It is currently Fri Mar 29, 2024 6:34 am

All times are UTC - 6 hours [ DST ]




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 238 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... 8  Next
Author Message
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:37 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 3:18 pm
Posts: 19454
pizza_Place: Phils' on 35th all you need to know
Not that complicated if you really look at it. If you look at the real number of unemployed. You also have to include those who are on the SSI Lists for semi legit reasons. Plus non citizens coordinating welfare. We do not even have to ship all 12 million home,just the criminal element.
Make welfare unattractive and with a time limit. A lot of the jobs that Americans will not do,guess what. In the days before rampant illegals and globalism,it was done by Americans.Every read Grapes of Wrath,it is about that very much thing.Plus,the can't report them all thing is BS. If you look at a map of where they estimate where they are concentrated,guess what 4-5 major cities.
The laws are there,the will is not because we don't want to hurt people's feelings.

_________________
When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:38 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 3:18 pm
Posts: 19454
pizza_Place: Phils' on 35th all you need to know
long time guy wrote:
chaspoppcap wrote:
long time guy wrote:
chaspoppcap wrote:
Yes with a promise it would never happen again.


ok so that excuses it I guess. Which policies have Republicans implemented which were designed to help blacks?

Don't know or really care. All I know is the party you all hitched your collective wagon to is selling you out wholesale. Care to deny?



But you cared enough to comment about it though. You can't support it unsurprisingly and now you're ambivalent all of a sudden. The Democrats aren't without their faults but I can point to a number of instances in which they have sought to help blacks. The reason that you can't find any instances in the case of Republicans is because none exist.

Blacks are supposed to all of a sudden vote for the party of the group that seeks to roll back affirmative action and suppress their vote. Sure that's really smart. I wonder why they haven't thought of that yet.

As usual ask you a question get nothing back but jibber jabber

_________________
When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:50 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
chaspoppcap wrote:
long time guy wrote:
chaspoppcap wrote:
long time guy wrote:
chaspoppcap wrote:
Yes with a promise it would never happen again.


ok so that excuses it I guess. Which policies have Republicans implemented which were designed to help blacks?

Don't know or really care. All I know is the party you all hitched your collective wagon to is selling you out wholesale. Care to deny?



But you cared enough to comment about it though. You can't support it unsurprisingly and now you're ambivalent all of a sudden. The Democrats aren't without their faults but I can point to a number of instances in which they have sought to help blacks. The reason that you can't find any instances in the case of Republicans is because none exist.

Blacks are supposed to all of a sudden vote for the party of the group that seeks to roll back affirmative action and suppress their vote. Sure that's really smart. I wonder why they haven't thought of that yet.

As usual ask you a question get nothing back but jibber jabber


From the guy that didn't care to elaborate on his own point. If you knew how to interpret you'd have realized that I actually did answer. I didn't see the question originally but there is an answer inside of my response

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 10:37 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 11:19 am
Posts: 23917
pizza_Place: Jimmy's Place
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ta-nehisi- ... 1505861888

Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Politics of Contempt

The great jazz musician Miles Davis was known for his boorishness, especially toward his white fan base. Davis would play his trumpet with his back to the audience and curse at people between sets. “If somebody told me I only had one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man,” he once told a newspaper reporter. “I’d do it nice and slow.” His admirers ate it up.

Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new essay on Donald Trump in the Atlantic magazine brought Davis to mind. Mr. Coates, who couldn’t be more highly regarded among the left-liberal intelligentsia, doesn’t have anything especially new or interesting to add to the never-ending debate on the left about how Mr. Trump got elected. As ESPN anchor Jemele Hill and countless other liberals have done for the past 10 months, he blames white racism.

If you don’t have time to read Mr. Coates’s lengthy article, just browse Ms. Hill’s controversial tweets from last week, in which she insisted that the president is “a white supremacist” and that his “rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.” Ms. Hill’s argument is no different and no less sophisticated than Mr. Coates’s, and she demonstrates a better economy of words.


