Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kanye West
Ta-Nehisi Coates weighs in on the Kanye West Trumplove, as might be expected.
I’ve written about Coates before (see also this). In that first post I wrote:
The larger message [Coates received from his father’s treatment of him] was that he would always get beaten at someone’s hands, either parental hands or public official hands via the police, and that his father attributed his own violence towards his son as originating from and being intended to forestall that official violence. His father was claiming that the private violence the father doled out to son was administered to prevent the public violence, both at the hands of the police and by the son or daughter who might be wanting to act in a criminal manner out in the larger and very dangerous world.
I think that Coates is describing some sort of powerful emotional (and also physical) trap that he got caught in early on, as a child, and has never gotten out of. The way it goes is this: I am a small powerless boy, my father whips me, my father loves me, he says he whips me so the others won’t, therefore they are causing my father to hurt me, it is their fault not my father’s, the world is a dangerous and violent place, how can I ever be safe?
I often can’t wade through the thicket of Coates’ prose; his style of writing is highly admired by a lot of people but I’m not one of them. It’s self-consciously ornate and pretentiously over-written, at least to my way of thinking, and his content (in the pieces I’ve read, anyway) sounds a single note, the one I’ve described above.
Coates’ opinion of Kanye West is in line with that single note, although he introduces variations on the theme. He starts with Zinnish history and finishes with West as white.
Here’s the Zinn part:
…[W]hat happened to America in 2016 has long been happening in America, before there was an America, when the first Carib was bayoneted and the first African delivered up in chains. It is hard to express the depth of the emergency without bowing to the myth of past American unity, when in fact American unity has always been the unity of conquistadors and colonizers””unity premised on Indian killings, land grabs, noble internments, and the gallant General Lee…
Coates seems to have greatly admired West’s musical output, writing, “when I heard Kanye, I felt myself back in communion with something that I felt had been lost, a sense of ancestry in every sample, a sound that went back to the separated and unequal, that went back to the slave.”
Okay, I confess it now—I tried to read the rest of the Coates essay and I got bogged down before I finished. But the message of it is pretty much encapsulated here:
…West calls his struggle the right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom””a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next…
So Coates considers that West’s saying something laudatory about Trump (or not knowing every single relevant fact) makes West’s freedom of thought a suspect, “white” type of freedom, loaded with all the bad history Coates always seems to associate with whiteness.
There was something about the reaction that just didn’t sit right with me, something too easy, too dismissive of an individual artist’s right to say whatever he wants, to be accountable to no one but himself. It had a smack of raw tribalism to it, of collective disciplining, of the group owning the individual, and exacting its revenge for difference. I find myself instinctually siding with the independent artist in these cases…
Or the individual anybody, I would add. Anybody—black or white or any other color, smart or dumb or eloquent or tongue-tied—has the right to think what he or she decides to think without anyone telling that person what color freedom is being demonstrated. What a deeply offensive thought, that freedom has a color.
Sullivan adds:
Coates reserves the worst adjective he can think of to describe West, the most othering and damning binary word he can muster: white. Just as a Puritan would suddenly exclaim that a heretic has been taken over by the Devil and must be expelled, so Coates denounces West for seeking something called “white freedom”…
Indeed.
So it looks like, for Coates, West “no longer matters”….
Be interested in knowing how many in the Black community will push back against this nonsense….
” He starts with Zinnish history and finishes with West as white.”
Howard Zinn was a good communist and that’s why liberals love his version of history and teach it to kids.
Coates’ best attribute is his name. I’ll skip the rest, life is short.
Kanye West??
Is this man marketing himself with help “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”??
So instead of hating his father,Coates can hate white people instead.
Growing up poor and “white” in a “black” neighborhood at least I didn’t have to worry about getting beaten up for “acting” white.
Acting white in my neighborhood, at that time, meant being seen holding a book, studying, doing well in school, dressing in certain clothes, listening to certain music, not smoking, taking drugs or having a JD card or being in a gang, looking at people, saying a “t” sound for words that end with a “t” because white people make spitting sounds when they talk, smelling like dog hair, having dog hair, having a dog, having a skinny behind, being seen publicly talking to white people…
All these kind of rules seemed stupid, bossy and exhausting to me. But, I was glad to know there even were “white” things, because I was lonely and concentrating so hard on trying to be invisible.
