Did anybody else notice the factual error at the start of this book?
The time of the announcement of the Michael Brown jury verdict?
[I]t's not an argument, much less one that's structured to defend itself against being attacked.
I took the impression from other reviews that Coates had written a prevent defense: i.e., narrow, walled-in pronouncements embedded in "I'm not talking about that" and "That doesn't exist in the world of my argument."
5: Not in the book. It's written as a letter to his son -- it's not structured as an argument at all. One way to look at it is the actual argument is in the case for reparations article.
5 is not solely a criticism of TNC: the Atlantic has a long track of cover stories with bold, eye-catching, headstrong cover lines and much slimmer threads within.
7: Am I correct in assuming you haven't read the book?
He's got stories about the gym teacher in his school setting up fights between the kids, and making him fight other boys.
This seems a little unprofessional to me.
9: He was also the English teacher and he was having them act out the beginning of Invisible Man
11: Did you know that H.G. Wells was a woman?
5: Sort of? Kind of? He has written a book to which lawyerly nitpicking would be a profoundly confused and inappropriate response. You could think of that as a defense against lawyerly nitpicking, but I think he was simply doing something completely different.
I thought 13 could be a response to 4. Does anybody get what I'm talking about?
No? I don't remember what time the Michael Brown verdict came out.
Re: the "dreamers", I think he might be referring to the idea that taking the textbook "land of the free, all men are created equal, & etc." rhetoric more seriously than the textbooks themselves take it can be a subversive act. That was one part of the mid-century civil rights movement strategy. I think TNC is suggesting that that strategy is played out and no longer very useful.
16: I think the "Dreamers" term is deliberately ambiguous. He seems mostly to be referring to the kind of white people who still see the U.S. as the City on the Hill. But it's also a reference to MLK civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s -- TNC expresses a great deal of ambivalence about that.
17: Is verdict the wrong word? Decision not to indict? Anyway, the DA started talking around 8-9 pm or so -- and by 9-10 pm the riot had begun. I remember because I was watching it on TV, and I go to bed early on weekdays. So, Samori also would not have had to stay up late to hear the "verdict". "Aha!"
Although, he could have seen the announcement (right, Charley, not 'verdict'), and had a post-announcement emotional conversation with his father, that left him staying up late and going to bed at eleven. In other words, what on earth is the point of nitpicking that kind of thing?
I mean, you can fuss about Coates' sentence structure as making the sequence confusing, but does it matter at all?
20, 21: I suppose you're right, but it jumped out at me. Maybe because it's not often that I have first-hand knowledge of events described in a book.
Me either, except maybe the simpler cookbooks.
I put the book down at several places because it was so sad.
Anyways, a cynical reaction is that one can always set up a contrast between your truth and mine. Yours is a pleasant dream, while mine is the way it really is. You can tell mine is reality because it is more brutal.
Do you think one can criticize Coates' writing or the structure of the book along these lines?
Oh, one tangential thing I meant to add about fear-- in the new Nina Simone bio, she specifically mentions the good feeling she gets on stage as absence of fear, an unusual feeling. She looks pretty young when she says this, I'd guess 1967 to 70.
He talks a lot about his parenting regrets-- that he's been too careful, maybe taught Samori unnecessary trepidation. I didn't get the feeling that TNC is especially into a cynical outlook, also didn't get the feeling that rhetorical strategy figured highly in writing this.
I agree that it's a sad book, but I didn't see it as especially cynical-- TNC describes more radical viewpoints that he's outgrown.
It was sad, but in the midst of the sadness there is also a story of personal triumph.
I haven't seen anyone inclined to dispute Ta-Nehisi's account of his youth, or any argument that inner-city Baltimore in the late 80s wasn't really that bad. What there is plenty of is arguments that Ta-Nehisi is misplacing the blame -- it wasn't white people that were terrifying him as a kid, and it wasn't a white cop that killed Prince Jones. TNC could have written a book spelling out why all this is the fault of a system of white supremacism, but that isn't the book he chose to write.
Thanks to both LW and LB for starting off the book club well.
I appreciate both LW's reminders of how slow change has been in Ferguson and LB's personal wrestling with the book.
[I have a copy of the book, read the first few pages and really liked them, but haven't had time to read farther. I'm hoping to read it this week.]
5 is interesting - I've read a fair amount of reviews and commentary, and haven't taken that away at all, but I can see where one could get that from reading the book itself.
But this is really just a way of restating what LB says - that Coates is not making an argument. His imagined reader is someone who has a basic grip on history. Coates is not talking to people at all who think the Confederate flag might not be a racist symbol; or people who think that black people just need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. He's not talking to idiots or people who are acting in bad faith. Indeed, he has framed the book as a letter to his son.
For instance, he describes how a black friend of his was killed by a black PG cop, but he doesn't try to argue that this occurrence was a function of white supremacy. I'm not even sure that he directly asserts that it was.
But it was, and I think anybody with any sense knows that it was. What Coates wants to talk about is what white supremacy means for people - how it expresses itself in modern society.
Does he use the phrase "white supremacy" in the book? I'm not sure. He talks about "the Dream," and we're supposed to understand that this is a way that white supremacy manifests itself. But again, he's not making an argument. He's just reporting.
30 was written before reading 28, which makes the same point.
1, 4: Was Coates in France last December when the Darren Wilson no-true-bill announcement came out? I know he spent quite a lot of time there recently. It would have been 5-6 hours later there.
Also, a couple of plot notes. Ferguson is fighting the DOJ report. They claim it would be too expensive to do what the DOJ is ordering them to do.
Meanwhile, the city is still pumping out warrants for petty offenses. And the city is paying for attorneys to defend against a citizen-sponsored effort to recall the mayor.
33: They're complaining about the price of a monitor, but I bet that's nothing compared to the price of not using your police department as a profit center.
26.2. I was thinking of a reader response, sort of like Lizard Breath's (although I am no lawyer).
Another thought I had when reading. When Coates writes about believing in a Black essentialism, so to speak, in his youth, he has already described the white race as socially constructed. My first thought was that this is a glaring contradiction.