Mr. Coates has distinguished himself as a racial polemicist, and his analysis of the 2016 presidential campaign is in the service of advancing his view that Mr. Trump’s rise, first and foremost, is evidence of racial retrenchment in the U.S. Never mind the far likelier reality that the 63 million voters who went for Mr. Trump did so not out of some “commitment to whiteness,” as Mr. Coates alleges, but because they wanted to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president.

According to Gallup, Mr. Obama’s approval rating was 57% on Election Day last year, and it was 59% 10 weeks later when he turned the White House keys over to his successor. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released last week found that 51% of the country still had a positive view of the nation’s twice-elected first black president, a finding that doesn’t square with Mr. Coates’s view that antiblack bias is ascendant. It’s true that white turnout increased for Mr. Trump, but it’s also true that the president won a smaller percentage of the white vote—and a larger percentage of the black and Hispanic vote—than Mitt Romney in 2012.

The more plausible argument is that Mr. Trump beat Mrs. Clinton by winning the support of more than eight million swing voters—in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—who previously had voted for President Obama. Mr. Coates ignores these voters in his essay, much as Mrs. Clinton ignored them on the campaign trail. That’s not analysis via Breitbart. It comes from, among other places, the number-crunchers at the New York Times . The “big driver” of Mr. Trump’s gains “was persuasion,” the paper explained back in April. “He flipped millions of white working-class Obama supporters to his side. The voter file data make it impossible to ignore this conclusion.”

But what’s most striking about Mr. Coates’s article, and the reason it recalled Miles Davis, is the borderline contempt he displays for his admirers and fellow travelers on the political left. The author’s primary targets are the “white pundits and thought leaders” whom he deems insufficiently anti-Trump. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, along with journalists and academics who sport impeccable left-wing credentials, are taken to task for indulging alternative explanations for Mr. Trump’s win. In Mr. Coates’s telling, there is no acceptable way to view the Trump phenomenon other than through a racial prism.

Not everyone is letting Mr. Coates get away with this bullying. One of his victims, George Packer, who writes for the New Yorker magazine and who will never be mistaken for George Will, pushed back (gently) in a reply that was published on the Atlantic’s website. Mr. Packer was gobsmacked by the suggestion that he was playing down racism in a pre-election New Yorker essay about the economic anxieties of working-class whites. “I didn’t excuse or extend comfort to anyone,” Mr. Packer writes in his response. “Analysis isn’t justification—unless you think, as Coates does, that the entire subject is illegitimate for scrutiny because it’s an evasion of the truth about white supremacy.”


Mr. Packer almost certainly gives Mr. Coates too much credit. Mr. Coates has little use for analytical reasoning and even less interest in changing anyone’s mind on racial matters. He exaggerates black victimization and tells people who already agree with him exactly what they want hear. In the end, racial discourse is worse off. All this reckless use of “white supremacy” only serves to devalue the term in the same way that the word “racist” already has been devalued. Soon, we’ll need a new term to refer to actual white supremacists.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 12:19 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 26, 2006 8:10 pm
Posts: 38609
Location: "Across 110th Street"
It's funny, that WSJ author touched on a "better economy of words" in the first third of a pointless 1200 word rant about Coates.

Which effectively sums up the Murdoch media empire imo

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 12:42 pm 
Offline

Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2010 1:30 am
Posts: 4113
pizza_Place: Palermo's 95th
long time guy wrote:
Coates was correct when he referenced safe spaces during racial discussions involving Trump. For instance it is much easier/safer to think of his victory as more of an Anti Hillary vote as opposed to a Pro Trump vote. It is easier to think of the birther movement as something promoted by Hillary Clinton and not him also. The vote for Trump had more to do with working class angst as opposed to racial backlash. This narrative has been consistently pushed even though post election polling showed that Hillary actually received a greater share of the vote from those making less than $50,000.

I'll grant right off the bat that the media's focus on the white working class has sucked for a plethora of reasons, including but not limited to the ones you cite. And it's more comforting for a general view of the US citizenry to continue to believe racism is something confined only to the periphery. That said, I'd suggest for much of Coates' largely white liberal centrist readership in The Atlantic and the press pundits who give him glowing reviews, it is in fact much easier to dismiss Trump voters as racists who could never have any hope of redemption.

