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[AJLma]

This man's words are a cutting sword.

 

[The Last Wizard]

It's about damn time we face the disgusting parts of our nation that have hidden in the shadows out in the open. They've been festering for well over two centuries.

It's not really hidden it's ignored I'd say, so many that can actually do something about it won't cause it don't personally affect them or those they know.

 

[SeanC]

Coates is probably the best social commentator and writer today, I absolutely admire everything he writes. I feel bad I have yet to read his books, but his articles are borderline poetic.

 

[Lil'DigiOp]

I always found it ironic that Barack got attacked for "possibly looking out for Black Americans rather than the entire country"


One could argue Barack looked out more for LGBT and Immigrants more than black people.... that's not the point.


The true irony is we fast forward to Trump and the motherfucker OPENLY serves only 30-40% of the country proven time and time again. Insane how a leader can ignore a majority of the countries constituents like nothing.

All of Obama's criticism are Trumps main behaviors. it's sickening how his flaws aren't flagrant with alot of people.

 

[Gattsu25]

Erm, I know a number of white man living in USA, who, for some reason, are yet to become presidents of USA.


PS
Searching for source for shocking quotes in this article I laneded on:

Did Donald Trump really say those things?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ally-say-those-things/?utm_term=.1f3aa6023763

Still reading...

Don't bother considering how badly you misread that sentence

 

[RastaMentality]

Absolutely, at least my own thoughts on the matter.

This is most definitely not the case for a lot of white liberals.

 

[Ryuuroden]

The last 8 months have shown if they do, it is so far down the list you need ropes and mining lights to find it. The editor at the Daily Kos heavy left site blamed POC when Arapio got pardoned. Like that was his first reflex, and it happens time and time again. Blaming minorities for bigotry systematic and otherwise

he was wrong to say that but ironically him saying that highlights the fact you cant rely on white people...even liberal ones.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

Fantastic article. I was pretty psyched there was an audio version so I could listen to it at my desk at work.

 

[Lime]

What's the way out of white supremacy? How can Whiteness be abolished? Coates have always been pessimistic in his writings and always thought of Whiteness/anti-Blackness as a natural force part of 'the galaxy' and the struggle for his son will always persist, so the only thing we can do is disaster measures like Earthquake warnings. But I wonder if others have offered any musings or ideas about a way out.

 

[TurnipFritters]

Your right. Those in power on the liberal side are centrists who are "the rich liberal elite". They are primary benefactors of the historical divide and conquer tactics of the white American rich. But there are huge swaths of progressive white young people who don't have much power, relatively little wealth, and much debt. They would truly like to see material change in terms of systemic racism, but they don't have the levers of power to do it.

This strikes me as an extremely charitable reading of most young folks.

 

[Linkup]

An attempt, even if very misguided and slow moving, to deliver true equality to all people independent of race, religion, and status at birth. A true meritocracy.

The more we fail to live those ideals the more divided we become as a country and those divisions open wounds for social decay. The decline of the United States tracks in line with it's regression in the progress towards true equality.

Define true equality as it would relate to race, religion, and status at birth. Good luck.

 

[Lil'DigiOp]

Hang on a minute I'm not American, Obama actually presented his birth cert to placate those fuckin tools?! Fuckin hell.

Yup then they went straight to "it's fake! I bet you never went to school either!"


Racist fucks

 

[Muppet of a Man]

The last 8 months have shown if they do, it is so far down the list you need ropes and mining lights to find it. The editor at the Daily Kos heavy left site blamed POC when Arapio got pardoned. Like that was his first reflex, and it happens time and time again. Blaming minorities for bigotry systematic and otherwise

Hey, people are going to be petty when their side or candidate of choice doesn't win. Liberals and progressives were stratified with supporting candidates this go around. Instead of trying to figure out the reason for this stratification on the left, everyone has been finger pointing.