But the memoir is not told sequentially, and that point about the need for some to be white is an important theme that needs to be brought out early, I guess.
When Coates writes about believing in a Black essentialism, so to speak, in his youth, he has already described the white race as socially constructed
I didn't notice that. Interesting point!
I have thoughts! But I am also supposed to write up another response in like a week so you'll have to wait to read them. Preview: compelling personal memoirist of the recent African-American subjective experience doesn't spend enough time discussing pet issues of middle aged white man.
I'll pencil this in for September 1st at 11:00am EST.
There is literally nothing in the book about Crossfit or the paleo diet, yet they are the solutions to Coates' "fear" problem. Damn it, I gave it away and that's all there is.
It's a short book; he has to save something for a sequel.
Preview: compelling personal memoirist of the recent African-American subjective experience doesn't spend enough time discussing pet issues of middle aged white man man who thinks of himself as white.
42: What do people think of the "believe themselves to be white" phrase? It annoyed me in a possibly silly way because it reminded me of a Jewish person I knew who claimed not to be white. As I saw this in him it wasn't about refusing white privilege (or supremacy) it was about refusing any responsibility (or guilt). When I acknowledge that I'm white, it's not a claim to be innocent and superior or based on any belief in he reality of race, it's just an honest appraisal of my position in contemporary American society.
If it helps, I've always thought of you as Asian American.
43 -- interesting point. I mean, obviously he's using it to make something like the following argument: (1) the concept of "whiteness" only exists inasmuch as people can define themselves as sociologically or biologically "not black"; (2) in America, people who can be will always want to be "white" because this is deeply baked into our history 3) this implies that there will also always have to be other people, defined as "black" who will, definitionally, be of lower status, precisely in order so that there can continue to be "white" people who take pride in that status; (4) this means that "black" people are both necessary to the concept of "white" America and are, by definition, excluded from it, and therefore (5) there's little reason to be optimistic that black Americans can ever be fully integrated Americans, at least so long as the concept of "white people" exists, and since the concept of "whiteness" isn't going anywhere black people in the USA will always be less than.
See, he does have an argument! And, put that way, it's hard to disagree with.
46: Yes, that's a good argument.
The problem I have is how to respond to this as a person who is perceived to be white.
43--I know, that phrase jumped out at me when I was reading. I don't have a problem with it or the socially constructed nature of whiteness but it did seem an odd tick and I wondered how other people would react to it.
46, 47: For example, Rachel Dolezal's actions could be seen as a plausibly rational/moral response to this situation.
I like the book so far and think it is powerfully written, but I can't tell where it is going. From everything I've heard, it doesn't sound like there will be any optimistic solutions proffered. I do really like the focus on the body and the rejection of respectability politics.
33.1 Possibly it will bankrupt the city. The insane patchwork of microjurisdictions in Saint Luois County needs to change. There is recent precedent for disincorporating. It would be a marginal improvement, because the county is racially polarized and I'm pretty sure more than half the county will eagerly support McCulloch's future endeavors.
36: Blackness and whiteness aren't symmetrical. An American black has a culture and identity of a sort that an American white does not.
What are the accomplishments of white culture? The Declaration of Independence was written by a man who thought of himself as white, and I think of myself as white, but why should I regard that document as an accomplishment of my culture? My forbears arrived in America about a century after Jefferson's black children did. Why is his work a product of my culture, and not theirs?
I wonder if I can take that a step further and say that the accomplishments of American whites, as whites, are pretty much limited to the oppression of people who are deemed non-whites. Why is the US Constitution a product of white culture? Only because blacks were forcibly excluded. The culture that produced that document was certainly multiracial.
It's incorrect to say that Heathcliff Huxtable "acts white" in those reruns that nobody watches any more. But it's merely an acknowledgement of reality to say that Elvis lifted from black culture.
Coates nods toward this when he talks about the "Tolstoy of the Zulus." Why wasn't Bellow wondering, "Who is the Tolstoy of the Portuguese"? Because he put the Portuguese in the same basket as the Russians for reasons that are purely arbitrary.
White cultural identity, to the extent that it's not villainous, is illusory.
"Who is the Tolstoy of the Portuguese"?
José Saramago. I looked it up on Wikipedia.
What do people think of the "believe themselves to be white" phrase?
I though it was kind of dickish. "No racial identity for you, white people!"
I'm fine with "no racial identity for you, white people." In theory that would mean something besides wanting to fly a confederate flag, but I've never seen it.
55: Right. Coates was being charitable, not dickish.
Whiteness describes, from Little Big Horn to Simi Valley, not a culture but precisely the absence of culture. It is the empty and therefore terrifying attempt to build an identity based on what one isn't and on whom one can hold back
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/12/beyond-the-pale-4
In theory that would mean something besides wanting to fly a confederate flag, but I've never seen it.
I'm not saying white identity hasn't been almost universally problematic (though not entirely - SWPL is funny) - but its another leap to proclaim it doesn't exist. Not least because there are millions of rebel flag waving white identity yahoos out in the world, and it would be better for everyone if we could figure out how to bring them over to the light than to write them off entirely.
59: He's not denying the existence of southern good old boy culture.
What do people think of the "believe themselves to be white" phrase?
This is not going to exactly be an answer, but it isn't anywhere near as annoying to me as "this person who happens to be black/Asian/white/whatever" when people use that phrase. I'll sometimes use parentheticals when saying someone is (to the best of my knowledge) straight because I know being straight is a cultural default but also that reality is often more complex. I wouldn't say it in a way that was implying I think someone is closeted, just saying I don't know the whole story and I haven't run anyone's ancestry listings either to know what's going on with their racial/ethnic self-presentations versus what's known of the facts.
I believe myself to be white, identify as white, call myself white, and I'm fine with all those as descriptors of my racial identity. I've recently found out that several relatives take a claim of supposed Cherokee ancestry more seriously as an emotional and personal identity than I do (which is not at all) but having a Cherokee great(-great?) grandmother if it were confirmed would not make me feel less white than I am.
I'm already explaining this badly, I think, but it's hard to point out the problems with assumed normative identities without having people bristle that it doesn't define them, and of course it doesn't. But that's a problem with the norming of the identity rather than with you or me, I think.
