We talked about the article for 10 pages+ I think most people think that Coates is overreaching with his conclusions.
As I said in post 331:
1 or 2%? The popular myth is that racists were staying at home when there was a black man on the ballot against a white man but coming out in droves to vote for a WHITE man over a white woman.
Who knows why but I would guess that the absence of a black candidate reduced voter participation by some minority groups and Hillary was a particularly unappealing candidate for others.
Obama won Asians by 47 points; Hillary won by 36 points.
Obama won Hispanics by 44 points; Hillary won by 36 points.
Obama won blacks by 87 points; Hillary won by 80 points.
ISTM the swing was much larger among minorities than among whites. Coates seems to view the whole word through the lens of racism and his perspective can be useful a times but at other times its just a distorted view.
His view is about as useful as the ready for Hillary types that claim that her loss was driven by misogyny.
We are beyond he point where we can get much out of legislative efforts. You’ve agreed that the governmental solutions presented by Coates are politically infeasible.
That’s not the point of the article – the point is both that Trump ran much more explicitly on whiteness (and against blackness or other non-whitenesses) than other candidates, and that only in a significantly white supremacist society and culture could a person as clearly unfit as Trump possibly be elected (or come close – even had Hillary won, the article could be written with very minor changes) after a President like Obama. Romney and McCain didn’t run as white men trying to restore America’s past glory that was apparently tarnished by Obama (and everything in modern progressive society that Obama represented) – only Trump did. Such a political campaign could win, or even come close to winning, only in a society with significant ingrained white supremacism.
Of course they’re politically infeasible right now. We’re not “beyond the point” – we’re not even close to reaching that point. It’s a long way away, hopefully in the future. Conversations like this (and articles like his) are, hopefully, a way to move society towards that goal, and move the Overton window on issues like reparations.
Wait, so this article is saying that the fact that Trump could even come close to beating Hillary indicates a problem with white supremacism? That a non-supremacist country would have rejected Trump outright based on his xenophobic remarks about Muslims and Mexicans?
I wonder how many white majority countries wouldn’t qualify as white supremacist under his formulation? Can you name one white majority country that wouldn’t qualify as a white supremacist country? This formulation of white supremacy might be a little broad if it includes every country with a white majority.
The issue of reparations is moving away from us faster than the Overton window can move. I think there might have been an opportunity for reparations shortly after emancipation when we were passing homestead acts, etc. But we didn’t, and now the concept of reparations (beyond things like affirmative action) is moving away from the Overton window too fast for the Overton window to ever catch up.
We might reach a point of zero racism but considering where the rest of the world is on racism, I suspect there is a level of racism that we will never eliminate except in highly stylized environments, like background radiation or the unemployment rate wen we have full employment. But I don’t think we will get to what Coates would consider adequate reparations. Ever. His time would be better spent criticizing his culture from within and trying to get them to move away from the shackles imposed on their culture by their history and try to inform his community on how to succeed despite the headwinds of racism. There might be “a long way to go” but that journey might require more self reflection than political agitation.
Is the black community doing everything it can to improve their lot in life or are they content to engage in unproductive behavior in the face of a racist headwind and then blame the aggregate result on racism? Are they doing everything they can while pointing fingers at white people? Or are they just telling white people that white people have to do everything white people can before anything can change for black people?
I expect Trump (or his local equivalent with the same history of statements and accusations) would have had near-zero chance of more than a tiny minority of support in Canada, along with many other majority-white countries.
However, this isn’t a discussion of binary alternatives (whether a country is or isn’t white supremacist), but rather a nuanced discussion
I disagree. According to polling, younger people are far more in favor of (or at least in favor of considering) reparations than older people:
I suspect Coates and other relatively young writers who write about race and justice are a big part of the reasons why.
So you disagree on tactics. That’s fine – there will always be disagreements on the best way to achieve various goals.
Yes, you think the black community and black culture are terrible and inferior to your community and culture. We get it, you’ve made it very clear. This is boring to me, and irrelevant to this topic.
Why not start a thread in which you can talk about all the things you think are terrible about the black community and black culture, if that’s what you want to talk about?
My second sentence in the post above got lost somehow. It’s meant to say the following:
However, this isn’t a discussion of binary alternatives (whether a country is or isn’t white supremacist), but rather a nuanced discussion of the significance and deep-seatedness of white supremacism in culture and society. I think it’s likely that most or all European and colonial cultures and societies (and maybe others too) suffer from some level of ingrained white supremacism and similar phenomena.
As much as I love my country, I’m not sure about that. There’s a shocking number of pro-Trump Canadians. The current leader of the Progressive Conservative party, Andrew Scheer, seems to be gearing up towards a nationalist platform, with a probable wink wink nudge nudge anti-muslim tones. Stephen Harper is well known for having used the term “old stock Canadians”, which is generally accepted to mean Canadians with white European ancestry. I don’t think the situation is as bad as it is in the USA but I think if as Canadians it would be best if we don’t ignore it and address that it is completely unacceptable. I’ve sent a couple of letters to my MP (he is PC) and Andrew Scheer expressing to them that I’ve voted PC in the past but if they persist with the nationalist rhetoric, and especially if it continues to have racist tones, they will lose my vote with absolute certainty. I will not vote for a regressive platform.
Its the Conservative Party of Canada now. The Progressive Conservatives were twice swallowed up by the Reform party and its successor the Canadian Alliance in 2000 and 2003. They dropped “Progressive” in name and (sadly) in spirit.
