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TA-NEHISI_JOY
July 20, 2020
TA-NEHISI_COATES
Ta-Nehisi Coates, at the close of the
introduction to his book "Eight Years in
Power" (2017), he remarks:
"This book is made in this way because I enjoyed the
challenge of doing so. If I can communicate half of
that joy to you, then I will have done my job."
That's actually at least a mildly strange remark, given
the nature of the book, arguing that white supremacy is
and always has been at the core of the American project.
The message might be true, but doesn't seem very joyful.
Immediately following the chapter on reparations,
he begins his "Notes from the Seventh Year" summarizing
the conclusions he'd come to:
"To be black in America was to be plundered.
To be white was to benefit from, and at time
directly execute, this plunder. No national
conversation, no moral appeals, no pleas for
'sensitivity' and 'diversity,' no lamenting
of 'race relations' could make this right."
p.211
What's peculiar about this is that he seems to
feel a sense of exultation, a sense of pride at TA-NEHISI_PEACE
just having gotten this point of view down on
paper with enough evidence to prove it to his
satisfaction. He wrote this "to know that *I* The audience in Oakland
was not crazy, that what I felt in my bones, what during a showing of the
I saw in my people, was real." And further: recent James Baldwin
"What I wanted most was to shine an unblinking documentary cheered the
light on the entire stage, to tell my people with line "This is not my
all the authority I could muster that they were personal paranoia!"
right, that they were not crazy ..."
I can see that all right... but doesn't it feel
incomplete? How long can you coast feeling
satisfied at spelling out the grim facts?
Coates isn't even pointing the way to some
hope for a plan to solve the problems. Of If this is The Truth, will
course, he doesn't *have* to have a grand it make us free? Will it
scheme up his sleve for his writings to be make someone free?
worthwhile, but his "joy" at having gotten
this far really does seem strange.
"The weakness in the case for integration was
that it ultimately rested on a critical mass What if I mention
of white people playing along, either out of the Brits giving
their own particular interests or some sense up on empire?
of morality. History has produced few Myself I don't
instances of the former and virtually none of care how "pure"
the latter. This made sense. If there is a the motives were,
power that has ever surrendered itself purely they did do it.
out of some altruistic sense of justice, I
have yet to come across it." There's also the
American abolition
of slavery, right?
"Nationalism [meaning black nationalism] had its
flights of fancy-- the vision of a separate state
outside America or a separate society within it.
Neither could work. A separate society without
would almost certainly replicate the very same
problems of power we found here. Niggers would
make more niggers, either of themselves or of the
unfortunate group they settled upon."
"And as for a distinct society within the borders
of the United States, well, the ruins of Tulsa and
Black Wall Street showed that flaw. And those
pogroms against independent black enclaves were
just the extreme case. A separate society within
America would depend on the mechanisms of American
wealth creation, and wealth in America has never
been created in absence of government policy, of
banks willing to lend and a justice system willing
to protect."
p. 213, Notes from the Seventh Year
Reading through this sort of thing, you might wonder
what he's actually proposing-- the next alternative
would seem to be violent uprising.
Or perhaps, a coalition of the non-white to flip the
status of the white no-longer majority.
Where he actually goes from there though is to talk about
how a sense of "ancestry and tradition was a balm".
So the world sucks, but at least it makes him feel
better to talk about it.
Let me toss out some points,
without insisting on any of
them for the present: But these are things that
I often say, and I
o Myths are prevalent for reasons, mistrust them because of
and it's entirely possible that that-- they come to hand
"America the land of the Free", easily, but may not be the
and the related "Yes, racial right tools...
problems, but Making Progress!"
serve some functions.
You might convince White America to
try to live up to this ideal, rather WHITE_HOPE
than just pretend it's all done.
And it could be that convincing
Black America they're doomed is not
actually as encouraging a message as
Coates seems to feel.
o Positive messages are often comforting
lies, and negative ones are often the
unvarnished truth, but it doesn't follow
that you can use negativity as a guide
to truth.
Sometimes the situation is really as
bleak as you fear, but sometimes things
turn out better than you would expect.
"Nothing can be done" can be a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
o Coates can talk about addressing "my people"
without us batting an eye, but that might be
worth a thought or two. Isn't even that
sense of identity something that was forced Coates talks about
upon him? I would say the defining element "ancestry" when I would
of "his people" is the shared experience of talk about "predecessors".
being classified that way. "Race" doesn't My own biological ancestors
have a lot of meaning in the absence of don't mean very much to me.
racism.
And I don't have much of a
"people". E.g. most white
males voted Trump: I
dunno what planet they're
from, but I'd rather move
to Saturn, myself.
o It's difficult for me to believe that
Coates really believes what he's
saying. Doesn't he *really* hope that
in describing the problem he'll help
solve it?
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