Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

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.

morbz i don't know if you're a racist but if you're going to thoughtlessly kneejerk in regards to a long article about race that you can't even bother to read you might as well be

OK, sorry, off to iron my [redacted]

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.
--max

this rly bothered me cause i read the academic paper when someone posted it on here and it was so so awful.

iirc Utah was the 'least racist state'

and he doesnt need to use it, either! like here

The resentment is not confined to Republicans. Earlier this year, West Virginia gave 41 percent of the popular vote during the Democratic primary to Keith Judd, a white incarcerated felon (Judd actually defeated Obama in 10 counties). Joe Manchin, one of West Virginia’s senators, and Earl Ray Tomblin, its governor, are declining to attend this year’s Democratic convention, and will not commit to voting for Obama.

It is often claimed that Obama’s unpopularity in coal-­dependent West Virginia stems from his environmental policies. But recall that no state ranked higher on Seth Stephens-­Davidowitz’s racism scale than West Virginia. Moreover, Obama was unpopular in West Virginia before he became president: even at the tail end of the Democratic primaries in 2008, Hillary Clinton walloped Obama by 41 points. A fifth of West Virginia Democrats openly professed that race played a role in their vote.

why use the garbage google data when w virginians are openly admitting they voted for the white lady over the black guy b/c he was black

yeah for real

judging a state's level of racism by the number of 'racist search terms typed into google' seems problematic

http://observer.com/2013/03/fear-of-a-black-pundit/

he failed 11th grade english?

'he was not a great speller'

lol david carr

why did the Observer write it that way? on page 2 he says race isn't his main subject. it seems weird to write a feature that ignores (dismisses?) what the writer says about his own work. like the article was mostly done and the quotes that came in didn't fit the framing, oh well, put them at the end

I had assumed he'd stay at The Atlantic until the NYT made an offer, so I was most surprised to read that he could've had a regular NYT column and turned it down!

the rumor is that the editorial page editor took him out to dinner and was such a prick that tnc soured on the whole idea

hah - that might explain telling another reporter about saying no to the offer. does this whole observer piece read differently from inside nyc media world than it does outside it? (does anyone outside it pay attention?)

haha i doubt anyone outside that world is reading an observer profile about an atlantic writer!

fwiw i think it's fair to make your own conclusions about what a writer is 'abt' rather than going by what he says. race may not "define" him but it's obviously a recurring motif

he was not a great speller'

Oh and BTW

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/how-the-quiet-car-explains-the-world/273885/

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/04/why-accidental-racist-is-actually-just-racist/274826/

Paisley wants to know how he can express his Southern Pride. Here are some ways. He could hold a huge party on Martin Luther King's birthday, to celebrate a Southerner's contribution to the world of democracy. He could rock a T-shirt emblazoned with Faulkner's Light In August, and celebrate the South's immense contribution to American literature. He could preach about the contributions of unknown Southern soldiers like Andrew Jackson Smith. He could tell the world about the original Cassius Clay. He could insist that Tennessee raise a statue to Ida B. Wells.

Every one of these people are Southerners. And every one of them contributed to this great country. But to do that Paisley would have to be more interested in a challenging conversation and less interested in a comforting lecture.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/the-ghetto-is-public-policy/275456/

If only Scalia would read some of the books on Coates linked reading list

Jesus, this writer!

The culture of our world, right now, is crafted by little boys who only recall being stood up on their first date, and nothing they got after. They don't remember the sand they kicked in other people's eyes, only their own injuries. Our art is cynical and bad-ass and made by people who will not be happy until you join them in the church of "everything is fucked up, so throw up your hands." This is art as anesthesia.

Our art is made in cities like New York by people who are running from other places. They feel themselves as misfits who were trapped in dead-end suburbs. They hated high school. Their parents did not understand. They are seeking a better world. And when they realize that the world is wholly a problem, that the whole problem is in them, they make television for other people who are also running, who take voyage in search of a perfect world, then rage at the price of the ticket.

I am not immune. But when I think of Baltimore, I think of Ma and Dad. I think of their new lives. I think of my sisters and brothers and their many mothers. I think of my youngest niece, like a daughter who I will never have. I think of nephews who are like sons to me. I think of high school friends who would have leaped in front of car for me.

I thought I would return to Baltimore. But I was out on the Yard. I was struck--then struck again by you. So it goes.

I winced at the NYC line but I've looked at his page the last couple days trying to figure out which passage from his Paris dispatches most impresses me.

really excellent times piece

loved it

"the culture of our world": *whose* world? whose *world*? Anyway: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/fashion/From-Joan-Didion-to-Andrew-Sullivan-some-writers-leave-behind-letters-when-they-leave-new-york-city.html?_r=0

see quiddities thread

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2009/11/18/1258560568547/Writer-Didion-At-Hippie-H-001.jpg
© Ted Streshinsky/Corbis

"Not in New York."

Coates can be great, but think he's giving some aholes too much credit here, on the way to more-to-the point peering at his own struggles, which a lot of people share.

not that the aholes aren't relevant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opinion/sunday/coates-in-defense-of-a-loaded-word.html

absolutely fantastic

totes

and perfectly timed for thanksgiving-relative time! u_u

^^^ yes

wow you guys are like a 100% sure youre going to have to discuss the n word at thanksgiving im depressed now

about 90 percent sure

am spending Thanksgiving at the relative at whose house we had a raucous, cheerful debate last June about his disappointment that he couldn't use the n-word.

fuck

team tnc http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pathology-and-the-closing-of-the-progressive-mind/284523/

Good as far as it goes, but the limitation of the late 19th/early 20th Century progressive mindset re residue and social hygiene is a familiar one, and what about the point made by some other African-American commentators, re actual residue:internalized expectations of failure? Also, being "too black" for acceptance by some, "too light/white" by others? He might well deal with such internalization elsewhere, but since he brought up the residue here, seems to beg the question a bit.

a fairly familiar point or topic, I meant.

what is... culture?

A summary, sort of:

http://gawker.com/public-intellectual-deathmatch-ta-nehisi-coates-jona-1554487845

that article is embarrassing ("Lookit what these eggheads are doing!").

ugh it even ends with an 'oh snap' gif

And yet somehow the comments manage to outdo it

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