"I'm rendered inarticulate by its power, by its purpose, by how fucking important it is and how I wish every person in this country would read it and really hear what he's saying. And, just, goddamn. It's so good. It references MLK in the same breath as Wu-Tang, and it's all woven together so fucking effortlessly, but the references aren't winky nods to pop culture, they're buttressing an argument that is already so strong and undeniable and. God. I know this sounds hyperbolic, but fucking hell, I hope this letter is taught in civics classes and literature classes for decades to come."
Metafilter discusses a Ta-Nehisi Coates piece titled "Letter to My Son/Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage."
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156 comments:
In contemporary times black Americans have done, and continue to do, a pretty good job of self-destruction.
I think he should not put up with white America for more than another minute or two. There are highly successful black countries he could emigrate to.
Zimbabwe comes to mind. Then there is Kenya.
Pieces I never finish reading, dept:
"That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free...."
Oh, TNC apparently missed things like this:
'Please Don't Shoot Me': Dog Walker Begs for Life Before (he is mercilessly shot dead for no reason by two Black teenagers)
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Arrest-Questioned-Killing-Dad-Stuhlman-Walking-Dog-Overbrook-296849631.html
And I wasted five minutes of my life reading this stupid, stupid piece of distilled race-hatred and America-hatred. It's bad, self absorbed, look-at-me bullshit. And it's published in a magazine of the itellectual establishment, The Atlantic.
I judged them against the country I knew, which had acquired the land through murder and tamed it under slavery, against the country whose armies fanned out across the world to extend their dominion. The world, the real one, was civilization secured and ruled by savage means. How could the schools valorize men and women whose values society actively scorned? How could they send us out into the streets of Baltimore, knowing all that they were, and then speak of nonviolence?
I know this sounds hyperbolic, but fucking hell
Hyperbaric, too.
Sorry, I don't take reading recommendations from bigots.
Yet another "White People are Bad" article for the trash heap.
"In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage."
Traditional for blacks to destroy each others' bodies.
Wu-Tang invented the orange drink that made the moon landing possible.
Coates didn't publish this. It was published by the white dude who runs The Atlantic and signs Coates' paycheck, James Bennet, a product of St. Albans and Yale.
The intensely white people who run The Atantic can be seen here:
http://mashable.com/2011/12/19/the-atlantic-digital-first/
Coates' writing is paid for and represents the establishment. America is people. Who are the people The Atlantic pays Coates to hate?
Maybe he should move to the peaceful black city of Chicago. There is a white enclave on the north side but my childhood home is now all black and the violence is breathtaking. Literally.
The death toll from Chicago's bloody holiday rose on Tuesday to 16 after two men who had been shot over the Fourth of July weekend died from their wounds.
Over the course of 84 hours during the Independence Day holiday in Chicago, 82 people were shot, prompting calls from Mayor Rahm Emanuel to put a stop to gun violence in the city.
The issue of overpraise seems like it deserves some critical attention. There's an element of breathless self abasement. It's like some sort of S&M thing.
It references MLK in the same breath as Wu-Tang
Aren't we over the mixing of high and low culture as a signifier of the avant garde? If not, could we try? I'm picturing a 50 year old in a ponytail here.
Also, the Wu Tang Clan? Their first album was released in 1992, 23 years ago. They're not even old school any more. They're classic rock. Since the author brings up King, I'll throw this out -- Wu Tang Clan is as close to being contemporaries of King (24 years) as to today.
Kiri te Kanawa is the pretty good, so you can't go by the te. (youtube)
"'Teenage girls like to be obsessed with something."
Proven by Mr. Coates.
From Inwood said...
'Please Don't Shoot Me': Dog Walker Begs for Life Before (he is mercilessly shot dead for no reason by two Black teenagers)
The teenagers were gentle honor students, on their way to college, until the naughty white man used up their sidewalk.
Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God"
Ta Nahesi Coates: "Thou have sinned, but not I."
If Mr. Coates was actually interested in being honest with his son and to provide him with some actual advice, he would tell him that the people who are most busily going about destroying black bodies are other blacks. The handful of Freddie Grays that happen every year are given all the sound and fury while the thousands of blacks killed every year by other blacks typically do not rise above the level of police blotter coverage in the local newspapers and TV stations. Between 1882 and 1968 (86 years), 3,446 blacks were killed in lynchings (along with about 1300 whites). Since 1980, black-on-black homicide has produced over 300,000 victims. Blacks are 13% of the population and commit half of all the murders in the country.
I hate to play the age card (younger people are just as bad about overpraising Jon Stewart). But I pick up a strong element of "I am relevant!" in the reference to Wu Tang Clan, and occasionally someone has to point out that pop culture ages just as quickly as everything else.
Coates needs to spend more time with people of any color who have succeeded in life by dint of their own hard work, and less time wallowing in the misery that so many black people bring on themselves. Too bad his son wasn't adopted by someone who wasn't such a whiner.
He was born in 1975, which makes him about 40. That is about the age that black men in Africa die. He should be happy he's here, for that reason alone. It's also well beyond the age when most people get their heads out of their asses, but I digress.
What he is doing to his son's mind is child abuse. Just like those ISIS fiends bringing young boys to beheadings - their minds will not be able to be fixed, and didn't someone say "a mind is a terrible thing to waste"?
On the article being referenced: it is very purple.
White liberals are so embarassing.
Somehow we whites have convinced blacks to kill each other with guns and knives and abortion. It was not the conservative whites who persuaded and convinced them.
Dennis Prager (paraphrase from memory), "A bald man once told me: When I go into a room full of people - all I see is hair."
What Coates is describing is the problem of "whiteness", not anything any particular white person has done. The problem of "whiteness" is responsible for everything that has ever happened to Black people. It is to blame for Black drug addiction, for black crime, for black violence. Since Blacks assault whites at higher rate than whites assault Blacks (on a per capita basis), this means that white victims of black violence are responsible not only for the violence done to them, but for the misery caused by the incarceration of the person who assaulted them.
This is the old slave mentality brought into the 21st century: "as a Black man, I am only what massa has made of me."
Ok, this is interesting. The article starts with
Son, Last Sunday the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to lose my body...
So I wondered -- what happened to his body? Is he old, is he sick? Did somebody beat him up? He doesn't resolve the question, so I did a word search for "body."
The word is used forty six times.
Very sad commentary. Bitterness is slavery.
"We would not kneel before their God"
Therein lies the problem. And it is not the White man's God. God for all men.
Here's what really bugs me about this sort of "omnipresent racism" theorizing -- it's based on a foundation that can't support the weight.
Marx replaces Hegel's Spirit (Geist) with economic forces as the determining motive force of history. Marx does this, in his words, "to make philosophy walk on its feet & not its head" (i.e. like Hegel). Marx hopes that by turning philosophy into economics, there can be a scientific, if not philosophy in general, then political philosophy. The problem is that Hegel's Geist is essentially Divine Providence, and you can stuff an awful lot of philosophizing into Divine Providence. Trying to derive all social phenomena as epiphenomena of economic relations proved to be basically impossible, and by 1880, the revisionists start in on the job of trying to bolt on some philosophical depth to the Marxist edifice by bringing in the work of other philosophers.
So, now, it's the late 20th C, and no one except the hold-outs believe in class struggle as the engine of history. It's now about "identity politics", where various groups vie, mostly but not always, against the dominant power structure for what they feel are their "just demands". One of the most important groups in the identity movement is, by numbers & history, American blacks.
The problem for the blacks is that their sociological numbers are just awful, by every measure. Fifty years after The Great Society, after trillions of dollars spent, the "talented third" has risen up the ranks, but the bottom is now mired in a seemingly rudderless underclass like never before. How to explain this? Well, there's classic racism. That explains it. But, if you're black that's the road to despair, so, what to do? You come up with a mashup of Marx, Foucault & Fanon that postulates White Supremacy as the analog of Marx's Capital, or Hegel's Geist. White Supremacy, like its two previous analogs, informs every aspect of social relation, as all social relations are simply epiphenomena of it.
The problem now becomes for the Identity warrior: how does one fight against an engine of history? For Marx, one can only be on the "winning team" (i.e. the proletariat). But the underlying mechanics of history, like physical laws, are fixed. Has the "Identity" Black Left simply exchanged the despair of racism or the tedium of classical liberalism's bit-by-bit, each-one-reach-one advance, for a tragic, losing battle against history itself? It sure seems that way.
