By David French
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
On the seventh day of May, in the year of our Lord 2018,
the heavens did open. And lo! They poured forth a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay. For a
parched people, seeking to drink from the wells of wisdom, his words were a
great blessing, a blessing that caused them to praise the Almighty.
My god, Ta-Nahisi Coates. My god.
- Laura Seay
And the praise did reach a great crescendo, with the
multitudes rejoicing across the length and breadth of Twitter. For there is no
greater writer than Coates. He is the prophet of our times.
The single most powerful – and devastating
– piece of essay writing I’ve read in ages. Read every word.
- Michael Barbaro
If there’s a better writer alive
today than Ta-Nahisi Coates … oh, hell – there’s not a better writer alive.
This is stunning.
- Ron Fournier
In some American circles, it is taken for granted that
Coates is one of the most important public intellectuals — if not the most important public intellectual —
of our times. The praise above isn’t extraordinary; it’s normal when Coates writes. Remember this tweet, from New York Times film critic A. O. Scott?
“Must read” doesn’t even come
close. This from @tanehisicoates is essential, like water or air.
As you read this praise, keep in mind that this isn’t
just an assessment of the beauty of Coates’s prose. It’s an extraordinarily
enthusiastic endorsement of the man’s ideas.
He is perceived as speaking necessary truths to a nation. In this instance,
what is that necessary truth?
When Kanye West went rogue, he was leaving the black “we”
for the freedom of “I.” But the freedom he sought was “white freedom.” And what
is white freedom? The definition may surprise you:
freedom without consequence,
freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit
off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground
freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello
without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the
freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of
Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom,
freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the
freedom of rape buttons, pussy grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of
oil and invisible wars, the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white
freedom of Calabasas.
In his excellent essay today, Ben Shapiro calls out the
innate racism of these words. Ben’s right, and it’s worth dwelling for a moment
on why he’s right.
Look at the list above. It’s a laundry-list indictment of
American history, with every single negative characteristic attributed to whiteness.
Moreover, it describes a “freedom” utterly alien to virtually every white
person living in the United States. It’s reductionist, and it’s wrong.
Where to begin? He can’t truly believe that white people
live without consequence or criticism. Does he not now know how many of his
fellow citizens, though white, are struggling immensely, dying deaths of
despair at such a rate that it’s decreasing American life expectancy? Does he
not understand that for each terrible movement he identifies, there was white
opposition — sometimes white opposition to the point of death?
When Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine Volunteer
Infantry Regiment faced William Oates and the 15th Alabama Infantry Regiment on
Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, which white man was exercising “white
freedom”? And when he talks of the “rape buttons” and the other hallmarks of
#MeToo, does he not remember Bill Cosby and Russell Simmons?
White people have conquered, yes, but they are hardly
history’s sole conquerors. Coates in earlier writings would have attributed the
sins above less to whiteness and more to human nature itself. People are prone
to do terrible things, and other people rise to oppose evil. Whites have done
terrible things and faced opposition from white and black alike. People of
color have done dreadful things as well. The evil that lurks in a man’s heart
knows no color boundaries.
None of this is to argue that America hasn’t faced
dreadful problems with white supremacy, or that white racism has been
extinguished. But there is a world of difference between decrying the actions
of actual individuals and racializing malice and ignorance on such a scale.
Coates is a good enough writer to know what he’s doing. These are not sloppy
words. They’re carefully chosen words.
As I’ve written before, there is a generations-long
temptation in white progressive circles to revere and promote radical black
voices. It’s as if the anger itself is worthy of respect, and expressions of
outrage, no matter how vicious, are markers of “authenticity.” But Americans
not steeped in this ideology — where white “allies” promote black radicals (yet
somehow always remain in the seats of power) — read Coates’s words and see
something else.
They see hatred.
But they also see ignorance. There was a striking moment
in the publicly released transcript of the internal Atlantic forum with Jeffrey Goldberg and Coates. Speaking of his
now-famous essay on reparations, Coates says that “there was, like, no other
conservative person I would have answered” other than Kevin Williamson. In all
of conservatism, only one man met his threshold for engagement — and that was
mainly because he viewed Kevin as a sufficiently gifted writer.
While Coates gets criticism from the Left, it typically
takes engagement with Left and Right
to fully evaluate ideas. To write off an entire movement as unworthy of
engagement is to create your own bubble. And so while the underlying talent may
remain, the quality of thought can and will degrade over time.
I’d ask Coates’s many fans a simple question. Read the
quoted paragraph again. Put aside its appealing ferocity. Engage with the
ideas. Are the words true? Or is he
too often recasting what is evil as what is white? White Americans should not
flinch from hard truths, but they can and should resist angry falsehoods.
It’s the false idea behind the eloquence that makes the
rapturous praise so nauseating. Powerful people push Coates’s prose and
declare, this is truth. This is real. And while Coates is
certainly capable of speaking truth, adoration is no substitute for critical
inquiry. Time and again, Coates’s words are hateful and wrong. The Left’s
golden literary idol has feet of clay.
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