I don’t know what the rules are anymore, sounds the same. Are people just naturally totalitarians? I still feel alienated.
Coates demonstrates Kanye’s point about black’s mental enslavement.
Coates father’s mistreatment of him is an excuse. Note that he makes no mention of black slaves journey to America starting with being first enslaved by other blacks. His African brother’s ancestors sold Coates’ ancestors to white and Arab slavers…
Obtusely, Coates sees no use for historical facts that contradict his imagined victimhood. Clearly failing to grasp that it is those contradictory historical facts that pave the way to freeing him from his mental enslavement.
Coates is literally his own jailer…
To me, the Left/Dems/Progs are all about control. They know better how to live your life better than you. The goal is to have you think the correct way. If you utter the wrong words, you go to “sensitivity” training, whole city departments will do this. This is just another, perhaps shorter, version of the re-education camps of the communists.
West will be made to conform. Or will wind up with only Caucasian friends. Who wants that?
Another well known person who’s strayed off the reservation…and what happens to him (H/T Instapundit):
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/all-thats-wrong-with-the-left-in-one-politico-article.php
Are people just naturally totalitarians? Esther
Many wise men have concluded that humanity divides into those who wish to control others, those who have no such wish and those… who wish to be controlled.
Romey,
I’m not so certain that if West refuses to “bend the knee” that he will end up with only white friends. I base that on two reasons; first, there is a small but growing contingent of young blacks who are speaking out online with truthful perceptions that resonate at a fundamental level. Kanye West can act as a rallying point for them and expose their POV to millions.
Secondly, the popularity of Kanye’s music acts as an intellectual ‘bypass valve’. I abhor the politics of many musical artists whose music I find of great value… if Kanye continues to put out well received songs, his social commentary will be impossible to shut down.
@ Esther I can see where you considered those rules exhausting. But being in that neighborhood as a white person were you *exempted * from those rules or did your black friends accuse you of complying?
I’m on the fence about West–I still remember his comments about Bush during Hurricane Katrina and pretty much wrote him off after that. Still, people can and do change. As for Coates, does he not understand that his attacks on West make him the “house n******” for the Democratic Plantation? Can he really be as obtuse as his prose and still remember to breathe or does he actually have less self-awareness than a flatworm…?
Not a fan of Kenye West, his music, or his “lifestyle,” but it was quite interesting to see that he was, in essence, nuked for stepping just a little outside the boundaries of the Leftist/Democrat’s black group think plantation.
This what seems like an extreme overreaction shows just how afraid Democrats and those on the Left are about the great mass of the sheep on their plantation actually “looking up,” waking up, and heading for the fence, and the greener pastures outside of it.
Speaking of K.W., and with a hat-tip to Barry Meislin above for the PowerLine link, if y’all haven’t seen this then rush rush rush to your nearest computer or other Internet Device to watch this wonderful 43-minute presentation by Candace Owens. She is Da Bomb!!!
Loaded with personality, intelligence, a wonderful showman — she can really grab the audience — refreshing style, plenty of gentle humour…. What’s not to love!
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/candace-owens-unexpurgated.php
Coates is a professional black grievance artist. The fools that buy, actually buy, his books in the hundreds of thousands of volumes are the enemy of every rational being. While Coates smiles all the way to the bank.
Neo: “What a deeply offensive thought, that freedom has a color.”
Sullivan: “There is no gay freedom or straight freedom, no black freedom or white freedom; merely freedom, a common dream, a universalizing, individual experience.”
Then he drops his own Trump Bump Hiccup into the essay, along with an Obama PBUH in the same sentence — as if everything Bad about racial tribalism began the day Trump won the 2016 election.
“And that, of course, is one of the most dangerous aspects of our elite political polarization: It maps onto the even-deeper tribalism of race, in an age when racial diversity is radically increasing, and when the racial balance of power is shifting under our feet. That makes political tribalism even less resolvable and even more combustible. It makes a liberal politics that rests on a common good close to impossible. It makes a liberal discourse not only unachievable but increasingly, in the hearts and minds of our very elites, immoral. The promise of Obama – the integrating, reasoned, moderate promise of incremental progress – has become the depraved and toxic zero-sum culture of Trump. Empowered and turbocharged by the mob dynamics of social media, we have all become enmeshed in it.”