So is this just fun with word search, or is there a point here? I think there's a point. Coates is playing on a very specific fear of bodily integrity to tie together many issues which aren't necessarily related. The common theme is outrage and indignation at being touched. That's how slavery connects to Trayvon Martin, connects to Eric Garner, connects to Coates getting in a shouting match in a movie theater.
But these aren't the same issue -- the only connecting theme is that they make Coates mad. You can think slavery was a tragedy, think Martin was the agressor, think Garner was a petty crook who didn't deserve to get choked, or think that Coates was being a jerk in the movie theater. Or you could disagree with any of the last three. The purple writing confuses the fact that there isn't really a through line here.
And you know the worst part of all -- we never do learn what happened to Coates's body! Whatever it was, I hope he feels better.
Terry @11:42,
This!
In "What Draws People to White Supremacy", Stephen L. Carter offered his "preliminary analysis, based on visits to seven sites, a couple of them difficult to track down. I’ll write later with more detail. For now, I want to record some general impressions." http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-19/what-draws-people-to-white-supremacy
I was astounded that Carter seemed invincibly blind to how many "mainstream" black elites like Coates traffic in the very same manipulations of fact and emotion.
The first thing to understand is that most of the sites frame their welcome to visitors not in terms of supremacy but in terms of grievance. To those who are suffering, they offer succor. To those who are outcasts, they offer an explanation: The white race is being oppressed, and is in danger of extinction. Those feelings of being left out, they suggest, are being intentionally fomented. Every other race is encouraged to celebrate itself. Whites are encouraged only to feel guilty about themselves. They are blamed, the sites say, for all the world’s ills.
But then you read on, and here comes the hate. You discover that they see whites as victims of aggression -- particularly black aggression. Some of the posts are about racial preferences -- that job you lost, that college that didn’t admit you -- but most are about crime. They trumpet questionable statistics about how much more likely it is that a black person will kill or assault a white person than the other way around.
"But then you read on, and here comes the hate."
Oh noes! Hate facts! Look out!!
Michael quoted a newspaper story:
"Over the course of 84 hours during the Independence Day holiday in Chicago, 82 people were shot, prompting calls from Mayor Rahm Emanuel to put a stop to gun violence in the city."
You can't make this shit up. How fucking stupid is Mayor Emanuel to utter that same phrase every time someone shoves a microphone in his face? Answer: Only slightly less stupid than the people who vote for him and his ilk.
In post-truth America nothing matters except having the agreed upon appropriate answers for things like this, things that question the narrative.
I see Tennessee Coates creating a new cartoon series for adults, with himself the voice of a penguin. Commercials will include one for VW's new redesigned model, the Golf the spokesman, of course, Barack Hussein Obama. The new Golf will not go anywhere, its engine designed by liberals will not start, Barack will declare it gets a million miles to the gallon. All with that stupid grin on his face, winking that he knows he's lying and you're smart enough to know he's lying. Post-truthy stuff
The blacks seem to be mired in self pity and self hatred but then I drive by my black neighbors who wave or I go to my grandson's Little League game and see the black coach. What is going on ?
We seem to have three groups. One is the violent black underclass described by the white girl who wrote On the Run and who doesn't seem to understand what she is seeing. The most liked review on Amazon called it "A Bizarre Work of Moral Blindness,"
The second group includes Mr Coates and, probably President Obama, and attributes all problems, which they don't actually experience, to white racism.
The third group, like my neighbors, seem to have adopted what we call, Bourgeois Values which include obeying the law, working hard, saving money, getting married before having children. They seem pretty happy.
What a puzzle ?
Young Hegelian, I agree with everything in 12:32 except for this:
"It's now about 'identity politics', where various groups vie, mostly but not always, against the dominant power structure for what they feel are their 'just demands'."
Coates is working for, not against, the "dominant power structure."
If the United States, and White Americans, are so racist, then why is it that Black people have a higher standard of living and a longer life expectancy (once they become an adult) here than anywhere else in the world?
It is not White people slaughtering Black teenagers. It is not White people aborting Black babies. It is not White people impregnating Black girls and not marrying them. White people didn't invent "Acting White".
Zach said...
And you know the worst part of all -- we never do learn what happened to Coates's body!
Stayed in a sauna too long and turned into a female lizard.
Gahrie wrote:
If the United States, and White Americans, are so racist, then why is it that Black people have a higher standard of living and a longer life expectancy (once they become an adult) here than anywhere else in the world?
Wrong wrong, wrong. The fact that American Blacks are behind white people in all the usual categories is because of whiteness. Your statements indicates that you do not comprehend your own racism.
It is literary structuralism applied to society. Does any character in a Western novel know that he or she is a character in a Western novel? No. Are they characters in a Western novel? Yes.
@terry,
Coates is working for, not against, the "dominant power structure."
Well, not in his mind. But, in reality, aren't we all working for the White Power Structure.
"Tricksy is that White Supremacy".
Boring.
America set black slaves free. America assimilates and integrates people. He's probably thinking about the African, pre-American, and progressive liberal heritage of his ancestors and family. That's a common hang-up in his diversity class.
As for "traditional to destroy the black body", that reflects a prejudice which denies the other broken bodies, past and present, in Africa, America, Mexico, etc.
Remember Coates isn't writing for anyone here, he is writing for (In reference to Michael K's comment about his former home town above) The Guilt Ridden White Liberals who make up about 80% of the population of Chicago's north side. They will nod in agreement and see themselves in his comments about whitey. Remember, most Rap artists would stave if it weren't white teenagers buying their stuff. The same logic applies for Black race baiting goofball journalists like T. Coates.
"Coates is working for, not against, the "dominant power structure.""
Exactly. He's tommin' up a storm in the service of white liberals who gain power and grow rich by feeding the addle-pated resentment of the underclass.
Hustler gotta hustle, though.
Michael K:
South Africa has a progressive constitutional model for class diversity. And an apartheid regime that has tolerated the murder and rape of illegal aliens. In contrast to America, where illegal aliens murder and rape the citizens.
Kenya has an Obama problem. Specifically the cousin who Obama supported politically, that following his faction's electoral loss, ran amuck, and followed a violent path to power.
YoungHegelian-
I think that there is no universe in which it would make sense for the Gates and Walton dynasties to not be considered part of the dominant power structure. Both financially support the liberal/technocrat "Aspen Ideas Festival." Both foundations provide financial support to The Atlantic, and so pay part of Coates' salary.
If we're all working for the White Power Structure, I'm far lower in the hierarchy than Coates is. The lowest of all would be, I think, not American Blacks, but the thousands of poorly paid workers in China who make novelty Confederate flags.
Well, that's several minutes I can't get back. Save yourself some time. Don't bother to read that article. It is complete trash and so full of falsehoods, strawmen, and just plain ignorance, that it is remarkable that it does not self-combust.
On my Facebook feed an African American woman who makes as much money as I do and works in the same job posted a picture that said:
"Your ancestors were enslaved July 4th, 1776. Please tell me the reason for your celebration?"
And of course, she liked and shared this.
And then there is this message below the picture:
"Dear "Black People"...
7/4 Has NOTHING to do with you.
Our people were BUILDING this country by FORCE and being slaughtered and raped and having our land taken from us. July 4 celebrates the finalization of the Declaration of Independence by the 13 original colonies who decided to separate from from British Rule.
By the way-around this time King George III was encouraging the slaves and natives to rise up AGAINST the colonial settlers when shit got out of hand over here. He never intended for the British extension of settlement in America to become what it did...#theirony
The Declaration of Independence was not just about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and human rights (PS-our native and imported ancestors were not considered 100% humans if not human at all).
The document is also a list of elaborately written complaints toward Georgie and Britain.
Since this post is for all of you running to the fireworks-you should know that:
One of the grievances touched on was about George promoting slavery, then trying to get those same slaves and SAVAGES (Native Americans) to rise against the settlers by encouraging them to join the British army when war broke out (even though he promoted and approved the slave trade which was already going on long before the US was established) But they ALL STILL had slaves and still kept killing and trading....(Ahem)
Now factor in that ALL OF THIS WAS ABOUT MONEY AND DEBT AND POWER which HAS NOTHING to do with any slave or native-I want you to SLAP YOURSELF.