I'd rather just shout them out of the public sector in hopes that will make it more difficult for them to gain adherents in the next generation.
Also, and this has sort of come up in heebie's family histories, I think the communities out of which people pass into the dominant culture are perhaps more aware of the nuances and uses of passing than the average person in the dominant culture is, though there are going to be bigots with power who want to keep clear definitions enforced there.
59: He's not denying the existence of southern good old boy culture.
No, but he's saying something confusing by stating that they only think they are white. I understand that he's basically taking the "absence of culture" premise of 57, but I think that's a pretty flawed argument, one which conflates a dominant culture with not being a culture. 52 does the same thing.
Camões is the Pushkin of the Portuguese, obviously. Let's let Bellow have his say about that line, because he at least makes it clear that he meant a different clueless thing than the one he's accused of meaning.
Nowhere in print, under my name, is there a single reference to Papuans or Zulus. The scandal is entirely journalistic in origin, the result of a misunderstanding that occurred (they always do occur) during an interview. I can't remember who the interviewer was. Always foolishly trying to explain and edify all comers, I was speaking of the distinction between literate and pre literate societies. For I was once an anthropology student, you see. Long ago, I had been a pupil of the famous Africanist M. J. Herskovits, who had also devoted many decades to the study of the American Negro.
The subject of my senior thesis was "France and the African Slave Trade." Rummaging in the library stacks, I had discovered that two of the French ships involved in the trade were the Jean Jacques and the Contrat Social. Never a professional anthropologist, I was however a sound enough amateur. I had read widely in the field, and immediately after the telephone interview I remembered that there was a Zulu novel after all: "Chaka" by Thomas Mofolo, published in the early 30's. In my Herskovits days, I had read it in translation. It was a profoundly, unbearably tragic book about a tribal Achilles who had with his own hands cut down thousands of people, including his own pregnant wife.
Now why did my remarks, off the cuff obviously and pedantic certainly [does this usually carry the implication of "wrong"? -ed], throw so many people into fits of righteousness and ecstasies of rage? France gave us one Proust and only one. There is no Bulgarian Proust. Have I offended the Bulgarians too? We, for that matter, have no Proust either: should the White House issue a fatwa and set a price on my head for blaspheming against American high culture?
It's all much more amazing than the original quote, IMO.
Camões is the Pushkin of the Portuguese, obviously. Let's let Bellow have his say about that line, because he at least makes it clear that he meant a different clueless thing than the one he's accused of meaning.
Nowhere in print, under my name, is there a single reference to Papuans or Zulus. The scandal is entirely journalistic in origin, the result of a misunderstanding that occurred (they always do occur) during an interview. I can't remember who the interviewer was. Always foolishly trying to explain and edify all comers, I was speaking of the distinction between literate and pre literate societies. For I was once an anthropology student, you see. Long ago, I had been a pupil of the famous Africanist M. J. Herskovits, who had also devoted many decades to the study of the American Negro.
The subject of my senior thesis was "France and the African Slave Trade." Rummaging in the library stacks, I had discovered that two of the French ships involved in the trade were the Jean Jacques and the Contrat Social. Never a professional anthropologist, I was however a sound enough amateur. I had read widely in the field, and immediately after the telephone interview I remembered that there was a Zulu novel after all: "Chaka" by Thomas Mofolo, published in the early 30's. In my Herskovits days, I had read it in translation. It was a profoundly, unbearably tragic book about a tribal Achilles who had with his own hands cut down thousands of people, including his own pregnant wife.
Now why did my remarks, off the cuff obviously and pedantic certainly [does this usually carry the implication of "wrong"? -ed], throw so many people into fits of righteousness and ecstasies of rage? France gave us one Proust and only one. There is no Bulgarian Proust. Have I offended the Bulgarians too? We, for that matter, have no Proust either: should the White House issue a fatwa and set a price on my head for blaspheming against American high culture?
It's all much more amazing than the original quote, IMO.
Okay, Karl Renner needs to design a browser that doesn't do that. The field is wide open.
I don't that he takes a position on "whiteness" being an identifiable culture or not. At times he certainly seems to identify a culture of whiteness (and identifies it with, e.g., suburban sitcom life and for some reason "football cards"). But he doesn't seem to care very much about precisely defining white culture, its elements, whether it's a unified or differentiated thing, etc etc. It's just not a big issue for the book.
The much more important thing for him is that whiteness, whether or not it's a "culture," does have a reality. It's just the reality of, by definition, not being black. And that's why black people can never, ever aspire to whiteness, and will be (at some level) second class citizens of the United States as long as the concept of whiteness exists.
65: Is there anyway that I am part of the same culture as Mike Huckabee but Ben Carson isn't?
52. White cultural identity, to the extent that it's not villainous, is illusory.
"White culture" is just a version of European culture, one that is unfortunately and historically conflated with race in the US. So is "European culture" illusory, too? All cultures are certainly at times villainous, but it would be interesting to see some actual persuasive argument about "illusory."
65: If you describe Anna Karenina and Bo Hazzard as being part of the same culture, then you've defined "whiteness" so broadly that it seems like you've got to include any Zulus who want to belong, too.
Or are you saying that it's wrong to think of Tolstoy as white?
Coates' point about imagining oneself to be white is that whiteness is a mutable concept in a way that blackness is not.
I was sort of troubled/annoyed/cornered feeling by the 'believe themselves to be white' formulation as well. I mean, I agree with 43 in that I know people who call themselves not 'white' because they're Jewish, or Italian, or something, and in the cases I know about, it does seem to me to be a claim to evade responsibility: racism isn't about favoring me, my name isn't Chip Chippington Threesticks.
Something can be a socially constructed fact and still a fact, and in American society as it is presently constructed, I am a white person (despite having a certain amount of identity insanely tied up in having minimal old-WASP ancestry), and claiming not to be would be lying -- I don't have a choice about believing myself to be white in that sense, it's just true. Believing, on the other hand that whiteness (in the sense of being a palish person of predominately European ancestry) innately, or appropriately, or normatively should mean or has to mean, what whiteness actually does mean in our society (having a position at the top of a racial hierarchy), is a different choice, and Coates maybe doesn't pull those questions apart as much as would be ideal if his intent in writing the book was to make me, personally, feel comfortable and at ease.