Coates certainly understands racism as systematic, but essays like this just reinforce the current Democratic and liberal focus on racism as being a strictly individualist phenomenon and as something so ontologically primitive that it is impossible to confront at all through the dull work of coalition building and persuasion. It likewise reinforces the notion of politics consisting of good and bad people and makes the whole project of discussion disposable, with combative call-outs being a more cathartic replacement. It fits in nicely with the horrid demographic arguments so many Democratic strategists constantly trumpet, as if we just have to wait for the racist poors to die out and everything will then be hunky dory. Never mind the fact that people switched from Obama to Trump and never mind the fact that on many issues Trump is not negating but actually reinforcing Obama's legacy (which consists of the good and bad things he did in office) and never mind the fact that the main reason Hillary lost was because so many people in the Obama coalition stayed home altogether. It's instead far more comforting to believe the people failed the Democratic party and by extension the nation and that they can never be moved at all, rather than the Democratic party failing the people.

I'd suggest even Coates' work which most stridently portrays racism as systematic like the reparations essay still allows liberals this comfort because the proposal is so vague and unspecified that the main response to that essay isn't to actually advocate for reparation but instead sigh and reflect about the tragic failures of America without any change to the status quo whatsoever, most especially and importantly capitalism and the myth of meritocracy.

This is why I found the Haider essay I linked to on the first page as well as R.L. Stephens' criticism more compelling as they're about actual political action rather than the paralysis or mere reflection that so many middle and upper middle class liberals take away from his essays. Coates of course is free to write about whatever he wants and doesn't need to present a step-by-step plan for change in anything that he writes, but I worry the effect of them is that readers merely have their consciousness raised without changing any aspect of their lives at all.


Last edited by ZephMarshack on Wed Sep 20, 2017 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 12:50 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:16 pm
Posts: 81627
I had forgotten 2008 Hillary was the original Trump

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," Clinton said in an interview with USA TODAY.

Clinton cited an Associated Press poll "that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:16 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:16 pm
Posts: 81627
The stuff about Differentiation is very real, imo.

"Perhaps the on thing giving their lives meaning was knowing there was someone beneath them"


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:21 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 6:57 pm
Posts: 88693
Location: To the left of my post
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:24 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.


Every time she has run for office she has garnered more than the person she has run against. Yeah that truly spells "horrible" in my book.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:30 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 6:57 pm
Posts: 88693
Location: To the left of my post
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.


Every time she has run for office she has garnered more than the person she has run against. Yeah that truly spells "horrible" in my book.
If only that mattered!

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:42 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
ZephMarshack wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Coates was correct when he referenced safe spaces during racial discussions involving Trump. For instance it is much easier/safer to think of his victory as more of an Anti Hillary vote as opposed to a Pro Trump vote. It is easier to think of the birther movement as something promoted by Hillary Clinton and not him also. The vote for Trump had more to do with working class angst as opposed to racial backlash. This narrative has been consistently pushed even though post election polling showed that Hillary actually received a greater share of the vote from those making less than $50,000.

I'll grant right off the bat that the media's focus on the white working class has sucked for a plethora of reasons, including but not limited to the ones you cite. And it's more comforting for a general view of the US citizenry to continue to believe racism is something confined only to the periphery. That said, I'd suggest for much of Coates' largely white liberal centrist readership in The Atlantic and the press pundits who give him glowing reviews, it is in fact much easier to dismiss Trump voters as racists who could never have any hope of redemption.

Coates certainly understands racism as systematic, but essays like this just reinforce the current Democratic and liberal focus on racism as being a strictly individualist phenomenon and as something so ontologically primitive that it is impossible to confront at all through the dull work of coalition building and persuasion. It likewise reinforces the notion of politics consisting of good and bad people and makes the whole project of discussion disposable, with combative call-outs being a more cathartic replacement. It fits in nicely with the horrid demographic arguments so many Democratic strategists constantly trumpet, as if we just have to wait for the racist poors to die out and everything will then be hunky dory. Never mind the fact that people switched from Obama to Trump and never mind the fact that on many issues Trump is not negating but actually reinforcing Obama's legacy (which consists of the good and bad things he did in office) and never mind the fact that the main reason Hillary lost was because so many people in the Obama coalition stayed home altogether. It's instead far more comforting to believe the people failed the Democratic party and by extension the nation and that they can never be moved at all, rather than the Democratic party failing the people.