The construction and establishment of this country has NOTHING to do with you other than how to use you for profit...Because the reality is.
Had it not been for the exploitation, capture and theft and millions of humans and dollars provided by their European parents-the US would have been.....
I don't know...Something else (shrugs)
But who gives a shit.
Fast forward to 2015...
You are still slaves....In HD....
Why are YOU celebrating the motion to separate from THEIR RULER to do what they wanted yet they won't let YOU DO SHIT? Fireworks and cotton candy today-- I guess "we shall over come"
NEXT WEEK...
The "United States" was established in America after sending colonies of people to set up shop for Britain to take the natural resources and land to do what??? Make $$$$
What does this have to do with you?
You are the descendants of the INDIGENOUS people of this land (Which was stolen from them as they were slaughtered) AS WELL AS the SLAVES (who built this country from the ground up and were also SLAUGHTERED)
We CONTINUE to be the GOLD of this country's economy and wealth and traded like chattle.
Today- they continue to keep all of the literal gold which is where the true wealth lies. While we are over working for pennies, comparing cheap cars and watches, being poisoned and drowning in a society that hates us. Just keep making it rain and chasing these DEBT NOTES and useless certificates to get permission to run in a rat race with no finish line so you can get pimped out by EVERY other major corporation domestically and globally because you don't want to read a book.
But watch out....
They don't need us anymore...
So they are burning the churches and killing you in the streets.
Fuck your Fireworks..
#Thinkfreshfruit
#USHistory
Is NOT #yourstory"
Alhouse- trend alert? This is another article about the "black body". Something that's been discussed in several of your posts over the last few weeks.
Seems to be getting pushed into the zeitgeist.
Eric,
As hyperbolic as that rant is, it is essentially true. But it's rendered meaningless by the ranter's refusal to recognize that massa is still a Democrat.
I want to live in the country that was settled without war and has no human misery in its past. The country where borders were decided by mutual agreement and everyone has always been treated with dignity.
Where is that country?
My very favorite part of the Obama era is all the racial healing.
"Your ancestors were enslaved July 4th, 1776. Please tell me the reason for your celebration?"
My ancestors were Huguenots and Calvinists cast out of their home countries under threat of being burned at the stake. My ancestors were in Salem for the witch trials. My ancestors were drafted into the low ranks on the Union side for the civil war.
While none were slaves in this country, my ancestors went through a lot.
You know, humans have been pretty cruel to each other throughout existence. We still celebrate the fact that we are here together, today. And now we are free.
In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me.
Earth to Ta-Nehisi Coates, 1863 was 152 years ago, a bit more than a century and a half ago. If you had paid attention in class, instead of demonstrating your blackness by mocking those trying to learn as "acting white," you might have been able to do the math yourself.
That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free.
Earth to Ta-Nehisi, even white cops are allowed to defend themselves. You might have made it a teachable moment by explaining to your son that getting high and attacking a police officer is never a good strategy.
you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help
... and that her killer was sentenced to prison
Coates also references John Crawford and Tamir Rice. If he wasn't caught up in the self pity (po' me, iz' Black!) he might note that a lot of white people are very disturbed at those two events and pushing back hard on poor police training. Video footage shows that neither individual was given a fair chance to put down their toy guns so that the situation could be resolved without bloodshed. But Ta-Nehisi would rather wallow in self-induced misery than to work with those hated folk with skin colored differently from his own.
Blogger The Cracker Emcee said...
Eric,
As hyperbolic as that rant is, it is essentially true. But it's rendered meaningless by the ranter's refusal to recognize that massa is still a Democrat
Who cares if it's true? It's whiny and pathetic. Where are you today? As I said, the lady who liked and shared it makes as much money as I do. Lives a good life here in the United States.
A life she wouldn't have today without the freedom she has been given under our constitution. Not without the declaration of independence.
Well, in a country whose "conservatives" would like to convince us that it's a part of our heritage to deny away all this, the man's got a point.
Earth to Ta-Nehisi Coates, 1863 was 152 years ago, a bit more than a century and a half ago.
As long as you and your friends' gangs are still trying to puff up and whitewash the cause of the wrong side, it makes little difference.
I wonder what kind words Coates could offer to that gay child. He would probably tell him that as a gay man he has a better chance of having a happy marriage than any black man. That should cheer the kid up.
Maybee; well said at 2:01 and 2:06. Our folks settled in Salem at much the same time. Farmers, seamen and finally sea captains.
I could only skim through the article. I have very little sympathy for such self -indulgent twaddle. Coates may continue to peddle this crap to the white liberals through the Atlantic, but I am much more taken by those who have succeeded on their merits.
It may seem puny, but I watch a lot of women's college basketball which like men's is dominated by blacks. The women are talented, ambitious, present themselves well and seem willing to work for everything they achieve. They clearly are taking advantage of the American opportunity and not wallowing in self-pity.
So was Coates' article more offensive even than this? Because <----that was pretty much as offensive as race-talk goes, got the guy fired, and basically states what a good number of the immoral, retrograde social conservatives here and elsewhere think anyway.
poker1one said:
You can't make this shit up. How fucking stupid is Mayor Emanuel to utter that same phrase every time someone shoves a microphone in his face? Answer: Only slightly less stupid than the people who vote for him and his ilk.
In post-truth America nothing matters except having the agreed upon appropriate answers for things like this, things that question the narrative.
Consider for a moment the Democrat voter. Their elected officials mouth words about gun violence, poverty, education and jobs. They pass laws. And matters get worse. So the Democrat voters re-elect the officials. They pass more laws. And matters get worse. And no one sees the pattern or connects the dots.
Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different rsults". That definition also works for "stupidity".
I'm really tired of "fuck" being everyone's new favorite intensifier.
The thing is, you can't really fault reactionary conservatives for not seeing blacks as people. They don't see people as PEOPLE. When you have a fear of not being able to control society and the culture, as they do, worrying about the humanity, individuality and history of anyone in America, let alone one single group, is the least of their concerns.
Sorry but I stopped reading this:
the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white
What does "those Americans who believe that they are white" even mean?
What does "those Americans who believe that they are white" even mean?
I think it means white people who believe their problems are worse than, or are even as bad as, if those same problems were faced by a black American.
You know. People like you.
Ritmo, thanks for the link to the Derbyshire article. He is a favorite of mine. I doubt of yours because he writes a lot about math. Also his wife is Asian and you probably stay as white as most leftist outfits, like TNR and The Nation editorial boards.
That Derb article is absolutely true and fools complain who think the truth is like some sort of poison.
The other link you posted (I've got to stop looking at your links) is back to Coates who is, of course, an idiot.
n.n. I worry about South Africa as I have friends there. The violence is growing .
As for Kenya, one of my students was from there and her parents, both physicians, had quit their government jobs and retired to their coffee farm to get away from the corruption. She was thinking of going back to try to help with AIDS but I don't know if she did.
I have met a few sharp African kids who come here and cannot understand American blacks who are here with such great opportunities and who ignore them. They don't want to have anything to do with black Americans.
After fucking reading that fucking endorsement, I'm going to make fucking sure that I don't fucking read the article the fucking illiterate endorser is fucking raving about.
@R&B,
Well, in a country whose "conservatives" would like to convince us that it's a part of our heritage to deny away all this, the man's got a point.
Not really. This is just another lefty lie by omission.
Were major players in the Confederacy White Supremacists? Sure. But so were Suffragettes, Progressive, every sort of immigrant, the SCOTUS, major European & American intellectuals, etc. The 19th C & the early 20th C did not share our views on the nature of race relations, just like in so many other things. This is not a surprise to anyone who has read the sources.
To pretend that somehow racism only had a foundation in the Confederacy is simply, historically wrong. And Coates would agree. Coates is a Critical Race Theory man, and CRT is as much of a critique of Liberalism (in its classical & street meaning) as it is of "conservatism". White Supremacy underlies all aspects of American culture, white liberal guilt included.
I'm sure black Americans have more than a few problems that are self-inflicted. (I blame it on the legacy of white European slave-owning rapists that fathered 1/3rd of their great-great-grandparents). Image and self-image is a large part of it.
But the fact that you think what the raging Derbyturd wrote was "absolutely true" when it comes to staying away from blacks, means that you do judge by skin color instead of character, are a racist (as opposed to someone who makes a more mature observation of "cultural problems" as those "African kids" would), and have no respectable opinion worth putting in writing - as Derbyturd soon found out.