Molly,
the problem wasn’t so much friends, it was that in the city we walk everywhere, and there is an entire world of gangs and kids on the street, who are strangers, but who might take offense, or might want your sneakers, or whatever, and jump you.
So, it was important to figure out how not to catch their attention. I was already white, so had to tone that down by not also overtly ‘acting white.’
To this day, that there is a whole world not like that is still exotic to me.
@Esther, Interesting
You are thoughtful & well spoken so you are fulfilling your promise even though you faced racism, bravo!
Ah, the joys of a big city high school, in a neighborhood that was becoming “mixed.”
I was a skinny little white kid, and 60 years later,
I remember them to this day.
Call it high school PTSD, and I’m sure most of us have at least a little touch of it still.
Ah, I can still smell the permanent sauerkraut odor of the cafeteria.
It was so much fun! Truth be told, it was f’n hell on earth.
My elementary public school education was with 50% Mexican kids, here legally, in rural S. TX. We all got along just fine until 5th-6th grade, when hormones started kicking in and spontaneous segregation occurred. I was startled that my previous friends were friends no longer. Stupid me!
A black slave has escaped off the plantation. Send the bounty hunters and get the feds to enforce the Federal Slave Act.
The USA tends to go insane over political party elections such as in 2016 or 2012 or 2008 or 2000.
I’ve noticed that while people recover their rationality in a few years, they are still under the sway even now.
The Democrats would shout “Kerry Kerry” like some cult of personality. The Republicans would shout “USA, USA”. I guess nationalism is somewhat better than personality cults.
Obama had Americans as Obamacans, because this is no longer America but Obamaca.
Now the Republicans have transitioned to a closer Democrat parity with DJT’s America.
The DS is laughing their arse off about how Americans are distracted with Red vs Blue.
freedom has a color
Is a corollary of the diversity doctrine, which is a color judgment that classifies people… discriminates between people by color, sex, etc., rather than the content of their character (e.g. principles). It constructs monolithic social structures that obscures the individual and denies human dignity.
Neo: “What a deeply offensive thought, that freedom has a color.”
And also offensive to think that success has a color.
“Acting white” is offensive to people who associate productive personal habits with skin tint.
“White people” weren’t productive just because they were “white” — as proven by the many Asian, African, and South American successes who adopt the personal habits that lead to material improvement (and which are inseparable from ethical improvements as well, because you can’t build real material success on a foundation of dubious character).
And please don’t respond with the obvious examples — wealth is not synonymous with success.
It works in reverse as well, btw, as the unsuccessful habits of the black ghetto are identical to that of the “poor white trash” in the archetypal trailer parks.
Read Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” for a historical and philosophical discussion.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/04/26/social-poison-a-reading-of-thomas-sowells-brawl-by-amanda-s-green/
For those who had abominable school experiences my heart goes out to you. My school years, from 1939 to 1954 were, as I remember them, so normal and fun that I still recall them as the happiest days of my life. 29 kids in my high school graduating class. 25 went on to college. 20 finished college and beyond. We had nerds, jocks, cowboys, cheerleaders, etc. but there was little ill feeling because all cultural choices were accepted. We lived in a tourist area where summer jobs starting at about age 12 – 13 were the norm. Hunting, fishing, mountain climbing, skiing, and the normal interscholastic sports were all available. We were busy and we had fun. The town was small enough that no one was anonymous and anyone’s parents could put you in your place if you stepped out of line. I was an exception in my class, as I was the only person with no father at home. (My parents divorced when I was 7 – an uncommon thing in those days.) That was the only point in which I felt the odd one out. Other local men stepped up and mentored me in the absence of my father. A child’s life should be as nourishing as possible and mine certainly was very close to it.
Tribalism and tyrannical government was the normal situation for most of human experience. Humans have evolved toward more individual freedom, but we still have a long way to go. Tribalism still has a strong genetic hold on us. History shows that we humans take two steps forward on the path to individual freedom and tolerance, but invariably slide backwards from time to time. The last 50 years has been a period of backward sliding in the U.S. Will there be a rebirth of movement toward freedom and individualism? We may be seeing it in the appearance of such thought leaders as Jordan Peterson, Candace Owens, Kanye West, Donald Trump, Neo, and others. As long as the blueprint for individual freedom, the U.S. Constitution, is known to humans, there will always be hope for movement away from tribalism and tyrannical government.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is the Zampolit of the Upper West Side.
