Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

I'm not sure what you'd prefer, Nhex? A Twitter thread isn't anything but someone replying to their own tweets, afaik.

One of the first big pieces by Coates was called 'The Case for Reparations'. He has definitely offered a solution, and he's been consistent about the importance of that solution.

― Frederik B, Friday, September 8, 2017 5:02 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah to be clear I'm speaking more to the notion of racism being something we make "progress" on, which coates largely rejects and has led to ppl accusing him of "pessimism." Which is what I assumed the post above me was talking about when xyzzz said the thing about brilliant writing not saving the day

The wider pt is lana del raytheon is not remotely in Coates league not just in terms of writing style but awareness of the conversations happening around this subject

Who is "lana del raytheon" and why is anyone taking a person who has chosen that name seriously?

LDR pointing out the hypocrisy of Obama v. Trump points is fine leftist Twitter and all, but, come on, we all know that "deporting a bunch of people and bailing out Wall Street vampires and murdering people via drone" is not going to be Obama's "legacy" in our lifetime even if it's all technically true

Also, this fascination with Obama's "legacy" is fucking stupid as shit since nothing means anything anymore when George W Bush is goofing around with Ellen and Jimmy Kimmel, get the fuck out of here with "legacy"

Obama's legacy is getting burnished on a daily basis by Trump, just by comparison.

There's a short piece on Talking Points Memo pointing out that Coates' selection of targets (George Packer, Nick Kristof, Mark Lilla) basically reveals him as existing entirely in that New Yorker/New York Times media-elite universe himself - he totally ignores much sharper discussions going on in the larger world.

What struck me though is the three voices Coates chose as the focus of his critique: Nick Kristof, George Packer and Mark Lilla. Lilla strikes me as somewhat set apart, a voice not so much of critical analysis or any sort of reportage but a sort of opportunistic and ahistorical preening rapped up in a fancy package. Kristof and Packer are wildly more interesting and thoughtful. But each is part of a highly elite and even literary kind of public dialog. We might call it David Brooksism, even if Brooks’ politics are a bit different.

Each are parts of an extremely rarefied elite culture who make a fetish of those they see as outside that culture and manage to create a caricature of the one they present themselves as a part of. It’s a funny thing to present oneself as the critic of elite cosmopolitan culture when one is so totally part of it. But this posture is a big part of the beautiful writing set, a view in which the main dynamic of American political life is the cultural condescension of the ‘elites’ which in some sense includes the entirety of the culture of the blue states against people in ‘fly over country.’ This has always struck me as a particularly shallow and shabby view of American culture and public life, a pose as much as it is an analysis. There is certainly plenty of cultural condescension from liberals in the big coastal cities toward rural conservatives in the midwest. But you have to be wildly out of touch not to see the the antipathy and condescension is mutual. Just flip on Fox News to see stereotypical Democrats and coastal ‘elites’ lampooned as lazy, deviant, precious, or generally offensive and worthless.

In any case, Coates’ piece is a great essay that brings together a wealth of data and characteristically penetrating analysis. I recommend it highly. But I could not read it without thinking there are a lot of voices – hardly little heard or without megaphones – he’s simply not hearing.

What "sharper discussions"? Fox News? That's the only example Marshall gives of a missing perspective.

Also, Marshall seems to think it is taken as universal truth that Trump won due to white backlash when it isn't, not even among people on the left. He goes on to admit this later in the response when he's complaining about a high-profile writer using the examples of other high-profile writers of the position he is arguing against. It seems odd, particularly for criticism of an excerpt from a book, which is not going to cite Twitter.

Also, I genuinely don't know this: who is the audience for TPM?

pr0n enthusiasts

(I am crediting Lana Del Raytheon as being genuine with the they/them in their twitter bio, when tbh the odds are high that they're just being an asshole)

― Andrew Farrell, Friday, September 8, 2017 5:51 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what does this mean

This means Andrew suspects that Lana Del Raytheon is mocking the concept of preferred pronouns.

"maybe they're being honest, but probably they're just being an asshole" is an interesting line of attack for when there's no evidence to back it up

Left Twitter is aggressively trans-accepting.

TNC bodied Kristof in this piece, if had any shame, he wouldnt show up for work tomorrow and eat apple jacks and watch judge mathis all day

otmmmmmmm I could drink a case and not be full

I think TNC would say before there is action there has to be recognition and reckoning re: what politics can address this

And he agrees that he's not saying anything new (beyond Trump as a new manifestation of American racism); I think that's part of his frustration. Historians have been saying these things for decades. I think the pointedness of Coates's critiques of the mainstream narratives about the 2016 election demonstrates that white conversation-setters in general are hiding from what happened, and so white Americans aren't reckoning with it.

Unsurprisingly, I agree with horseshoe.