I get the divide in thinking regarding that stratification, and I actually think it was best intentions mostly from both ends. Centrist liberals are pragmatists who believe n+1 iterative/gradual change is the only thing that's feasible in this country, and to a large degree they are right (at least historically). I think many in the black community are keen to this and, in playing it safe for the progress made to this point, took the more conservative stance (to preserve progress made) in supporting the centrist candidate. Those who are more progressive, who may be naive on how American politics operate but who may also just be fed up with what they effectively perceive as lip service paid regarding reforming both systemic racism and classism up to this point, chose to back a progressive candidate. Many young people fell in this category. Good intentions wound up ultimately splintering the base in what is a big tent politics arena. And just enough, mind you, to let cheese doodle slip into power.

The other part that has been killing the left politically is gerrymandering and the tendency of the left to concentrate themselves in big cities where they then get screwed by the fallout of gerrymandering.

 

[FStubbs]

Name one country that wasn't founded on genocide, racism and violence.

Ethiopia. Been around forever.

 

[clevbrowns94]

Brutal and wonderfully done. Trump is the most racist President since KKK Lovin' Wilson, and he's revenge from white people for having the first black President. I thought there was no way he could win with such little minority support, given that whites are declining as a percentage of the population, but they simply banded together even stronger to elect one of the most racist and certainly the most unqualified President ever. Stunning, but I and others should have seen it coming.

 

[NandoGip]

I'm not even done reading the essay and I feel like I want to cry....

 

[Lombax]

Honest and well written.

 

[toneroni]

Amazing read.

 

[chaos789]

👀

Not sure I would equate any of those issues to race. As Obama's actions on all of those issues such as climate change and justice reform I 100% have always advocated for all of my life as a white man. Its just sad to see Trump erase those accomplishments in a time when we need them the most. Not to mention Trump wiping his ass with laws regulating Wall St and laws forbidding collusion and bribery and worker safety and so many other issues that are of critical importance. But these are things conservatives have always been against at least since the Reagan administration. Its always been about raking in those corporate profits for them, consequences be damned. But great read though and cuts right to the truth of the Trump ascendency.

 

[Username1198]

Trump demanded the president’s college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.

LMAO this guy is a MASTER projectionist. trump is very obviously stupid as fuck, and just bumbles his way through. He's like Leslie nielsons character from naked gun.

Lmao at the suggestion of a ghost writer when trumps own ghost writer is on CNN daily talkin shit about the goon. Godamn the irony is gonna literally kill me

Edit damn this article is fire

 

[AJLma]

Not sure I would equate any of those issues to race. As Obama's actions on all of those issues such as climate change and justice reform I 100% have always advocated for all of my life as a white man. Its just sad to see Trump erase those accomplishments in a time when we need them the most. Not to mention Trump wiping his ass with laws regulating Wall St and laws forbidding collusion and bribery and worker safety and so many other issues that are of critical importance. But these are things conservatives have always been against at least since the Reagan administration. Its always been about raking in those corporate profits for them, consequences be damned. But great read though and cuts right to the truth of the Trump ascendency.

He's saying that since Obama is the one to put them in place, they are "Nigger Issues", just because that's how they rest in the minds of his uninformed, ignorant voter base when he points it out that Obama is the one to set them in motion. Black hands can't touch his money, or legislation, apparently.

 

[Drek]

I strongly want to believe this is what America stands for, but it would be lying to say it's true.

At the very least, we must acknowledge the many, many people in our history who have succeeded in undermining this value (with no consequence).

It is what the United States of America has tried to stand for. At the time of the Declaration of Independence it was a revolutionary idea that a nation would try to form itself around the concept of individual equality.

They then couched it in all kinds of bullshit after winning their freedom.

That was then somewhat rolled back with the Civil War, but then after that it was bent and contorted further.

Then World War I came along and a chance to strike at noble inheritance arose and was seized, that led to capitalism getting an incredibly strong foothold as part of the war effort/financial draining of European old money into the U.S..

That capitalist bent helped for a short time in drawing clear battle lines between the haves and have nots, leading to unionization, workers right, etc..

But once we got to the point where the average white person was living a pretty solid day to day life the white majority stopped pushing forward. The civil rights movement throughout the late 20th century was an obstacle to navigate around, but upon doing so the wealthy have been able to obfuscate the battle lines and as such have convinced a large white majority of have nots that it's really all due to merit that someone like Donald Trump was born into an absurdly large fortune.