You cannot use "African kids'" opinions as a way to justify your agreement with Derbyturd, as he did not make that distinction, either. He said, (and you agree with him), "blacks". Therefore, you agree with making broad generalizations based just on skin color, and nothing else. That would make you a racist. It would mean your opinions aren't respectable for a reason, that you can't get published to a wide platform with an foresight that narrow-minded, and you (and he) have no one but yourselves to blame for that.
You should realize that people generally have a faith and hope in humanity that you and he lack. Yours and Derb's hatred of humankind and narrow-minded and prejudicial misunderstandings of how to deal with its problems are the reason that your mindsets elicit much greater scorn - EVEN FROM THE EDITORS OF NATIONAL REVIEW!!!! - than agreement.
Swallow that, and you'll be a smidgen closer to becoming the decent sort of American you might think you'd like to be. Oh, and you're welcome for thanking me on the link. No doubt many people will find it edifying, if in a completely different way than you did, though.
Were major players in the Confederacy White Supremacists? Sure. But so were Suffragettes, Progressive, every sort of immigrant, the SCOTUS, major European & American intellectuals, etc. The 19th C & the early 20th C did not share our views on the nature of race relations, just like in so many other things. This is not a surprise to anyone who has read the sources.
To pretend that somehow racism only had a foundation in the Confederacy is simply, historically wrong. And Coates would agree. Coates is a Critical Race Theory man, and CRT is as much of a critique of Liberalism (in its classical & street meaning) as it is of "conservatism". White Supremacy underlies all aspects of American culture, white liberal guilt included.
That racism was and remained a strongly understood (if atrociously misguided) wisdom all the way through the 1920s doesn't detract one iota from the fact that both the Confederates and the people fighting on their behalf were much more cruel, inhumane and wrong than their adversaries. Even Lincoln wasn't sure of how much "humanity" blacks shared with whites. Entirely beside the point when he fought (and gave his life) for allowing them to determine that with as much freedom and compassion as the law would allow on their own, rather than on behalf of constraints defined by those who saw a superior cause in using them only for their own, personal, selfish, economic benefit.
But it's interesting that you'll use Coates' views to buttress your own in more convenient particulars.
Ritmo, you reassure me that you have learned nothing about race or humanity.
You do serve the purpose of showing everyone else who reads this blog what a leftist fool sounds like. That saves some of us trouble in explanation. Example is often more powerful than explanation. That's true in math too if you ever try to learn some.
R&B,
But it's interesting that you'll use Coates' views to buttress your own in more convenient particulars.
It's interesting that you resist the idea that Coates & the CRT crowd are criticizing you, when it's a foundational idea of CRT that Liberalism has failed as a vehicle of black liberation. Why would it be so weird to think that the CRT guys have looked around & seen that the liberal Democrats have imposed simply another form of oppression on blacks than have the conservatives? They have eyes in their head, too. When in post-war America, the black great migration north all gets funneled into their own separate, often squalid, neighborhoods in northern metropolis after metropolis, that racism. When it happens again & again separated by time & geography, that becomes a textbook example of systemic racism.
You do serve the purpose of showing everyone else who reads this blog what a leftist fool sounds like. That saves some of us trouble in explanation. Example is often more powerful than explanation. That's true in math too if you ever try to learn some.
You know, Michael K., I'm re-reading your original response and see now that you meant it in a tone much nicer and more neighborly than my response to it warranted.
But FFS, you are trying to paper over with tone the fact that what Derbyshire wrote was disgracefully wrong, and reflective of a mindset that Americans writ large find loathsome for a reason.
So, how should I have responded? Is there a nice way to say that this is the case when it comes to the reaction against Derbyshire?
I realize that you, as a humble, professional man, who just muses with blogging and writing as a curious, interested amateur (as we all do), lacks the responsibility that a man like Derby would have to take - because of what he does professionally.
So you sort of need to realize that, if you're going to take on the gargantuan case that took him down, you might need to do even better.
Honestly, is that something you think you can do? I gave you the charity of partially agreeing (and even outlining the direction for response based on other "kid's" observations of a "cultural" rather than a "racial" problem). But what you do with that, is up to you.
If you want to go on with making it a political thing, I can't stop you. But I can certainly point out what it looks like to all the voters who will punish you much more harshly than I would, for it.
Consider it a form of "tough love", my friend. Tough love, from a "leftist tool" like me. It's up to you to believe it's merely a partisan trick, as opposed to merely some honest advice in the service of any attempt at a decent conversation on this topic.
Good luck to you. And good day.
The tragic sense of life (to use Unamunos term where I shouldn't) is a realistic approach to such issues. People have had problems and always will, as this world really is a vale of tears. There is no point, nor benefit, in asking for metaphysical justice, nor is it psychologically healthy to pine for it. To fix the problems immediately in front of us is the best we can do.
The sort of advice Coates likes is not helpful.
BTW, this is the Asian approach to most things. Major exceptions are the Chinese and Korean hate of Japan.
Based on a long long history of tragedies, most of which can't be blamed on foreigners, and even of those, very little of which can be blamed on white people.
This blaming of the white man, or history, is a crutch, a palliative, and unhealthy.
It's interesting that you resist the idea that Coates & the CRT crowd are criticizing you, when it's a foundational idea of CRT that Liberalism has failed as a vehicle of black liberation. Why would it be so weird to think that the CRT guys have looked around & seen that the liberal Democrats have imposed simply another form of oppression on blacks than have the conservatives? They have eyes in their head, too. When in post-war America, the black great migration north all gets funneled into their own separate, often squalid, neighborhoods in northern metropolis after metropolis, that racism. When it happens again & again separated by time & geography, that becomes a textbook example of systemic racism.
Then I guess we all agree, and disagree, with whomever will, respectively, advance or attack our views, as the case may be.
I'm not sure if I've got the full understanding of "CRT", but suspect I agree with it in parts, if not in any full extent. Either way, it doesn't mean that he or I think (or that you should think) Confederate apologetics are better. I have a feeling that whatever TNC's views of liberalism's "failings" are vis a vis blacks, he takes it to be less pernicious than the other, and so would I.
My views are essentially that while racism is real (if less so each day), so are the cultural failings of black Americans. They are reinforcing, co-dependent behavior. I think two things can be simultaneously true - even so in this case. I think affirmative action should be ended because it exacerbates this problem.
Whether TNC agrees with some or none of what I'm saying, that's his right. As it's mine to do the same with his. We're just people with opinions, some useful to others, some less so - and that's how it is and should be.
As for what he's stated about discrimination in housing in the 1950s, though (by whomever, liberals, the "culture", whatever), what I remember hearing sounded reasonable and sound enough. But maybe I'm not remembering in enough detail the precise nature of the case he made or what it had to do with America as an entire national community inclusive of all political viewpoints, aside from just the arguments he (rightfully, IMO) had with Confederate apologists.
Therefore, you agree with making broad generalizations based just on skin color, and nothing else. That would make you a racist. It would mean your opinions aren't respectable for a reason,
The hypocrisy! It burns!
I can hardly believe that the poster most obsessed by race on this blog (now that Crack Emcee is back in his straight jacket) actually wrote this.
Now comes the post telling me Blacks can't be racist.
The great thing about the "whiteness" thing for Coates and his fellow psychonauts is that not only don't you have to prove guilt, it is impossible to prove innocence. The late Medieval witch trials were like that. You could never prove yourself innocent, and they would never stop pulling out fingernails or pulling other bits of your body off until you had confessed or died. They never said "oh, he didn't confess even when we poked his eyes out so I guess he's innocent." Eventually, even Joan of Arc was burned.
The socialists did the same thing under Stalin.
"Prove that you're not a kulak."
"What's a kulak?"
"A kulak is whoever we say a kulak is. So you're guilty."
Since both people, one sitting behind the bench and one standing before the bench, are essentially the same, it becomes a pure exercise in power, "who" versus "whom", as Lenin said.
@Brian. Well done. Thanks for the laugh.
Micheal K I have friends and family in South Africa and indeed there really is no future for whites there. Sure the whites who are in their late forties and older can ride it out to the end of their lives and in the Cape province perhaps even those in their mid-thirties. But beyond that, forget it if you are white. For whites in their twenties the future is simple, emigrate or create your own business. All the slots are now AA and that doesn't include whites. It's a majority black country and that's that.