I'd suggest even Coates' work which most stridently portrays racism as systematic like the reparations essay still allows liberals this comfort because the proposal is so vague and unspecified that the main response to that essay isn't to actually advocate for reparation but instead sigh and reflect about the tragic failures of America without any change to the status quo whatsoever, most especially and importantly capitalism and the myth of meritocracy.

This is why I found the Haider essay I linked to on the first page as well as R.L. Stephens' criticism more compelling as they're about actual political action rather than the paralysis or mere reflection that so many middle and upper middle class liberals take away from his essays. Coates of course is free to write about whatever he wants and doesn't need to present a step-by-step plan for change in anything that he writes, but I worry the effect of them is that readers merely have their consciousness raised without changing any aspect of their lives at all.



I actually believe that Coates was on to something. The Republican Party has played identity politics more than anyone. When you look at the past 50 years it is they that have chosen to shun groups which help comprise "the others". They have absolutely no use for the black vote. Black politicians must take the oath of token in order to gain any traction. Immigrants are targeted lest they agree to wash dishes and cut grass first. Policies which seek to benefit minority groups are often targeted for extinction. Hate groups are often allowed to park somewhere on the fringes of the party without ever being rebuked. Their slogans often harken back to an era where lynching, racism, bigotry, and corrupted legal systems were the rule.

Republicans have rightly learned how to play the divisive game. They in essence throw rocks and hide their hands. Democrats indulge them but not enough in my book. Obama tip toed around it for 8 years and still was considered divisive by some on the right. Hillary didn't make the sale on it either. Democrats are fearful of ticking off the white working class by indulging in too much "race talk". Dates back to FDR which Coates correctly noted.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:44 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.


Every time she has run for office she has garnered more than the person she has run against. Yeah that truly spells "horrible" in my book.
If only that mattered!



It doesn't quite jive with being "horrible". I know you tend to get your info from Bernstein, but championships or bust is an illogical way to view each and every competition.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:56 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 6:57 pm
Posts: 88693
Location: To the left of my post
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.


Every time she has run for office she has garnered more than the person she has run against. Yeah that truly spells "horrible" in my book.
If only that mattered!



It doesn't quite jive with being "horrible". I know you tend to get your info from Bernstein, but championships or bust is an illogical way to view each and every competition.

1 for 3 in elections and two of them being pretty shocking is horrible. Obama was a relative no name and Trump was terrible and started with a horrible approval rating.

You should have helped her with her new book.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:57 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:56 am
Posts: 32235
Location: A sterile, homogeneous suburb
pizza_Place: Pizza Cucina
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.


Every time she has run for office she has garnered more than the person she has run against. Yeah that truly spells "horrible" in my book.
If only that mattered!



It doesn't quite jive with being "horrible". I know you tend to get your info from Bernstein, but championships or bust is an illogical way to view each and every competition.

1 for 3 in elections and two of them being pretty shocking is horrible. Obama was a relative no name and Trump was terrible and started with a horrible approval rating.

You should have helped her with her new book.


Revisionist History: How Racism Elected Donald Trump and No One Saw it but Me.

_________________
Curious Hair wrote:
I'm a big dumb shitlib baby


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:00 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
leashyourkids wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.


Every time she has run for office she has garnered more than the person she has run against. Yeah that truly spells "horrible" in my book.
If only that mattered!



It doesn't quite jive with being "horrible". I know you tend to get your info from Bernstein, but championships or bust is an illogical way to view each and every competition.

1 for 3 in elections and two of them being pretty shocking is horrible. Obama was a relative no name and Trump was terrible and started with a horrible approval rating.

You should have helped her with her new book.


Revisionist History: How Racism Elected Donald Trump and No One Saw it but Me.



Revisionist history. How Whites excused it, evaded it and dressed it up as a way of glossing over it.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:08 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:56 am
Posts: 32235
Location: A sterile, homogeneous suburb
pizza_Place: Pizza Cucina
You can laugh at yourself sometimes, buddy.

