Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

I'm not arguing 'tnc is the result of affirmative action' I'm saying 'is it a total coincidence that the most popular africam-american blogger among white people is like the least shrill person on the internet'

africam

fyi, tnc used to kick it on ilm a bit back in the day. i've been following him since he was at the voice doing the press clips column -- he was killer funny. sometimes he can (or could, don't read regularly now) go hella hard, albeit with some dry irony.

what was his usr name

CRW

I'm not arguing 'tnc is the result of affirmative action' I'm saying 'is it a total coincidence that the most popular africam-american blogger among white people is like the least shrill person on the internet'

― iatee, Thursday, March 1, 2012 2:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in this post he talks a lil bit abt his feelings on the topic, tho obvs he doesnt get at the particular explaining black things to white folks angle itatee is talking abt

I consider myself a writer of some merit and talent, who says some interesting things from time to time. That's all very nice. But I understand that if I were in my exact same job, and happened to be just another white dude from an Ivy, I'd attract less interest. Race, as lived by individuals, is biography and people are always interested in biography when it differs from the norm in any field. I have no idea why it should be any different with Lin.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/02/the-jeremy-lin-backlash/253076

i remember him writing about the hip hop cops at the voice

didnt realize that was him, i loved that story

so fn nuts

Of course his background/bio make more people notice him. That question is a textbook example of "begging the question".

My issue is that iatee basically said, "well he's good, but he's not that good, so people must be heaping all of this praise on him because he is the platonic ideal of the good Negro, so much calmer and more pleasant than all those angry black people (although I can't stress enough how talented he is so that someone won't call me on the gross assumptions spilling out in my thoughts)" and, unsurprisingly, the general reaction aside from me was "hmm, makes you think *strokes chin*"

tbf you and i were the only people who reacted at all to his posts and you should know by now that i never stroke my chin while passively condoning racism

I never said 'he's not that good', he is on my rss feed even though I have problems w/ the think out loud stuff. I said the way people praise him and talk about him is 'different' and sometimes kinda awkward and his role as that 'one and only go-to black guy blogger' in the blogosphere might have something to do with how nice he is

I'm glad you could find the secret racism tho, I thought I was hiding it so well

and it's hard to disassociate that w/ the fact that he actually is an interesting writer but I see him celebrated in ways that I don't see w/ many other bloggers, like the way people compliment him out of the blue 'one of the best writers. everyone should be reading him. just great.' etc. is...different

The direct implication here is that you think he's good but he's not THAT good, otherwise it wouldn't be so weird or awkward. Or conversely, these people don't actually think he's that good, but because he's the non-threatening black guy he gets held up as the token example, which both implicitly downplays the quality of his writing and implicitly posits the existence of a slew of equally high-profile black writers who are surly rage demons too edgy for white America to handle but more like what the average black person is like (cf the he is what a lot of people would like black people to be comment).

iatee basically said, "well he's good, but he's not that good, so people must be heaping all of this praise on him because he is the platonic ideal of the good Negro...

After a certain level of 'goodness', the great majority of people have no scale by which to measure any further gradations or distinctions. The average person is just as likely as not to heap up mountains of praise on Stephen King or Ann Coulter. At that point you have to examine what their yardstick is, to see what they are measuring. It is not inconceivable that for some of them, iatee has sussed out the mark TNC is meeting. This is not the same as endorsing that measurement.

the point was that I don't see the same 'everyone should be reading him. just so great.' talk in the same manner w/ *any* other blogger and it's awkward in that he's talked about *differently* not that he's talked about *too much*. you can read whatever 'direct implication' you want into that.

fwiw i find him a v good explainer of racism, am wite btw

im not trying to beg the question fyi, just an aside, and as an additional aside i was unaware of the original meaning of beg the question until today, also i think i used it kinda backward there but w/e

The direct implication here is that you think he's good but he's not THAT good

I read that less as a critique of his writing than as a way of marketing him.

would be curious to hear whether he feels like explaining racism to white people has become part of his job or hes just talking abt stuff that interests him and if the whole blog xposting/commenting internet communication/feedback loop has affected how/what he chooses to write on the topic

yep, too nice by far:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/on-making-yourself-right/253889/

trying real hard here to follow tnc's example and not accuse certain posters of certain things that aren't true in a somewhat escalated way, but goddamn it would feel good to do so...

