Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

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

fuck it man, treeship 3, be a legend

https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036

“Cornel Wooster”

He didn't misread TNC, he clearly didn't read at all what he was criticizing. He is talking out of his ass, which is bad, no matter how nice he is to treeships.

Ulysses aint about a mythical hero's adventures and eventual return home to conquer his enemies OR IS IT

Ulysses is cultural appropriation of hellenic folklore, similar to vanilla ice aping hip hop, which is also originally a hellenic folk music form

https://olvidorecords.bandcamp.com/track/hip-hop-fox

“The Old Westament”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-nehisi-coates-neoliberal-black-struggle-cornel-west

this is a dumb, useless essay, but most offensive to me was his insistent use of "fightback", apparently a word they use in the UK. horrifying

people don't say fightback in america?

i've never seen it, and it's not listed in merriam-webster

this is a dumb, useless essay, but most offensive to me was his insistent use of "fightback", apparently a word they use in the UK. horrifying

Sometimes UK editors will change a word to its British equivalent. It's happened to me when I write for The Wire, and I've also seen tabloids change the phrasing in celebrity quotes in puff-piece profiles so that Anne Hathaway or whoever speaks in British colloquialisms.

also: Andrew Sullivan has some words.

I'm v glad Sullivan is mostly out of the conversation of late

this piece was really bad

I liked Loomis on this.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/12/oh-hey-andrew-sullivan-exists-hes-still-racist

In conclusion, one of the most embarrassing things about the early blogosphere is that people took Andrew Sullivan seriously. What a horrible person. I am also reminded about the era when Sullivan gave Freddie the keys to his site. What a pair of geniuses.

what a disaster for the early blogosphere

In which Cornel West thoroughly clowns himself

idgi

west is responding to the clearly intended implications of the title by questioning the credibility of the claim to political representativeness made therein

i don't see how pointing to a source for the phrase changes that, the title carries the implications it does regardless, and it would seem the book backs that implication up

xp I never did understand the enthusiasm for Sullivan, other than that he seemed like a moderate voice from the center-right at a time when the hard right was firmly in control. His ideas were, at best, mushily conservative, advocating social change with "all deliberate speed", which has always meant "at a snail's pace".

j. you could just read the twitter thread and maybe even the book itself.

CW was just being a twerp, like every other drip with a reflexive anti-Obama and contrarian “TNC isn’t all that” axe to grind who just saw an opening and took it

the thread does not answer my question, since it's mainly TNC's followers basking in his clownage and congratulating themselves on getting it (something). TNC's response seems disingenuous, and doesn't make it possible to tell the difference between refusing to take the criticism seriously because he thinks it's poorly drawn or impertinent, and refusing to take it seriously because it articulates an actual vulnerability.