are we talking about the chompo tap house guys
― crüt, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:20 (six years ago) link
yes and I have no idea why, nor how their POC guests would feel about being accused of not knowing how to address race
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:21 (six years ago) link
but my recommendation/request would be to not do this in the TNC thread
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
when CTH had a POC guest on to talk about TNC, the boys mostly hung back and snickered until they sprang forth and the end with great critiques like how libs love BTWAM the way they love "Hamilton".
― President Keyes, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:28 (six years ago) link
lol i actually listened to that episode. it was awful
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:33 (six years ago) link
anyway yeah maybe save it for the chapo thread
I love both TNC and CTH, but the part where R.L. Stephens talk about how "black bodies" has become a pseudo-intellectual buzzword was OTM
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:38 (six years ago) link
*R.L. Stephens and the gang
I am sure on earth-2 people are complaining about Chapo hosts taking over the discussion with RL, how it shows they are not serious about including leftist voices in their discourse, etc.
― sovereignty flight, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:39 (six years ago) link
i mean lots of things are pseudo-intellectual buzzwords these days (like... neoliberal???). it's fueled by social media's combination of fast-spreading information and performative insistence
anyway let's go back to the main topic, sorry everyone
― maura, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 15:52 (six years ago) link
Where were all these people complaining abt Coates before the podcast came along to give them a space to criticize him from "the left" lol
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, 13 September 2017 16:27 (six years ago) link
We were posting on Stormfront, obv.
― sovereignty flight, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 16:45 (six years ago) link
give me a minute I'm sure I can sum this up with a terrible Metal Gear analogy
― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 13 September 2017 23:23 (six years ago) link
Snake Eater sucks
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 23:51 (six years ago) link
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/if-obama-said-that-ta-nehisi-coates-test-exposes-how-institutional-racism-helps-trump/
― reggie (qualmsley), Saturday, 16 September 2017 11:50 (six years ago) link
He was terrific on Chris Hayes' show.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 16 September 2017 12:04 (six years ago) link
George Packer responds.
When you construct an entire teleology on one cause—even a cause as powerful and abiding as white racism—you face the temptation to leave out anything that complicates the thesis. So Coates minimizes sexism—Trump’s disgusting language and the visceral hatred of many of his supporters for Hillary Clinton—background noise. He downplays xenophobia, even though foreigners were far more often the objects of Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policy proposals than black Americans. (Of all his insults, the only one Trump felt obliged to withdraw was his original foray into birtherism.) Coates doesn’t try to explain why, at one point in the campaign, a plurality of Republicans supported Ben Carson over the other nine candidates, all white. He omits the weird statistic that slightly more black and Latino voters and slightly fewer whites went for Trump than for Mitt Romney. He doesn’t even mention the estimated eight and a half million Americans who voted for President Obama and then for Trump—even though they made the difference. No need to track the descending nihilism of the Republican Party. The urban-rural divide is a sham.Then there’s the fact that Trump’s support among working-class whites has fallen from two-thirds on Election Day to 43 percent last month. Has Trump gone soft on the bigotry? Or has he failed to deliver on the rest of his package—cleaning up corruption and doing amazing deals and making America great again? Coates might need more than one cause to explain it.That 46 percent of voters, overwhelmingly white, chose Trump—that some chose him because of bigotry and some while overlooking it—that more than a third of the country still supports him: all this is hideous enough. But we live in a time of total vindication, when complication and concession are considered weaknesses, and counter examples are proof of false consciousness. This spirit has taken over Coates’s writing. In this essay and other recent work, he’s turned away from the self-examining quality of his earlier writing to a literary style that’s oracular. He has become the most influential writer in America today; this latest Atlantic essay is already being taught in college courses. He has never written more powerfully, and the sentences sweep you along because they don’t yield for a second to anything.But the style of no-compromise sacrifices things that are too important for readers to surrender without a second thought. It flattens out history into a single fixed truth, so that an event in 2016 is the same as an event in 1805, the most recent election erases the one before, the Obama years turn into an illusion. It brushes aside policy proposals as distractions, and politics itself as an immoral bargain. It weakens the liberal value of individual thought, and therefore individual responsibility, by subordinating thoughts and individuals to structures and groups. It begins with the essential point that race is an idea, and ends up just about making race an essence.
Then there’s the fact that Trump’s support among working-class whites has fallen from two-thirds on Election Day to 43 percent last month. Has Trump gone soft on the bigotry? Or has he failed to deliver on the rest of his package—cleaning up corruption and doing amazing deals and making America great again? Coates might need more than one cause to explain it.