Obviously gross simplifications, but the upward trend of the United States as a world power tracks directly with improving equality in at least some capacity throughout time. That has stopped and begun to regress hand in hand with income inequality skyrocketing and that is not a coincidence.

Define true equality as it would relate to race, religion, and status at birth. Good luck.

Universal education through 12th grade of comparable quality regardless of birthplace.

Nutritious food readily available to anyone.

Education beyond 12th grade gated entirely on the basis of merit and effort. You can test in or you can work your way in to a higher education that would also have no cost associated with it.

Various changes to housing, healthcare, etc. regulations to remove biases against minorities.

And probably the most important item: zero inheritance. Obviously can't go straight to it, people would lose their shit, but cap it at double the median family farm's net worth as the absolute max a person can will out. Everything else goes to the Government to be churned back into the cycle.

 

[Torquill]

That's good...real good.

99% of the people in the south that would read that wouldn't understand what it is saying.

Unfortunately....

Yes, only the south has racism, or voted for Trump. This is a part of the problem. It is NOT, in fact, only the south that needs to confront this.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

LMAO this guy is a MASTER projectionist. trump is very obviously stupid as fuck, and just bumbles his way through. He's like Leslie nielsons character from naked gun.

Lmao at the suggestion of a ghost writer when trumps own ghost writer is on CNN daily talkin shit about the goon. Godamn the irony is gonna literally kill me

Seriously, it is parody at this point. Literally every bit of finger pointing is comical projection at this point. Sadly, his whole rise to power is built on it.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

After his cabal of conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump demanded the president’s college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.

Holy fucking shit! I knew about his relentless birtherism but I never knew about all of that! Has any previous President been asked to show their school grades? Its n coincidence that this happened to the first black President in history and all of that was spearheaded by an old white rich man in his late 60s!

Trump is a colossal racist!

 

[NoName999]

Yes, only the south has racism, or voted for Trump. This is a part of the problem. It is NOT, in fact, only the south that needs to confront this.

Seriously. The sooner that white liberals realize that there is hate among their ranks and playgrounds is the sooner that they can be actual fucking allies.

 

[chaos789]

He's saying that since Obama is the one to put them in place, they are "Nigger Issues", just because that's how they rest in the minds of his uninformed, ignorant voter base when he points it out that Obama is the one to set them in motion. Black hands can't touch his money, or legislation, apparently.

Well, I could give a shit what race the person who puts these issues forward is. I am just happy that Obama did put those issues forward and tried to do something about them. Obama possessed something Trump will never have, class and diginity, amongst a million other things.

Anyone who voted for Trump should feel ashamed of themselves. If they really thought voting for a NYC business man was gonna "Make America Great Again" they had another thing coming. All they did was cut out the middle man so corporations could fleece the government for even more profit and lower taxes. I always thought MAGA was code for "Make America White Again". These people disgust me.

 

[Mistouze]

Coates is probably the best social commentator and writer today, I absolutely admire everything he writes. I feel bad I have yet to read his books, but his articles are borderline poetic.

At least give his Black Panther comic book a read.

 

[Nepenthe]

“The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes,” charged the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, “is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now.”

That black people, who have lived for centuries under such derision and condescension, have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not trouble these theoreticians. After all, in this analysis, Trump’s racism and the racism of his supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with which liberals call out Trump’s bigotry is assigned even more power than the bigotry itself. Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments about intersectionality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.

This so much. It's always telling when I ask "economic anxiety" people why is it then that only white people overwhelmingly voted for Trump when everyone is hurting economically and other groups have sociopolitical hurdles to contend with on top of that, and they never have a fucking answer.

 

[foxuzamaki]

This was a incredible read, this is really saying it how it is

 

[Mael]

All politics are identity politics—except the politics of white people, the politics of the bloody heirloom.