Coates's critiques of the mainstream narratives about the 2016 election demonstrates that white conversation-setters in general are hiding from what happened

the whole notion of "conversation-setters" is more questionable now than at any point in my lifetime. are we talking about talking heads on cable news? talk radio jocks? internet commenters? newspaper and news magazine columnists? celebrity twitter accounts? politicians? mega-church preachers?

finding any commonality or unanimity of interest among those conversation-setters seems like a hopeless quest and identifying whose narratives are "mainstream" and whose are not seems to depend more and more on where you stand, not on any agreed criteria.

but then, hiding from race or submerging race is something white-generated narratives about US politics tend to do by default, except when they address it in directly, unambiguously racist terms, so frustration on the part of non-whites with this status quo is pretty much the status quo from their side of the coin.

"maybe they're being honest, but probably they're just being an asshole" is an interesting line of attack for when there's no evidence to back it up

It's not an attack, it's an observation+explanation of why I'm using the pronouns.

Tomorrow, when it gets a Verrit code, it'll be an attack.

lana del raytheon is a trans person of color who is an editor for jacobin. i think the twitter thread sucks

First thing I'm a-gonna do when Irma blows over is learn what "Verrit" means.

I would not want to be facing a hurricane right now, so I say this in jest

I'd rather sit out a hurricane than have to hear about Verrit again

What "sharper discussions"? Fox News? That's the only example Marshall gives of a missing perspective.

Also, Marshall seems to think it is taken as universal truth that Trump won due to white backlash when it isn't, not even among people on the left. He goes on to admit this later in the response when he's complaining about a high-profile writer using the examples of other high-profile writers of the position he is arguing against. It seems odd, particularly for criticism of an excerpt from a book, which is not going to cite Twitter.

― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Friday, September 8, 2017 1:57 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think I agree w/ DJP pretty much, although Josh Marshall isn't the only one bringing up this argument; part of it is that there are lots of conversations happening among many other black writers who've made many of these points, which Coates seems not to acknowledge in his rush to reference Packer et al, I think this argument is fair to an extent but I also think Coates is simply good at synthesizing and distilling those arguments in a way that gives them a force. But yeah the critiques ive read are more along the lines of, why is Coates the only black writer white liberals are picking up on, which is a fair concern.

That said i think Coates' piece was good

xxxp Then I'm an asshole - sorry, folks.

First thing I'm a-gonna do when Irma blows over is learn what "Verrit" means.

no one outside of left twitter will remember that in a week anyway

or me!

I'll remember you, Alfred.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2wrtoloJ6k

I agree with DJP, too. I didn't see that post; it totally obviates any need for mine.

I liked Between the World and Me a lot, but I found all the white critics falling over themselves & frothing at the mouth to come up with the best superlative for it (my favorite: A.O. Scott said it was "necessary, like oxygen") to be pretty disingenuous and disgusting. it very much felt like "OK, this is the black guy we're going to listen to and read and accept into the conversation."

or they may have genuinely liked it and gone hyperbolic as critics are wont to do

Sure. Can't forget that it came out only 3 months after Freddie Gray's death & less than a year after Michael Brown's. Christ, and mere weeks after Charleston. But I think there's something to the critique of Coates being very comforting to upper class white liberals who didn't know how to deal with everything going on in our country since Trayvon Martin's death and smartphones exposed the routine abuse & murder of black people by the police that had been going on for decades beforehand & was only now visible in the mainstream. I mean, the long and the short of it is Coates isn't a radical, and LDR & Jacobin & most of leftist twitter are. The complete dismantling of capitalism is the only way to destroy white supremacy to them. I don't buy that, for lack of a better phrase.

Finally read the piece and I thought it was great and challenging and troubling. I have to say I even agreed with his critiques of Bernie. Bernie's "white working class" line bothered me at the time but I sort of repressed my distaste for it. I really think everyone to the left of center should commit to never saying "white working class" again in a political context.

In spite of all of this, I *still* felt like there was a moment of sleight of hand in the piece, probably not in the deliberate sense, when he used the fact that Trump won majorities of all income levels to somewhat avoid the ways factors other than white supremacy were key to electing Donald trump. Because elections are won at the margins. And I also felt like this was the point where the piece started to blur the distinction between what people advocate for the purpose of winning elections vs the ways the moral heart of our country is deeply afflicted by racism. To be fair, he is absolutely right that even an anti-NAFTA one-issue voter had to be insufficiently bothered by Trump's supremacy, sexism, homophobia etc to say he was out of the question. Black voters have more to fear from Trump's racism than to gain from his elusive bullshit about jobs. White voters don't have that dilemma.

I think only the most old fashioned holdout leftists from
An earlier generation really believe dealing with economics will eliminate racism or the ways in which it privileges even poor and working class whites above poor and working class blacks. Bernie may or may not still be one of them. But a lot of people specifically in the organizing and electoral spheres were thinking about this more in the immediate, pragmatic sense -- "well if we fight for a higher minimum wage ifs something that low wage workers of all races can get behind." In the same sense, some of the reasons for focusing on white working class voters are simply strategic -- yes, whites of all incomes went for trump, but white working class voters have historically been in play for democrats, whereas white suburban republicans who work for defense contractors probably aren't.