As for Coates, he ought to consider emigrating a country where he will be part of the majority. Why would he in his febrile mind expect the majority in this country to bow down and acquiesce when they don't have. If he doesn't like my "white privilege" that's his problem or R & B's problem but it isn't my problem. For all the moaning from the lefty self induced guilt complex and the race hustlers the simple fact is even if we accept the argument that they are 100% correct the moaning and agitation is irrelevant. The majority doesn't have to change. It doesn't have to acquiesce. That it did change is by its choice and entirely by its choice a choice that it did not have to make.
Now comes the post telling me Blacks can't be racist.
Oh, I won't do that.
What I will do, is ask you to outline for me the precise details of how black "racism" held you or your family back in anything.
Tell me, oh wounded white man! how the harms of black racism curbed your opportunities in life! How their prejudice of you made life much more difficult and problematic for you, as a white man, in America, in 2015!
Tell me about all the black cops that beat you to teach you "a lesson", or were more suspicious and angry merely on that account. Of the bank loans denied. The neighborhoods in which you weren't welcome! (Harlem, I suppose?) The jobs it was presumed you'd be unable to do. The black daughters you were discouraged from courting and dating.
Oh, poor white man, Gahrie! Your burden is extraordinary! But the hope, that you can rise above it, certain! Now go, and pick thyself up by thy bootstraps! Show the world how black racism against you isn't going to bring YOU down!
I think white Americans have made more of an effort to overcome their racism than black Africans have made to overcome their tribalism and sexism. Nothing like Rwanda (save for our Civil War) has ever happened in America. Fifty percent of the women in South Africa claim they have been raped at least once. That's not due to colonialism or slavery. That's due to people making bad--evil is the better word--decisions.......To say that only white people have the privilege and faculty of moral agency is a form of white supremacy doctrine. We all have free will and moral agency.......I think that there are students on the UCLA campus who come from more straitened circumstances than the son of P. Diddy. Some of them probably have more athletic ability and didn't win football scholarships. I think it's theoretically possible that there are Chicago pols with more honesty than Jesse Jackson's son, the one currently in prison.
CubanBob wrote:
"As for Coates, he ought to consider emigrating a country where he will be part of the majority."
Coates? What the Hell would he do in Canada or France Senegal? Write articles on fly-fishing? Coates owes everything he has to the dominant white culture. He'd be nothing without it.
Why would he in his febrile mind expect the majority in this country to bow down and acquiesce when they don't have.
Because of what they did to them.
Some people call compensating your victims "justice".
Some call it "decency".
But el Bobo just sez "geet back to Liberia, esse! Make weeeeigh for the eeeemegreeents that Republicans want to put up a big fence to keep out! (And vote por Donald Trump!"
But don't complain about it. Complete the failed Liberian mass exodus "solution" to America's slave trade problem. Black Americans should expect nothing else.
And you call yourself an "American," Cubanbob? You'd better learn your country's history, first.
Or tell Castro I said hi. Relations are now friendly enough between our countries that you could try your "African" solution out yourself, should your understanding of American problems prove to be too monumental a task for a humble recent emigre like yourself.
I see R&B is back! Did you have a nice Fourth, R&B? Maybe put in a little 'voluntary' overtime in the cane fields?
I had the traditional rib eye cooked over charcoal for dinner and went to the local parade in the AM. The Hawaiian activists were there. Denouncing the US one minute, and asking the Afghan vet for a little American flag the next. They had a couple of Indians doing a dance, and right behind them the cowboy-hatted Harley dudes. God I love America!
Not speaking for myself, but in the SF Bay Area there was for decades a general fear on the part of poor Asians, mainly new immigrants, that they were being deliberately preyed on by their black neighbors.
This fear is one reason that Asians were the principal opponents of school desegregation and the cause of resegregation of the public schools, when permitted.
I see R&B is back! Did you have a nice Fourth, R&B?
Awesome time! Definitely! I love America and I'm in the heart of being able to experience what it's all about. Love this country.
I love it hopefully as much as so many other Americans claim to love it, as much as they'd like to make our Day of Independence about the only things they might find to be certainly American: Stuffing one's face with as much demonstrations of consumerism as our patriotism will allow, and the predictable obsession with pyrotechnics!
Eating and blowing things up are what Americans love to do best. And I wholeheartedly endorse their opportunity to engage in displays of patriotism as festive as that.
The scene you described sounds just as cool, though - especially the way you described it.
Tell me, oh wounded white man! how the harms of black racism curbed your opportunities in life!
Affirmative Action has harmed me more than once.
The only way my race has ever helped me is the fact that none of my friends ever attacked me for "acting White" whenever i was successful at something.
"Why would he in his febrile mind expect the majority in this country to bow down and acquiesce when they don't have.
Because of what they did to them."
They did not do anything to them. Nothing. None of us was alive during slavery. Many of us weren't alive during Jim Crow. Those of us who were, many of us never did one racist thing in our entire lifetimes. My family came here from Lithuania and Poland early in the century. My parents always taught me that skin color doesn't matter. And it doesn't, no matter how many straw men you try to throw at me.
Was I beaten by a black cop? No, black cops generally beat up black people in the Baltimore that both Coates and I live in. But they also beat up white people, if the white people are poor and live in the wrong neighborhood. As a recent well-known article by the author of The Wire pointed out, black cops here in Baltimore are (usually) more brutal and scarier than white cops. And that's not because of their skin color either, but because of the social setup that cops work with today.
I understand why Coates suffers, and I can sympathize. My people, Jews, have been enslaved, murdered, raped, and tortured too. But we can't let it rule our lives, and it would destroy us if we did. I can sympathize, but I sympathize with lots of people who suffer from pathologies, and generally the solution is to get therapy. We have moved on, and he should try to move on as well. Lots of us would be happy to help him.
Affirmative Action has harmed me more than once.
How? Because learning and achieving something was "whack" to you?
Try harder. The only non-whites that AA hurts are those at the margin. If you're good enough, you'll get something. I don't notice blacks crowding out whites at Harvard. Whites who complain about AA have a point. And the point is that too mediocre to overcome the tiniest of achievement gaps between questionable applicants.
Michael K:
There is less of an interest to reconcile and synthesize a race, than to exploit differentials in order to force establishment of a new minority ruling class. It's the same in America with so-called "minority" leaders who have exhibited a greater interest in reestablishing the old order under their direction, than in assimilation and integration with an established, tolerant native population.
TNC writes a beautiful essay, but what he doesn't get is this: Whites aren't obsessed with some power structure through which to dominate just blacks. Whites are obsessed with a power structure through which to dominate anyone, including each other. His words hearken back to a sense of the lifestyle of docile gentility that the South always wanted to convince us it was their only prerogative to retain. He's simply a gentle guy, with a soft soul, who doesn't get that the harshness of life doesn't escape whites in what they perpetuate amongst each other. We see life as a vicious struggle for conquest and competition, no matter how neat and tidy the exterior, much different from the "village" narrative that can't escape his writing's tone. It's a lovely thing, and much more organic than anything the hippies ever envisioned. But whether it is at all practical to implement is another story altogether. If I could live in his words, I would. But all the grown-up lessons of my life convince me that I cannot.
fucking bloody hell. Another racist piece by TNC, Althouse pushing this garbage? The expected spirited praise from Ritmo I expect, but professor?
MikeR wrote:
"They did not do anything to them. Nothing. None of us was alive during slavery. Many of us weren't alive during Jim Crow."
Whiteness isn't something you do. It's an attribute you have. All you can do is atone for for your whiteness. Your degree of whiteness, and the amount of atonement that will be required of you, will be communicated to you at the proper time.
Merely asking about the justice of your sentence indicates that you need to atone even more.
Diamondhead: White liberals are so embarassing.
Coates is a pretentious lightweight, nothing more, but I don't look away in embarrassment at the silly whites falling all over themselves pretending that he's the deepest social theorist of the age. I've long since become inured to the existence of this sort of simpering liberal and their distasteful behavior. But I do remain perplexed and amazed at their ability to patronize the hell out of blacks while at the same time contemptibly abasing themselves. How do they do that? You would think these were two contradictory, mutually exclusive mental/emotional states. Yet they manage. It's a wonder to behold.
