In Defense of James Baldwin – Why Toni Morrison (a literary genius) is Wrong about Ta-Nehisi Coates. [James] Baldwin was a great writer of profound courage who spoke truth to power. Coates is a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power. Baldwin’s painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements. He reveled in the examples of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Fannie Lou Hamer and Angela Davis. Coates’s fear-driven self-absorption leads to individual escape and flight to safety – he is cowardly silent on the marvelous new militancy in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Oakland, Cleveland and other places. Coates can grow and mature, but without an analysis of capitalist wealth inequality, gender domination, homophobic degradation, Imperial occupation (all concrete forms of plunder) and collective fightback (not just personal struggle) Coates will remain a mere darling of White and Black Neo-liberals, paralyzed by their Obama worship and hence a distraction from the necessary courage and vision we need in our catastrophic times....In other words: Coates, like Obama, is only a liberal, not a hardcore lefty, as he should be.
I got there via the Observer, which tried but failed to get Coates to respond and proceeded to get a response from Michael Eric Dyson, "a professor of sociology at Georgetown University who wrote a withering takedown of Mr. West in the April issue of The New Republic."
He described Mr. West’s Facebook post as an “acrimonious dirge,” a “bitter, nasty, sorrowful blue note,” and “despotically and willfully intolerant of the gifts and talents of those who may potentially eclipse him. It shows the vast ineptitude of professor West’s scholarship,” Mr. Dyson told the Observer in a phone conversation. “The point I made in my piece is that he doesn’t keep up, he doesn’t read the freshest, newest, most insightful scholarship, nor does he write about it in any serious fashion or teach it in his curriculum, and it shows here.”...In other words: Shut up.
Mr. Dyson suggested that Mr. West listen to “the great Ludwig Wittgenstein,” who said: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
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What did Dyson think of Philosophical Investigations? Wittgenstein more or less disowned the Tractatus.
Russell, who sponsored Wittgenstein, said of Wittgenstein's new take that Wittgenstein had some very interesting ideas that he certainly hoped were wrong.
Oh dear, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornell West, two of the biggest BS'ers around, slinging excrement at each other. God knows they have plenty of ammunition.
It's like watching The Three Stooges punch, slap, and pull each others nose hairs.
Self-absorbed is how I've described Coates before. I never get the impression that he wants to hear from people who disagree with him.
I simply can't understand why intelligent people take Coates seriously at all. I've really tried, but I can't see it. He seems to write about everything except what would actually help blacks in 2015.
But compared to Cornell West, Coates is Aristotle by comparison. I mean, Gawd that is awful.
In other words: Shut up.
The basic Leftist argument.
West, Coates, Morrison, Dyson...decent group of writers. Atrocious thinkers. But I will give Cornell West credit for maintaining his principles and applying them rigorously to the current occupant of the White House regardless of his melanin content.
West has and will keep a mad-on for Obama who dissed him. I like West. He brings the southern cadence to his intellectual song. He is thoroughly pissed.
Clowns, all of them. Stringing sentences together in a pretty-sounding way might make one a good writer, but it can never make one Right. That takes sound and logical thought processes, which none of them possess in any significant quantity.
"In other words: Coates, like Obama, is only a liberal, not a hardcore lefty, as he should be. "
Yes. He is a, if not the, "house nigger" of white elites so without any real cares in this world that he provides them with the "English Instruction" they crave. Cultural ennui combined with power gives rise to great societal mischief.
Shutting up is usually a good idea.
BTW, there are a good number of black editorial writers, and professional literary writers, but oddly they all seem to write about being black, or some related matter, and almost never anything else.
This is very strange. And a bit pathetic. Are there no black American war correspondents, travel writers, political writers (about anything but the black POV), economic writers ?
There are a few who are outside the narrow role limits, like Thomas Sowell, but I cant think of many.
To his credit, at least West is making an intelligible argument.
He thinks America is a force for bad, not a force for good, and everyone should move much farther to the left to dismantle what America has built, including gentle commentators like Coates.
But I would take Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, MLK, Colin Powell, Ben Carson, Condi Rice, Cory Booker, Tim Scott over left-wing Academic clowns, like Cornell West, any day of the week.
" . . . the necessary courage and vision we need in our catastrophic times...."
This is hard core marxism, crisis of capitalism stuff.
