Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

lol ok lol @ me

xps but I am pretty sure Richard Spencer is just starting trouble and doesn't actually appreciate the TCW article. There was plenty in the article one could object to from an left/antiracist standpoint but I'm fairly certain it didn't call for a white ethno state.

Spencer and the alt right try to inflame inter-left conflicts as a wedge to drive people over to their side. That's literally why the Mercers gave millions of dollars to Milo Yiannapolous. Caricaturing one's centrist or leftist opponents as "basically Nazis" both 1.) plays into this strategy and 2.) diminishes the toxicity of the actual alt right, who are very much a part of our political landscape right now unfortunately.

the article was blatantly, on its face terrible. that you guys would defend it speaks to how shallow your understanding of this conversation is

http://www.sfchronicle.com/books/article/We-Were-Eight-Years-in-Power-by-Ta-Nehisi-12258991.php

I was happy to hear TNC more or less reject "great president" rhetoric on Intercepted

Tremendous but woefully short interview:

http://www.theroot.com/ta-nehisi-coates-talks-race-trump-and-what-s-really-sc-1820422279

The Root: In your book We Were Eight Years in Power, you bring up this concept of “plunder” (to be robbed or taken advantage of by a large group). That the United States is “plunder,” that to be African American in this country is to be plundered. To be white is to be the plunderer. If this is true, does this essentially make the American experiment irredeemable?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: No, no; here’s why ... why can’t America admit to its crimes the way Germany deals with its conscience? Well, Germany killed—good God, a number of Jews in order to get to that point. What is redeemable? I think human society is a mess. They’re always a mess. And this is our mess.

The Reich’s twelve million actual slaves have not been dealt with by Germany's conscience in the slightest, though.

*7.6 million

I’m still struggling with his argument — in this clip — that white fans of hip-hop don’t have the right to rap the n-word along with the music. I get not using a powerful, hurtful word in casual conversation, but saying that in the context of an artwork, the white listener is incapable of sharing the black artist’s experience, even in the limited space of a song — that it’s an act of white plunder rather than empathy — seems to me profoundly divisive, even toxic.

yeah.........no, just a hard no on that one

What about a white listener singing along with Peter Tosh or Fela Kuti? Is singing along in Fela's pidgin English a racist act?

you know you can just rap along with it in the privacy of your own home and no one's gonna be the wiser. unless Alexa really is spying on us all.

I read (generously, because TNC) his verbal ellipses there as an acknowledgement that the true number is unknowable, like the true number of slaves and natives we killed over the centuries to build this country. Round up or down or use more or fewer decimal places, it’s not even the order of magnitude, it’s the fact it’s greater than 0.

wow much xpost

dinnerboat if you cannot understand the point he is trying to make because it’s inconvenient for you then I’m sorry, you’re not going to find any help here. He lays it out about as Big Bird as possible.

And yes fake patois is kind of racist, dude

yeah i just don’t get the urge to say it tbh, or why i should have the right to. seems like a pretty easy concept to me

that said...i was a little surprised at how easily he let “b****” and “f******” fly in his examples of words he couldn’t use

xp thks

I’m still struggling with his argument — in this clip — that white fans of hip-hop don’t have the right to rap the n-word along with the music. I get not using a powerful, hurtful word in casual conversation, but saying that in the context of an artwork, the white listener is incapable of sharing the black artist’s experience, even in the limited space of a song — that it’s an act of white plunder rather than empathy — seems to me profoundly divisive, even toxic.

― dinnerboat, Wednesday, November 15, 2017 7:19 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you are an irredeemable dullard

I move we use "dinnerboat" as our own ILX-centric version of Milkshake Duck

oh no TNC is being divisive about white people who use the n word!! lol tf

I’m still struggling with his argument — in this clip — that white fans of hip-hop don’t have the right to rap the n-word along with the music.

yeah, this is like saying I don't have the right to hump the seat in front of me when I watch porn on an airplane

the struggle is real

what

what about frequent fliers

divisiveness >>>>

I paid for a rights upgrade

I don’t want to dig myself a deeper hole here (though that ship may have sailed), but I’m in no way advocating white people start using the n-word, nor do I have an urge to do so (nor to go around spouting fake patois). I was asking specifically within the context of relating to music made by someone from another race or culture. The argument that real empathy with a stranger’s experience, which art mediates, is a racist delusion is hard for me to understand.

what on earth are you talking about

if you want say the n-word while rapping along to "Juicy" in your Honda, go ahead.

I'm pretty sure you can experience empathy without dropping n-bombs

I don't think singing/rapping along with a song in and of itself constitutes "real empathy with a stranger's experience"

No, but it can be an expression of empathy, can't it?

...

How much empathy do you need to display/experience to enjoy "Country Grammar"?

did you read the article, man? All the way to the end?

his whole point was that having to stop yourself from saying all the words in the song is actually a good way of coming to a tiny understanding of what it's like to be black

I'm pretty sure you can experience empathy without dropping n-bombs

this made me lol

I'm pretty sure you can experience empathy without dropping n-bombs

Jessie Helms was a gentleman.

this is the reason i never do NWA at karaoke

As an aside, the funniest karaoke experience of my life was at a bar near Loon Mountain in NH, watching two 20something white women attempt to do "Country Grammar" and having it become abundantly clear that a) they only knew the chorus, and b) they'd only ever heard the clean radio version. The panicked reaction to verse 2 combined with furtive glances in my wife's and my direction just made us laugh harder and harder.

went to JayZ 444 show last week and m/l just danced and sang a few choruses. four extremely drunk/high yts nearby were belting just about every word and it was p awkward. i think it was loud enough to drown them out for the most part. i was relieved that they stayed quiet/still during The Story of OJ.

that's hilarious xp

I can't remember where I saw it but there was a story about/review of Vince Staples playing at a university or festival and a legion of polo-ed up white frat boys taking a special pleasure in rapping along with "Norf Norf." Suspicious empathy wasn't in the forefront of their thoughts.

In which Cornel West thoroughly clowns himself and retroactively justifies nearly every criticism Larry Summers made of him:

come on, g. it's literally on the first page.

like grapes of wrath ain't a novel about carnivorous fruit...and Moby Dick ain't a work of erotic fiction...
and Black Reconstruction ain't a Afrocentric home repair manual... https://t.co/5Rqwb94NeE

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) December 4, 2017

Cornel West is probably the nicest person I’ve ever met. Whenever he comes into the store I work in he is always genuine and warm and interested in other people. I don’t believe for a second he is an opportunist — his political positions emerge from his egalitarian belief system, which he seems to live out in his daily life. So maybe he misread Coates in this instance but Summers definitely wasn’t right about him.

Also in general I think West is pointing to a real difference between himself and Coates with regard to their positions on the relative importance of economic inequality, esp in regard to corporate oligarchy. Coates acknowledges the limits of Obama’s presidency but it is simply true that he is not as fierce a critic of Obama as West is. So West isn’t fully off base or making some kind of wacky critique.

come on, g

come on, g

gship

What username should I use to no longer be a meme