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.
“Your question presumes that there is a static definition of whiteness...”
Well, that will make the future fun....
And smarmy to boot.
There most certainly is no hope for, in, or by the mentality represented by Coates and others.
I don’t want to burst Ta-Ta boys bubble, i feel no guilt, racism of blacks to whites is rampant. Not my monkey, not my circus.
This is the first I heard of this "brilliant must read" buffoon but I think I will not let him speak for me and I would advise America to put down his books. I am sure the whites that feel that they owe the blacks for years of oppression (BS) cannot get enough of his garbage.
I treat black/white/purple all the same, they treat me with respect, I return that gesture. My adopted son who is black was over yesterday afternoon and a tech who was white was working on my internet. They both arrived at the same time. My adopted son, said hello, shook my hand. The tech, who was arrogant on the phone brushed by me, asked me where my equipment was with out introductions. I promptly told him to get the hell out of my house until he could enter with respect. He got in his truck and left...
And that is what is wrong with America, people do not respect other people. Be it white, black or purple.
Irish was at one time not considered white, huh??
I swear that as of reading this piece, it is the first time I have heard of Ta Nehisi. I don’t look to him for anything. I’m a busy guy, and I don’t ask anything of anyone else. And I have not read the latest Ta Nehisi writing.
“White supremacy” means different things to different people, and is used in different ways by different people.
Whites react to “white supremacy” as if it’s an accusation, a description of something they DO, and so something that they could potentially do otherwise.
It’s increasingly clear that black race theoreticians like this guy and Ellis Cose, and many others, use “white supremacy” to describe something that white people ARE.
This is a completely different meaning. The Swedish woman who wrote the declaration “ I will never bear a white child” was using it in the latter sense.
This has given rise to the whole academic fraud of “whiteness studies”. Like Nazi anthropologists, they are laying the groundwork for the proposition that the only way to end white supremacy is to end whites.
31% of the world in 1900, 8% of the world now. Whites are in danger in their ancient homelands. Time grows short.
But the Ta-Nesi Coates faction has declared victory too soon. A majority in the world, flooding in to Europe, but a minority here, even bolstered by the neologism “people of color”.
It’s a mistake to tell whites their people must end before you have the means to make it happen. Proven again and again as the world masters of organized violence - heck, whites even invented football!
There are a great deal of political cartoons from the US and GB in the 19th century that depict the Irish as part ape. And they were frequently referred to as a separate race.
I am not sure that whiteness counted for much back then
'Cause this clown ain't. Time was, psuedo-intellegent "elites", who were educated beyond their understanding, always Ivy League, could be identified by how frantic they were to defend Stalin. All of their acquaintances were communist, so they would join the Party, and circle jerk each other about the inevitability of the Class Struggle.
It's comforting to see that stupidity is a Constant, like the freezing point of water.
Most of post-colonial Africa wishes whites would return to administer them as colonies/zoos; independence has forced them to grow up, and it has been brutal. In “Triumph of Evil” (about the Rwandan genocide), European troops sent to evacuate their own citizens are surrounded by blacks begging them to save them from other blacks. They logistically can’t do so, and the cameraman returns weeks later and you see all those people slaughtered - you can recognize individual outfits people were wearing in the earlier footage.
Those blacks fortunate enough to have some legal right not to live in a black country will never leave; easier to sit and lash out then to actually have to provide for themselves. At this point the non-black governments are just looking to reduce their birthrate.
Well, that will make the future fun....
You see it today. Black kids being told they're "acting white" if they study. People being called "oreo" or "Uncle Tom" if they hold middle-class values.
What these activists hate is not "white people" but "white CULTURE", regardless of the skin color of the people who adhere to white (middle class) norms.
Me also.
OF all the personalities on TV he is the one I find most disgusting.
Second place.. Keith Olbermann.
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Cannot be repeated enough. I don't see how this man ever rose to be a "comedic star". He's not funny. Ever.
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The Irish were apes until the north needed troops for their war on the south. The north, for their part, learned in the Mexican-American War that Irish troops should be led by their own officers; the embarrassment of having hundreds desert and fight for the other side (the San Patricios) wasn’t repeated 15 years later.
After a conversation I had with a black coworker several years ago, I’d have to agree with Coates.
The man mentioned to me that black families discussed the “C” word around the dinner table and at gatherings.
I asked if he was talking about “Caucasians.”
He lowered his voice and looked back and forth, then said, “No, ‘Cracker’ “
He seemed disbelieving when I told him my white family never sat around and discussed black people, but we talked about our own family, what we were doing, our lives, our goals.
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