I know some second amendment types and they marshal these incredibly powerful arguments about the second amendment, and how few crimes are committed by people with carry licenses, and I tell them "You don't understand. No matter what you say, no matter what syllables your breath powers and your lips give shape to, they only hear "I want a gun so I can shoot Black people."
Assuming for the sake of argument that Coates actually gave this message to his son (as opposed to just using the son as a literary device), what did he hope to accomplish? The message seems designed to turn young Coates into another Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin. Is that what ANY father would want to do to his son?
Yes, growing up Black in America is tough. But the lessons a young person needs to overcome the challenges can better be learned by reading Condolezza Rice's memoir than Coates's screed.
fucking bloody hell. Another racist piece by TNC, Althouse pushing this garbage? The expected spirited praise from Ritmo I expect, but professor?
Alex, just don't read it, then. You don't read anyway. Print out the post and do some doodles and coloring around the margins and in the loops of the letters.
Rhythm and Balls said...
TNC writes a beautiful essay, but what he doesn't get is this: Whites aren't obsessed with some power structure through which to dominate just blacks. Whites are obsessed with a power structure through which to dominate anyone, including each other.
Describes liberalism to a T.
So don't don't bundle me with you guys. I'm not with you. You fucked this up on your own. Have a misery filled existence.
cheers
I understand why Coates suffers, and I can sympathize. My people, Jews, have been enslaved, murdered, raped, and tortured too.
Ahem. Everybody's people have been enslaved, murdered, raped, and tortured, somewhere along the line. And everybody's people have enslaved, murdered, raped, and tortured when they they had the power to do so.
There are no permanent oppressors and no permanent spotless victims in human history.
(Through one side of my descent I belong to a historically recent and currently fashionable "victim" ethnic group. For the life of me I've never been able to figure out why I'm supposed to take some kind of moral pride in this status, as if a special virtue inheres in the simple fact of having been unable to defend oneself from being kicked around. There isn't any, none at all. I have some relatives who like to posture as members of an oppressed group, railing against our erstwhile oppressors. They get sniffy when presented with the earlier history of our ancestors, when they were riding high and preying on their fellow men, right, left, and center. As one does.)
R&B: He's simply a gentle guy, with a soft soul, who doesn't get that the harshness of life doesn't escape whites in what they perpetuate amongst each other. We see life as a vicious struggle for conquest and competition, no matter how neat and tidy the exterior, much different from the "village" narrative that can't escape his writing's tone.
*************
* Where the EFF, I ask, has any civilization escaped "the harshness of life", or the need for competition? Tell us, oh Great Seer of History!!!
* "WE" see life as a vicious struggle for conquest? WTF? Where are all our colonies, our empire, based on these conquests? American crime stats show w/o doubt that blacks perpetrate crimes against each other AND against whites far beyond their proportional representation. White on black crime is a helluva lot lower, which falsifies the claim that whitey is the vicious party.
*
You obviously had too many bong hits over the years, chump.
I imagine some piece of performance art set at night in the antebellum South, where the slaves sit around looking at the lighted windows of the Big House, and tell each other what they think the master and his family are talking about. Freeing them? Maybe. Selling them all? Maybe. Worried that they will revolt? Maybe.
And the horrible truth is that the master and his family are talking about little Melissa's piano recital and not thinking about them at all. That is the truth that is too cruel to bear.
Fernandinande said...
The teenagers were gentle honor students, on their way to college, until the naughty white man used up their sidewalk.
I guess I was misinformed.
So don't don't bundle me with you guys. I'm not with you. You fucked this up on your own. Have a misery filled existence.
cheers.
Rusty - I get that you've been taught to be content with your own low life score on the achievement gap. But most people are not taught to be like that. Every group that comes here, European, Indian, Asian, is taught to excel in some way. That's how they integrate. They achieve something well enough to bring the lot of their own communities up, and then they feel contented and "American." That you don't understand that, or the extraordinary sacrifice and suspension of other goals related to communal cohesion that it requires, is your own problem. But then, you do what for a living, exactly? You're a machine fitter?
I don't blame you for that. I blame you for not understanding what hard economic determination does to people and their values. Unless you're a commie. Then your ignorance would make sense, at least.
* "WE" see life as a vicious struggle for conquest? WTF? Where are all our colonies, our empire, based on these conquests?
It's in the U.N., a body over which we exert the extraordinary control of veto power in a five-member "security council". It's through NATO. It's through having a greater military than the next few dozen countries combined.
* You obviously had too many bong hits over the years, chump.
Oh. So that would be the reason, in your mind. Then what's your excuse?
I notice that TNC never mentions the disproportionate number of blacks babies being aborted. That is who is now losing their bodies. He's very free with comments about what happened in the past. He's very ready to condemn everything that happened which everyone around him also condemns. He wouldn't dare challenge the liberal establishment on abortion - the issue of today. He wouldn't dare mention that this disproportion is wiping out the black race in America.
Martin Luther King's niece, Alveda King, is challenging the liberals on these issues. Never heard of her and her crusade? TNC never mentioned her? The Atlantic hasn't written up her story about how she lost the body of her baby to abortion? Well, next month or the one after that, TNC will speak up about today's issue - abortion - and the Atlantic will carry his powerful piece on what it means to be in the generations of the black genocide. Can't wait (but not holding breath).
Thing is, TNC, if you won't speak up about abortion and genocide when your only subject is black oppression, do you really understand, are you really speaking the truth about racism in America?
There's an innocence in TNC's writing that certain guys (I'm sure some of them gathered here) must surely resent.
The correct term for a person who writes like Ta Nehisi Coates is "popinjay."
If popinjay was what the puckered butt Galloway called Hitchens, then it must be a good thing.
I think TNC is slightly naive about some things. But definitely about as honest a writer as they come. Sometimes almost too much so.
People might not be able to handle it. It's almost like he lacks any defenses at all.
Map of shootings in Chicago since July 1. If you know Chicago, you will immediately see that there were no shootings in the white/predominantly white neighborhoods, e.g., Beverly, Mt. Greenwood, Edison Park, Hegewisch, Midway Airport area, etc. The shootings all took place in black and Latino neighborhoods.
http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/shootings
Note to Michael K.: there are several fairly populous white neighborhoods in Chicago, not just one enclave on the north side.
I was thinking:
1. If the letter is for his son, why am I reading it?
2. Perhaps Coates' is getting his reparations in a personal letter-writing campaign instead of through the gov't.
A true Critical Race entrepreneur.
The Galloway thing with Hitchens was interesting, R&B, in part because it stung Hitchens deeper than Galloway's accusations of alcoholism, and also because Hitchens considered himself an intellectual heir of Orwell and the troskyites of the POUM, while Galloway considered himself heir to the Stalinist British Left (such as it is). Of course it was the Stalinist Left who defeated Orwell's beloved POUM and drove Orwell from Spain back to Britain. I'm sure that both Hitchens and Galloway were aware of the association.
Read in a Texas paper this week about a 9 year old Asian immigrant, who is now 15, went to a local hick school, learned English, made valedictorian, and will be going to UT at Austin in the fall. Her two brothers at already in college... And yes they learned English to.
Meanwhile we have this 'affirmative action' president and his victemology.
Pitiful. Slavery ended 150+ years ago, in the process 600,000+ died, mostly whites, to decide the matter. Yes whites died to free those very black slaves.
And what political party fought to free them? Republican. What party tried to keep them in slavery? Democrat party.
Welfare, as envisioned by Johnson, was just a way to bring them back to the plantation. Welfare is their chains. When they vote democrat they vote to keep the chains on.
They make their own slavery.
I don't have time to read Ta-Nehisi Coates, because I have to decide what to wear. Fashion is more important than race relations.
I almost feel sorry for Coates. He has studied history enough to realize that whatever moral failings white people may have, our political, cultural and intellectual creations are vastly greater than anything blacks have produced. He has excuses, of course, but they ring hollow, even in his own mind. He would like to believe, that black people have the same capabilities as white people, and that only white racism has held them back. But the reality, which he is probably smart enough to recognize, is that when the white people go away, and the black people run things to suit themselves, the result is Detroit. And Detroit would be a lot worse than it is if it weren't for all the white people putting money into the EBT account. Ta does not want to be white. But he isn't real happy about the reality of being black, either.
