Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

lol i actually listened to that episode. it was awful

anyway yeah maybe save it for the chapo thread

I love both TNC and CTH, but the part where R.L. Stephens talk about how "black bodies" has become a pseudo-intellectual buzzword was OTM

*R.L. Stephens and the gang

I am sure on earth-2 people are complaining about Chapo hosts taking over the discussion with RL, how it shows they are not serious about including leftist voices in their discourse, etc.

i mean lots of things are pseudo-intellectual buzzwords these days (like... neoliberal???). it's fueled by social media's combination of fast-spreading information and performative insistence

anyway let's go back to the main topic, sorry everyone

Where were all these people complaining abt Coates before the podcast came along to give them a space to criticize him from "the left" lol

We were posting on Stormfront, obv.

give me a minute I'm sure I can sum this up with a terrible Metal Gear analogy

Snake Eater sucks

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/if-obama-said-that-ta-nehisi-coates-test-exposes-how-institutional-racism-helps-trump/

He was terrific on Chris Hayes' show.

George Packer responds.

When you construct an entire teleology on one cause—even a cause as powerful and abiding as white racism—you face the temptation to leave out anything that complicates the thesis. So Coates minimizes sexism—Trump’s disgusting language and the visceral hatred of many of his supporters for Hillary Clinton—background noise. He downplays xenophobia, even though foreigners were far more often the objects of Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policy proposals than black Americans. (Of all his insults, the only one Trump felt obliged to withdraw was his original foray into birtherism.) Coates doesn’t try to explain why, at one point in the campaign, a plurality of Republicans supported Ben Carson over the other nine candidates, all white. He omits the weird statistic that slightly more black and Latino voters and slightly fewer whites went for Trump than for Mitt Romney. He doesn’t even mention the estimated eight and a half million Americans who voted for President Obama and then for Trump—even though they made the difference. No need to track the descending nihilism of the Republican Party. The urban-rural divide is a sham.

Then there’s the fact that Trump’s support among working-class whites has fallen from two-thirds on Election Day to 43 percent last month. Has Trump gone soft on the bigotry? Or has he failed to deliver on the rest of his package—cleaning up corruption and doing amazing deals and making America great again? Coates might need more than one cause to explain it.

That 46 percent of voters, overwhelmingly white, chose Trump—that some chose him because of bigotry and some while overlooking it—that more than a third of the country still supports him: all this is hideous enough. But we live in a time of total vindication, when complication and concession are considered weaknesses, and counter examples are proof of false consciousness. This spirit has taken over Coates’s writing. In this essay and other recent work, he’s turned away from the self-examining quality of his earlier writing to a literary style that’s oracular. He has become the most influential writer in America today; this latest Atlantic essay is already being taught in college courses. He has never written more powerfully, and the sentences sweep you along because they don’t yield for a second to anything.

But the style of no-compromise sacrifices things that are too important for readers to surrender without a second thought. It flattens out history into a single fixed truth, so that an event in 2016 is the same as an event in 1805, the most recent election erases the one before, the Obama years turn into an illusion. It brushes aside policy proposals as distractions, and politics itself as an immoral bargain. It weakens the liberal value of individual thought, and therefore individual responsibility, by subordinating thoughts and individuals to structures and groups. It begins with the essential point that race is an idea, and ends up just about making race an essence.

So Coates minimizes sexism—Trump’s disgusting language and the visceral hatred of many of his supporters for Hillary Clinton—background noise. He downplays xenophobia, even though foreigners were far more often the objects of Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policy proposals than black Americans. (Of all his insults, the only one Trump felt obliged to withdraw was his original foray into birtherism.) Coates doesn’t try to explain why, at one point in the campaign, a plurality of Republicans supported Ben Carson over the other nine candidates, all white.

It's not a matter of TNC's "minimizing" sexism or "downplaying" xenophobia -- he has acknowledged those don't constitute his metier. Also, yes he HAS explained why Ben Carson drew support; even last night he detailed why a white voter who voted for Trump could vote for Obama twice.

