Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

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

^ throws a lot of punches and some of them connect, but they don't form a counter-critique so much as escalate the twitter brawl. this only comes to a good end if it gets people to read the book before they argue about it.

i'm gonna say there is literally no hope for that

I don’t know @tanehisicoates well. We had a long dinner once & I interviewed him on @intercepted. But I do believe this line of attack is off base. I was struck by his humility and a clear sense that his views evolve as he gets more information, which should be true of all of us.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) December 18, 2017

I also believe that Cornel West has been unjustly smeared for years. West spoke out early and often about Obama’s wars, drone strikes, neoliberal economics. Still, I question why he would blast @tanehisicoates, rather than engage him directly.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) December 18, 2017

I think the problem here is that Cornel West is no longer really engaged in serious scholarship and so tosses off a 1000 word article which doesn't really engage, makes arguments that don't really stick etc. and then, as TNC is as about as sacrosanct as a public intellectual can be for liberals, this results in a load of controversy and invective. there absolutely could be a compelling critique of Coates made from the left, which Cornel West himself would be capable of writing if only he would actually bother doing the work.

his piece is just pure clickbait. the guardian published it knowing that. sometimes i want to just give up on the media

Pure clickbait? Not engaged in serious scholarship?

Well it’s a polemical piece after all. It’s supposed to provoke (reactions, thoughts, debates).

It’s an ungenerous and selective reading of TNC, I’d agree, but I can’t blame the old Prof for smelling a rat when presented with the spectacle of the unanimous, enraptured lionization of a fellow black intellectual by white liberal America. It may be that Coates ends up being unfairly charged by West, but in the process he may be shedding light on issues worth being alerted to.

Reading my post over, I realize it’s an ungenerous reading of your post , jim, and very not otm

Also I’m tired and stressed out tonight

Jelani Cobb’s argument that West was motivated by professuonal jealousy is petty and meanspirited. Coates’s wntire worldview — from his atheistic pessimism to his strong critique of the idea that black and white working poeple can find solidarity on class grounds — goes directly against everything West stands for. Of course he would object to the intellectual who criticizes the very forms of hope that for the basis of West’s politics. Of course he would be skeptical that this vision — which might not be “hopeless,” but is way more cautious of hope than what West believes, because he believes the world can be transformed — has proven so popular among white middle class people. What do you expect him to say?

These two thinkers don’t believe in the same things.

Bad grammar and typos but you get the idea.

Just because you believe in different things you don't have to write so shallow attacks as West did.

it looks like he just deleted his twitter account?

Yes, he pointed to West, a South African feminist writer and Richard Spencer all disagreeing with him and suggested he didn’t want to be part of the conversation via that medium any more.

it was a bit of a bad look tbh

not quitting twitter but basically saying: west, this feminist, and richard spencer agree with each other, see ya.

idk seems reasonable to me

if a white supremacist was enthusiastically seconding cornel west's critique of me i'd def quit the internet and possibly burn the bridge behind me

yeah weird that the white nat media-magnet stuck his nose into a disagreement between two prominent black leftists, wonder what's up with that

my issue is that being like "look richard spencer agrees with west, wow!" you're assuming that Richard Spencer is acting in good faith which he obviously fucking isn't, and you're trying to connect West with Spencer, which whatever you think of West is unfair

leaving twitter is pretty much always a good idea, too bad RS is gonna consider this a win

getting punched in the face, w/l?

sorry to chime in on that point only. but come on, the man profits hugely on our indiscipline.

as a rule i think it's best for wp to just kind of read and observe these kinds of disagreements instead of coming out swinging. i mostly feel like i haven't read enough. i don't think the concepts in question are small enough to really boil down to 1 guy vs 1 other guy, whoever you think ought to win.

i will say that @ztsamudzi has been a good follow for the past few days (and generally)

The argument these last few days has literally been that Coates was suspect because white liberals agreed with him, but Richard Spencer co-signs West and it's no big deal?

i tried, everybody

frederik profits hugely on your indiscipline

The argument these last few days has literally been that Coates was suspect because white liberals agreed with him, but Richard Spencer co-signs West and it's no big deal?

― Frederik B, Tuesday, December 19, 2017 11:22 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you rival richard spencer for disingenuousness

The problem isn't that Richard Spencer cosigned Cornel West. The problem is that Cornel West traded scholastic credibility for a cameo in a shitty Matrix movie and has spent a good chunk of the subsequent 20 years cosigning white people who feel they have the right to opine on whether particular black people are black enough.

there's another guy who lacked scholarly credibility

maybe you've heard of him