^^^
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 21:43 (six years ago) link
seconding that
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 21:51 (six years ago) link
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/
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 21:57 (six years ago) link
Yeah, that was linked upthread. Frederik didn't find that one very convincing, either.
― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 21:58 (six years ago) link
tbh i didn't find that one convincing either
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 21:59 (six years ago) link
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
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:00 (six years ago) link
(its a thread)
yeah this seems to repeat his point which i am probably extremely reductively compressing: tnc is too pessimistic
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:03 (six years ago) link
which imo...idk y'all, is the revolution gonna solve racism
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:04 (six years ago) link
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:05 (six years ago) link
i already regret posting about this at all
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:05 (six years ago) link
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
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:06 (six years ago) link
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
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:07 (six years ago) link
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
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:08 (six years ago) link
anyway i don't wanna derail us from our thread locus
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:11 (six years ago) link
hoos look at where you are
check that address bar
― j., Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:12 (six years ago) link
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.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:19 (six years ago) link
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.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:28 (six years ago) link
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.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:34 (six years ago) link
though i say that taking it as read that we'd agree essentialism is a bad move, when maybe we wouldn't
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:36 (six years ago) link
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.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:46 (six years ago) link
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, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:49 (six years ago) link
flopson i'm gonna have at you over that in a better thread
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 22:58 (six years ago) link
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
― flopson, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 23:04 (six years ago) link
listen Goosebumps try writing a grown up book before you criticize Coates and West u Halloween ass chump
― Joan Digimon (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 23:12 (six years ago) link
As far as I'm concerned optimism is a job responsibility for anyone serious about making change in the world. SEIU 1199's advice to rookie organizers has it "every worker is showtime"--optimism is a political choice as much fatalism.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 23:16 (six years ago) link
yo hoos
https://i.imgur.com/jynZPlp.jpg
― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 23:19 (six years ago) link
Jefferson had nothing to do with the Constitution.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 23:30 (six years ago) link
He smuggled a curse into it.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 23:35 (six years ago) link
(I guess I know, he was off getting high with the french, and didn't return until Act 2, I don't really care)
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 23:39 (six years ago) link
theres a reason RL Stephens keeps getting referenced over & over again & sadly its not bc hes got an especially well articulated critique of ta nehisi coates
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, 20 December 2017 00:20 (six years ago) link
I mean, he's a friend of mine. I produced his radio show for 3 years. Tell me more though.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 00:21 (six years ago) link
Arrrre you privy to a preponderance of TNC critiques by leftists? I'm sure not.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 00:25 (six years ago) link
what odds u want on revolution hoos?
― flopson, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 00:33 (six years ago) link
lol
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 00:43 (six years ago) link
Hoos otm
― treeship 2, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 01:19 (six years ago) link
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, 20 December 2017 01:20 (six years ago) link
to attempt an answer to this: anyone who claims perfect knowledge of post-revolutionary (I know, I know) conditions is lying, and certainly any post-capitalist society's character would necessarily be defined in large part by what came before. the optimist's view is that if you remove the material basis for conflict between people - no more struggling for resources with the elimination of artificial scarcity, no competition over wage labour in something like a planned economy, etc - then perhaps systemic racism can at least be significantly attenuated over generations. what I don't think is in question for this same crowd is that current economic arrangements (or slightly altered/cosmetically "improved" iterations thereof) never will.
― Simon H., Wednesday, 20 December 2017 01:31 (six years ago) link
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, December 20, 2017 1:20 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
does this mean you've got more critiques you're sitting on or does this mean you're passive aggressively ignoring my question
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 01:51 (six years ago) link
like if you're suggesting "people are lifting up his points because he's a black critic" i'd say that belies that he's a good writer with the mind of the law student he is--harvard law forum seemed to think he was worth bringing in. if you don't think his arguments are worth their salt, maybe say that instead.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 01:56 (six years ago) link
......lol maybe it doesn't belie but nobody ever said i was a sharp writer
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 01:58 (six years ago) link
God dammit I wrote a response and it got eaten by the internet
Hold on when I get to a laptop I’ll write it up again, but tbc I wasn’t being glib to be pass agg but bc we had a big argument about RL previously
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, 20 December 2017 02:09 (six years ago) link
fair fair ilu sorry i'm salty about my friend
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 02:12 (six years ago) link
Some good, interesting things in this take:
https://www.theroot.com/from-an-ex-neo-liberal-why-ta-nehisi-coates-keeps-talk-1821429336?utm_source=theroot_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 12:15 (six years ago) link
Came here to post that
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 20 December 2017 13:00 (six years ago) link
The idea that one must address these separate but connected entities is correct at its core, but it is also neoliberal thinking at its highest level.
There's a lot to like in this piece but predictably I take some issue w/ this
― Simon H., Wednesday, 20 December 2017 13:37 (six years ago) link
I feel like "neoliberal" is being rendered close to meaningless in these discussions. (And in a lot of modern Leftist rhetoric.) It's the new "bourgeois" or "counter-revolutionary" or whatever. It used to have a relatively specific meaning, but now it's just kind of "center-left who isn't left enough for me."
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 20 December 2017 14:38 (six years ago) link
Otm
― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Wednesday, 20 December 2017 14:44 (six years ago) link
After reading the last couple links I still can't figure out what Coates wrote that so incensed West other than the banality of the class v. race binary
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 20 December 2017 14:46 (six years ago) link
That plus alleged pessimism/hopelessness/not having a political/economic program. Which I think is true of TNC up to a point, but that's because he's not a political theorist or economist. He's an essayist who uses history to frame and illuminate the racial inequalities of the present. It's not necessarily his job to say "here's how to do community organizing to address these things." And I don't think he's in any way saying DON'T organize or work to address them. It's more like, "Look at all of this goddamn bullshit."
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 20 December 2017 14:50 (six years ago) link