I mean, it's possible that last issue wasn't in the forefront of his mind. Was there something more important under discussion?
I don't that he takes a position on "whiteness" being an identifiable culture or not. At times he certainly seems to identify a culture of whiteness (and identifies it with, e.g., suburban sitcom life and for some reason "football cards"). But he doesn't seem to care very much about precisely defining white culture, its elements, whether it's a unified or differentiated thing, etc etc. It's just not a big issue for the book.
This is kindof why I was annoyed at the "belief" dig, because it was distracting. Fundamentally, the book is not about white people. I read a few conservative reviews of the book, and they really didn't seem to understand that. They were writing things like "Coates thinks white people are to blame for...." when really, the book wasn't really even working on that level.
65: Is there anyway that I am part of the same culture as Mike Huckabee but Ben Carson isn't?
Yes.
That is, your position and experiences in American society, as shaped by how people without much personal knowledge of you treat you, are going to be closer to Mike Huckabee's than Ben Carson's. (You're a white guy, right?)
69.2: The formulation of 'white' as 'non-black' isn't right, because it's also 'non-Latino', 'non-Native American', 'non-East Asian', 'non-South Asian' and so on.
I think the difference between "white" vs other affiliations becomes obvious when you think about celebrating it.
An Italian American parade, a Ukrainian heritage festival & etc. are all pretty innocuous. It's hard to think of any version of a White Pride parade or White heritage festival that wouldn't be just plain racism in a cheap suit.
But I think the "belief" is going in a different direction. If you call yourself "white," full stop, you're expressing nothing more than a belief, while it may feel like a certainty to you, because that's how one-droppiness works. He can call himself black and realize that "black" for most black people in the US involves white ancestry. It's got some overlap with this recent piece about how "biracial" doesn't feel like a meaningful identity when black people are being killed and I think he's partly saying that all these identities are more complex and less stable than people maybe think, but that the system is set up to make them look stable and feel stable and keep the hierarchy in place.
Something can be a socially constructed fact and still a fact, and in American society as it is presently constructed, I am a white person (despite having a certain amount of identity insanely tied up in having minimal old-WASP ancestry), and claiming not to be would be lying -- I don't have a choice about believing myself to be white in that sense, it's just true. Believing, on the other hand that whiteness (in the sense of being a palish person of predominately European ancestry) innately, or appropriately, or normatively should mean or has to mean, what whiteness actually does mean in our society (having a position at the top of a racial hierarchy), is a different choice, and Coates maybe doesn't pull those questions apart as much as would be ideal if his intent in writing the book was to make me, personally, feel comfortable and at ease.
I actually think that this is a deliberate choice that Coates is making, and a message he is sending. He assumes precisely that (good thinking "white" people) *don't* believe that their lighter skin color innately, appropriately, or normatively should make white people better than black people. He is saying that those intentions and that understanding don't actually matter all that much. The entire concept of whiteness is bound up in, and requires, blacks to be second-class citizens who are others. As long as the concept of the "white person" exists and is real (and, for sure, he knows that it does exist and is real, and that people do "believe themselves to be white" with justification), black people will be second-class. That's just, for him, a fact about how America works and almost certainyl will work into the foreseeable future.
75: Well, what you're saying is that we share the experience of being members of the oppressor class -- but that's all. That was my point.
If you describe Anna Karenina and Bo Hazzard as being part of the same culture, then you've defined "whiteness" so broadly that it seems like you've got to include any Zulus who want to belong, too.
You mean Bo Duke? Certainly Bo Duke and Tolstoy are both part of cultures that are offshoots of a broader European culture in the way that the Zulus aren't. Duke may have even read a translation of Tolstoy, at some point, if he'd thought it would impress a girl.
Luke Duke was part of the same culture as Tolstoy. Bo wasn't as deep.
80: But Martin Luther King couldn't be part of this culture no matter how much he loved opera.
But Martin Luther King couldn't be part of this culture no matter how much he loved opera.
That's not true though. Martin Luther King is venerated in (some parts of) white culture. I can tell because I see tons of Facebook posts of white people standing in front of his statue in DC.
Or rather, maybe "white culture" and "black culture" aren't particularly useful constructs here. Rather have an American culture that venerates MLK, and which also includes people who have a white identity, and which includes people who have a black identity believe themselves to be black.
Whiteness, really?
Musical references, how's that for a different tack. TNC didn't mention Burning Spear, but did mention Mobb Deep.
83: From what I see, there isn't a "white culture" that is distinct from "American culture" that isn't racist. That could show that "white culture" isn't a particularity useful construct, but I don't see what it says about "black culture".
80: Eh, if you're going to make your umbrella broad enough to include Tolstoy and the Dukes, why not include everybody? Tolstoy's culture came from somewhere, as did the Zulus'.
But okay, even if you're not going to give me the Zulus, it seems that you're conceding that American blacks are, by your definition, white.
How do you get Bo Hazzard to be a product of Tolstoy's white culture without having Martin Luther King (that's Martin Luther King!) be white?
That's the essence of my point: That blacks have all the non-hateful stuff that would characterize a hypothetical "white" culture, but blacks have other things, too, that make them a distinct culture.
Dr. Huxtable isn't appropriating white culture - it's his culture! But Elvis is appropriating black culture.
When I think of "white culture" that constructs itself as such and that isn't racist I always end up thinking of Martin Mull and Harry Shearer's The History of White People in America. But of course that's taking the piss.
That could show that "white culture" isn't a particularity useful construct, but I don't see what it says about "black culture".
I'll agree that "white culture" isn't particularly useful. But, aside from white culture, there are white people - and they aren't all bad. Why, some of my best friends happen to believe that they are white.
Clearly Pushkin is the Tolstoy of the Zulus. And there'd be no Tolstoy if Pushkin hadn't invented his language.