_________________
Curious Hair wrote:
I'm a big dumb shitlib baby


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:14 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 6:57 pm
Posts: 88693
Location: To the left of my post
leashyourkids wrote:
You can laugh at yourself sometimes, buddy.

Image

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:14 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
leashyourkids wrote:
You can laugh at yourself sometimes, buddy.


No offense but when it comes to racism that's not something I can joke about. I actually am sort of off the Trump stuff. I cited this article because Coates touched on a lot of things that I had mentioned earlier.

I'm content to see where we are as a country in 2-3 years. I also want to see where the Democratic Party is in 3 years minus Horrible Hillary. Let's see all of the people oppressed by those rotten Clintons ascend to the throne.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:39 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:56 am
Posts: 32235
Location: A sterile, homogeneous suburb
pizza_Place: Pizza Cucina
This article is complete bullshit. For many years, I considered myself a liberal. But I, like many others, am tired of being told how awful I am simply for being white. There are tons of whites who recognize the fact that we have advantages in life and don't deny it. Yet somehow we need to be beaten over the head until we are zombies who hate ourselves for the "misfortune" of our birth as white people.

I'm down to help fight for equal rights for the oppressed, but it makes it hard when some mythical "whiteness" label tells me at every turn that my opinion doesn't matter.

The area I grew up in is pretty fucking poor. But it's rural poor, so according to Liberal royalty (aka the Clintons), it's not really poor. That shit gets exhausting, and it does nothing but alienate a good number of people, including many who are willing to fight the good fight. At its core, it's the definition of racism.

_________________
Curious Hair wrote:
I'm a big dumb shitlib baby


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:41 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:50 pm
Posts: 6721
pizza_Place: Parts Unknown
leashyourkids wrote:
This article is complete bullshit. For many years, I considered myself a liberal. But I, like many others, am tired of being told how awful I am simply for being white. There are tons of whites who recognize the fact that we have advantages in life and don't deny it. Yet somehow we need to be beaten over the head until we are zombies who hate ourselves for the "misfortune" of our birth as white people.

I'm down to help fight for equal rights for the oppressed, but it makes it hard when some mythical "whiteness" label tells me at every turn that my opinion doesn't matter.

The area I grew up in is pretty fucking poor. But it's rural poor, so according to Liberal royalty (aka the Clintons), it's not really poor. That shit gets exhausting, and it does nothing but alienate a good number of people, including many who are willing to fight the good fight. At its core, it's the definition of racism.



This is a pretty good take. I don't think those who play identity politics understand how shutting out potential allies (with the political/racial currency they may innately possess) ultimately sets the movement up for defeat.

_________________
Terry's Peeps wrote:
Have a terrible night and die in MANY fires.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:03 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Mon May 02, 2011 4:29 pm
Posts: 39604
Location: Everywhere
pizza_Place: giordanos
long time guy wrote:
ZephMarshack wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Coates was correct when he referenced safe spaces during racial discussions involving Trump. For instance it is much easier/safer to think of his victory as more of an Anti Hillary vote as opposed to a Pro Trump vote. It is easier to think of the birther movement as something promoted by Hillary Clinton and not him also. The vote for Trump had more to do with working class angst as opposed to racial backlash. This narrative has been consistently pushed even though post election polling showed that Hillary actually received a greater share of the vote from those making less than $50,000.

I'll grant right off the bat that the media's focus on the white working class has sucked for a plethora of reasons, including but not limited to the ones you cite. And it's more comforting for a general view of the US citizenry to continue to believe racism is something confined only to the periphery. That said, I'd suggest for much of Coates' largely white liberal centrist readership in The Atlantic and the press pundits who give him glowing reviews, it is in fact much easier to dismiss Trump voters as racists who could never have any hope of redemption.