That 46 percent of voters, overwhelmingly white, chose Trump—that some chose him because of bigotry and some while overlooking it—that more than a third of the country still supports him: all this is hideous enough. But we live in a time of total vindication, when complication and concession are considered weaknesses, and counter examples are proof of false consciousness. This spirit has taken over Coates’s writing. In this essay and other recent work, he’s turned away from the self-examining quality of his earlier writing to a literary style that’s oracular. He has become the most influential writer in America today; this latest Atlantic essay is already being taught in college courses. He has never written more powerfully, and the sentences sweep you along because they don’t yield for a second to anything.
But the style of no-compromise sacrifices things that are too important for readers to surrender without a second thought. It flattens out history into a single fixed truth, so that an event in 2016 is the same as an event in 1805, the most recent election erases the one before, the Obama years turn into an illusion. It brushes aside policy proposals as distractions, and politics itself as an immoral bargain. It weakens the liberal value of individual thought, and therefore individual responsibility, by subordinating thoughts and individuals to structures and groups. It begins with the essential point that race is an idea, and ends up just about making race an essence.
― grawlix (unperson), Saturday, 16 September 2017 13:05 (six years ago) link
So Coates minimizes sexism—Trump’s disgusting language and the visceral hatred of many of his supporters for Hillary Clinton—background noise. He downplays xenophobia, even though foreigners were far more often the objects of Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policy proposals than black Americans. (Of all his insults, the only one Trump felt obliged to withdraw was his original foray into birtherism.) Coates doesn’t try to explain why, at one point in the campaign, a plurality of Republicans supported Ben Carson over the other nine candidates, all white.
It's not a matter of TNC's "minimizing" sexism or "downplaying" xenophobia -- he has acknowledged those don't constitute his metier. Also, yes he HAS explained why Ben Carson drew support; even last night he detailed why a white voter who voted for Trump could vote for Obama twice.
It's not that TNC doesn't deserve criticism -- it's that his critics are a second-rate bunch.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 16 September 2017 13:09 (six years ago) link
Where you and I differ is that you think Coates is better than his critics. His Reconstruction-era prose makes his ideas seem like much more than they are.
― grawlix (unperson), Saturday, 16 September 2017 13:30 (six years ago) link
As a test, whenever someone writes that article 'It's not JUST racism', search for the word 'intersection' in it. There's a huge theoretical current of thought examining how race intersects with, for example, gender and class, and whether or not a critic mentions that is a really good indicator of whether they actually want to broaden the discussion, or whether they just want to stop people from talking about race. It's not perfect. But a good indicator.
― Frederik B, Saturday, 16 September 2017 13:53 (six years ago) link
At the end there, when he complains that TNC doesn't allow for 'individual thought' and 'individual responsibility', it's just really obvious he doesn't want to think about white privilege.
― Frederik B, Saturday, 16 September 2017 14:13 (six years ago) link
xp dude
― j., Saturday, 16 September 2017 14:19 (six years ago) link
lol
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 16 September 2017 14:24 (six years ago) link
Fred do you know who George Packer is
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 16 September 2017 15:11 (six years ago) link
Haven't the slightest clue, which is why I kept my remarks to this specific text.
― Frederik B, Saturday, 16 September 2017 15:42 (six years ago) link
And it really didn't give me any evidence I should spent time figuring out who George Packer is. Anything I should know?
― Frederik B, Saturday, 16 September 2017 15:43 (six years ago) link
He's white.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 16 September 2017 15:46 (six years ago) link
As a test, whenever someone writes that article 'It's not JUST racism', search for the word 'intersection' in it.
Any writer who hopes to connect with an audience that is unfamiliar with that "huge theoretical current of thought" you cite, which amounts to at least 95% of that writer's potential audience, will deliberately avoid that word because it is specialized academic jargon, and will instead concentrate on conveying as simply as possible the meaning and significance that the jargon can only reference. If that word appears, the writer is probably preaching to the choir.
― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 16 September 2017 19:17 (six years ago) link
"Racist whites couldn't possibly support Ben Carson" is a massively disingenuous argument
― crüt, Saturday, 16 September 2017 19:47 (six years ago) link
It's like the flip side of "but some of my best friends are black!"
― just1n3, Saturday, 16 September 2017 19:55 (six years ago) link
My wife's brother is white, racist as fuck, and the biggest Carson stan I've ever known. Carson is proof to him that racism has been solved and he doesn't have to do a thing or (especially) think about it anymore.
― WilliamC, Saturday, 16 September 2017 20:02 (six years ago) link
lol at the image of a "Carson stan"
― flappy bird, Saturday, 16 September 2017 20:33 (six years ago) link
My dad is a big Carson fan for similar reasons. Carson is a mega Christian, has wacky ideas about pyramids and shit, and most importantly, in his mind it supporting Carson shows his even more racist friends that he's not a racist
― Karl Malone, Saturday, 16 September 2017 20:41 (six years ago) link
I didn't see Packer making the argument that "racist whites couldn't possibly support Ben Carson," I see his line about that appearing in a paragraph where he's making the point that lots of other shit was going on in 2016 besides just America being racist as fuck. But I am reading his response with more sympathy than almost everybody else here, I suppose.
