"... of a figure who justifies and legitimates the White supremacist practices. We know that we can internalize in our own minds, in our own subconscious, in our own bodies the very principles that are undoing us. So to have a Black face speaking in behalf of a White supremacist legacy is nothing new. And it is to the chagrin of those of us who study race that the White folk on the other side and the right wingers the other side don’t understand."
Do you know when you are speaking your own true thoughts and are not channeling someone's else's? Are you sure? Do you know when somebody else is speaking their own true thoughts and are not channeling someone's else's? I could see being eternally skeptical about whether anyone is ever truly speaking their own mind, 100% originality, but I'm just going to be skeptical of the people who choose to pronounce some and only some people to be the puppets of others. The selective puppet accusation itself might be channeling what somebody else is launching off the runway of your tongue.
When puppet accusations fly, I feel compelled — by my own true motivation of the heart — to post this video clip:
“There is a black mouth moving but a white idea running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the white supremacist practices.” pic.twitter.com/P3O8ciTveG
Meade and I just watched that — with a lot of pausing and conversation. And I don't want — at least not right now — to have to watch it again to pinpoint where I'm seeing all these things, so I'm just going to list them for now:
1. Maher only nonapologizes. He declares his "apology" "sincere," but he's only sorry about the pain it must have caused some people. (Did it really cause pain or just outrage and a bristling awareness of entitlement to control who can use that word?)
2. Both men are uncomfortable. Dyson knows he's being used to embody the set of people who claim entitlement to control the use of that word, and he knows other people in the set might not like his taking on this role, especially for the obvious purpose of getting Maher through his tribulations.
3. Dyson does not purely represent the people on whose behalf he gives absolution, because he's Maher's "friend," which seems to mean that he's been on the show before. He's a go-to guest because he serves a purpose, Maher's purpose. Dyson's willingness to be on the show seems to have a lot to do with selling books. Count how many times Dyson refers to his book (which is called "Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America"). At one point, Maher says something that makes Dyson uncomfortable and Dyson begins a sentence "My book, my book, my book...."
4. Maher is uncomfortable, visibly squirming. We rewound to get more laughs out of the squirming. I felt as though I could read a thought bubble: Is this enough yet? Can I make him go now?
5. At the outset, it's established that Maher has been anti-apology over the years. He thinks people apologize too much, but he concedes that sometimes an apology is appropriate and that this is one of those times. But why? I think the answer is not because it caused some pain and he's not about causing pain, but because he wants to keep his HBO show. He's fighting for his show. He lost a show once before because of something he said, and he's doing what he must to keep this one. By the end of the colloquy with Dyson, Maher is back to responding to Dyson's sermonettes with sentences that begin with the word "but."
6. Maher speaks of his "political capital," and he's irked that this incident "cost" him political capital. He starts to say that he "spent" political capital, but he changes the word to "cost." He didn't spend capital, he only accidentally allowed some political capital to drain away. He wants political capital so that he can spend it on things that really matter to him, and he's irked that he lost some on a meaningless interchange with Ben Sasse about visiting Nebraska.
7. Maher's central excuse (or justification) is that he's a comedian. It's inherent in the nature of the work that he blurts out zingers. It's the kind of thing that's going to happen. He's got to take that risk, just like a quarterback has to throw passes even though there will be some interceptions. That's his analogy, and I hear him to be saying there will be other things like this. He's not delivering the full apology that includes the element of insuring it won't happen again. He's pretty much warning us that it will happen again. He'd just like the line-crossing to happen over something that's worth it and not some damn thing about working in the fields of Nebraska.
8. The notion of "evolving" comes up multiple times. He also calls himself a "monkey," but not in the context of evolution. "Evolution" is used to say he's evolving on something about race or sensitivity in talking about race or something. "Monkey" is used in the context of portraying himself as a comedian, doing impulsive antics for the amusement of the crowd. When he says the word "monkey" — referring to himself — Dyson issues a caution. There's danger ahead. Maher, jumping for comedy, said "monkey" in the midst of a discussion of race. He could be heading into a new round of racial discipline.
9. Dyson reads a text from his son, something about how some white people acquire a privilege to use the word, but the good "white boys" with the privilege don't exercise it. Dyson tells us over and over again that Maher has been great over the years on racial issues, which might put him in that category of white boys who are privileged to use the n-word, but Maher failed to fit Dyson's son's definition of a good n-word-privileged white boy because he exercised the privilege.
10. Watch Dyson as he expatiates on Maher's virtues. He will not make eye-contact.
In Defense of James Baldwin – Why Toni Morrison (a literary genius) is Wrong about Ta-Nehisi Coates. [James] Baldwin was a great writer of profound courage who spoke truth to power. Coates is a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power. Baldwin’s painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements. He reveled in the examples of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Fannie Lou Hamer and Angela Davis. Coates’s fear-driven self-absorption leads to individual escape and flight to safety – he is cowardly silent on the marvelous new militancy in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Oakland, Cleveland and other places. Coates can grow and mature, but without an analysis of capitalist wealth inequality, gender domination, homophobic degradation, Imperial occupation (all concrete forms of plunder) and collective fightback (not just personal struggle) Coates will remain a mere darling of White and Black Neo-liberals, paralyzed by their Obama worship and hence a distraction from the necessary courage and vision we need in our catastrophic times....
In other words: Coates, like Obama, is only a liberal, not a hardcore lefty, as he should be.
I got there via the Observer, which tried but failed to get Coates to respond and proceeded to get a response from Michael Eric Dyson, "a professor of sociology at Georgetown University who wrote a withering takedown of Mr. West in the April issue of The New Republic."
He described Mr. West’s Facebook post as an “acrimonious dirge,” a “bitter, nasty, sorrowful blue note,” and “despotically and willfully intolerant of the gifts and talents of those who may potentially eclipse him. It shows the vast ineptitude of professor West’s scholarship,” Mr. Dyson told the Observer in a phone conversation. “The point I made in my piece is that he doesn’t keep up, he doesn’t read the freshest, newest, most insightful scholarship, nor does he write about it in any serious fashion or teach it in his curriculum, and it shows here.”...
Mr. Dyson suggested that Mr. West listen to “the great Ludwig Wittgenstein,” who said: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
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