Majority white-ethnic (not elite liberal) neighborhoods in Chicago include: Beverly, Mt. Greenwood, Midway, Bridgeport, Canaryvilles, Archer Heights, Hegewisch, plus the neighborhoods of the Northwest Side (Edison Park, Saugenash, Jefferson Park, Norwood Park, Albany Park, Irving Park, North Park, etc. Plus there are the majority white (traditional and trending) neighborhoods of the Near North Side including Lincoln Park, Ukrainian Village, Wrigleyville, Avondale (a.k.a Polish Village), Lincoln Square, Andersonville, Bucktown, Wicker Park, etc.
Polish immigrants are moving back into the traditional Polish area of settlement along Milwaukee Ave., re-populating a neighborhood (and rejuvenating its magnificent churches) that once had the largest Polish population in North America and looks to be on track to regain that distinction.
All these neighborhoods are more or less very pleasant places to live--if, of course, you overlook the taxes you pay for the "priviledge" of living in Chicago, and apart from the occassional thugs who drift in from the bad neighborhoods to commit the odd murder and act of rapine.
He is such a mediocre writer and intellect. If you've read one of his pieces, you've read them all. His commenters swoon over him as if he was MLK, as liberals do in their patronizing way. He is good click bait, though, so The Atlantic must pay him well. It is disturbing that he is raising his son to be a racist, but not surprising. His son is in no more danger from white people than the big doofus mayors kid is.
"If you want to go on with making it a political thing, I can't stop you. But I can certainly point out what it looks like to all the voters who will punish you much more harshly than I would, for it. "
Thanks but I am not running for anything. I've even been asked to run for an occasional local office but I have absolutely no interest. I have great respect for Derbyshire, aside from the fact that I love his books. He was telling his children how to survive in a mixed racial society when the hostility of black "activists" is a real danger.
For example. Chicago, where I grew up, has weekly shootings and last summer had a series of racial attacks on whites in an upscale area called North Michigan Avenue. We don't know yet how this summer will go in Chicago but I was there a couple of weeks ago and situational awareness is important.
I don't mean to insult you when I say you are a fool. One of my own children I consider a fool. He is a successful lawyer and assured me about five years ago that my concern about gay marriage activists going after churches was ridiculous. It would never happen.
He is a fool.
"Note to Michael K.: there are several fairly populous white neighborhoods in Chicago, not just one enclave on the north side. "
Was just visiting my sister in one of them; Beverly where displaced South Side Irish move just before they leave the city.
Her neighbors on each side are black but it is still a largely peaceful area. They have shootings every couple of weeks that would create hysteria in Orange County but it is normal for them. A friend of hers was held up at gun point last month while walking her dog. Amazing what seems to be normal after you get used to it.
He needs to lighten up.
Every group that comes here, European, Indian, Asian, is taught to excel in some way. That's how they integrate.
Yep. Those are my people. Those are my guys. Not the miserable whining simps such as yourself. Constantly whining,"it's not fair". Nothing's fair. So get over it under achiever.
Have a fabulous gay love filled day.
Cheers
Coates summons Baldwin to begin his essay.
I read James Baldwin with great interest and curiosity as a young man. It was hard to comprehend for a white guy from a Pittsburgh suburb, but it gave me some kind of view hole to learn about blacks in America, which had always seemed to me to be a very important topic. I have read Baldwin again now that I am old and have seen the dreams of the Civil Rights Era falter as they are used and abused by lesser men and women than the pioneers who risked so much. I still see Baldwin as I saw him before--a stark realist but in spite of everything an optimist. A man who still believed in possibilities, even amid his despair.
Coates, who was born into a much less hostile world than Baldwin, is a pessimist. It seems he can not believe that an individual, much less a society, can transcend the past. In the final analysis only the struggle matters, but the struggle has been fruitless. He warns his son that it will continue to be fruitless. I hope his son does not heed the warning and hopes and strives for more. But what a sad pessimistic burden the young man will have to overcome.
In the final analysis only the struggle matters, but the struggle has been fruitless. He warns his son that it will continue to be fruitless.
If the struggle is, and will be, fruitless, why struggle?
Perhaps this is the wrong message?
Tony Ta's problem is that he 's been listening too long to Obama's racial theories.
obama is the king of the popinjays. He has been raised to high office by the ruling class for giving voice to their vanities.
Here's the takeaway: Coates is a nut. He thinks that white people -- if Zimmerman counts as white -- go out of their way to kill Black people in cold blood, and "the system" lets them go. Therefore there is a war on Black people in the US, and the only thing that stands between all the poor Black people and a howling mob of bubba's with nooses is a powerful federal government, with policies directed by people like the wealthy liberals who read and publish The Atlantic.
That is what makes Coates a popinjay, The heroes of his story are his paymasters.
Gutless TNC allows no comments on the site, of course.
That article confirms utterly that the man is one of the most racist and hateful people in America.
Was just visiting my sister in one of them; Beverly where displaced South Side Irish move just before they leave the city.
Beverly isn't where South Side Irish move to, it's where South Side Lace Curtain Irish live and have lived for more than a century. Bridgeport and Canaryville are Shanty Irish neighborhoods and Mt. Greenwood is bourgeois Irish but Beverly is where you live if you're Irish and you've made a pile of money as a lawyer or a trader on the now-shuttered Chicago Board of Trade. Irish families have lived there for generations and the majority of them are (or used to be) descended from ancestors who immigrated in the 19th century from County Mayo. Western Avenue which forms the neighborhood's western boundary is the route for the South Side St. Patrick's Day parade. The homes are stately, large, and very expensive. Christ the King Church is the parish church and, as such, the neighborhood's heart and soul. But the railroad tracks that form the neighborhood's eastern boundary are no barrier to the thugs who come into Beverly from the black neighborhood on the other side of the tracks to commit the shootings and muggings you mentioned. There are former Irish neighborhoods in the area (e.g., Marquette Park in the 63rd and Kedzie area) that are Irish no more because of black criminality--the Irish abandoned them for the southwest and western suburbs. I live in a western suburb with a large percentage of former South Side Irish who got out of the city because of black crime. Sorry to have to say this, but that's the way it is, and pretending that it's otherwise is a lie.
"The homes are stately, large, and very expensive"
The larger homes are mostly owned by middle class blacks. My sister's husband was a CPD cop and they had to live in the city.
I knew many people who were Irish and lived there 50 years ago but not lately.
My family is mostly farther west, out of the city.
I used to go to Christ the King for dances when I was in high school. The St Patrick's Day parade on Western was cancelled for several years because of rowdy drunks. This is the first year it was held in several.
The stats, if you are interested -- straight from the FBI!
There were 3,005 white murder victims in 2013.
2509 of the white victims were killed by whites (83%)
409 of the white victims were killed by Blacks (13%)
87 other 3%
There were 2,491 Black murder victims in 2013 (holy cow!).
2,245 of the Black victims were killed by Blacks (90%)
189 of the Black victims were killed by whites (7.5%)
57 other (2.5%)
So, the way whiteness works is that all the Black-on-Black murders were caused by whiteness?
Otherwise it kind of looks the opposite from what the idiot Coates wants you to believe.
http://1.usa.gov/1SwHtFR
Still a goodly number of tricolor flags flying from the front porches of Beverly homes on St. Patrick's Day. But fewer every year, that's for sure. I find that sad. I used to hang out in the Irish neighborhood just north of Marquette in the 63rd and S. Kedzie area. In the late 90s the neighborhood turned with astonishing rapidity. One day just for the heck of it after having a few Guinesses at the 6511 Club on Kedzie a friend and I drove around the neighborhood counting the for-sale signs in front of the houses. The city still allowed the display of for-sale signs at the time, and as we drove up and down the blocks, about half the houses on every block had a sign out front. A mass exodus was taking place. The owner of the 6511 Club, Tom Flanagan, sold his place and bought another on 55th and Central by Midway Airport and that was symbolic of the end of yet another venerable Chicago Irish neighborhood. I'll know Beverly has suffered the same fate when the Irish pubs on Western, e.g. the Cork and Kerry, close down. So far that hasn't happened but I expect it will, eventually.
Roughcoat, Chicago won't let you put up a for sale sign on a residential property?