I know this is a bizarre reaction, but this book reminded me a lot of reading Stephen Jay Gould. I think it's mostly the joy they both take in particularity, contingency, and specificity. But also there's a certain poetry of language that's unusual for non-fiction writing and an irrepressible interest in history.
92: That comparison didn't occur to me, but I agree totally with your description of the writing.
My bizarre comparison would be to a John Lennon song, "I Found Out" which is about discovering the truth of life is that it is painful and there is no escape from this. The triumph of discovering the truth even when the truth offers little solace.
How do you get Bo Hazzard to be a product of Tolstoy's white culture without having Martin Luther King (that's Martin Luther King!) be white?
I feel like I'm being trolled. Did I say Bo Duke was a product of Tolstoy's white culture? Are both MLK and the Zulus a part of black culture even if MLK has more in common with Tolstoy? Or is white culture/black culture a pretty stupid dichotomy?
At some point the discussion moved from discussion of identity to discussion of culture. My view of culture is that its extremely amorphous, and doesn't really aligned neatly with race. Identity is something separate.
95, 96: When this happens maybe it's best to agree not to disagree.
Why are we talking about Bo Duke when we could be talking about Daisy?
98: Daisy Dukes! Now that's some culture for y'all!
You'll have noticed I have absolutely nothing to contribute to this conversation.
I thought it was going to start in September and have yet to download it to my Kindle much less read any of it.
I find its a very slow read for such a small book. He writes heavy.
101 -- agree. It's hard to explain exactly why.
People wondering about the Zulu Tolstoy should have been wondering instead about the Russian Mandela.
ISTM that the evolving interface between white and Asian indicates that second class citizenship might not be the fate of blacks for the rest of all time. Forseeable future, though, that's another story. But we only get from here to there with enough people, everywhere, making a journey.
I feel like I'm being trolled.
Sorry about that Bo Hazzard thing. If I'm going to discuss your culture, I should educate myself better about it.
Identity is something separate.
Okay, but what are you going to base a white identity on, if not some kind of white culture?
And by shifting the discussion to identity, are you acknowledging that it's okay to refer to "people who imagine themselves to be part of white culture" as opposed to "people who imagine themselves to be white?"
One day, there could even be a black President.
101,102, cf 92. Also, TNC likes adjectives.
Now that JEB! has clarified that the "anchor" babies he's upset about are Asian, not Hispanic, maybe there's more yardage to be made up on that interface than commect 103 anticipated.
Really? That's different of him.
Okay, but what are you going to base a white identity on, if not some kind of white culture?
I based by white identity on my ancestry, mostly. Also the color of my skin, the color of my eyes, my inability to dance, my sweet Kitchenaid stand mixer.
But the thing about identity is that its a personal thing that you don't really have to justify it to anybody else. There are people born with male genitalia who identify as women, and they can do that because its nobody else's business. But if you refer to them as "people who believe themselves to be women," you are being dickish.
And by shifting the discussion to identity, are you acknowledging that it's okay to refer to "people who imagine themselves to be part of white culture" as opposed to "people who imagine themselves to be white?"
I don't think its my place to say whats "okay" to write, but, while I don't really have a problem with that construction, I'd think less of you as a writer. Its not a really elegant way to make a point, and if you kept repeating it as a tick, it would be a distraction.
Now that JEB! has clarified that the "anchor" babies he's upset about are Asian, not Hispanic, maybe there's more yardage to be made up on that interface than commect 103 anticipated.
Am I wrong in thinking that increased cross-citizenship between the US in China will probably end up being a net benefit for both countries in the long run?
I don't know. I'm still pulling for the KMT.
108, 109 It's the Trump effect. The 'viable' candidates have to find something to differentiate themselves from Trump while commandeering as much of the machismo rhetorical territory he's staked out for himself.
There are people born with male genitalia who identify as women, and they can do that because its nobody else's business. But if you refer to them as "people who believe themselves to be women," you are being dickish.
Ah. So you see Coates as trying to diminish your identity (which you carefully distinguish from your culture).
That's exactly what you said at the outset, in 54. I guess it just took me awhile to appreciate that you really meant it.
De gustibus. This is where I agree to disagree. I wasn't an admirer of the SWPL thing, either, for that matter.
I think I missed the Swipple wars. I may have caught the very end of them, but that's it.
The SWPL thing was the best because it made people here hilariously defensive for whatever reason.
So, I haven't read the book. (Confession time: I haven't read any book. My sole source of information about the world is Must See TV sitcoms and Wikipedia.) I don't understand the phrase "Tolstoy of the Zulus".
I don't understand the phrase "Tolstoy of the Zulus".
It's basically the same thing as "Harvard of the Midwest".
118: It's a reference to a remark by Saul Bellow that Coates cites: "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?"
Coates takes Bellow to be drawing lines between the superior white culture and the inferior Zulu one - the culture that lacks a Tolstoy. Coates' answer is: "Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus."
lk in 66-67 is correct that this is a bit unfair to Bellow. But I don't think that harms Coates' point, which wasn't about Bellow, but about the sort of question that might be asked by people who imagine themselves to be white.
Who is the Dan Brown of the Russians?
I could probably be persuaded to read a Dan Brown of the Zulus.
I haven't read it, but I would have thought he's using 'believe themselves to be white' in the way i take Thorn to be talking about--gesturing towards how the one drop rule made and makes whiteness precarious, always potentially subject to revocation.
Right, "white" means people who, due to their birth, fall on the side of a particular US distinction that is created by slavery, sustained ny terrorism, essential to the country, and maintained to this day, and which is defined at its core by not being black. The "people who believe themselves to be white" are the beneficiaries of that history, and, as long as they are going to keep on believing themselves to be white, they will, by definition, maintain some degree of subjugation of the people who are called black. It's not a myth, exactly, people who believe themselves to be white are right to do so. His point is that the thing that allows people to (correctly) believe themselves to be white is exactly the thing that keeps black people permanently apart and down. And this is true as a matter of fact and history, and can't be overcome by white people not "being racist" or having good intentions.
125: That's well-said. One of the things I admire about Coates' book is that he doesn't bog himself down with an over-specific discussion of exactly what everything means.