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 16 September 2017 20:48 (six years ago) link
lol at the idea that someone has to use a specific fucking word, every time, or their argument can be dismissed out of hand
fwiw coates singled out packer for criticism in his essay, so he's responding to that
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 16 September 2017 20:58 (six years ago) link
Yep. His response amounts to, "But I wrote good stuff about the election too!'
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 16 September 2017 23:33 (six years ago) link
― grawlix (unperson), Saturday, September 16, 2017 8:30 AM (twelve hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is one of the worst posts I've ever read. Not sure if that's your bad prose, bad ideas, or a mixture of the two
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 17 September 2017 02:09 (six years ago) link
― El Tomboto, Saturday, September 16, 2017 3:48 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
It really was just America being racist is fuck, which is why white people were the only demographic to go overwhelmingly for trump. If it was sexism why did a majority of white women vote for trump? I mean we've been over this 8million times by now
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 17 September 2017 02:12 (six years ago) link
this is one of the worst posts I've ever read.
You should read more. Like, in general.
― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, 17 September 2017 02:13 (six years ago) link
From my 'fieldwork' in this area (conversations with my mom, who got all 'no, YOU'RE the racist' when challenged on her dislike of Obama or BLM or whatever) support for Carson was given purely to troll liberals.
― kim jong deal (suzy), Sunday, 17 September 2017 02:51 (six years ago) link
in my scientific opinion, it was 55% racism, 20% sexism, 15% xenophobia, 10% south park fans
― Karl Malone, Sunday, 17 September 2017 03:21 (six years ago) link
Women can't be sexist, it's a fact.
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 17 September 2017 03:50 (six years ago) link
xp 12% necrophilia, 89% sexual frustration, 3.23% memes, 42% martian interference, 0.04% pussy hats not ready until week after election, 7% millenials vs boomers thinkpieces, 2% obama party hangover, 100% gravy sauce
― sleepingbag, Sunday, 17 September 2017 03:53 (six years ago) link
The idea that xenophobia and racism aren't overlapping is absurd obv
Likewise the idea that bc more poc voted for trump than Romney means it can't be racism ... that's just bad logic
Packer is a brilliant journalist who is also an old man thinking in an ancient boomer paradigm
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 17 September 2017 04:44 (six years ago) link
i largely agree with packer's response, and i think it explains the reservations i had after reading coates' piece, even though i largely came away agreeing with it. there was a striking lack of humility and cavalierism regarding the logical leaps he was making that were, truthfully, beneath a writer of coates' caliber.
― k3vin k., Sunday, 17 September 2017 05:00 (six years ago) link
Oh fuck off
― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Sunday, 17 September 2017 15:33 (six years ago) link
I think this discussion is at an impasse. If you point out that TNC's argument is essentialist by pointing out the other factors in the American character, you are effectively eliding the difficult conversation about white privilege as the principal substance of the American character. The issue of white privilege is what has to be tackled first before anything else matters. Pointing out that other things might also matter, no matter how true, is ultimately jejune.
You can attack class issues before tackling race issues, and that's pretty much what we've always done, but the effects don't last. Race always drags us back down. The New Deal was racist as hell and the right wing still wants to get rid of (most of*) what remains from it.
I don't think TNC is at heart an essentialist or an absolutist. I think he writes like one because he feels that if he makes his points any other way then it's not going to get through to people.
*all those dams and power administrations sure do keep the lights on in a lot of red state homes though
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 17 September 2017 15:50 (six years ago) link
i don't think every writer needs to account for everything. coates's subject is racism and he was writing about trump's election as it fits into the long story of american racism. i don't think the "oracular" style packer complains about is necessarily a problem. coates shouldn't have to water down the truth he wants to talk about by name-checking a hundred other true things.
the one thing that is objectionable about the coates piece is the way he deals with writers who had other explanations for trump. attack lilla -- fine -- because lilla is actively trying to sideline BLM from the democratic party, but someone like packer isn't discussing class *in order to* sideline race, he is talking about it because it is another part of the story. the trump election wasn't just about one thing.
― Treeship, Sunday, 17 September 2017 16:35 (six years ago) link
Right. Forcefully prioritizing one thing can sound like essentialism, but it isn't.
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 17 September 2017 16:41 (six years ago) link
I figure Packer got singled out because he was the sharpest of the bunch writing "What Would the White Working Class Do" pieces prior to the election.
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 17 September 2017 16:44 (six years ago) link