It's not that TNC doesn't deserve criticism -- it's that his critics are a second-rate bunch.

It's not that TNC doesn't deserve criticism -- it's that his critics are a second-rate bunch.

Where you and I differ is that you think Coates is better than his critics. His Reconstruction-era prose makes his ideas seem like much more than they are.

As a test, whenever someone writes that article 'It's not JUST racism', search for the word 'intersection' in it. There's a huge theoretical current of thought examining how race intersects with, for example, gender and class, and whether or not a critic mentions that is a really good indicator of whether they actually want to broaden the discussion, or whether they just want to stop people from talking about race. It's not perfect. But a good indicator.

At the end there, when he complains that TNC doesn't allow for 'individual thought' and 'individual responsibility', it's just really obvious he doesn't want to think about white privilege.

xp dude

lol

Fred do you know who George Packer is

Haven't the slightest clue, which is why I kept my remarks to this specific text.

And it really didn't give me any evidence I should spent time figuring out who George Packer is. Anything I should know?

He's white.

As a test, whenever someone writes that article 'It's not JUST racism', search for the word 'intersection' in it.

Any writer who hopes to connect with an audience that is unfamiliar with that "huge theoretical current of thought" you cite, which amounts to at least 95% of that writer's potential audience, will deliberately avoid that word because it is specialized academic jargon, and will instead concentrate on conveying as simply as possible the meaning and significance that the jargon can only reference. If that word appears, the writer is probably preaching to the choir.

"Racist whites couldn't possibly support Ben Carson" is a massively disingenuous argument

It's like the flip side of "but some of my best friends are black!"

My wife's brother is white, racist as fuck, and the biggest Carson stan I've ever known. Carson is proof to him that racism has been solved and he doesn't have to do a thing or (especially) think about it anymore.

lol at the image of a "Carson stan"

My dad is a big Carson fan for similar reasons. Carson is a mega Christian, has wacky ideas about pyramids and shit, and most importantly, in his mind it supporting Carson shows his even more racist friends that he's not a racist

I didn't see Packer making the argument that "racist whites couldn't possibly support Ben Carson," I see his line about that appearing in a paragraph where he's making the point that lots of other shit was going on in 2016 besides just America being racist as fuck. But I am reading his response with more sympathy than almost everybody else here, I suppose.

lol at the idea that someone has to use a specific fucking word, every time, or their argument can be dismissed out of hand

fwiw coates singled out packer for criticism in his essay, so he's responding to that

Yep. His response amounts to, "But I wrote good stuff about the election too!'

Where you and I differ is that you think Coates is better than his critics. His Reconstruction-era prose makes his ideas seem like much more than they are.

― grawlix (unperson), Saturday, September 16, 2017 8:30 AM (twelve hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is one of the worst posts I've ever read. Not sure if that's your bad prose, bad ideas, or a mixture of the two

I didn't see Packer making the argument that "racist whites couldn't possibly support Ben Carson," I see his line about that appearing in a paragraph where he's making the point that lots of other shit was going on in 2016 besides just America being racist as fuck. But I am reading his response with more sympathy than almost everybody else here, I suppose.

― El Tomboto, Saturday, September 16, 2017 3:48 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It really was just America being racist is fuck, which is why white people were the only demographic to go overwhelmingly for trump. If it was sexism why did a majority of white women vote for trump? I mean we've been over this 8million times by now

this is one of the worst posts I've ever read.

You should read more. Like, in general.

From my 'fieldwork' in this area (conversations with my mom, who got all 'no, YOU'RE the racist' when challenged on her dislike of Obama or BLM or whatever) support for Carson was given purely to troll liberals.

