Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

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

I don't feel suspicious of him per se but there's is defintietly a part of me that is like "hmm, why does The Atlantic of all publications like this so much. What is the appeal of this kind of thinking to the kind of liberal that, let's be real, will never actually stick his neck out for reparations." I don't think the left should be "coming for him" but continue to be wary of the cynical deployment of this kind of rhetoric for the purpose of quashing class analysis without any real underlying commitment to what Coates advocates.

is anyone using TNC's work to "quash" class analysis, though?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/13/clinton-in-nevada-not-everything-is-about-an-economic-theory/?utm_term=.f0c274d3292f

ctrl+f "coates" 0 of 0

Read what I wrote again.

okay thats fair

Anecdotally, the On Reparations piece was a) informative on a historical level (even for lefty me, who knew about sundown towns and redlining, but didn't know about a lot of the specifics of much of the rest beyond basic unfairness) and b) helped me talk to racially aggrieved whites who had even less of an idea about how we got to where we are than I did. I support reparations, fwiw. A group of people who have been systemically ripped-off and disenfranchised should always be able to get redress.

People who talk about the white working class and call themselves any kind of socialist/social justice person are internalising a divide placed there by conservative forces. Also, American white people who are working class bristle at being so described because they're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Working people need to figure out how to do solidarity or we are fuuuuuuuuucked.

Hilary Clinton otm there, though.

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

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, 8 September 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You are comparing a piece worked over and edited to a twitter thread written in response a few hours later. In the end this sets up a hierarchy that doesn't go anywhere. Nobody cares that Obama has a brain and wrote his own speeches and the like...the current President has the range of a 12 year old. And on Obama its also fair to point out that his "legacy" (and that's an act of looking back at what was accomplished by the person you voted for) is death and destruction, the mis-handling of the aftermath of the financial crisis, as well as domestic healthcare reform. You don't absolve the white working class (and that's the great work of that TNC piece), equally you can see Obama as part of an elite that didn't do the right things when needed.

Reparation as a suggestion (and I haven't read the piece so going by accounts here, try it and read so later) v much reminds of Piketty's manner of redistribution - nice and all but dead on arrival. You can make the case for it but the people with the wealth and power aren't going to give it up/going to do this thing because they are being beaten in an argument.

I don't think there needs to be this chasm between TNC and the left (but there's room for arguing with each other, via twitter and elsewhere) leading to this weird race to the bottom on what's radical. Room for a whole range of demands that can be worked on the ground over time.

Equally?

'We can admit to this historically accurate depiction of the white working class that is being suppressed and kept out of history books, but equally we must confront this biased thing I read on The Intercept about the first black president. Equality!'

People who talk about the white working class and call themselves any kind of socialist/social justice person are internalising a divide placed there by conservative forces. Also, American white people who are working class bristle at being so described because they're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Working people need to figure out how to do solidarity or we are fuuuuuuuuucked.

― kim jong deal (suzy), Saturday, September 9, 2017 2:18 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is true. It needs to just be the "working class." An even better term for this moment is "the 99%" because it speaks to the absurdly unequal gains over the past twenty years of growth and innovation that has somehow left millions desperate and precarious.

"Class" analysis shouldn't be about mythical coal miners. It should be about retail workers and care workers and teachers basically all of us. There are issues on which different identity groups can and should stand together. The opposition of class vs race that is emerging, or has emerged, is a catastrophe and it dooms us to either neoliberal misery or -- what is more likely -- some everlasting right wing nightmare.

joy reid is as insightful as ever

http://www.thedailybeast.com/whats-going-to-happen-when-the-trumpists-realize-the-america-they-yearn-for-is-gone

Nothing in Coates's piece suggests he would disagree with this. He astutely points out that raising the specter of the "white working class" as an identity group repeats the right wing division of white and non-white workers (as suzy also pointed out). But his focus in this piece is not defining a path for the Democrats, he is looking specifically at how race still poisons so much in American life and politics, and what the rise of Donald Trump means to black Americans. It's sort of a parallel conversation. So the piece is urgent and the blind spots he identifies in Bernie, Kristof et al are all true, but the possibility of people using this piece to make some facile argument against universalist redistributive policies is... troubling

Ok that Joy Reid piece is fucked up. There needs to be a middle ground between inflaming the worst passions and resentments of struggling rural whites and taunting them for not pulling their weight economically.