In 2015 there are more human beings, with a smaller proportion of them living in poverty, than ever before in the history of the planet. If you want misery and people living without hope, try a socialist country like North Korea or Cuba (the list of socialist countries would be longer, but mankind collectively spat socialism out a quarter century ago).
An excellent quote from David Brooks speaking about Coates rejection of the American Dream: "By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future."
Fortunately not all blacks reject the American Dream. With each generation more are attaining it. Coates' and West's verbal rejection of it while living it does a disservice to others who are striving to achieve.
West is crazy, but I'd rather have a beer with him than Coates.
A person who writes "There has been a depth, power and richness to the African-American conversation about Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings that has been humbling and instructive."
Is in no position to judge what is and what is not "excessive realism."
"Shut up," he explained.
"There has been a depth, power and richness to the African-American conversation about Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings that has been humbling and instructive."
African-American response to Ferguson: riots.
African-American response to Baltimore: riots.
African-American response to Charleston: get white people to remove remaining symbols from state property, and get white people to ban "The Dukes of Hazzard" banned from TVland.
I have the distinction of having been called "Fuckin' Althouse" by Ta-Nehisi Coates — explained in this post from 6 years ago.
"...the vast ineptitude of professor West’s scholarship...."
He is far from alone in that vast space. I fact it might be getting crowded in there.
Of course I'm an old fool who still believes "scholarship" entails actual, coherent thought and (at least) a tenuous tether to reality.
"But I would take Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, MLK, Colin Powell, Ben Carson, Condi Rice, Cory Booker, Tim Scott over left-wing Academic clowns, like Cornell West, any day of the week."
MLK does not belong in this list of loyal establishmentarians. If MLK were alive today preaching the views he was preaching at the time of his assassination, he would be excoriated and hated again, as he was then by many, including J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, for being a communist.
Sowell is not establishmentarian at all.
Remember that his career was in education, and education policy, which in his view should be driven by solid econometric analysis.
US educational policy, academic education theory, teacher training, and all that certainly hasn't gone Sowell's way over the last 50 years. He is most definitely an outsider and always has been.
Carson, Rice, Scott, Sowell and Thomas also, much of the time, oppose the monolithic academic-bureaucratic-corporatist apparatus.
I think you misunderstand who has power and who doesn't, and what the establishment is.
I guess Dyson and West aint going to be going to the barbecue together any time soon. The issue seems more with Dyson. He just can't stand that someone would be critical of the president. it gets his panties in a wad.
When Obama's presidency is over, I hope he doesn't expect to be invited over to the Wests's for dinner.
Robet Cook wrote:
"If MLK were alive today preaching the views he was preaching at the time of his assassination, he would be excoriated and hated again"
Which of his teachings? Who would hate him?
Come on now, Robert. Are you sure this isn't just another one of the fantasies you entertain to justify your hatred of America?
I guess the rioters in Ferguson and Baltimore don't buy the non-violence angle (and you really can't have King w/o the non-violence). Maybe they would hate him? Maybe the C-in-C would hate him for preaching against militarism?
Mr. Dyson suggested that Mr. West listen to “the great Ludwig Wittgenstein,” who said: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Oh, Good Lord, if Dyson thinks that's what the last line of the Tractatus even comes close to meaning, how does this man have a job in academia?
I also love how lefties throw the term "Neo-liberal" around. The use of the term "neo-liberal" is indicative of lefty thinkers who are stuck in their own ideological circle-jerk, since no one in the political arena has referred to themselves as a neo-liberal in 20 years. It's kind of like a righty referring to the left as "commie symps".
If you can't bear to call your opposition by the name they call themselves, then you might want to give serious thought as to what the word "tendentious" means.
Young Hegelian wrote:
"Oh, Good Lord, if Dyson thinks that's what the last line of the Tractatus even comes close to meaning, how does this man have a job in academia?"
Check Dyson's CV, he was ordained at 19 (baptist), but didn't get his BA until he was 27. His degrees are in religion, and he teaches sociology.
For interesting historical reasons baptists have a history of ordaining ministers w/o a college education. But this is ridiculous.
Terry, if you're not aware that MLK was feared and hated by many in the power establishment at the time, either you weren't alive then or you weren't paying attention. Do a little reading. He was harassed by the FBI, his hotel rooms were bugged and his extra-marital trysts recorded, (so they could be used to defame and discredit him if and when it was deemed useful or necessary), and he received many death threats. He was fearful for his life for much of the last years he lived. And he was assassinated...not usual for a beloved, uncontroversial teddy bear. He was directly challenging the status quo and they feared he might inspire an insurrection. He called the United States the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. He was hated, but tolerated...until he became intolerable.