 

[Sunster]

I used to think trump was bumbling idiot who didn't have an ideology and just sort of fell into the presidency sort of like in Southpark. I think many people on the left believe that. but a quick look into his past, the things he's said and done, the money he has spent, all in service to white supremacy. he wasn't just playing around and saying things he didn't mean. he had no political power before, he wasn't just saying what he needed to get voters. he said and did those things because this is his ideology. it's not an act. I hope this article leads others to that same conclusion.

 

[ShyMel]

This is an amazing article!

 

[FStubbs]

This so much. It's always telling when I ask "economic anxiety" people why is it then that only white people overwhelmingly voted for Trump when everyone is hurting economically and other groups have sociopolitical hurdles to contend with on top of that, and they never have a fucking answer.

Same answer as why black people have a higher percentage of professing Christians than white people and are so overwhelmingly Democratic.

"They're just stupid we know better."

 

[kirblar]

Looking forward to reading this, the quotes I've been seeing have been absurdly good.

 

[Mael]

The dent of racism is not hard to detect in West Virginia. In the 2008 Democratic primary there, 95 percent of the voters were white. Twenty percent of those—one in five—openly admitted that race was influencing their vote, and more than 80 percent voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Four years later, the incumbent Obama lost the primary in 10 counties to Keith Judd, a white felon incarcerated in a federal prison; Judd racked up more than 40 percent of the Democratic-primary vote in the state. A simple thought experiment: Can one imagine a black felon in a federal prison running in a primary against an incumbent white president doing so well?

*Add West Virginia to the list*

 

[Vicetrailia]

Donald Trump is the ultimate form of privilege that's only possible for a straight white male achieve. A woman or minority would never be given the benefit of the doubt that he has recieved. For all of his good points the negatives are blatantly more numerous.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

This so much. It's always telling when I ask "economic anxiety" people why is it then that only white people overwhelmingly voted for Trump when everyone is hurting economically and other groups have sociopolitical hurdles to contend with on top of that, and they never have a fucking answer.

Maybe we are all looking for the wrong answer, a binary, clear-cut answer in a world which is not.

The truth, sad as it is, is apparent. In order to route out systemic racism via policy changes in a place like America, you need the votes of those who are apathetic at best, racist at worst, in addition to those with good intentions, as we operate with big tent politics and require the support of moderates/independents to be really politically successful with a leftist agenda.

 

[ApharmdX]

Just so much great stuff in there. Lots of quotes posted already but I want to highlight a few more:

Obama allowed that ”blacks in particular have been vulnerable to these trends"—but less because of racism than for reasons of geography and job-sector distribution. This notion—raceless antiracism—marks the modern left, from the New Democrat Bill Clinton to the socialist Bernie Sanders. Few national liberal politicians have shown any recognition that there is something systemic and particular in the relationship between black people and their country that might require specific policy solutions.

I agree BUT- any policy targeted at erasing the gap between blacks and other Americans is politically toxic in the extreme. Obama was terrified to touch this. Even Bernie Sanders, comfortable with being labeled as a socialist, is terrified to touch this. I'd love to hear Coates' specific solutions. I know he's argued for reparations in the past. How can we sell that to the American people when they (as Coates points out) just elected a racist, wholly-unqualified white man to erase the entire legacy of the single black president?

Coates goes hard on our liberal "allies" as well:

During Bill Clinton's presidential-reelection campaign in the mid-1990s, Hillary Clinton herself had endorsed the ”super-predator" theory of William J. Bennett, John P. Walters, and John J. DiIulio Jr. This theory cast ”inner-city" children of that era as ”almost completely unmoralized" and the font of ”a new generation of street criminals ... the youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has ever known." The ”baddest generation" did not become super-predators. But by 2016, they were young adults, many of whom judged Hillary Clinton's newfound consciousness to be lacking.

Confronted with a young woman who hoped to become the second Latina senator in American history, Sanders responded with a parody of the Clinton campaign: ”It is not good enough for someone to say, ‘I'm a woman! Vote for me!' No, that's not good enough ... One of the struggles that you're going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics." The upshot—attacking one specimen of identity politics after having invoked another—was unfortunate.