Xp

Treeship repeatedly OTM

One more thing about the Reid piece -- then I'll shut up -- is that college educated whites and rich whites also voted for Trump. The worst thing that can happen is if the Democrats make Trump's election about America's "losers" getting revenge on its "winners." Thaf'a supposed to be how Republicans think.

That's been the standard high-status media-type/pundit/journo reaction since the election, hasn't it? They can't possibly conceive of why anyone would have voted for the guy, so they cast about for reasons why and can only blame those poor folks over there(ones that they never actually talk to, funny that) in that state as why.

You are comparing a piece worked over and edited to a twitter thread written in response a few hours later. In the end this sets up a hierarchy that doesn't go anywhere.

― xyzzzz__

by "this" you mean "twitter", right?

death and destruction, the mis-handling of the aftermath of the financial crisis, as well as domestic healthcare reform.

Fine, point out these faults, but also address the fact that as centrist as Obama may have been on some/many issues, his centrist-Dem Court picks were/are better than Trump's court picks like Gorsuch; his labor law and environmental policies are better than Trump. Trump removed some of the standards re use of drones, so more civilians are getting killed by drones now than before. ICE is worse now than before. One can criticize without doing Lana Del Raytheon false equivalency comparisons.

Anecdotally, the On Reparations piece was a) informative on a historical level (even for lefty me, who knew about sundown towns and redlining, but didn't know about a lot of the specifics of much of the rest beyond basic unfairness) and b) helped me talk to racially aggrieved whites who had even less of an idea about how we got to where we are than I did. I support reparations, fwiw. A group of people who have been systemically ripped-off and disenfranchised should always be able to get redress.

People who talk about the white working class and call themselves any kind of socialist/social justice person are internalising a divide placed there by conservative forces. Also, American white people who are working class bristle at being so described because they're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Working people need to figure out how to do solidarity or we are fuuuuuuuuucked.

― kim jong deal (suzy), Saturday, September 9, 2017 1:18 AM (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The first part of your post is immediately contradicted by the latter part of it... stop condescending to working class people. It's white people generally who need to get it together, not the working class

Oops I only meant to copy the second paragraph of your post

Reparation as a suggestion (and I haven't read the piece so going by accounts here, try it and read so later) v much reminds of Piketty's manner of redistribution - nice and all but dead on arrival. You can make the case for it but the people with the wealth and power aren't going to give it up/going to do this thing because they are being beaten in an argument.

The notion that socialist redistribution is totally attainable but reparations are pie in the sky nonesense is basically the equivalent of saying "we can figure out class but not race" aka putting class first. How do you not see this

I don't think there needs to be this chasm between TNC and the left (but there's room for arguing with each other, via twitter and elsewhere) leading to this weird race to the bottom on what's radical. Room for a whole range of demands that can be worked on the ground over time.

You say this like "both sides" are guilty of being "more radical than thou" but that's the entire framework of the jacobin left right now..,, that everyone who resists them is "a liberal"

To clarify @Suzy, I 100% agree with:

People who talk about the white working class and call themselves any kind of socialist/social justice person are internalising a divide placed there by conservative forces

But think you complete contradict it two sentences later:

Working people need to figure out how to do solidarity or we are fuuuuuuuuuucked.

D-40, you are arse-over-tit in ALL your responses to my post. Do better.

As TNC writes, more than half of white people across every demographic of age and class voted for [blecch]. This includes people in my family, who do not all necessarily inhabit the same age/education/income brackets as one another. I am also wondering about your choice to single me out, when others here are saying things similar to me. But y'know, wevs.

D-40, you are arse-over-tit in ALL your responses to my post. Do better.

