Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

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

a stonemason from athens

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.

― Embalming is a flirty business (DJP), Tuesday, December 19, 2017 2:37 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What is this in reference to?

https://www.singlepayeraction.org/2011/09/19/ralph-nader-cornel-west-unveil-proposal-to-challenge-obama-in-primaries/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibsP6XN2dIo

For the record, you can 100% criticize Obama's record without calling him an Uncle Tom or cosigning people who do; this is not about "Obama was right" as much as it "white people on the left are quick to decry racism right up until they get to use it themselves"

Did Nader ever apologize for that remark? If he did, I never heard about it.

of course he didn't, why would he?

He doubled down, if anything.

https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/nader-defends-obama-slur/

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.

not sure if i'm misreading, but my intended snarky point was "rs likely considered that a win too, what an ahole."

i cant imagine looking at this scenario and thinking coates leaving twitter is some kind of "bad look" ... the fuck?

^^^

seconding that

did anyone in here already link RL Stephens much more substantive left critique of TNC? it's a more serious thing, not a glib guardian blog post, that i'd hoped somebody with a bigger platform like west might mount:

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/05/17/the-birthmark-of-damnation-ta-nehisi-coates-and-the-black-body/

Yeah, that was linked upthread. Frederik didn't find that one very convincing, either.

tbh i didn't find that one convincing either

here he is on west for whatever that's worth for passerby

I think the Cornel West riff on Coates is rather shallow, sort of like an interview riff rather than a substantive take on Coates and his work. It's more about West projecting his intersectional line rather than taking up Coates on his own terms.

— R.L. Stephens (@RLisDead) December 19, 2017

(its a thread)

yeah this seems to repeat his point which i am probably extremely reductively compressing: tnc is too pessimistic

which imo...idk y'all, is the revolution gonna solve racism

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i already regret posting about this at all

i do think there's something to his point about reconstruction reparations being qualitatively distinct from TNC's suggestions in what they have the potential to make possible

I know I'm pulling it, context-free, from a paragraph but:

Because he fails to deeply consider the real, material resistance of the masses, the kind that guided Fannie Lou Hamer, Coates idealizes racism.

I mean

like idk i think RL is onto something in naming that so-called "class based remedies" are necessary but insufficient--but necessary--to root out racism

anyway i don't wanna derail us from our thread locus

hoos look at where you are

check that address bar

I think we spoke about RL Stephens several times, as he republished that piece a bit. And no, I'm just tired of it, it's always the same critique, no? The absolutely awful thing about the West thing is that he wrote something stupid on twitter, then Coates showed that it was a misread of the very first page of his book, and still then West got The Guardian to publish something just as stupid. What's the point of Coates even trying, at this point 'critiquing' him seems to lead to getting published no matter how awful it is.

This tweet:

I think Coates has a muddled view of race and racism, oscillating between essentialist mystification and grounded historical analysis. I think he retreats to interiority and fatalism because he's afraid of *revolution*, of what it would take and what it would mean to win.

— R.L. Stephens (@RLisDead) December 19, 2017

It's like, taking these absolutely simple things, which Coates is absolutely entitled to think and say and write, and demand that he does something else. And that is not what being a writer is. And it's so so personal, it's never 'Coates is great, but don't believe that it's the whole truth about racism', it's 'Neoliberal, supporter of American Imperialism, blind to Settler Colonialism', etc.

You baited and switched there, though--it's one thing to say he mixes history with D&D, which is a question of style, and another to say he muddles history with essentialism, which is a question of the soundness of an argument.

though i say that taking it as read that we'd agree essentialism is a bad move, when maybe we wouldn't

But it's a stylistic mix. He describes the history, then uses fantasy language to describe the way it works. He doesn't literally say that Thomas Jefferson wrote a curse into the constitution and since then racism shall rule. He describes how racism is baked into the founding of America, and then depicts it as an eldritch, in a metaphor. It's a question of literary style, and RL Stephens is not a particularly good literary reader, imo.

i think one big difference between RL and TNC is their ages--like 2 decades apart? i expect RL will be much more pessimistic after 18 years of DSA not amounting to shit :)

flopson i'm gonna have at you over that in a better thread

i wish the revolutionaries well, but imo it's not a coincidence that the writer who is puppy-dog excited about The Revolution is 26, and the more pessimistic pov is from a 42 year-old

listen Goosebumps try writing a grown up book before you criticize Coates and West u Halloween ass chump