The tormented worldview of Ta-nehisi Coates
Ta-nehisi Coates is a writer for The Atlantic and a pundit who skyrocketed to fame in recent years for his writings on race in America. He has been awarded a MacArthur genius grant and showered with effusive praise from the mainstream media and liberals alike. Coates is a powerful writer indeed. But are his insights actually original? Are they supported by data? Do they merit the attention he has gotten?
I recently read his Atlantic piece, "The First White President," several times. In this essay, Coates essentially argues that the Trump election and presidency can best be understood through the lens of white supremacy. He outright states that most white Trump voters are certainly not racist but rather argues that the notion of white entitlement, a nostalgia for a less brown America, drove Trump to the presidency. For Coates, Trump's election was a step backwards for America's march towards racial justice, one that he believes was bound to happen, as a reaction to our first black President.
Although I sympathize with his point of view, I am a data driven person, and I cannot square Coates' argument with actual data and logic.
Let us consider the following:
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Trump did worse with whites and better with minorities than Romney did.
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Trump won 200 counties that voted twice for Obama.
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At multiple points in the campaign, Hillary was leading by double digits nationwide, even closing the gap in red states such as Texas, Utah, Montana, Missouri, Indiana. Did voters "magically" become racially conscious in the last few weeks of the campaign?
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Obama had an approval rating of around 60% in 2016, and most likely he would have crushed Trump. How does that square with Coates' theory?
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Coates argues that Trump won with whites across all income groups. That's true, but Republicans have won the white vote in every election since 1968, so that's a moot point.
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Coates dismisses the economic angst argument in explaining Trump's rise. He points out that the median Trump voter has a higher income than the median Clinton voter. This is true but ignores two facts: first, Republican voters on average has always been more affluent, at least, in the modern era, and second, the demographic group with whom Trump lost the most ground compared to Romney were college whites making $250K+/year.
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Hillary was white, not black.
Furthermore, I find Coates to be a dangerous pundit, insofar as he is being showered with money, praise, and media attention, for perpetuating an endless cycle of racial anger, clothed in the veneer of eloquent prose. Coates projects his inner turmoil onto America, exhorting us to see everything through the lens of race, to blame society's core problems on whites. In short, he is a literary pied-piper of the race baiter variety, a modern-day Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton but far more intelligent and articulate.
Him and Shaun King are morons whose ignorance isn't called out by the "woke" crowd for fear of being labeled racist.
Coates, Shaun King, Jamelle Bouie, Tim Wise, are all peas from the same pod. They have made a living from stoking racial grievances, demonizing white people, and peddling in racial hysteria.
Ta-nehisi Coates is a very brilliant guy who makes some fantastic points. I disagree with him and his world view in an overall sense, but hand-waiving his point of view as "stoking racial grievances, demonizing white people, and peddling in racial hysteria" is just being purposefully hyperbolic, @Rufus1234"
Likewise, timetogetserious , you are perfectly capable of disagreeing with his conclusions, as I do, without being called a racist.
Not sure that OP is "hand-waving" his point of view away. I think he made a pretty reasoned counter-argument to Coates' thesis rooted in empirics. I do agree that he ultimately lacks nuance simply leaping to assume that because Coates is a black writer writing about white racism, that he's a race-baiter.
That being said, you're just as wrong; Coates is far from brilliant. He's just another talented writer who has figured out that he can use eloquence and sophistication to cover up insufficiently accurate or rigorous thinking. If he was brilliant, he would point out the nuances of the issue at hand, rather than playing to the SJW peanut gallery and advancing the dangerous narrative that Trump and his voters are simply "racist." There is something to be said for Trump re-igniting white nationalism, and that's a real issue to be discussed. But there is no empirical grounding to assert that white nationalism really drove Trump's election. One of my friends is doing a PhD at the Kennedy school, and has done a really in-depth analysis of the election, and most of the white nationalist vote was irrelevant vis a vis the general election. It may have played a role in the primary though. If Coates was truly "brilliant" and not intellectually lazy, he might've engaged with the empirics, might've pointed out some of the nuances, and perhaps mentioned that a lot of the voters he's assuming are "racist" or "white nationalist" were simply populist. Trump won the election because Clinton was too secure and abandoned the economic message to drive on social issues. People who were facing economic and political isolation were more unhappy about the economy than ever, and she ignored them and what mattered to them. Trump, although unpolished and crass, focused almost entirely on the issues that mattered to them. As a truly "brilliant" professor at Dartmouth wrote in the NYT, what he did was open a second dimension to the American political landscape, upsetting the single dimensional ideological equilibrium that had been stable for decades. He fed off disastisfaction with a gridlocked Washington, with special interests, with policy path dependence, with a big-city political bias, with free-trade, with high-minded American policy.
What Coates is, is opportunistic. He knows that he can write an eloquent article that plays to the liberal byline for the election. He knows he can gain fame and acclaim for it, and it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. Either that, or he's been so blinded by the wool of the out of touch liberal establishment that he is drinking the kool-aid (no racist joke intended) and really thinks Trump got elected because white people are racist. In which case, idiot more aptly describes him.
You seem to be making two separate points here. One I agree with and the other I vehemently oppose.
I agree with the premise that racism, whether implicit, institutional, or other did not sway the outcome of the election. The data you’ve supplied seems to support this idea. However, I think you are conflating claims, at least based on how you presented them.
You seem to be making the case, and I agree with you, that racial prejudice did not influence the election. This is very different from Coates broader point, which, at its essence, is that nostalgia for white homogeneity and hegemony is part of Trump’s appeal. Both of these can be true. In fact, the election outcome has no bearing on whether the latter point is indeed true or not.