JJ: Freedom and individualism, both in excess, are severely injurious to individuals and societies. We have both in excess now. What we do not have is a community, bound together by shared moral and community values. We have Red v Blue, men v women, sexual gobbledegook (self-proclaimed genders in mere children, to H with DNA and parenting) as freedoms. We are splitting apart because of too many freedoms and insufficient cohesion. Everyone feels oppressed, ALONE: that is the ultimate individualism.
Republicans badmouth Republicans over nothing.
Kaepernick is a symbol. An outrageous ingrate for his great good luck.
Atheists rule us out of our fear of giving offense, yet “In God We Trust.”
We are in very great danger.
I don’t think TN Coates is in the same league as crack cocaine or rap music as a plague upon American blacks, but Coates is somewhere up there.
And lord is he a terrible writer. Not as bad as Sean Penn, as we’ve recently learned, but also up there for smug preciousness.
It’s almost amusing when white writers like Andrew Sullivan or David Brooks feel obliged to genuflect to Coates before broaching any disagreement.
We’ve had the Trump Bump; now we have the Coates Curtsy.
Frog, all good points. Yes, we have too much careless individuality. For more freedom and individuality you have to have responsibility and morality. What I see is a breakdown of morality (licentiousness, addiction, loss of faith in a power outside ourselves, fuzzy thinking) coupled with much less responsibility and a high percentage of people who believe the government can/should take care of everyone and direct their lives.(Free college, welfare, guaranteed income, massive government regulation, etc.) It is freedom and individuality misused.
All the group/identity conflict is tribalism kicking in. As you point out we no longer share as many common values, but we also have less tolerance for other points of view.
Artfldgr constantly points out the way the Gramscians have fomented a lot of this with their march through academia, media, and Hollywood. I agree that our country is at a point where the Marxists have almost achieved their goals. Should they succeed humanity could see another age where tyranny and tribalism are the norm with another “Enlightenment” occurring at some future point. (And not necessarily in the U.S.) Trump and many anti-Gramscian voices are the reaction to that. Maybe it’s the final struggle. Maybe it’s a turning point away from Marxism. We’ll see. Well, maybe I won’t see it. My days grow short. 🙁
You were basically terrorized the entire time you were growing up, whether you felt it deeply or not.
I know a fair number of people who lived in circumstances similar to yours. But they were all male. All of them told a tale of constant, unceasing, physical assault and fighting.
That is no way to live, and there is no reason to cooperate in its preservation or enable those who enjoy, profit from, or excuse such an existence.
And that was a generation ago. Some people were still trying to play by the rules back then. If only our government officials knew! Where are the police?
Yeah, if only Stalin knew … then, these horrors would not exist and the authorities would intervene and put an end to it.
Most local government officials have it seems just about as much moral courage and philosophical sophistication on average, as the run of the mill junior high school teacher or school district functionary; though perhaps twice the self-esteem and three times the petty ambition.
Little wonder that both public education and many governing institutions are falling apart in this country.
They cannot even muster the fortitude to keep the peace.
There are plenty of race motivated beating videos on YouTube and on the Internet in general. I suggest that one avoid watching them. If you do watch, you might wind up praying for the Chinese to destroy most major American cities … or at least become indifferent to the fact that they might.
DNW, yes I believe I was terrorized, but I did manage not to get beat up. Dodging rape or having my shirt pulled off was a constant concern. My poor brothers were always getting assaulted.
The Police work for Unions that work with the Black Enforcers and Overseers like Sharpton. This is even more true in Demoncrat inner city fiefdoms. The unions tell the police crack down on blacks, and the Overseers blame the police and whiteys for it. Both benefit.
The unions get arrest records and help elect Mayors, expanding their territory and funding. The black overseers get more control over their slaves. The unions get more power over their LEOs, because LEOs are now caught in a Thin Blue Line situation. If Leos take the side of blacks, the unions and the Democrat Sharptons would get rid of them.
Easterners already figured out a way to deal with hoodligans, thugs, and criminals. Either kill them all on sight, or joint break their joints so they can’t move. Knock em out, lock em out, or they’ll do it to you.
See problem solved. No people, no problem.