I wonder if this is a result of learning to ignore trolls as a blogger.
I read an interview where he said he was not writing for white people. Reading the book, I found this confusing because the book speaks very directly to me, and I imagine myself to be as white as white can be. But I see now that he was writing for people who read in good faith and who have the basic grip on American history and culture that a reasonably intelligent 15-year-old black kid would have. That disqualifies a lot of white folk.
Sure, Rich Lowry is going to misunderstand and will troll hard. But fuck Rich Lowry. How are we going to have a grownup conversation if we allow him to be in the room?
"The Dream" is another place where Coates doesn't pedantically define his terms, and I think the book is better for it. By using that phrase, he's clearly invoking MLK -- or, at a minimum, the sanitized white-people version of MLK -- but because he doesn't walk you through it step-by-step, he invites you to reach your own conclusions about how MLK's legacy fits into white supremacy.
By using that phrase, he's clearly invoking MLK
Mmmaybe? I actually didn't hear MLK; just a generalized "American Dream" of safe suburban life: cookouts and pool parties. If he was going for MLK, I would have expected to see more actively rejecting the idea that colorblindness is a workable solution to racism, and that didn't seem to me to be what he was talking about at all. (Not that he was saying that it is a solution, just that it wasn't the topic he was addressing.)
I could be misreading, of course, but if that was the significance of Dream, I missed it.
A certain type of Swedish leftist writer have started talking about "us white people", "old white men" in the last decade. I find it incredibly misguided and maybe pernicious.
I think much of the book is genuinely a -- not exactly an attack on, but a strong distancing from -- MLK. Certainly an attack on the mainstream civil rights movement and its reception in US history. But now I am cannibalizing my post from next week. Damn you commenting and posting schedule!
When I was an exchange student in Sweden, I noted that Swedes were not shy about droping the n-bomb. I was like "Dude, thats so racist," and they were like, "no, we don't mean it like when Americans say it."
That, certainly. Or at least a description of how alienated he felt from the mainstream civil rights movement as historically presented.
I just didn't see his usage of the "Dream" as referencing the "I have a dream" speech. Maybe it was and I just wasn't following.
By using that phrase, he's clearly invoking MLK
I don't think so. Or, to the extent he is invoking MLK, it's to rebut him. MLK's "I have a dream" speech talked about a dream of racial equality and even of colorblindness, where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin," and where people of all colors will join hands together. Coates' Dream is a the dream of those who "believe themselves to be white," and whose fantasy of security and power is paid for by labor and blood stolen from black people.
Yeah, he never defines what he means by the Dream, though I agree in the context of this kind of book the ambiguity makes it more interesting.
Not really about the Bellow quotation, well worth reading:
"When the Zulus Produce a Tolstoy We Will Read Him": Charles Taylor and the Politics of Recognition.
The formulation of 'white' as 'non-black' isn't right, because it's also 'non-Latino', 'non-Native American', 'non-East Asian', 'non-South Asian' and so on.
"White culture" (or less pejoratively, "American culture") has been perfectly happy to annex previously "other" people and cultures: Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Japanese, Chinese, and so on. It's as much about class as about ethnic origin or visual cues. Latinos and South Asians are fitting in fine if they present as members of "American culture." The only exception is African-Americans, and that's purely about racism. The one non-negotiable racism is about "black" people, but maybe it turns out be to about slavery and the outcomes in black culture, and how they recursively feed into racism and so on ad infinitum.
The formulation of 'white' as 'non-black' isn't right, because it's also 'non-Latino', 'non-Native American', 'non-East Asian', 'non-South Asian' and so on.
"White culture" (or less pejoratively, "American culture") has been perfectly happy to annex previously "other" people and cultures: Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Japanese, Chinese, and so on. It's as much about class as about ethnic origin or visual cues. Latinos and South Asians are fitting in fine if they present as members of "American culture." The only exception is African-Americans, and that's purely about racism. The one non-negotiable racism is about "black" people, but maybe it turns out be to about slavery and the outcomes in black culture, and how they recursively feed into racism and so on ad infinitum.
The formulation of 'white' as 'non-black' isn't right, because it's also 'non-Latino', 'non-Native American', 'non-East Asian', 'non-South Asian' and so on.
"White culture" (or less pejoratively, "American culture") has been perfectly happy to annex previously "other" people and cultures: Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Japanese, Chinese, and so on. It's as much about class as about ethnic origin or visual cues. Latinos and South Asians are fitting in fine if they present as members of "American culture." The only exception is African-Americans, and that's purely about racism. The one non-negotiable racism is about "black" people, but maybe it turns out be to about slavery and the outcomes in black culture, and how they recursively feed into racism and so on ad infinitum.
When Tolstoy produces Anna Karenina and the bits in W&P about Andrei, Natasha, Marya, Pierre, and the wonderful wonderful crazed Prince Bolkonsky I will read him but when he's nattering on about Napoleon on the brow of one more hill I tend to nod off. All the bits with Kutuzov are highly entertaining.
IN SOVIET TOLSTOY ZULU TOLSTOYS YOU
White culture" (or less pejoratively, "American culture") has been perfectly happy to annex previously "other" people and cultures: Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Japanese, Chinese
I would dispute this as a factual claim, as contrary to my observations and my personal experience, and I don't think Coates claims or implies this. At the most, he leaves the possibility of assimilation open based on the past examples of Catholics and Jews, but really he just doesn't spend very much time, in this book, discussing non-blacks who at present day are still not considered "white."
|| OK, so I was in Canada recently, and found that I really like that Liberte 10% plain yogurt. Is there an equivalent US product? |>
perfectly happy to annex previously "other" people and cultures: Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Japanese, Chinese, and so on.
I think the appropriately nuanced response to this is: lol.
I would buy a greatest hits collection from Tolstoy and the Dukes.
That's not something I've ever encountered other than this one mideastern looking guy who sat next to me in a pizzeria in 03 who was constantly saying "What's poppin, nigga?" to his friends.
136: Do you think that non-elite Poles have been adopted as white? I'm not sure that they aren't considered pretty foreign. In a way that's not the case for the Irish or the Italians/Sicilians.