(and yeah, tnc's take on sncc is problematic and one-sided, to say the least, i think. but there are ways you talk about that, and there are ways that you absolutely do not talk about that [and tnc's rejection of precisely some of those ways probably informs his take on sncc, in fact])

you have followed his example in more than one way

About half finished. Damn compelling.

man I get emotionally invested in pieces like this

probably why I read so much fantasy

Hey, so does he.

"Stellar piece" understates.

i wasn't sure where exactly to post this article, but i didn't realize T-NC already had his own thread. compelling indeed. and damn long, i'll need to reread it soon...

I heard that she's hot.

yeah, i dug this piece a lot. i think he leans kinda hard on the "google searches for racism" datapoints when he really doesnt need too... otherwise so great.

that was great

I just skipped around quickly, will read the whole thing later. I'm glad he knocks down the "Clinton had it just as bad" theory. I don't expect that 10 years from now, Republicans will have smoothly made the transition to "Obama actually wasn't so bad after all."

that TNC article is really good but I honestly don't remember Obama's comments on Trayvon Martin being a turning point for the racism to pour out, that seems off to me

it definitely was

that and the geraldo hoodie segment both happened on a friday

by monday daily caller had like three "investigations" into martin's twitter/myspace accts

president's comment sure to harden certain hearts even further i'm afraid. this is going to get worse.

― goole, Friday, March 23, 2012 11:21 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had assumed that all that stuff was just unfolding quickly and at the same time, but it does make sense that after Obama's comment, the racist wackos would step up their efforts, because now there was a chance to tarnish Obama with anything negative uncovered (or fabricated) about Martin.

yeah I can see that. this happened pretty quickly, my memory was just that the seething rightwing racism was just bubbling underneath from the start. I'm sure TNC paid closer attention to the chronology than I did tbf.

yeah I don't remember there being any point when there wasn't at least some kind of racist bullshit floating around about the case, but I'm probably hazy

was expecting to see other thread's link to his NYT column about Obama being Cheney perfected.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/coates-obamas-perceived-transformation.html?_r=1

why are you humoring him

having the right reasons to loathe Obama at hand is convenient.

so basically your response to a long, well-argued, supported argument about the difficulty of being the black President of a racist country is to say "pshaw at that, what about the article that called him an evil white man, THAT'S the important thing we should be looking at here"

and you really are confused why people have called you a racist? fuck off

I think I missed something...

Morbs, did you even see this:

The political consequences of race extend beyond the domestic. I am, like many liberals, horrified by Obama’s embrace of a secretive drone policy, and particularly the killing of American citizens without any restraints. A president aware of black America’s tenuous hold on citizenship, of how the government has at times secretly conspired against its advancement—a black president with a broad sense of the world—should know better. Except a black president with Obama’s past is the perfect target for right-wing attacks depicting him as weak on terrorism. The president’s inability to speak candidly on race cannot be bracketed off from his inability to speak candidly on every­thing. Race is not simply a portion of the Obama story. It is the lens through which many Americans view all his politics.

But whatever the politics, a total submission to them is a disservice to the country. No one knows this better than Obama himself, who once described patriotism as more than pageantry and the scarfing of hot dogs. “When our laws, our leaders, or our government are out of alignment with our ideals, then the dissent of ordinary Americans may prove to be one of the truest expressions of patriotism,” Obama said in Independence, Missouri, in June 2008. Love of country, like all other forms of love, requires that you tell those you care about not simply what they want to hear but what they need to hear.

now I have

It's been a life-event-crap week, I am not reading long articles.

amazing piece.

xp then don't be glib about them

I'm not sure anyone but you has called me a racist, djp, but it still makes me unhappy.

the parallelism here is stunning:

No criminal charges were ever brought against Carlton Jones, the officer who killed my friend and rendered a little girl fatherless. It was as if society barely blinked. A few months later, I moved to New York. When 9/11 happened, I wanted nothing to do with any kind of patriotism, with the broad national ceremony of mourning. I had no sympathy for the fire­fighters, and something bordering on hatred for the police officers who had died. I lived in a country where my friend—twice as good—could be shot down mere footsteps from his family by agents of the state. God damn America, indeed.

I grew. I became a New Yorker. I came to understand the limits of anger. Watching Barack Obama crisscross the country to roaring white crowds, and then get elected president, I became convinced that the country really had changed—that time and events had altered the nation, and that progress had come in places I’d never imagined it could. When Osama bin Laden was killed, I cheered like everyone else. God damn al‑Qaeda.

"I grew" not particularly supported by the next 4 sentences.