"the marvelous new miltancy" in Ferguson? What has it produced but rubble? Ferguson produced Baltimore. Ferguson began with Brown looting a convenience store. Now there's more looting in Baltimore and many more deaths. How is this producing a sustainable society that anyone would want to live in? I am baffled by Obama and by West. What we need is more Bill Cosby, or at least the avuncular character he played on Tv.
@buwaya:
"Carson, Rice, Scott, Sowell and Thomas also, much of the time, oppose the monolithic academic-bureaucratic-corporatist apparatus. "
Condoleeza Rice is the provost of Stanford University. It does not get much more "academic-bureaucratic-corporatist" than that.
Not to mention Rice's complicity in the perpetration of war crimes, part of the "purveying of violence in the world" that MLK deplored.
Robt. Cook wrote:
"If MLK were alive today preaching the views he was preaching at the time of his assassination, he would be excoriated and hated again, as he was then by many, including J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, for being a communist."
I am talking about today, just as you are, Robert. Who would excoriate and hate MLK today. Hoover is gone, Johnson is gone, Wallace is gone. Who are the segregationists of today? Which politicians are building careers on racial paranoia and hate?
Terry...you need to read more about what MLK was talking about before he was killed. He had gone beyond just talking about the racial issues of the day, to the economic divide between rich and poor in America at the time and the violence of the American war machine. These issues are as pertinent and divisive today as then. He would be no more welcome today than then talking about these topics as frankly as he did.
Robert, it looks like you were blowing smoke in your 5:59. For all you know I wrote my master's thesis on MLK.
Your assertion was baseless, but just for the heck of it I will repeat my question:
"Who would excoriate and hate MLK today"?
One way to begin to answer this would be to ask who excoriates and hates King today? It's possible to excoriate and hate a dead individual -- you seem to have a problem with Hoover, for example.
Which politicians are building careers on racial paranoia and hate?
Every Democrat out there.
Terry: MLK would be hated by the powers that be: the government, the right-wing propaganda machine, FOX NEWS, the (supposedly) more respectable mainstream media...all those who excoriate Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning for being traitors and enemies of the state. MLK was not ever a comfortable or accepted mainstream presence such as Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Ben Carson, Condi Rice, Cory Booker, Tim Scott, the figures he was grouped with by another commentator. These people are careerists.
You are a delusional person, Robert Cook. You are engaging in hand waving. Replace the initials "MLK" in your comment and it could apply to anyone, viz.:
"Terry would be hated by the powers that be: the government, the right-wing propaganda machine, FOX NEWS, the (supposedly) more respectable mainstream media...all those who excoriate Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning for being traitors and enemies of the state."
There is no similarity between MLK and Assange, Snowden, or Manning. This should be obvious to a child. If you believe that the goals of MLK were the goals of these three, you are spitting in the face of Martin Luther King.
Terry, if MLK were alive today, he would certainly--and rightly--be supportive of Assange, Snowden, and Manning. That you assert that he wouldn't demonstrates conclusively that you know little or nothing about him. There were many who scorned MLK as being the same sort of enemy of the state as many today, including you, think Snowden, Assange, and Manning are. These three are among the very few who can be called heroes today.
The FBI's War on Martin Luther King
The FBI Urged MLK to Commit Suicide
When MLK Was Hated and Unpopular
I understand Dyson has a doctorate in hip hop.
"Terry, if MLK were alive today, he would certainly--and rightly--be supportive of Assange, Snowden, and Manning. That you assert that he wouldn't demonstrates conclusively that you know little or nothing about him."
I didn't say that MLK wouldn't support these people. It's a meaningless statement, anyhow. The FBI, if you haven't noticed, is especially vigilant about persecuting what remains of the KKK. How is it possible when the FBI also went after Snowden and Manning?
"Mister Manning, what do you have to say about the voting right act?" (Manning lloks confused).
"Mister Snowden, what do you have to say about the voting rights act" (Snowden looks confused)
"Mister Assange, what do you have to say about the voting rights act" (Assange looks confused)
You really should ask yourself why, Robert Cook, when you think of people that are most like MLK in today's world, you come up with three white guys who hate the United States. You are picking people you most identify with. I can't make it any clearer than that.
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