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Never heard of this guy before. But pretty on point.

The fallout from that viral CBS interview continues. Zeteo reports that basically, the group hosting Ta-Nehisi Coates already had vetted questions ready to go, but Mr. Dokoupil just steamrolled everyone. And apparently this guy would do it again, and would also ask some Palestinian if Israel had a right to exist. And apparently the top brass is fine with that "in the name of fairness". Would CBS anchors interrogate any Israeli and/or Jewish authors of books they're promoting about Palestinian rights to exist? We all know the answer to that.

Looking forward to the interview Coates does with Trevor Noah on his podcast, which drops tomorrow.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those writers where I will read him at any time, anywhere. Like, his writing is just that good - I always know that I can look forward to a deep dive, beautifully crafted sentences, and serious thoughtfulness about whatever the topic is. I pre-ordered the book and it arrived yesterday and I finished it in one sitting. It's not as impressive as it sounds - the book is fairly short and has pretty large print, but it is packed. You could get a lot of material out of it.

It's basically 3 essays addressed to his students about what writing is for, and the purpose of it. He writes about his trips to three specific places - Senegal, South Carolina, and Israel/West Bank. It is this last part that is getting the most attention. He went viral two days ago for this hostile morning show interview with a Zionist who all but accused him of basically being a terrorist sympathizer. Watch it for the rapid-fire hasbara accusations, and for Coates to basically stand his ground, morally, in saying "Apartheid is never justified". He did an interview with Jon Stewart that is better, and worth watching:

Watch on YouTube

And also with Chris Hayes:

Watch on YouTube

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NY Mag's profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates

This time, he lays forth the case that the Israeli occupation is a moral crime, one that has been all but covered up by the West. He writes, “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel.”

Coates traveled to the region on a ten-day trip in the summer of 2023. “It was so emotional,” he told me. “I would dream about being back there for weeks.” He had known, of course, in an abstract sense, that Palestinians lived under occupation. But he had been told, by journalists he trusted and respected, that Israel was a democracy — “the only democracy in the Middle East.” He had also been told that the conflict was “complicated,” its history tortuous and contested, and, as he writes, “that a body of knowledge akin to computational mathematics was needed to comprehend it.” He was astonished by the plain truth of what he saw: the walls, checkpoints, and guns that everywhere hemmed in the lives of Palestinians; the clear tiers of citizenship between the first-class Jews and the second-class Palestinians; and the undisguised contempt with which the Israeli state treated the subjugated other. For Coates, the parallels with the Jim Crow South were obvious and immediate: Here, he writes, was a “world where separate and unequal was alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet for others was policy.” And this world was made possible by his own country: “The pushing of Palestinians out of their homes had the specific imprimatur of the United States of America. Which means that it had my imprimatur.”

That it was complicated, he now understood, was “horseshit.” “Complicated” was how people had described slavery and then segregation. “It’s complicated,” he said, “when you want to take something from somebody.”

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Ok, someone needs to define "neoliberal" for me because I really don't understand how various people use it.

I feel like Cornell West is not reading the same Ta-Nehisi Coates' work I did? I'm not saying he shouldn't be criticized, to be clear. (I haven't read We Were Eight Years In Power. It sounds too depressing at the moment. I've read most of his other work, though, and most of his writing/reporting in The Atlantic.)

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My new job gives me lots of time to listen to podcasts, so I listened to the Chapo Trap House episode on the critique of Coates' book. (For what it's worth, I'd only vaguely heard of this podcast before, and only started reading up on them today. They appear to have some beef with Sady Doyle? Sarah Jeong? I dunno.)

Anyway, the critique makes the following points:

1. Coates uses the word "bodies" too much and it's dehumanizing.
2. Coates focuses too much on reparations, which doesn't do anything for most black people, and is also an easy out for white people to handwring and not do anything about the actual problems of racism.
3. Not enough class critique.
4. Basically it's overly pessimistic and he doesn't value the Civil Rights movement enough.

I think I'm going to have to re-read the book, since I don't really remember getting those impressions. I do agree on the overuse of "bodies", though - that was a bit much.

I'm not comfortable with Stephens "it all comes down to class" viewpoint.

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I found this 30 Day Meme tumblr, so I'm going to pull some out to do some to just get myself writing something. No guarantees of actually finishing everything.

First one I'm doing is the book one: 30 days of books.

Day 01 – Best book you read last year

Oh man...did I even read anything last year? It looks like I read Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between The World And Me. It was beautiful and painful, and I should probably re-read it to see if there's anything new to glean from it, especially after reading so many terrible critiques of it, ranging from "it's classist" to "it's too pessimistic". I think there was a decent one I found on Metafilter, (but I can't find it right now, and it's not the Jacobin one that rants about how he should support Bernie Sanders (newsflash: he already said he was voting for him)). Maybe it was another Jacobin one. Anyway, I think the critique laid out some of Coates' blind spots pretty clearly, and says basically that he doesn't give enough credit to the politics of organization, and says that he focuses too much on individual injustices at the expense of collective action. I think. I think there was a podcast where they discussed it further? Maybe Chapo Trap House?

OH YES I FOUND IT.

The Birthmark of Damnation: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Black Body.

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Hell, I am actually considering subscribing to The Atlantic because of him. Look at the stuff he says:

If you told me that 100 percent of the Boule, the Links and Jack and Jill look down on lower-class black folks, indeed, believe that they deserve to be where they are, I'd argue. But I'm a man who still laughs at "Niggers vs. Black people. And Jack And Jill can spot my ghetto-ass a mile away. I'd argue, but not because I took offense.

When you're not on the business end of an -ism, it's always easy to underestimate the malice of its employers. When you're a part of that class of employers, it becomes even easier.
You know what this is. I've written repeatedly about how racism can be a problem in a society with seemingly no racists, how racism--out of all the isms--became the province of cannibals, ogres, people existing one rung above the rapist, and child molester. Some of this is our fault--dramatizing the depravity of Southern racists was a brilliant political strategy. But the unexpected upshot is that whites who know they'd never sic a dog on a kid for the crime of crossing a street, can sit at home and say "Well if that's racism, I know I'm not that." It'd be as if our thoughts of sexism revolved strictly around honor-killings and rape. Perhaps they do.

Black people who go out into the wider world don't have the luxury of thinking about racists strictly as societal outcasts, any more than women have the luxury of thinking about sexists strictly as rapists. The society is changing, no question. The world is a less racist place. But this is coming from a start of being an intensely, intrinsically racist place.

(Bolding mine.)

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ta-nehisi coates is awesome and you should all read him