Coates certainly understands racism as systematic, but essays like this just reinforce the current Democratic and liberal focus on racism as being a strictly individualist phenomenon and as something so ontologically primitive that it is impossible to confront at all through the dull work of coalition building and persuasion. It likewise reinforces the notion of politics consisting of good and bad people and makes the whole project of discussion disposable, with combative call-outs being a more cathartic replacement. It fits in nicely with the horrid demographic arguments so many Democratic strategists constantly trumpet, as if we just have to wait for the racist poors to die out and everything will then be hunky dory. Never mind the fact that people switched from Obama to Trump and never mind the fact that on many issues Trump is not negating but actually reinforcing Obama's legacy (which consists of the good and bad things he did in office) and never mind the fact that the main reason Hillary lost was because so many people in the Obama coalition stayed home altogether. It's instead far more comforting to believe the people failed the Democratic party and by extension the nation and that they can never be moved at all, rather than the Democratic party failing the people.

I'd suggest even Coates' work which most stridently portrays racism as systematic like the reparations essay still allows liberals this comfort because the proposal is so vague and unspecified that the main response to that essay isn't to actually advocate for reparation but instead sigh and reflect about the tragic failures of America without any change to the status quo whatsoever, most especially and importantly capitalism and the myth of meritocracy.

This is why I found the Haider essay I linked to on the first page as well as R.L. Stephens' criticism more compelling as they're about actual political action rather than the paralysis or mere reflection that so many middle and upper middle class liberals take away from his essays. Coates of course is free to write about whatever he wants and doesn't need to present a step-by-step plan for change in anything that he writes, but I worry the effect of them is that readers merely have their consciousness raised without changing any aspect of their lives at all.



I actually believe that Coates was on to something. The Republican Party has played identity politics more than anyone. When you look at the past 50 years it is they that have chosen to shun groups which help comprise "the others". They have absolutely no use for the black vote. Black politicians must take the oath of token in order to gain any traction. Immigrants are targeted lest they agree to wash dishes and cut grass first. Policies which seek to benefit minority groups are often targeted for extinction. Hate groups are often allowed to park somewhere on the fringes of the party without ever being rebuked. Their slogans often harken back to an era where lynching, racism, bigotry, and corrupted legal systems were the rule.

Republicans have rightly learned how to play the divisive game. They in essence throw rocks and hide their hands. Democrats indulge them but not enough in my book. Obama tip toed around it for 8 years and still was considered divisive by some on the right. Hillary didn't make the sale on it either. Democrats are fearful of ticking off the white working class by indulging in too much "race talk". Dates back to FDR which Coates correctly noted.


Did LTG just say black republicans are tokens? Ergo, there really can't be black republican voters?

_________________
We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

-Ronald Reagan


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:09 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
leashyourkids wrote:
This article is complete bullshit. For many years, I considered myself a liberal. But I, like many others, am tired of being told how awful I am simply for being white. There are tons of whites who recognize the fact that we have advantages in life and don't deny it. Yet somehow we need to be beaten over the head until we are zombies who hate ourselves for the "misfortune" of our birth as white people.

I'm down to help fight for equal rights for the oppressed, but it makes it hard when some mythical "whiteness" label tells me at every turn that my opinion doesn't matter.

The area I grew up in is pretty fucking poor. But it's rural poor, so according to Liberal royalty (aka the Clintons), it's not really poor. That shit gets exhausting, and it does nothing but alienate a good number of people, including many who are willing to fight the good fight. At its core, it's the definition of racism.



I get that you don't like being beaten over the head for past sins but whereas you merely talk about racism blacks have to live it. We don't have the choice of selectively choosing to discuss it. It's there and it's not just part of our past experience. It's present day also. We just elected a guy that sought to delegitimize the first black President simply because he is black. The vast majority of people on this board attempted to pooh pooh it by constantly referencing Hillary Clinton. When Coates talks about evasively handling subject matter that is it.


I would love to live in a world where I didn't have to experience it. A world Where I could simply talk about it. Frankly one of the reasons that blacks always bring up racism is because there is a tendency to sugar coat it whenever it arises. That's troublesome. either someone is telling you that it's life get over it, or they are saying that it's not as bad as you think quit overreacting,or they are denying it's racism at all. Again blacks live with this everyday. They don't have the luxury of simply discussing it.