They must have used some mean calculus to have figured out the white-flight point where less advertising keeps the prices from falling.
The Chicago that I knew and loved and grew up with is mostly gone. As Will Danaher lamented, comically, in the Quiet Man, "the old days are gone forever." Some neighborhoods of the "old Chicago" endure, e.g. Hegewisch, Canaryville, Avondale, and others. Several neighborhoods are actually better than they used to be, but even so they're not like the Chicago neighborhoods of yore. And so many parish churches and schools shutting down. Oh well, not even the mountains last forever.
Apparently, Coates believes that in a properly run Amerika, Little Trayvon would beat George Zimmerman's brains out on the sidewalk, then go back to his gangster father's house, where he would smoke some more dope and call his brain-dead sow of a girlfriend to brag about it.
Terry,
The practice of putting up for sale signs was banned in some neighborhoods because it facilitated the schemes of "block busting" speculators. I don't know if the ban is still in effect in certain neighborhoods or whether the ban was city-wide or just in neighborhoods that were vulnerable to the aforementioned speculators. I don't live in the city and I've lost track of what's going on there with regard to demographic trends and the real estate market and such. I've made my life elsewhere. The "old Chicago" will always have a special place in my heart and in my memories but that city is gone and it isn't coming back, ever. I don't think Chicago will go the way of Detroit, although that's certainly possible; but whichever way it goes, it will go there without me.
Anglelyne @ 5:12 & Jupiter @ 11:08
Just sent your pieces (with attribution)to a Lib friend of mine who'd once upon a time cited TNC as a balanced guy re race.
I'd simply replied at the time that my friend should've been embarrassed. You've said it better.
Thanks
"If you want to go on with making it a political thing, I can't stop you. But I can certainly point out what it looks like to all the voters who will punish you much more harshly than I would, for it. "
Thanks but I am not running for anything.
Whether it's in a run for an office or not, mouthing what Derbyshire ranted will get you nothing but opprobrium from any workplace, public space or polite society in general. And I think you know that.
But you're probably retired so you probably don't care.
"Every group that comes here, European, Indian, Asian, is taught to excel in some way. That's how they integrate."
Yep. Those are my people. Those are my guys.
Nah. I saw your profile. You're nothing like them. And none of them would be proud to have a plumber (or whatever it is you do) as their kid. That point seemed to fly right over your head. But then, you're an unprofessional, uneducated man anyway so you're not expected to have much going for you in the way of reading comprehension.
Derbyshire always had a bit of the English middle-class bigotry going on. His bigotry turned vile about the time he gave up on religion and became an atheist. I don't think it was coincidence, but I don't what caused what.
Thanks, Roughcoat.
I didn't know what "blockbusting" was, but I found this article that describes it:
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/147.html
I haven't been to Chicago in 30 years. In the 80s, once you got outside of Chicago itself, it had a lot of quaint little self-contained suburbs. Sounds like it is getting to be like Detroit.
Good heavens, who reads Ta Coates for anything other than laffs? The guy is the loopiest Fruit Loop since the Unibomber, or maybe Jim Jones. If you take him seriously you should probably see your shrink about getting a touch of Risperdal added to your Lexapro.
Again, TNC is a deep thinker for a crowd of exceptionally shallow thinkers.
Blogger Rhythm and Balls said...
"Every group that comes here, European, Indian, Asian, is taught to excel in some way. That's how they integrate."
Yep. Those are my people. Those are my guys.
Nah. I saw your profile. You're nothing like them. And none of them would be proud to have a plumber (or whatever it is you do) as their kid. That point seemed to fly right over your head. But then, you're an unprofessional, uneducated man anyway so you're not expected to have much going for you in the way of reading comprehension.
You moron. You can't even comprehend what you read. No wonder you have such a hard time dealing with people.
You're pretty high and mighty for a lab technician.
I feel for Coates. As if what remains of traditional old racial discrimination isn't enough, he has to imprison himself within his own beliefs. The walls you make for yourself are generally higher than the walls other people erect.
R & B may not like what Derbyshire wrote, but it is simply the truth. Here is a lovely photo of some poor Son of a White Man who didn't get the Derbyshire Talk;
http://tinyurl.com/omzfhbm
Red, White and Blue.
I read The Atlantic for 35 - 40 years. Its emphasis varied from editor to editor, but the intelligence if its articles remained a constant.
Consequently, when I first encountered TNC you can imagine my shock. Evidently he was an English major at one time and so many of his squibs made passing reference to distinguished writers and thinkers. But, he could not develop those thoughts or references.
I recall a few years back, before Obama when I began noting that black intellectuals were seemingly the central contributors to that which was livest and freshest in American thought. Then, with the rise of Obama (actually somewhat predating that rise)they vanished. Those who received ink and electricity were Sharpton and TNC and Tavis whatsit and any 3rd rater who was content to complain from the past and refused to countenance any off the plantation speculation.
I think TNC is slightly naive about some things. But definitely about as honest a writer as they come. Sometimes almost too much so.
You confuse idiocy with being naive. Adorable.
And none of them would be proud to have a plumber (or whatever it is you do) as their kid.
Plumbers make rather good money and have a skill that is needed and useful. I can see why YOU wouldn't appreciate it.
But then, you're an unprofessional, uneducated man anyway so you're not expected to have much going for you in the way of reading comprehension.
If he IS a plumber, can you --- oh brilliant man --- do what he does? Even come close?
No.
But anybody can fake being an educated dipshit. It just takes more idiocy than the average person can believe anybody would buy into.
I will say --- Coates would be perfect for Twitter. It'd limit his verbosity while not sacrificing his "message"
No_Limit_Nigga assaulted what he thought was a soft target, for snitching. He had no respect for Zimmerman's body, but he did have a limit. Michael "My Arms My Ammunition" Brown died because he thought he was tougher than bullets. Tamir Rice drew on a cop. Eric Garner fought cops and died from fat man's diseases (diabetes, heart disease, asthma, apnea). Tony Robinson thought he would live forever. Over 2,000 blacks murder other blacks every year, but at least they aren't racist. Te Ne Click-Click Coates tells lies for the enjoyment of white liberals who want desperately to believe them. PANTS UP! DON'T POOT!
"But then, you're an unprofessional, uneducated man anyway so you're not expected to have much going for you in the way of reading comprehension."
Oh yes, liberals care about the "working man" indeed.
Consider the fact that ethnic privilege was the norm, not the exception, throughout human history.
The fact that ethnic privilege in America was minimized in less than five decades is very remarkable. I mean, think about it. Ethnic privilege has a rich pedigree going back more than fifty centuries, and it took less than fifty years to diminish this privilege to levels never before seen in human history.
These race baiters refuse to acknowledge that,.
I would not be surprised if Coates or his son shows up in the news someday like Colin Ferguson or John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. All this hatred will have an outlet.
"The fact that ethnic privilege in America was minimized in less than five decades is very remarkable."
Not even the Soviets managed that. In practice, admission to higher institutes of learning was subject to a strict quota of Jews right up until the end. Come to think of it, I bet it's still that way in Russia.
If he IS a plumber, can you --- oh brilliant man --- do what he does? Even come close?
I could learn it in a few nights. Physics is not that difficult for everyone.
But anybody can fake being an educated dipshit.
Only an uneducated dipshit would believe that knowledge or intelligence can be "faked".
Oh yes, liberals care about the "working man" indeed.
We care more about his well-being than about his "pride" that some of the stupider among them force themselves to feel at being permanently underfoot.
I could learn it in a few nights. Physics is not that difficult for everyone.
Of course you can, little man. You can even wear your lab coat.
Derbyshire always had a bit of the English middle-class bigotry going on
Yeah, and like most bigots, he married outside his race.
I was reading an article about Max Baer, a heavyweight fighter in the 20s or thirties, and the 'whites only' conflict he got into in a bar in Chicago at that time when he showed up with a black corner man and a singer. The bartender handed a man who accosted him a baseball bat and Max told him 'He'd take the eyesight out of both eyes free of charge.' The man said, 'We don't like nigras and we particularly don't like nigra lovers.' There's probably some truth to what TNC has to say, not that sometimes black people haven't themselves identified with it or perpetrated violence out of a similar anger at white people. TNC and black people are probably more aware of it for historical reasons and more aware of it for more commonly consciously knowing that they are restraining an 'eye for an eye' attitude.
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