I also remember Terri Gross' interview with Coates in 2015 to be very telling - she brings up an anecdote from the book where Coates was disruptive in one of his high school classes, talked back to the teacher or something. Gross was clearly appalled by that story & couldn't believe Coates was defending it, which I thought was hilarious. She clearly thought talking back to a teacher was never acceptable.

xp

*commit to never saying "the white working class". That's not a class.

That aside, reading the piece it occurred to me that I have become less open than I'd like to admit to the kind of critiques he is raising. I think this is partly because during the election it felt like his reasoning was being deployed cynically by people who in reality support neither universal healthcare nor reparations. So I got a bit too dug in.

If white liberals find Ta-Nehisi Coates comforting, they are misreading him. I think tokenization of Coates happens when it does because would-be aesthetes think of him as the Black Writer With Craft. What he says is typically pretty bleak.

But who cares why some imagined white fan you have narcissism of small diff beef with likes Coates? This piece rules.

Sure. Can't forget that it came out only 3 months after Freddie Gray's death & less than a year after Michael Brown's. Christ, and mere weeks after Charleston. But I think there's something to the critique of Coates being very comforting to upper class white liberals who didn't know how to deal with everything going on in our country since Trayvon Martin's death and smartphones exposed the routine abuse & murder of black people by the police that had been going on for decades beforehand & was only now visible in the mainstream. I mean, the long and the short of it is Coates isn't a radical, and LDR & Jacobin & most of leftist twitter are. The complete dismantling of capitalism is the only way to destroy white supremacy to them. I don't buy that, for lack of a better phrase.

― flappy bird, Friday, September 8, 2017 7:26 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ummm I'm with you until you argue ldr and Jacobin are "more radical" than Coates...more radical on whose terms? People are measuring "leftness" on a one dimensional spectrum...I don't know about coates pov on this specifically but the critiques of jacobin et al in Coates work don't inherently suggest a more liberal or moderate approach...

And yes horseshoe otm

As far as I can tell Coates pessimism could as easily reflect a radical revolutionary perspective as a liberal one, is what I meant to say...like sure his big suggestion is reparations which isn't all that radical compared to "revolution" but reparations are at once a serious suggestion (they're obviously deserved) and a symbolic one, because the country in which reparations would ever happen is probably not this one--in which case it might just take something as radical as revolution for reparations to become reality. In which case Coates is much more radical than most of these leftists who are like "it would be good if we were more of a social democracy"

Otm. Ta-Nehisi Coates believes descendants of enslaved people should be cut checks by the federal government. That's radical by American standards, I'd say.

I saw Coates speak right after the case for reparations came out. All these white folks in the audience took for granted that he meant reparations symbolically. And he kept saying, "you don't understand I think (whatever the name of the main dude in that article was) should be cut a check. Tomorrow. A big check."

@D-40
just on the terms of that last statement, that dismantling of capitalism is the only way to destroy white supremacy. afaik Coates does not agree. but you're right, i was being reductive & vague using "radical" like that.

I also remember Terri Gross' interview with Coates in 2015 to be very telling - she brings up an anecdote from the book where Coates was disruptive in one of his high school classes, talked back to the teacher or something. Gross was clearly appalled by that story & couldn't believe Coates was defending it, which I thought was hilarious. She clearly thought talking back to a teacher was never acceptable.

xp

― flappy bird, Friday, September 8, 2017 7:28 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao there are so many ppl ive worked with that ive privately celebrated when kids talked backed to them

Clyde Ross is the dude. The main subject of that article.

As far as I can tell Coates pessimism could as easily reflect a radical revolutionary perspective as a liberal one, is what I meant to say...like sure his big suggestion is reparations which isn't all that radical compared to "revolution" but reparations are at once a serious suggestion (they're obviously deserved) and a symbolic one, because the country in which reparations would ever happen is probably not this one--in which case it might just take something as radical as revolution for reparations to become reality. In which case Coates is much more radical than most of these leftists who are like "it would be good if we were more of a social democracy"

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, September 8, 2017 8:46 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

flappy bird, Coates sees capitalism as intertwined with the history of theft of black labor and bodies, so I think he does advocate its dismantling; he just refuses to speak about it in a purely Marxist way. Because of racism.

Maybe "advocate" is the wrong word, as he's more in the business of diagnosis, but American capitalism is definitely poison in his analysis.

A bunch of twitter socialists were in my mentions today for defending the Coates piece, ppl on the "left" are about to start coming for him in bigger ways. Someone was citing this sociologist Vivek chibber whose whole thing is that postcolonial theory has mainly served capitalism & postmodernism gutted the left and that Marxism needs to come back (which is Marxism more or less unaltered by postcolonial studies etc.) I'm just very suspicious of this entire line of thinking