Posted on 10/04/2017 12:32:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
One of the recurring ideas of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, is that he hates being asked to offer white people hope of a better future in which America might become a post-racial utopia. But when Coates appeared on The Late Show Monday night, Stephen Colbert asked him to offer that hope — and appeared to be almost offended when Coates refused.
In his book, Coates writes that he hates being asked to talk about a future he doesn’t believe in, and he simply does not believe that America is going to “get over” racism. As he sees it, white supremacy is so foundational to America that it will be impossible to ever eradicate it. “Our story,” he concludes at the end of Eight Years in Power, “is a tragedy,” but it’s one that Coates has dedicated himself to resisting nonetheless.
There are also troubling racial dynamics to this question. Coates is one of the most important writers on race in America today, but that also makes him one of the only writers on race whose work many white Americans have read — and correspondingly, for many white readers, there’s a sense that by reading Coates, you are absolving yourself of complicity in America’s racism. As the Washington Post put it in 2015, “‘Did you read the latest Ta-Nehisi Coates piece?’ is shorthand for ‘Have you absorbed and shared the latest and best and correct thinking on racism, white privilege, institutional violence and structural inequality?’ If you don’t have the time or inclination or experience to figure it out yourself, you outsource it to Ta-Nehisi Coates.”
White people seem to have decided that it is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s job to teach us all there is to know about racism in America. And once he’s finished, we would also like for him to make us feel better, to absolve us of our guilt and tell us that things will get better. Which is a lot to put on a single person, however brilliant — to say nothing of the fact that, as Coates pointed out on The Late Show on Monday night, it’s not actually his job.
“You’ve had a hard time in some interviews expressing a sense of hope in this country,” Colbert said toward the end of the interview. “Do you have any hope tonight for the people out there, about how we could be a better country, we could have better race relations, we could have better politics?”
“No,” Coates said, to scattered laughter. “But I’m not the person you should go to for that. You should go to your pastor. Your pastor provides you hope. Your friends provide you hope.”
“I’m not asking you to make sh*t up,” Colbert interjected. “I’m asking if you personally see any evidence for change in America.”
“But I would have to make sh*t up to actually answer that question in a satisfying way,” Coates explained.
What about the coming demographic change to America, Colbert asked. White people will soon be a numerical minority in America: Won’t things change then?
“Your question presumes that there is a static definition of whiteness,” Coates said. “And that this is the first time that there’s been a demographic change.” The Irish, he argues, weren’t always considered white; neither were the Italians or the Jews. America, by implication, is perfectly happy to change the definition of whiteness if it means the country can remain a majority-white nation.
“In addition to the very definition of whiteness being malleable,” Coates added, “the ability to vote is also a malleable thing. So you might have the possibility of the demographics actually changing, but who has the ability to use those demographics in an electoral system might also change too.”
Colbert took a second to sigh, in frustration or in sadness. “I hope you’re wrong,” he said.
For some, ‘brilliant’ means someone excessively PC and obsessively disturbed in it’s apparent absence.
Someone both brittle and base in their amoral, self centered and machiavellian approach to life.
I never heard of this guy so I went and looked him up. I could not even get past a paragraph of his writing , it was so counter to reality I could feel my IQ draining trying to make sense of it. This idiot got a MacArthur genius award? Just another America hating leftist.
The two should GTFO of the USA and move to Cuba or the DPRK, Socialist paradises that suit these Leftist poseurs.
Well, whatever will you all do without this f*ck*ng tool’s offer of hope?
I’d like to kick Colbert’s teeth in... But that’s just me.
Evil despises hope.
I hate to break the news to you Colbert, but Coates hates you too, because you are White.
Does “brilliant” mean something new nowadays?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ta-Nehisi Coates.
A utopian liberal fascist of the first water is far from brilliant.
Ethnic and racial nationalism is a danger to the USA.
And peeps like Coates will see his movement armed.This is what his writing is about.
The USA is NOT a racist country. Some of the people in it are. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.Americans will never accept totalitarianism under anyone to make a “perfect” nation, voting and fighting instead for freedom.
Dweebs like Coates are racists personified, race mongerers, shake down artists, carpetbaggers. And we gave then 8 years in power while they were bent on destroying America? They won’t ever get another chance.
So how to we view people like Coates?
This is a good read:
” The Quintessential Liberal Fascist”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.htm
Coates is a far-left racist. Believe he’s from South Africa where killing whites and their black friends/workers is called a “sport”.
Johannesburg has one of the highest crime rates in the world.
Once the reds of the So. African Communist Party and its front the ANC, took-over the country, it was downwards like Zimbabwe but not yet quite as bad.
Coates should clean up his own house before he tries to clean up ours.
coming to a theater near you: White Genocide, the Beginning.
This is the same corrupt bubble these NFL protesters are living in. The left, through the entertainment industry and the media pushes these lies so much, these people that buy in to the lies think this is the norm in America. Problem for them, IT ISN’T. That’s why the racist themes pushed within the NFL blew up because the majority of Americans understand what they are pushing, is not true. Using an inappropriate time to protest, exposed all that.
America’s race relations was great till a certain Kenyan come along. No one thought anything of white privilege. Anyone that believes in our founding documents understand “All Men Are Created Equal” so the privilege belongs to anyone willing to work hard and try to create some prosperity for themselves, regardless of race. Leave it to that a-hole Colbert to continue to push the left’s lies.
CGato
I thought "brilliant" was dog whistle for "Guinness Stout."
Coates was born and raised in Baltimore, MD.
In your face D head! What else did you expect?
Colbert is an unfunny hack. Same for his racist guest.
I get along fine with people of different races. We are polite to each other and do our best to see past any differences we have. My work, my church, the marketplace.
Don’t need lectures from either of these clowns.
What a moron. If he thinks the USA is so horrible, why doesn’t he go somewhere else? Just give up on us and move to a more enlightened country like Zimbabwe instead of blubbering about how awful and racist we are.
The danger of too much blathering about America being irredeemably white supremacist, is that white people may decide “Well, what’s wrong with white people being in control? Look at what happens to places where blacks get control.”
Remember when Apartheid was the leading liberal cause? Now that communism and black racism has destroyed that nation nothing more is heard.
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