142: Some Whole Foods carry Liberte if you haven't looked there yet.
You have to go to Aldi for Egalite yogurt.
Mmmaybe?
See page 131, which is near the end of Section 2 and thus inappropriate for this week's discussion. (Sorry, Roberto!) I quote at length to provide full context:
Michael Brown did not die as so many of his defenders supposed. And still the questions behind the questions are never asked. Should assaulting an officer be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner? Is that what we wish civilization to be? And all the time the Dreamers are pillaging Ferguson for municipal governance. And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong. Each time a police officer engages us, death, injury, maiming is possible. It is not enough to say that this is true of anyone or more true of criminals. The moment the officers began their pursuit of Prince Jones, his life was in danger. The Dreamers accept this as the cost of doing business, accept our bodies as currency, because it is their tradition.
Re "people who believe they are white": I found this a bit dubious, though I wonder if that very doubt isn't self-justifying. Personal context: my parents are both immigrants; everyone in the US takes one of my parents for white, while nobody in the US takes the other for white; my sibling presents as racially ambiguous, I present as white unless I go to extreme lengths not to. My sib and I were born in this country and, I guess, identify as white more than anything else --- certainly I've never felt comfortable checking any other boxes, because that seems to claim a history of oppression that I've not experienced myself. So, with this background, I've grown up with more (believe-they-are-) white friends than those in other US racial categories, and so I get the idea of white == emphatically-not-black. But I think there are some for whom it's genuinely, subjectively an unmarked default category, _not_ defined in opposition to slaves-or-descendants-of-slaves. OTOH from having lived with & even married & white Americans, I think there is a definite culture there, only partially overlapping with other Americans, which is not mine. (I do not just mean the idea that "casseroles" are non-emergency foods, though that's a concrete illustration of it.) So I am not sure where, if anywhere, people like me fit in to Coates's ontology. (I completely realize that this is utterly irrelevant to Coates's project.)
---- Based on passages towards the end of the book, I don't think identifying "Dreamers" with MLK-believers is sustainable. It seems to be something like "people who believe they are white, and [therefore] buy in to the American Dream".
146.last is basically my ancestry.
Still. The MLK "I have a dream" dream is colorblindness, not nonviolence -- "not by the color of their skins, but by the content of their character". And valuing MLK's message isn't central to how he's describing "Dreamers" -- he's talking about the Dreamers using MLK, but MLK doesn't seem to be what they're about, really, he's a tool. The alienation from/rejection of MLK is absolutely there, I'm just still not feeling the connection to that word.
I am far enough down the library hold list that I may have to buy this before the reading group ends.
146.1: I feel like they have been, at least in the places I've lived in the US, yes.
150: s/justifying/comforting/
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If you were born between 1975-1997 and feel like taking a 20-minute survey about your housing choices and preferences, go for it.
N.b. I have no affiliation with the survey or researcher.
||>
152: I think we've reached a place where our disagreement is trivial, but that won't stop me from dragging this on at length.
We agree that Coates wants to differentiate his own views from King's, and that Coates believes the Dreamers use King to justify the Dream.
The trivial remaining question is: Did Coates deliberately choose "the Dream" in part because it implicates King?
When Coates talks about the Dream, he's not merely talking about the American Dream (though that's clearly one reference he's invoking). More importantly, he's talking about a false narrative - one that he says the memory of MLK abets.
So why doesn't he call it "the Narrative" or "the Story" or "the Myth" or "the (conventional) Wisdom" or "the Lie" or something else?
I'd propose it's because he wants to invoke King. Is there any phrase more closely associated with King than "I have a dream"? Is there any King phrase more consistently employed by modern racists?
The idea that we have substantially achieved King's dream is quite common among white people, and it's a significant feature of the thing that Coates calls "the Dream." I don't think that's a coincidence.
But yeah, he doesn't say this straight out. Despite his misgivings about aspects of King's legacy, it seems clear that he doesn't want to go off on that particular tangent. I think it's a real strength of the book that he doesn't let himself get sidetracked. This would be a less powerful book at 400 pages.
I'm just glad to see that LB found something to nitpick about. Lawyers gonna lawyer.
Judging by Coates' adaptation of the book for the Atlantic, "The Dream" doesn't have a lot to do with MLK, Jr. He doesn't seem to mention King at all.
156: I am old. Thanks for making me remember that.
You just wanted a chance to answer "cob" to all the questions.
Is it a jerk comment to say that the book was a very fast read? I got through it in a single (long) evening. I wish, actually, that TNC had spent more time elaborating on some points.
For example: people who self-identify as white are a bit more than 3/4 of the US population. Suppose that the rest of the country was entirely destitute (which isn't remotely true), and that reparations amounted to sharing out the country's wealth equally. (I honestly can't tell from TNC's "case for reparations" article whether that'd be adequate or not.) This'd entail people who think they are white giving up 1/4 of their wealth, which'd not be something an ordinary person would take easily (_I_ wouldn't) but is not exact driving them into Malthusian poverty.
This makes me suspect TNC's thing about fear is much more important than I'd first thought.
"because they think they are white" is a Baldwin quote (pdf).
161: I did that. I just feel bad about the false date of birth that I gave first.
156: Done! I'm also considering posting the link on FB and asking people to take it.
163: thanks for that link; I found it very helpful! I guess maybe I should read the book.
I'm in agreement with 157. He didn't pick the Dream metaphor by accident, and he's a smart enough writer to know that its association with MLK would be read into it, whether intended or not.
Its not even all that dissimilar a mechanic from the "believe they are white" thing, which he uses to make reference to an argument that has been made elsewhere, but which he doesn't care to lay out at the time.
I finished the book last night, and now I want to talk about it . . .
I know there's going to be a new post Monday, but I wanted to copy some passages from the book, so I'll put my thoughts here and I can refer back to them.