I get what you're saying when you say that you don't want to be beaten over the head by it. It can t always be a guilt trip either. For me when I see people pooh pooh the racism of Trump as no big deal that's troubling. I don't care to hear about post racial and all that because it's false. It's phony. I would never vote for a person that expressed the level of bigotry that he displayed. It wasn't just against blacks either.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:13 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
pittmike wrote:
long time guy wrote:
ZephMarshack wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Coates was correct when he referenced safe spaces during racial discussions involving Trump. For instance it is much easier/safer to think of his victory as more of an Anti Hillary vote as opposed to a Pro Trump vote. It is easier to think of the birther movement as something promoted by Hillary Clinton and not him also. The vote for Trump had more to do with working class angst as opposed to racial backlash. This narrative has been consistently pushed even though post election polling showed that Hillary actually received a greater share of the vote from those making less than $50,000.

I'll grant right off the bat that the media's focus on the white working class has sucked for a plethora of reasons, including but not limited to the ones you cite. And it's more comforting for a general view of the US citizenry to continue to believe racism is something confined only to the periphery. That said, I'd suggest for much of Coates' largely white liberal centrist readership in The Atlantic and the press pundits who give him glowing reviews, it is in fact much easier to dismiss Trump voters as racists who could never have any hope of redemption.

Coates certainly understands racism as systematic, but essays like this just reinforce the current Democratic and liberal focus on racism as being a strictly individualist phenomenon and as something so ontologically primitive that it is impossible to confront at all through the dull work of coalition building and persuasion. It likewise reinforces the notion of politics consisting of good and bad people and makes the whole project of discussion disposable, with combative call-outs being a more cathartic replacement. It fits in nicely with the horrid demographic arguments so many Democratic strategists constantly trumpet, as if we just have to wait for the racist poors to die out and everything will then be hunky dory. Never mind the fact that people switched from Obama to Trump and never mind the fact that on many issues Trump is not negating but actually reinforcing Obama's legacy (which consists of the good and bad things he did in office) and never mind the fact that the main reason Hillary lost was because so many people in the Obama coalition stayed home altogether. It's instead far more comforting to believe the people failed the Democratic party and by extension the nation and that they can never be moved at all, rather than the Democratic party failing the people.

I'd suggest even Coates' work which most stridently portrays racism as systematic like the reparations essay still allows liberals this comfort because the proposal is so vague and unspecified that the main response to that essay isn't to actually advocate for reparation but instead sigh and reflect about the tragic failures of America without any change to the status quo whatsoever, most especially and importantly capitalism and the myth of meritocracy.

This is why I found the Haider essay I linked to on the first page as well as R.L. Stephens' criticism more compelling as they're about actual political action rather than the paralysis or mere reflection that so many middle and upper middle class liberals take away from his essays. Coates of course is free to write about whatever he wants and doesn't need to present a step-by-step plan for change in anything that he writes, but I worry the effect of them is that readers merely have their consciousness raised without changing any aspect of their lives at all.



I actually believe that Coates was on to something. The Republican Party has played identity politics more than anyone. When you look at the past 50 years it is they that have chosen to shun groups which help comprise "the others". They have absolutely no use for the black vote. Black politicians must take the oath of token in order to gain any traction. Immigrants are targeted lest they agree to wash dishes and cut grass first. Policies which seek to benefit minority groups are often targeted for extinction. Hate groups are often allowed to park somewhere on the fringes of the party without ever being rebuked. Their slogans often harken back to an era where lynching, racism, bigotry, and corrupted legal systems were the rule.

Republicans have rightly learned how to play the divisive game. They in essence throw rocks and hide their hands. Democrats indulge them but not enough in my book. Obama tip toed around it for 8 years and still was considered divisive by some on the right. Hillary didn't make the sale on it either. Democrats are fearful of ticking off the white working class by indulging in too much "race talk". Dates back to FDR which Coates correctly noted.


Did LTG just say black republicans are tokens? Ergo, there really can't be black republican voters?



Black Republicans have to denigrate and demean other blacks in order to be elected by Republican voters. Been part of the playbook for the past 30 years. Not exactly revelatory.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:21 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Mon May 02, 2011 4:29 pm
Posts: 39604
Location: Everywhere
pizza_Place: giordanos
Sounds like even given a hypothetical game changing swing in policies the republicans can never win the black vote back.