”You can't eat equality," asserts Joe Biden—a statement worthy of someone unthreatened by the loss of wages brought on by an unwanted pregnancy, a background-check box at the bottom of a job application, or the deportation of a breadwinner.

He even goes in on Obama, who was never really comfortable with helping blacks directly, or consistent in pointing out that a lot of his opposition was just plain racist.

Reading the article, I was reminded of what I think was Hillary Clinton's finest moment during her campaign in 2016- the deplorables comment. It was politically asinine but to have a presidential candidate in the general election strike right at the heart of the American racial divide like that? That was truly admirable. And it was absolutely true.

Observing a Trump supporter in the act of deploying racism does not much perturb Kristof. That is because his defenses of the innate goodness of Trump voters and of the innate goodness of the white working class are in fact defenses of neither. On the contrary, the white working class functions rhetorically not as a real community of people so much as a tool to quiet the demands of those who want a more inclusive America.

Absolutely.

I think Coates is making an unfair generalization here, as most left wing whites are eager to tackle the issues of racism in addition to other related struggles, such as classism,

I strongly disagree with you here.

 

[Mark L]

Absolutely brilliant, beautiful article. Does anyone know a way to contact Coates? I like to send personal messages showing my appreciation to writers whose stuff I truly enjoy.

 

[DerangedHermit]

Absolutely brilliant, beautiful article. Does anyone know a way to contact Coates? I like to send personal messages showing my appreciation to writers whose stuff I truly enjoy.

https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates

 

[Etrian Oddity]

No lies in that piece. Gotdam

 

[Muppet of a Man]

I strongly disagree with you here.

In what ways? You don't think white progressives would support a policy platform which reforms systemic racism in governmental and other institutions? Affirmative action is one such policy that progressives have been trying to protect. There is much more to do on the policy front, but hardly anyone ever proposes policy to address it. Most just symbolically address it. But it needs to go further.

Coates himself discussed reparations, which I think is a great idea but by itself is still not enough.

I think reparations actually could be pretty easy to implement in terms of how they could be funded. This would include a combination of targeted tax increases on wealthy individuals and other wealth centers (corporations), in addition to inflationary spending (i.e., printing money and awarding it where necessary). The taxes would help temper any sort of run away inflation and take money from the greatest beneficiaries of white supremacy, rich white Americans. Inflationary spending prevents people looking for loopholes to protect their assets from being impacted, as the value of their assets would be diluted and spread to others regardless and their assets wouldn't even have to be seized for that to happen.

Add the social democratic agenda of universal healthcare and free or highly subsidized higher education, and you go even further in truly leveling the playing field in large part since minorities are disproportionately impacted by expenses related to those things.

 

[Jimothy]

pretty wack, honestly.

 

[pigeon]

Dammit, I was making this thread just now.

Great article.

 

[Zantetsuken]

I wish I could get my point across as eloquently as Coates does.

 

[pigeon]

I agree BUT- any policy targeted at erasing the gap between blacks and other Americans is politically toxic in the extreme. Obama was terrified to touch this. Even Bernie Sanders, comfortable with being labeled as a socialist, is terrified to touch this. I'd love to hear Coates' specific solutions. I know he's argued for reparations in the past. How can we sell that to the American people when they (as Coates points out) just elected a racist, wholly-unqualified white man to erase the entire legacy of the single black president?

You're pulling a bait-and-switch here, I think unintentionally. Coates makes no pretense of having politically acceptable solutions. Merely morally necessary ones.

 

[pigeon]

That's clear. Essentially he said that Trump would not become president, if he wasn't white or male.

I don't really think so, and that's just my opinion, of course. I perceive Trump as an all out opportunist. He doesn't really stand for anything concrete, there is a goal and there are opportunities to use. Had he not been white, he would have used his skin color to his advantage. One could argue that racism in US would not have allowed him to become so popular, but there is Obama.


What I said was that being white or male doesn't really help you become a president that much.

Right. That is an idiotic and ignorant thing to say, and taints the rest of your thinking.

 

[Slayven]

pretty wack, honestly.

How so?

 

[BlastProcessing]

This hit me right in the fucking gut.