' has read the book it purportedly criticizes?

The review isn't a "takedown" of the book. It doesn't disagree with the idea of structural racism. It's mostly critical of the implications TNC traces from his macro social analysis for day to day life as an African American. All of this is relevant to Chatterton Williams because he is a young African American man. You're egregiously misrepresenting his point of view out of fealty to TNC and it's weird.

Have you read TNC's book?

there's room for a thoughtful critique of coates. the lrb piece isn't it.

Coates doesn’t realise that his disproportionate reaction – ‘my words were hot with all of the moment and all of my history’ – is bound to be seen as objectionable to those ‘standing nearby’.

This is an egregious misreading. The whole section is rich with a reflexive immediate reaction, self-consciousness, retrospective understanding, and view from inside and outside of the self at once. That's sort of the point of the section and much else in the book -- to act in part as a coming-of-age story of his own consciousness and understanding of the world. Those sorts of gaps between immediate gut response and the bigger picture, as well as how the world is seen through the eyes of others -- and how he is seen -- are a central theme of the book.

Ditto when he denounces coates' description of paris as fantasy -- that's precisely the point of the passage he quotes, and coates says as much explicitly. it isn't a nuanced understanding of paris, but the rush of emotion of being somewhere different with different cultures and different problems. and it doesn't deepen any sense of injury -- it captures a feeling of freedom.

The article just doesn't understand the text at a basic level.

And then you have the total non-sequiters like this:

"The capacity to find gratification in making a choice – even if it’s the wrong one – is glossed over. Yet even Coates admits these pleasures:"

So which is it is this glossed over, or does coates discuss it in the passage the article goes on to quote? You can't have it both ways, but the article tries to, within two adjacent sentences no less.

good profile in NYT Mag last week of Coates' editor (who i didn't know was the Jackson of NY's McNally-Jackson bookstore)

he has pretty boring taste in rap :(

so will you when you're 40 : /

ahem

Wu Tang fan Coates or Jackson?

Jackson had accompanied Jay Z and Beyoncé to the music festival in search of material for what would become ‘‘Decoded,’’ a book-length exegesis of Jay Z’s lyrics, written by Jay Z himself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/magazine/how-chris-jackson-is-building-a-black-literary-movement.html

@tanehisicoates Feb 26
Way late, but finally saw "Creed." Amazing. Black af. Healed racist legacy of Rocky films, without dismantling Rocky legacy.

https://twitter.com/verilymag/status/722795195364990976

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgfiZnmWIAABGX9.jpg

omg cornel is gonna be so jealous

omg

pls 2 not constrict urself pretty white lady

I don't know. It makes me a little uncomfortable to see burning candles near all that fabric .

they seem to have taken that down

they seem to have taken that down

Why? This is America - everyone has an equal right to be turned into a vacuous meme.

My President Was Black. A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next

this is an amazing piece

heh

Coates on Obama, Trump, atheism, and becoming the guy “white people read to show they know something.”

Saw this response piece to Coates article https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/obamas-failure-to-mitigate-americas-foreclosure-crisis/510485/

He says: Obama the candidate ran on allowing bankruptcy judges to cut balances on primary mortgages; Obama’s administration actively whipped against the policy. This statement includes a link to another article that notes in part:

After narrowly passing the House, cramdown was defeated when 12 Democrats joined Republicans to vote against it.

Many Democrats in Congress said they saw this as the death knell for the modification program, which would now have to rely on the cooperation of banks and other mortgage servicers to help homeowners.

So while it is true that Geithner, Summers and others including Obama did not push hard for the "cramdown" law (that would allow Bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages downward to prevent folks from getting foreclosed upon), even if they had it is not clear that they would have won over those 12 Dems.

Sometimes when the party leader signals that something is important, then party members have a harder time voting against it

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/05/17/the-birthmark-of-damnation-ta-nehisi-coates-and-the-black-body/

paging fred

was already posted on the rolling race thread tho I'm sure freddy b won't mind bumping his gums about it again itt

ah my bad for doubling up

it's hard to keep up!

I read something like that when the book came out. At one point iirc the commenter / reviewer actually compared TNC to a nihilist, for similar reasons i.e. arguing that American racism is an immutable constant.

If you read the book as philosophy then maybe I guess the argument could hold up? But taken literally as a letter to his son, the violence-against-blacks-in-our-country-is-basically-the-same-as-gravity is the way ALL parents talk about danger to their children. If you cross the street without looking YOU WILL DIE HORRIBLY. I mean maybe most of us don't get into the morbid details but that's how it's crystallized in your mind and why you can't let the point go without repeated acknowledgement. Being a dad is impossible!

I don't think TNC wrote the book as a logical argument for why blacks in the USA should give up on equality. I haven't seen any signal in his other projects or appearances that he holds that position. He wrote it as a parent trying to be honest to his kids about what they're up against, with a lot of literary flourish, as he does.

^^^

Reading it any other way is straight-up idiotic, particularly if you are also a black American.

yeah but personally i love bad faith essays!

Listen to Episode 113 - Hit and Run feat. R.L. Stephens (5/31/17) by Chapo Trap House #np on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-113-hit-and-run-feat-rl-stephens-53117

Lol, Jacobin reprinted that yesterday: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/ta-nehisi-coates-racism-afro-pessimism-reparations-class-struggle And yeah, it's still stupid.

They renamed it though.

I can understand being annoyed with RLS' characterization of TNC's tone/intent but I'm gonna need more substantive criticisms than "lol marxism" to convince me he's not correct about the need to organize to effectively counter discrimination.

Who is even having that argument?

Fred, elsewhere

Maybe that rebuttal should also go elsewhere, then.

Don't take that strawman anywhere.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/?utm_source=atltw

discussing a little bit in one of the 20 threads currently being updated about residual 2016 bullshit

yes this article was mainly about the 2016 primary and the future direction of the democratic party, so that makes sense

they didn't even bother to link it in the other one. great article in any case.

TNC is an increasingly beautiful stylist whose central idea here strikes me as pretty obvious, not sure who really seeks to refute it

some issues raised with one part of his argument (for the record this particular LDR is not white)

The new Ta-Nehisi Coates piece is beautiful, but deeply limited analysis that only comforts the already comfortable.https://t.co/1ESvHGSokn

— Lana Del Raytheon (@LanaDelRaytheon) September 7, 2017

there's an extended monologue from Suzan Lori Parks' 'Father Comes Home From the Wars' where a white confederate colonel talks about how he thanks every day he was born white and how even though he may lose everything and be dirt poor a king will still meet with him because he's white. That paragraph in the T-NC piece about 'if a black man can be president then any white man can be president' really reminds me of that only... not satirical? I know SLP meant that monologue sincerely but it's presented as comedy before it grows grimmer and grimmer. T-NC version is just bleak as f.

I didn't get the impression that Coates was aiming to comfort anyone.

Don't know that pointing out all the ways Trump and Obama are indistinguishable really advances or addresses any of the ideas Coates is bringing.

xp

he's specifically taking issue with the notion of Trump undoing O's "legacy", I don't think it's an unfair or irrelevant criticism to point out the common ground

I've read the "comforts the already comfortable" a few places already. He's not a polemicist!

I don't really like that characterization either tbh

it strikes me as pretty ridiculous to dismiss TNC for not doing enough to "challenge" his audience and then falling back on the argument that trump is rly no different than obama because obama didn't just throw all the bankers in prison, a ridiculous stance but one that's certainly calculated to please an audience made up of left-wing doofs on twitter who can't handle any argument more nuanced than "they're all the same, those bums"