As TNC writes, more than half of white people across every demographic of age and class voted for (ewwwwww). This includes people in my family, who do not all necessarily inhabit the same age/education/income brackets as one another. I am also wondering about your choice to single me out, when others here are saying things similar to me. But y'know, wevs.

(That did need saying twice, manchild)

college educated whites and rich whites also voted for Trump

damn straight. plenty of them did. they were panting after the big tax breaks, deregulation, and other goodies that were supposed to flow forth in abundance from a Republican administration. they may just get them, too.

The fucking word count raffle / dick measuring contest over which of us can admire the problem the most wokefully has got to fucking stop.

It feels like everyone has been turned into the most tiresome crank this past week, it's fucking impossible to wade through any of this shit. I don't mean just ILX, I mean basically all over the goddamn place. Between Hillary's stupid (stupid, stupid) publishing schedule, this Daou idiot and his phenomenally terrible website, and TNC's most erudite ever takedown of everything, I have just about lost hope for anything remotely productive or intelligent to emerge from the muck of self-loathing and, oh, fuck it.

Ideas are bad, people. Don't ever have those. Have pithy scorn instead.

I didn't find LDR's thread particularly pithy esp by twitter standards

I can grasp how to build class solidarity but not racial solidarity

"wokefully" is the ILX word of the day imho

lol I'm not singling you out @suzy I've been making this point throughout the thread.

And I don't know what your personal history with class has to do w anything, I'm just saying "working class people need to get it together" is just reinforcing the same dynamic you claimed to want to dismantle seconds before

You're still misquoting, just STOP ALREADY.

Working people need to figure out how to do solidarity or we are fuuuuuuuuucked.

??????

I can grasp how to build class solidarity but not racial solidarity

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), 9. september 2017 22:22 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That might say more about you than about the two problems?

That seemed a bit accusatory. I definitely don't mean to imply that you're racist or something. Just that I can see several historical instances where a lot of racial solidarity was build.

Good work everyone ok let's pick it up again here tomorrow

I just wanted to point out that Joy Reid's piece is making exactly the same types of points as Coates' essay and the people criticizing it appear to have skim read for pull quotes they could misunderstand so they could put the uppity negress with the fancy degree back in her place.

IMO, That's what everyone has been doing to everyone else since Her tweeted about Verrit and it's al devolved into a sticky miasma of being completely pissed off at all the wrong people.

I must confess to having zero to say about the following un-useful things:

Verrit
Chapo Trap House
Relitigating 2016
Hillary/Bernie

....because I've had it with Left-on-Left aggro, since there are larger battles to pursue and a more relevant enemy to set myself against.

i suppose Teh Discourse was bad this week, but I've been p heartened by signs that irl politics are getting past 2016; Harris and Warren jumping on Bernie single payer and the left cutting Harris slack for having been a prosecutor as she adopts more left policies. like this guy ('which city does Adam Johnson live in again? NYC har har') was one of the worst sanctimonious Bernie ppl during the primary and,

she's acting like someone who a) can read the writing on the wall RE dem base b) not hung up on intraleft 2016 relitigation c) will win nom https://t.co/OKgyXmWKSB

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) September 9, 2017

imo for a black woman to beat trump and enact single payer is basically the only path to redemption left for America, after Trump

i like RL's writing on other stuff (and his DSA plank is sure better than the one that's all white dudes lol) but his critiques of TNC seem like some shit you would write in an comparative lit MA. fuck outta here with that imo. literary theory in left infighting operationalized as bitchmode petty sniping seems dated, from a time when the left had way less potential for power, like 80s or 90s...but the rest of his writing is much more substantive about left strategy & big picture policy:

https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/housing-poverty-freddie-gray-racism-black-panther-party-baltimore

https://jacobinmag.com/2017/06/walter-scott-police-killing-michael-slager-race-class

yeah I have noticed a significant easing up on Harris this week

https://theoutline.com/post/2213/the-progressive-potential-of-kamala-harris

it's good

imo for a black woman to beat trump and enact single payer is basically the only path to redemption left for America, after Trump

It would be a beautiful thing.