Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

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.

CW and TNC both make strong and arresting arguments. Fuckin surreal to see posts about these two interspersed with ones about that head-measuring clown Sullivan.

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

Maybe read the fucking text where Coates explicitly criticizes Obama for the exact same reasons that West is coming for Coates before making this dumbass argument.

why so hostile?

🤔

Hi there, white guy here to tell you what's poppin: CW is roughly right about what TNC's weltanschaung leaves out, but he's wrong, I think, to imply that these omissions come from some kind of unquestioning obeisance to neoliberalism and the military industrial complex.

Well going back to it "criticizes" is strong but Coates entire argument is "bourgie respectability is terrifying to white people" and encapsulates West's shallow criticism of the title of the book, which is explicitly intended to link together two separate eras of black history and highlight the white backlash to both of them.

it would not be unheard of for a critic to want to point out that an author is susceptible to an argument they make against other people.

An unremittingly bleak pessimistic assessment of racism and white-supremacy is perhaps more subversive in the american context than invocations of struggle and resistance which, while hugely important, can be co-opted into a comforting liberal narrative of, you know, struggling to fulfil the country's true promise and that sort of thing.

subversive how?

i read 'the beautiful struggle' years ago as tnc was picking up steam... i mostly remember him going to great lengths to convey how unimaginably violent and hostile the kids he grew up around were. brutal book.

Because it can't be co-opted into any sort of comforting narrative of improvement, the arc of the moral universe tending towards justice and all that.

"I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror."

well if it can be co-opted into other narratives, that might be a mixed bag, huh?

a mixed bag of white people terrors - where do I buy this

the annoying thing with these recurring beefs is like, TNC writes these densely researched pieces and books, super engaged with academic history. and then the criticism sidesteps all of that and is like, uhhh he likes obama

I’m reading the Coates thread and ... I’m starting to think he’s missed the entire point of the criticism levelled against him.

— San (@sansdn) December 17, 2017

it's not a thread so i can't link to it all but TNC has tweeted a lot of links today to his past work that pretty solidly refute the idea that he's some kind of uncritical fan of obama or that he's ignored all of the issues west brings up. west seems like he hasn't actually spent much time reading TNC.

'eight years in power' is kind of insistently ambivalent, and west is cherry-picking to a ridiculous extent

who is this san person

J.D. otm.

lol that thread simon posted

I’m going to give my own in-depth critique this thread of Ta-Nehisi Coats. Starting with this one. Nice dark pea coat but the exaggerate lapel gives it a nice edgy haute couture feel that has a nice slimming effect 👍🏽 pic.twitter.com/zeD4MVJD8f

— T. (@RickyRawls) December 18, 2017

Continuing the review of Ta-Nehisi Coats, this one was okay, kind of unremarkable. Low risk, safe choice compared to the large lapel pea coat. Nothing to insult about it but not memorable either pic.twitter.com/pCM5mlYM39

— T. (@RickyRawls) December 18, 2017

Those are the only two coats I can find him wearing so that’s the whole thread.

— T. (@RickyRawls) December 18, 2017

T. rules

https://twitter.com/i/moments/942612074584256512