_________________
We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

-Ronald Reagan


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:23 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:10 am
Posts: 31948
As far as Coates goes there were many relevant points suchas: Discrepancies in the way black unemployment and white unemployment are perceived in this country. 2. Trump was able to say things that no black politician would dare get away with saying. 3. Mythology and glorification of the white working class overall.

there are other points that I could address but it will take too long.

Leash I get what you're saying and honestly I hate when blacks try and guilt trip all whites for the sins of racism. It's unfair. If I were white I'd be tired of it too.

_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:39 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:16 pm
Posts: 81627
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Why can't it just be that Hillary is horrible at running for office? Her one win was gift wrapped because of medical issues to her opponent. She let a no name like Obama not only beat her but by a significant margin. She had a tough battle with a guy who wasn't even a Democrat. She lost to a moron who probably didn't want to win.

I think it becomes pretty obvious that is why Trump won when his approval rating went so low so fast.

I'd say it's both. The Hillary thing lost the moderates. His base though.... well that's an entirely different discussion altogether


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:56 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:56 am
Posts: 32235
Location: A sterile, homogeneous suburb
pizza_Place: Pizza Cucina
@LTG: I don't want to quote everything as to muck up the thread, but here's my response:

Any even semi-educated white person realizes all of what you said. I realize that when a cop gives me shit for eating ice cream in a hotel parking lot, I can tell him to get fucked without being arrested. I realize that I'm less likely to be pulled over in the first place. I realize that I'm given more benefit of the doubt in society than any black man (all things being equal otherwise).

The part where I think you and others are off is that most white people realize these things. I'm not saying they all do, but most do.

And I think that far too frequently, if a white person isn't some sort of self-deprecating racial activist, they are seen as not understanding this, and that's completely unfair. Most reasonable white people have to do the same things most reasonable black people do - get up, go to work, talk shit about co-workers, come home, laugh at Trump, and go to bed after numbing their daily concerns with a glass of hooch.

Those same white people are cognizant of the fact that their life is at least slightly priveliged due to their whiteness. But that doesn't change the fact that they're dry humping the American Dream and getting less out of it than they thought they would, regardless of race.

Now, they may be getting less out of it than they thought for a variety of reasons. Maybe they're not as financially independent as they thought they'd be. Maybe their grocery bill is still 50% of their income despite all the advertisements and sitcoms that made them think they'd be Kings. Maybe their deadbeat brother-in-law borrowed money and skipped town. Maybe their child has a debilitating disease that they cope with every day.

The point is that everyone deals with immense troubles, whether they live in a white picket "everything is great here" fence of a facade or they live in a shitty bungalow on the South side or they live in a beat-to-fuck trailer that they inherited from their aunt who raised them in Galesburg, Illinois.

So, imagine how those trailer-dwellers or those semi-suburban parents with sick kids feel when they're constantly bombarded with messages about how they are priveliged. Their lives fucking suck too, and yet they constantly have to be told how they don't really know what it's like to live an underpriveliged life. You would also be irate.

Lastly, what does constantly shaming white people do? "Whiteness" isn't going to disappear, nor should it. MANY white people face the same trials and tribulations as minorities.

You know what would solve it? If we just judged everyone on an individual basis and had an understanding that some ethnic groups - on average - have to overcome a bit more to get to where they are... and we continue, within reason, to eliminate that gap that separates those groups.

Blaming white people constantly only works to undermine the overall goal.

_________________
Curious Hair wrote:
I'm a big dumb shitlib baby


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:59 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:56 am
Posts: 32235
Location: A sterile, homogeneous suburb
pizza_Place: Pizza Cucina
long time guy wrote:
Leash I get what you're saying and honestly I hate when blacks try and guilt trip all whites for the sins of racism. It's unfair. If I were white I'd be tired of it too.


I know you do, and that's why I respect you. I think if we made it more about economics, we could be partners in crime (so to speak)

_________________
Curious Hair wrote:
I'm a big dumb shitlib baby


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Ta-Nehisi Coates
PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:07 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Mon May 02, 2011 4:29 pm
Posts: 39604
Location: Everywhere
pizza_Place: giordanos
Good stuff.

_________________
We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

-Ronald Reagan


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 238 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... 8  Next

All times are UTC - 6 hours [ DST ]


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group