In this one they spend 40 minutes criticizing both Ta-Nehisi Coates and the (white?) intellectual class that empowers him. I normally enjoy watching these two for their views (despite of both men repeatedly drifting their discussions to their mutual distaste of Coates), and now that Coates has put out another book they dedicated an entire show to air out their (quite vehement) hatred of Ta-Nehisi.
Sadly, there’s not much meat behind their repeated denouncements; it would have been a much more enlightening vlog if they had a dissenting view so that their criticisms could be raised and unpacked/analyzed. But here is a link for prosperity.
I feel like we are a at screeching high pitch on social justice issues. In fact, the sense that we were focusing too much on social justice issues to the exclusion of other issues is part of what created the reactionary movement towards Trump.
Years and years of SJWs who don’t really understand what the terms “white privilege” and “institutional racism” mean, using these concepts to beat up on white people who are living worse than their parents di and struggling to re-enter the middle class in a country where they see preferences being given to everyone but them (because they are almost by definition blind to their own privilege).
They are also a lot of the reason why we have Trump.
Well to be fair its not merely opinion. It is an informed opinion. And its not that I think Confucian culture is only responsible for Asian performance relative to blacks. I think it is also explains Asia performance compared to whites and Hispanics, etc.
Perhaps he’s just an inferior product of a toxic culture. I don’t think so, but I have no illusions that I could change your mind about him.
Not worth discussing the laughable idea that people like Coates are in any way responsible for Trump’s success. As ridiculous as the idea that black people bear some responsibility for segregation, or Jim Crow, or police brutality.
Yawn.
Local man thinks his culture and community is superior and others are inferior. The story of human atrocities, pretty much. Local man insists this is not a hateful opinion, but an “informed opinion”, just like everyone else who’s ever insisted their culture and community are superior and others are inferior. And blacks just so happen to be at the bottom.
And I don’t think I can change your mind about him either. Netierh of us are going to change the other person’s mind just like debates with ElvisLives will change HIS mind about the Assault Weapons Ban but the adversarial process of the debate itself changed several minds when they realized how weak the argument for the Assault Weapons ban was.
You may think its laughable but I would suggest that in many ways, we innoculated many Americans to the obscenities to democracy like Trump and drove even more Americans away from the Democratic party when folks like Coates engages in white-shaming a country that was 75% white.
So yes, hyperbole and fuzzy anecdote based arguments philosophies are partly to blame for Trump’s success.
I don’t think my community is superior. I think that there are all sorts of flaws with the Asian community in America. We can talk about that more if you like.
It is not a good response to basically say: “you’re a racist because I have no argument to refute anything you say”
I never said all blacks are at the bottom, culturally. I said that the descendants of slaves had their culture ripped away from them and over centuries of slavery, and segregation during which literacy was discouraged and sometimes punished, they did not develop the same reverence for education that 5000 years of imperial exams as the primary method of significant social mobility instilled in Asians.
Please explain to me why blacks from the Caribbean and African refugees (not the black children of African doctoral students, etc.) seem to do so much better than the black population generally?
There is always some nuanced explanation for why faults seen in the black community are not really the responsibility of the black community but Occam’s razor applies to faults seen in other communities.
You stance seems to be that any criticism of anything black is racist. Insisting that all conversation surrounding the subject of race must portray blacks as faultless, for all practical purposes, presents an almost impossible path to solving the problem you want to solve.
You can place some of the blame for Trump’s election on at the feet of partisanship generally. We have created an environment where moderate Republicans, extreme conservatives and racist nutjobs all exist in a political Darwinian echo chamber. There was no evolutionary advantage to Republicans being moderate. When Trump ran, we had run out of superlatives to hurl at him. We were using many of the same words to describe Trump that we had used to describe Romney and McCain. Everyone was called a racist. Everyone was called a sexist. Everyone was called an out of touch elitist rich guy. At some point it just becomes white noise and fake news. There is a reason the phrase fake news is in common use today.
Sure if you are paying a shit ton of attention and parsing through everything carefully, you can figure out what is real and what is bullshit; but for most voters, they believe stuff their side says and think the other side is full of liars.
Most of this has nothing to do with anything I’ve said (or Coates - “white shaming” is total nonsense that has nothing to do with his writing). Not interested in straw men and an attempt at a rationalization of hateful language like “toxic” to describe millions of people.
I never described anyone as toxic. I used the word toxic to describe a culture. To describe a culture where the illegitimacy rate is high and getting higher. Where young men kill each other in war zone like numbers. Where doing well in school is considered to be “acting white” etc.
Sure, I understand you want to ONLY focus on the stuff that is beyond the control of blacks that contribute to the condition of the black community and pretend that it fully explains why they are in that condition but it doesn’t.
I understand that Coates want to pretend that Trump was elected because of racism or that he couldn’t have gotten elected but for racism because you want to be an “ally” but the fact of the matter is that Trump was elected by about 26% of American voters, most of whom would have voted for anything with an R next to their name. Its not a sweeping indictment of America. Associations with racists no more disqualifies Trump in the eyes of Republicans than Obama’s association with Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright disqualifies him in the eyes of progressives. Trump’s election MIGHT prove that America is profoundly racist (but not quite racist enough to prevent a black man from getting elected… twice). OR it might prove that Hillary was a shitty candidate; or that America wanted a candidate that focused more on economic issues than social justice; or that America was sick of “establishment candidates”; or that anti-gun rhetoric has been eroding Democratic support in the rust belt for decades; or a dozen other things.