I liked the book, and was very glad that I read it. It's interesting to me that we ended up talking about his use of "Dreamers" and "believe themselves to be white." I thought the book as a whole was strong, but that the strongest points were his descriptions of specific events or moods (including the final conversation with Dr. Mabel Jones, which brought tears to my eyes). There are certain points when the language clicks into total focus. Reading the book I found myself wanting to copy down passages, rather than wrestle with arguments. By contrast I thought the references to the Dreamers were clearly meaningful but much less focused. I wasn't sure if he did mean something specific by the term -- if it was an analytical category or just an emotional category.
The other thing that struck me is that it was a slippery book for me. Perhaps it['s just because I come to the book from such a different background and perspective but, having read all of the reviews which talk about his anger and pessimism, I was struck by how strong the element of pride was in the book. The anger is real and broad, but it wasn't the dominant emotion for me reading the book.
For example, one of the things he comes back to repeatedly in the book is the ways in which he and his peers were beaten by their parents, and the fear that was at the root of that.
When I was six, Ma and Dad took my to a local park. I slipped from their gaze and found a playground. Your grandparents spent anxious minutes looking for me. When they found me, Dad did what every parent I knew would have done -- he reached for his belt. I remember watching him in a kind of daze, awed at the distance between punishment and offense. Later, I would hear it in Dad's voice -- "Either I can beat him, or the police." Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn't. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit. (p 16-17)
He uses this as an example of how intimately the violence which has been inflicted on the black communities contaminates day to day life. That sets up his comments about crime:
"Black-on-black crime" is jargon, violence to language, which vanishes the men who engineered the covenants, who fixed the loans, who planned the projects, who built the streets and sold red ink by the barrel. . . .
The killing fields of Chicago, of Baltimore, of Detroit, were created by the policy of the Dreamers, but their weight, their shame, rests solely upon those who are dying in them. There is a great deception in this. To yell, "black-on-black crime" is to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding. (p 110-111)
But it also connects to how own efforts as a parent to behave differently and better.
Your mother had to teach me how to love you--how to kiss you and tell you I love you every night. Even now it does not feel a wholly natural act so much as it feels like a ritual. And that is because I am wounded. I am tied to old ways, which I learned in a hard home. It was a loving home even as it was besieged by the country, but it was hard. Even in Paris, I could not shake the old ways, the instinct to watch my back at every pass, and always be ready to go. (p 125-126)
In that moment the fact that the book is written as a letter to his son is not just a framing device; it explains why he's wresting so intensely with this particular issue.
There are also ways in which the book marks his own changing class experience. From the description of being broke in New York (p 88-9) to being in Paris as a tourist in which he is able to enjoy the life and energy of the city without feeling that the money and wealth carry the same weight of inequality (both historical and present) as directly (p 123-124).
But even beyond that, I felt in the book the pride of a writer entering his prime. I don't know if it's charitable or uncharitable of me as a reader to hear that, and and to respond to that as having almost as much weight for me as his anger. I don't know if that means that I'm ignoring the text for the subtext, and if that's just a way to avoid dealing with the discomfort. But when I read this passage about Malcolm X, for example, I was struck by how confident the writing was.
Malcolm X, who'd been dead for twenty-five years, exploded out of the small gatherings of his surviving apostles and returned to the world. Hip-Hop artists quoted him in lyrics, cut his speeches across the breaks, or flashed his likeness in their videos. This was the early '90s. I was then approaching the end of my time in my parents' home and wondering about my life out there. If I could have chosen a flag back then, it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X, dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling, one hand parting a window shade, the other holding a rifle. The portrait communicated everything I wanted to be--controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear. I would buy tapes of Malcolm's speeches -- "Message to the Grassroots," "The Ballot or the Bullet" -- down at Everyone's Place, a black bookstore on North Avenue, and play them on my Walkman. Here was all the angst I felt before the heroes of February, distilled and quotable. "Don't give up your life, preserve your life," he would say. "And if you got to give it up, make it even-steven." This was not boasting -- it was a declaration of equality rooted not in better angels or the intangible spirit but in the sanctity of the black body. (p 35)
That is somebody who loves the written word. Contrast that with this passage from Fresh Off The Boat (which is an interesting book to compare with BTWAM for many reasons, among them the fact that while hip-hop may be the background music for BTWAM and Eddie Huang spends a lot of time talking about his own obsession with hip-hop).
One day about two weeks in the summer, the professor came in with packets of five pages stapled together and dropped them in front of us. I looked at the title: "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. I remember the first time I head Michael Jackson's Bad, I remember the first time my cousin played, "Fuck wit Dre Day," and I remember the first time I read "A Modest Proposal." It was like going to the gym early in the morning and hearing the first basketball hit the floor. From that first drop you can feel that the game is on.
When I read Swift it was like I could hear this dead motherfucker. It wasn't writing anymore, it was live. I could feel how he felt with someone standing over him his whole life. He was sick of it. There was some real hate behind his words. Swift was beyond, "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
At a certain point, people don't deserve "Letter from Birmingham Jail." All they get is hard dick and buble gum. Swift reminded me of Ghostface on the intro to "Biscuits."
"Who the fuck brought me this chocolate shit, man. I said a banana nutriment, man."
He reminded me of Ghost because it was frenetic, funny, desperate, and reasonable all at the same time. People look at Ghost and think he's nonsensical, but he's not. He makes more sense than anyone else in the game, but at certain point, being straightforward sounds nonsensical because the rest of the world can't shoot straight. When you feel like you're the only one in the world going crazy, it's probably not you, it's them. What else can you do when everyone else becomes paralyzed by social ketamine? You kufi-smack them in the face! That's what I learned from Swift. Everyone knew what England was doing to Ireland wasn't right, but Ireland didn't have a chance. I respect that Swift knew that he couldn't win, knew England wouldn't care, but told his story in the most raw, real, and personal way possible. Eat our children, eat them, that's exactly what you're doing anyway! You want them? Eat them. He made sure that if England was going to keep doing what it was doing, that their government and their people did it consciously. There would be no mistake about what was going on.
When we talked about "A Modest Proposal" I felt like I was running circles around everybody. I understood that shit better than the professor 'cause he was just a fan. I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. . . .
Eddie Huang writes clearly and well, but Ta-Nehisi Coates is far more writerly.
Yes. It was very clear and saved me reading a chapter of a book.