It really was just America being racist is fuck, which is why white people were the only demographic to go overwhelmingly for trump. If it was sexism why did a majority of white women vote for trump? I mean we've been over this 8million times by now

in my scientific opinion, it was 55% racism, 20% sexism, 15% xenophobia, 10% south park fans

Women can't be sexist, it's a fact.

xp 12% necrophilia, 89% sexual frustration, 3.23% memes, 42% martian interference, 0.04% pussy hats not ready until week after election, 7% millenials vs boomers thinkpieces, 2% obama party hangover, 100% gravy sauce

The idea that xenophobia and racism aren't overlapping is absurd obv

Likewise the idea that bc more poc voted for trump than Romney means it can't be racism ... that's just bad logic

Packer is a brilliant journalist who is also an old man thinking in an ancient boomer paradigm

i largely agree with packer's response, and i think it explains the reservations i had after reading coates' piece, even though i largely came away agreeing with it. there was a striking lack of humility and cavalierism regarding the logical leaps he was making that were, truthfully, beneath a writer of coates' caliber.

Oh fuck off

I think this discussion is at an impasse. If you point out that TNC's argument is essentialist by pointing out the other factors in the American character, you are effectively eliding the difficult conversation about white privilege as the principal substance of the American character. The issue of white privilege is what has to be tackled first before anything else matters. Pointing out that other things might also matter, no matter how true, is ultimately jejune.

You can attack class issues before tackling race issues, and that's pretty much what we've always done, but the effects don't last. Race always drags us back down. The New Deal was racist as hell and the right wing still wants to get rid of (most of*) what remains from it.

I don't think TNC is at heart an essentialist or an absolutist. I think he writes like one because he feels that if he makes his points any other way then it's not going to get through to people.

*all those dams and power administrations sure do keep the lights on in a lot of red state homes though

i don't think every writer needs to account for everything. coates's subject is racism and he was writing about trump's election as it fits into the long story of american racism. i don't think the "oracular" style packer complains about is necessarily a problem. coates shouldn't have to water down the truth he wants to talk about by name-checking a hundred other true things.

the one thing that is objectionable about the coates piece is the way he deals with writers who had other explanations for trump. attack lilla -- fine -- because lilla is actively trying to sideline BLM from the democratic party, but someone like packer isn't discussing class *in order to* sideline race, he is talking about it because it is another part of the story. the trump election wasn't just about one thing.

Right. Forcefully prioritizing one thing can sound like essentialism, but it isn't.

I figure Packer got singled out because he was the sharpest of the bunch writing "What Would the White Working Class Do" pieces prior to the election.

the problem arises when that prioritization causes him to mold all the available evidence to fit his thesis (which packer, and everyone in this discussion, is on board with), while dismissing out of hand anything that might complicate it. his questionable readings of packer's (in particular) writing and tendentious use of statistics should give any thinking reader pause, even if it doesn't necessarily change our assessment of his conclusion. maybe this is a hangup i have coming from a mostly medical science background rather than the humanities, but the methods of making an argument matter, and the evidence one chooses (and chooses to exclude) affect my view of the validity of the conclusion. the carelessness with which coates steamrolls over nuance would be more objectionable if the writing weren't so clear and powerful, not to mention necessary.

i would also caution people against becoming so enamored of a particular writer that the ability to think for oneself is lost. avoid thinking of public intellectuals like coates or packer as part of this zero-sum game where any criticism of a particular thinker implies rejection of what they stand for. this is how this tends to work on twitter, but we can be better than that if we choose to be

I read the original Packer piece: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/hillary-clinton-and-the-populist-revolt In all honesty, Coates was pretty mild in his criticism of it.

avoid thinking of public intellectuals like coates or packer as part of this zero-sum game where any criticism of a particular thinker implies rejection of what they stand for

Absolutely. The challenge in spaces like the Internet, which is a campus classroom, a public square, and a middle school cafeteria all at once, is that it becomes almost impossible to discern when people are using shorthand, when people are being earnestly dense, and when people are trying to engage, while accommodating for the times when people with kids and day jobs don't have the time to say much more than their feelings (i.e. "Packer's argument is not without merit" = "TNC is wrong about America" -> "oh fuck off")

or to put it more succinctly

i love ta-nehisi coates, but twitter is not for everyone

― horseshoe, Thursday, March 1, 2012 2:16 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink