West recently criticized Coates in an essay published in The Guardian, slamming him for not being critical enough of former President Obama... [for] “fetishiz[ing] white supremacy" [and for] having a “preoccupation with white acceptance” and an “allegiance to Obama.”...Well, let's see the exchange with West. Coates had an active Twitter feed and then deleted it all. That seems highly emotional. I want to see what the 2 men said to each other.
According to the AP, Coates and West engaged in a “contentious exchange” on Twitter, prompting Coates to delete his account.... Coates often used his Twitter account for political commentary. Earlier this year, his 31-tweet thread criticizing chief of staff John Kelly’s controversial comments about the Civil War being started by a “lack of compromise” went viral.
I understand feeling offended by West's essay, but stand up to him! He's not that hard to fight, is he?
Maybe Coates thought that he's doing so well with his books that it's foolish to let people take shots at him on Twitter and that West was using him to leverage his own flagging career as a race pundit.
ADDED: You can un-delete your Twitter account (within 30 days) (and you can also just take it private), so the gesture isn't as self-destructive as it may look.
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84 comments:
"stand up to him! He's not that hard to fight, is he?" He is. With all that hot air blowing at you, it's hard to stand up.
Though I think I'd lean West in this case.
Cat Fight!
Ya gotta cut Tennessee Coates some slack. He was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
"Coates, who has emerged as one of the country's leading black intellectuals"
Low expectations can be a resume enhancer.
Two bullshit artists flinging excrement at each other.
The less Coates the better. That said, any sensible person should get off Twitter. Twitter is for posting short announcements, meeting times, road closures, reminders. Put to other uses it is destructive and should be shunned by persons of good will or serious intent.
Let 'em fight. I hope they both knock out the other. It could happen.
A phrase I seem to utter more with every passing year:
Is there some way they can both lose?
Coates has always gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent any criticism of his views or his writings. Whenever he publishes an article in The Atlantic, the comments sections is always turned off. He does not like anyone criticizing his views or presenting opposing arguments to what he says.
I still don't get why people Tweet or use Twitter.
When I see this sort of thing, I always think of the Henry Kissinger quote about academic politics/disputes- it is so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small (paraphrased, I think, but the meaning is there).
Coates is a contentless phony.
I'm not that fond of West, but, intellectually, he's leaps & bounds beyond Coates in education & training.
There's just not a lot of there there with Coates. He just was the right guy in the right place at the right time, being the token angry black (not-too) intellectual that white readers could use for virtue signalling. The fact that they could make it all better by rallying around the Obama flag pole just put the cherry on the sundae.
Coates does not have a good relationship with dissent. He can't stand it. He really, really can't bear to hear anyone tell him he's wrong. That's why his comment section is an egregious echo chamber, with any and all criticism purged. It's frankly a moral failing for someone in his position as an alleged intellectual.
Now seeing Truthavenger's comment. Did he turn off comments altogether? Too much trouble for him I guess, to delete all the bad people. But I haven't been over at the Atlantic much since Megan McArdle left, and I haven't commented on Coates' blog since he deleted my comments in an NBA post. It wasn't even sensitive stuff like race in the NBA, it was just basketball. I think it was arguing about whether the Spurs counted as a young or a veteran team. Disagreement was still verboten.
It's the feminization of the culture.
Imus, living with a wife and three daughters, said there was no time of the month that somebody wasn't crying and slamming the doors.
He's pulling a Franken.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an opportunistic dunderhead whose success has been enabled by virtue signaling white elites. I'm torn about him giving up on Twitter. On the one hand, it's important to have idiots reveal their idiocy, and Twitter is the perfect platform for that. On the other, maybe there's just too much noise out there.
Coates has sold a lot of books, and it makes other people jealous.
How is it remotely controversial that the civil war occurred due to lack of compromise?
See also "The American Lion" and the Nullification crisis, some 30 (?) years before.
-XC
All I'm saying is the people tearing him down ought to worry that they look jealous (or territorial).
The diversity racket is not having a good year. Revenues are low. The National Socialists are real and projections from their own minds. With positive progress, the racketeers will have to reject their liberal outlook, judge people by the "content of their character", and discover another means to finance their lifestyles and political ambitions.
I'm not that fond of West, but, intellectually, he's leaps & bounds beyond Coates in education & training.
Coates' ideas are more like tribal reflexes, indistinguishable from white racist shtick.
"Coates, who has emerged as one of the country's leading black intellectuals"
Says who? His mother? Other liberals?
I have slogged through some of Coates scribblings and calling him an "intellectual" is quite the exaggeration (in my humble opinion), awarding him "one of the country's leading black intellectuals" does a disservice to both the country and actual black intellectuals.
There are two bloggers with whom real disagreement is never allowed on their sites- Coates and Brad DeLong. If you point out that they got a basic factoid wrong, they would delete the comment and correct the factoid, never acknowledging it in any way. If you disagree with either one, it had better be in the form of "Coates/DeLong, you aren't even aware of how right you are!".
Earlier this year, his 31-tweet thread criticizing ...
Why did he stop his thread at 31 tweets?
Did he run out of points to tweet?
Coates can't handle dissent because he has never had to and doesn't know how. His "arguments" are ignorant, emotional and racist.
Coates has sold a lot of books, and it makes other people jealous.
Your first assumption is jealousy? Why? Why doesn't West deserve the assumption that he is acting in good faith? I have always had the impression that he was the most responsible of the race hustlers out there. I could understand assuming the worst if the attack came from Sharpton..but West? Would you make this assumption if West was White?
Which one likes or doesn't like black-body radiation?
I don't twitter, or even read any that aren't part of some other story/essay I am reading, but can you delete the comments of people specifically on your account so that they don't show up on your feed?
It's like the old 1980s Iran-Iraq war - we hope they both lose, but only after wailing away on each other with all implements of destruction up to and including poison gas.
Red on red.
Popcorn.
"West was using him to leverage his own flagging career as a race pundit."
There can only be one.
It seems.
"Coates has sold a lot of books, and it makes other people jealous."
"I can't be held responsible for every undercapitalized small business.."
Oops, that was Hillary,.
>Your first assumption is jealousy? Why?
I think her point is that it's difficult to criticize him without appearing jealous, which is always a problem when criticizing someone with the same audience
Oh, come on, Althouse!
Where's you I_Hope_They_Both_Lose label???
Coates ain't no Einsteiner, that's for sure.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is popular with white liberals for one main reason - they get to feel smugly superior that they read articles or books by a black man named Ta-Nehisi.
That's it.
His writing is dreck. His arguments are easily refuted. His viewpoint is pure navel-gazing, "look at me I'm BLACK!". And his intellect is sorely lacking.
But he has a cool, ethnic, first name, and looks like how a black intellectual "should look".
So the coffeeshop crowd loves him.
"That seems highly emotional."
At least he isn't hysterical (yet).
Coates is a lightweight. West knows that and suspects Coates knows it too. West and Coates both know Coates is enriching himself off white guilt. West calls him out on that not so subtle angle and essentially makes the pointthat Coates is not a serious thinker.
West prefers that the "Token Black Intellectual" positions go to blacks with at least some minor intellectual pretensions. Cornel West can truthfully claim that there are universities that would hire him even if he weren't black. Having a wickless candle like Coates on the team makes West's own token status harder to disguise.
Inside baseball Blacketty black.
Coates doesn't like it when someone disagrees with him or posts something that he doesn't like. I'm proud to say that several years ago he blocked me from posting comments on The Atlantic. He didn't even bother to tell me he was blocking me. When I couldn't post a comment I contacted The Atlantic's online customer service as to why I couldn't post, the young lady had to do some digging but finally was able to tell me the Coates blocked me because of the language I used. I eschew the use of scatalogical language and ad hominem attacks so the only thing I can think of is that I used to many multi-syllable words.
I missed this article in the Guardian. Like many such articles, I disagree with much of what this author says, but this observation of Coates is spot on: "In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical and unremovable. What concerns me is his narrative of “defiance”. For Coates, defiance is narrowly aesthetic – a personal commitment to writing with no connection to collective action. It generates crocodile tears of neoliberals who have no intention of sharing power or giving up privilege. Coates reveals his preoccupation with white acceptance when he writes with genuine euphoria: “As I watched Barack Obama’s star shoot across the political sky ... I had never seen so many white people cheer on a black man who was neither an athlete nor an entertainer. And it seemed that they loved him for this, and I thought in those days ... that they might love me too.” "
Sorry for the long quote, but it's significant on multiple levels. The major problem with Coates is that he views the problems of black people in America as a totally white problem. Black people will never advance until white people allow it. Until then, nothing can be done. This surrenders black agency. Black people cannot do anything to improve themselves or their communities. It's absurd.
West is more traditional Black Marxism, while Coates is more SJW. Both are triablist scum.
I recommend Michael Harriot's writing at the Root for a greater understanding of the issues between Coates and West, he writes:The idea that one must address these separate but connected entities is correct at its core, but it is also neoliberal thinking at its highest level. Thinkers like Coates who address the inherent evil of white supremacy without muddying the argument with extraneous variables aren’t ignoring them. They are highlighting them. Both the capitalism-fueled inequality (West) and simple math of white supremacy( Coates) must be taken into account.
Link:https://www.theroot.com/how-three-real-american-families-eat-dinner-1819181538
In the immortal words of Henry Kissinger, "It's a shame they can't both lose."
Kyle Smith - Black Critics Shake Their Heads at Ta-Nehisi Coates:
When it comes to essays about Ta-Nehisi Coates, you can almost guess the race of the writer from the tone of the piece. If the words ring with a sort of rapturous adulation, as though the writer feels blessed to be allowed to absorb Coates’s wisdom and especially his chastisement, the author tends to be white. Several prominent black writers, however, have written pieces that are much more equivocal, suggesting Coates’s central claims are off the mark.
......
A number of leading black intellectuals have raised similar points. Writing in the London Review of Books, Thomas Chatterton Williams says that Coates has “either a cynical or a woefully skewed way of looking at the world,” and he also scores Coates for his denial of black agency, for reducing criminals to “hopeless automatons.” He writes that “despite the undeniable progress that has been made towards equal rights,” Coates insists on presenting racism and racial disparities “as utterly intransigent and impersonal forces, like a natural disaster, for which no one can be usefully held to account.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451593/ta-nehisi-coates-black-critics-reject-his-breed-antiracism
Here's West: "any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. "
So I interpret this as saying to Coates, "either you agree with me on everything or you're a sell out, non-authentic black person".
And that kind of argument really rubs me the wrong way. Coates opinions about race are invalid because he wasn't sufficiently strong in opposition to the Iraq war?
In my opinion this really makes West look bad, like a bully. And as to whether or not the best way to deal with a bully is to aggressively confront, or to disengage (delete twitter account), I don't have a strong opinion. But let's be clear that West is trying to win a debate (though perhaps the debate is who is the number one black intellectual?), not by presenting strong arguments but by threats and irrelevant arguments.
Molly,
Why is he a bully? Because he disagrees with the guy? Because you disagree with his take on the world, or his commentary on other writers?
Can't the guy have a position that's pointedly different, passionately held? Why is that bullying?
I think her point is that it's difficult to criticize him without appearing jealous, which is always a problem when criticizing someone with the same audience.
For people with different audiences, they say you appear racist.
You just can win.
Cornell West: The honorable opposition. I’d be proud to have the man over for dinner. We wouldn’t agree on anything, but it would be a helluva good conversation.
Coates: An idiotic, preening libtard. Too intellectually dishonest and immature to bother dealing with. Incapable of dealing with honest and reasoned discourse, which is why he bans dissent on his own blog. An embarrassment to his own side in the argument.
"All I'm saying is the people tearing him down ought to worry that they look jealous (or territorial)."
Does the same hold true for criticism of every person who has "sold a lot of books"?
If I criticize Nicholas Sparks, or Mao, or Bill O'Reilly, or the guy who popularized transactional analysis, are we to assume that I'm just jealous because they sold a lot of books?
Wondering what the difference is.
"Can't the guy have a position that's pointedly different, passionately held? Why is that bullying?"
I think Molly's point, which is well taken, is that when someone like Cornel West, who has taken the trouble not merely to master the bullshit rhetoric of anti-colonialist third-world Marxist analysis but to make his own highly lucrative contributions to it, criticizes a gormless poser like Coates, it is necessarily bullying. It's like driving your SUV into the sandbox where little Ta-Nehisi is making Vrooom! noises.
White supremacy is the natural result of white cultural superiority.
I'm not joking.
White people conquered the world with laughably tiny forces against immense odds.
They did not even start out with significant technological advantages.
When you get down to cases, in the 16th-18th centuries it was the usual form for a few hundred men to obtain suzerainty (which is the best word for the usual arrangement) of populations of hundreds of thousands or millions. Over and over and over again. Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, French, they all did exactly this. And they were armed no better than the natives.
The battle of Plassey is almost the defining example. Every element of "white" (European) advantage is seen here, and all the mechanics of failure on the other side. This fight was less a battle than an implicit political negotiation with bloodshed, between a few hundred Europeans, and a few thousand natives in their service, against tens of thousands of natives - which had, on paper, tremendously greater firepower. The factions among the natives fundamentally distrusted each other, and most of them trusted the Europeans better - so they fell out among themselves and major factions cut deals with the Europeans. That was THE pattern of European conquest.
To AlbertAnonymous and Jupiter: My objection to West's argument is that it seems to be: "you can't be right about race because you are wrong about war (or sexism or possibly the minimum wage)." I think that is a weak argument. It says, "agree with everything I believe or I'll call you hurtful names (inauthentically black)." Perhaps "bullying" is too strong to characterize that argument, but it's not far off. The challenge for West is to cite specific opinions about race that Coates espouses, and to criticize those opinions as stand-alone opinions.
In the 19th century the non-white natives started reforming their deficiencies and giving more effective resistance. The whites conversely started relying more on technology and industrial capacity than their cultural-institutional advantages.
And the required investment in military and administrative systems to keep the natives under control began inflating the cost of empires.
Black-on-black violence, under-reported per usual by the MSM clerisy.
It was kind of a joy to read that. I don't think I've ever enjoyed reading West before.
He nails Coates for his race-obsession, and his Obama love. He bashes him hard from the left. Good show.
And thanks to Buwaya for getting me to research the Battle of Plassey and learn something new.
The winning of empires (whence racial superiority, no empires, no power and no racial mystique) was at its root based on an under-analyzed capacity of Europeans, which was making deals, and keeping deals. That, or an even more under-analyzed ability in rhetoric.
It was not superior armies that won empires, but superior negotiation, the suborning of elements of the local native power elite to accept the suzerainty of the European governing clique in exchange for an alliance against local rivals. It was the native peoples that conquered the Europeans empires for them.
Over and over and over again, this is the pattern.
R/V: "Both the capitalism-fueled inequality (West) and simple math of white supremacy( Coates) must be taken into account."
Lol
My God you marxists are morons.
M. Jordan: "I hope they both knock out the other."
Knockouts are extremely rare in the intellectual lightweight division.
This is the first time I'v agreed with Cornel West. It's a WONDER!
Didn't Coates win a MacArthur fellowship? He's way ahead of West in monetizing his militancy. Plus, he's younger and better looking. Who can blame West for feeling jealous......I've never read any of their books, but I've seen them on television. Coates definitely has a better crease, and that's where the money is.
Molly said...
"The challenge for West is to cite specific opinions about race that Coates espouses, and to criticize those opinions as stand-alone opinions."
Molly, the challenge for West is to resist the urge to rip his own scraggly hair out in righteous indignation at the spectacle of all those white people treating little pimple-butt Coates like some kind of a savant. West is a real, actual scholar, for Christ sake. He knows languages and shit. He teaches classes!
Coates isn't fit to lick the soles of Martin Luther King Jr.'s shoes after a walk through a cow pasture.
Tennessee Coates is fixated on one idea (slavery was wrong) and one policy proposal (US to pay reparations).
I agree with the former, but not the latter.
I understand feeling offended by West's essay, but stand up to him! He's not that hard to fight, is he?
Coates has done some good work in uncovering the whole history of redlining. But in this, as in probably many other things, I'm sure it's West who's in the right.
I won't read either one of them. I'm getting old and don't have time for delusional fools. History is much more interesting. Blacks have made their bed and only they can change it.
And the required investment in military and administrative systems to keep the natives under control began inflating the cost of empires.
The British Army is a perfect example. Hw many did it take to conquer India?
More died on the first day of the Somme than conquered India.
Coates is an empty vessel into which many fools pour their wishes and guilt.
The current state of Humanities is a farce,
Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle.
If West thinks that about Coates, then Cory Booker must be the fucking anti-Christ.
"The British Army is a perfect example. Hw many did it take to conquer India?"
Very few. At Plassey there were maybe 800 European combatants under Clive. The rest of his @3000 men were Indians of one sort or another. They were up against @50,000 men.
This whole thing, the actual process of conquest (in India and everywhere else), is badly under-studied, and under-published. Which is very curious given how important it was, and still is. Because here is where the nature of power is found. A mystique is based on something, and here in the process of conquest you can find it.
The complaints of West and Coates are mere downstream consequences, the wailing of the conquered. Vae victis.
One of the best works on the period, for example, - of the mechanics of the conquest of India - is actually John Fortescue's "A History of the British Army". Vol II has Clive at Plassey, and Eyre Coote; etc., in further volumes. History is built on details, and its lessons usually are found in the details.
Indiana,
At first I read your question as, "Does the same hold true for criticism of every person who has 'sold a lot of boobs'?"
But it make sense; we're all jealous of Hugh Hefner, aren't we?
Michael K,
And it wasn't even really the British Army for most of the conquest.
Deletes his Twitter...what a pansy.
Jupiter just killed it on this thread.
Vrooom!, indeed!
PS. Professor, did I miss a post about Nancy Friday?
I just found out she died last month and I would think you'd have a word or two to say.
All I'm saying is the people tearing him down ought to worry that they look jealous (or territorial).
Why? It’s a stunningly juvenile criticism. I usually see this kind of ad hom in articles criticizing popular athletes or celebrities. The comments almost always include some fanboy defending his idol this way, “Y’all just jealous cuz he rich and famous.” I’m surprised you think it’s a serious concern.
Coates really does have an issue with advancing white supremacist narratives. The guy really does need to shut up and think for a little bit.
Drago said...
Red on red.
Popcorn.
This is different. West is intelligent and accomplished. He got to where he was because of what he did. I think that West has realized that the democrat party and progressives are still running a plantation.
On the other hand Coates is a tool. The wealthy people who own DC and the media own Coates as well. He just piddles out the crap they tell him to write with the express goal of dividing the people against each other.
West may be wrong about a lot of things, but he still has his soul.
Not surprised in the least, Ta's a weak minded bigot, could never handle any debate. I've been banned twice for politely pointing out that the Democrats have always been selling racial statism to whoever's buying.
Ta-ta.
Coates is no intellectual, and neither is West. They are both shallow polemicists, with no interest at all in understanding and attempting to remedy the problems that they have made a career of exploiting. I am reminded of the words of a genuine intellectual, who described them perfectly:
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
― Booker T. Washington
"... so the gesture isn't as self-destructive as it may look."
Twitter is an evil instrumentality, a coarse and ridiculous medium, a heckler's heroin, whose defining characteristic is to truncate meaningful communication arbitrarily, and deleting one's Twitter account, permanently, is a sign of mental health, not self-destructiveness, for anyone, even wacky Coates.
"West may be wrong about a lot of things, but he still has his soul."
If West still has his soul, it's cause the Devil doesn't want it.
Not to say anything good about twitter, but the idiocies so often seen in it are not improved by going long form. Neither West nor Coates improve when given room to spread out.
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