Secondly, I have to fervently disagree with your final conclusion. I, like many others, do not always agree with Coates’s perspective, but still regard it as valuable nonetheless. He sees the world through a prism of race and power relations. While this restricts his analysis and ultimately his perspective, it does not entirely invalidate it. I do not feel that I have to agree with everything a person says in order to feel as though they have something to teach.
I'm reading a book called Everybody Lies. It's about using big data (google trends being one of the data sources) to reach conclusions that were previously very difficult to prove, based on the flaws in self reported data.
It addresses the issue on whether or not racism has influenced elections in the past.
Here is a paper that the author, Seth Stephenson-Davidowitz wrote addressing the issue:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51d894bee4b01caf88ccb4f3/t/51d89…
The author himself does a much better job of explaining the argument than I can, so please watch this 3 minute video explaining how he believes racism affected this election:
http://www.msnbc.com/shift/watch/here-s-what-we-re-googling-in-the-age-…
He's admittedly "obsessed with Trump" so take it with a grain of salt. I highly recommend reading the book if you'd like to find out more.
Will definitely pick it up. Thanks for steering me towards it.
But this is based on what evidence? The guy is a black liberal Democrat, yet he purports to speak for white conservatives? I know a lot of Trump voters and I can't think of a single one of them who had any kind of racial motivations at all--the vast majority of them would have voted Republican anyway (they were Republicans) or they voted against Hillary Clinton. This kind of intellectually bankrupt garbage is similar to how Hollywood portrayed Christians in the 2000s as raving homophobes when I grew up in a conservative Christian church and never once saw or heard of a single homophobic incident or even a statement.
People create a false dichotomy and create in their head an "other" that often times doesn't exist. Coates is a partisan, left-wing Democrat who divines the absolute worst intentions onto those with whom he disagrees.
I'm neither backing the argument or accusing these people you know of anything, but there is a strong change that you would not be able to tell their biases just based on "knowing them."
Most people with negative racial motivations don't deny the holocaust, wear white hoods, get confederate flag tattoos, etc. Most prejudice is much further under the surface and not admitted publicly, or even acknowledged internally, for obvious reasons.
You say that would have voted Republican anyway or they would have voted against Hillary Clinton, and when pressed, all of them would claim that as their rationale. There is simply no way of you knowing if they really voted for Trump because his racial dog whistles appealed to them or not, just like there is no way of you knowing if someone voted for Clinton because they thought she was a better candidate or if they were a...
To my knowledge, there is no definitive way to quantify or substantiate peoples’ intent. I don’t believe I could convince you, to your satisfaction, that racial motivations were a prevailing factor for a portion of the constituency. Again, I’m not implying that it was determinative factor in the election’s outcome. One could have voted republican regardless, but still have found solace in Trump’s unabashed approach and rhetoric towards racial minorities; these two points need to be unstitched.
Also, it doesn’t have to be the singular force behind his ascent in order to be extremely disconcerting to racial minorities alike. Even if Trump lost, the 2016 election has clearly emboldened a racist faction of the Alt-Right. I don’t believe Coates is examining the election through the prism of race, which would be blinkered and misguided. He’s doing the inverse; he’s looking at the evolution and unfolding of race relations in this country through the prism of the recent election. On these grounds, I think what he’s saying is worth considering, whether or not you subscribe to it.
Lastly, I don’t think he’s nearly as partisan as you’ve portrayed. If Trump would have employed the same tactics as a Democratic candidate, I have little doubt that he would have been as quick and fierce in meeting it with condemnation.
You bring up fair points.
What do we mean by "nostalgia" for white hegemony? Did Trump campaign on giving tax breaks just for whites, favors for whites, locking up minorities in internment camps? He did run hard against illegal immigration and fighting against radical Islam, but I don't see how this equates to "white hegemony." In essence, liberals are now conflating conservative positions with white racism rather than engaging substantively on the issues. It's fine to say that you disagree with the Trump travel ban as a policy matter, but don't be disingenuous by calling it a Muslim Ban. It's fine to argue that we should extend DACA, but don't say that those who support enforcement of immigration laws are doing so out of racial animus towards non-whites.
If you think Coates' point is valuable, that's your opinion. His argument though has been made millions of times, albeit Coates is a really good writer who has discovered his inner voice. Are there certain elements of Coates' worldview that is correct? Yes. The main critique here is twofold: Coates' paradigm falls dangerously short of explaining what is really going on in this country, and that Coates does not provide meaningful solutions for the black community.
I think, as is typical, that the truth resides somewhere in the middle. I agree that the sanctimonious identity politics that the left has engaged in has been overwrought and detrimental to their own cause.
The Muslim Ban moniker, however, is largely a product of Trump's own statements and press releases: ""Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." It's hard to take umbrage with the name, when Trump, with his own words, clearly established an intent to target Muslims. Plus, these sorts of deliberate monikers are just standard political strategy that occurs across the spectrum.
Although I take some exception to the example, I understand your broader point. There has been a creeping intolerance and absolutist form of progressive thinking in the far left that's noxious and alienating for those who carry different values. It consumed the liberal economic message in the 2016 election, and if it's it not attenuated soon it will continue to hollow out blue-collar and middle-class support.
Trump's election had to do with one thing--Hillary Clinton. Clinton was a horrible, atrocious, unbelievably bad candidate. Trump had significantly fewer votes in Wisconsin than Bush in 2004, for example, but easily won Wisconsin where Bush lost.
Coates is the classic case of drawing a conclusion and then searching for the evidence rather than letting the evidence speak for itself. Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, and had the Dems not nominated her there would be a Democrat president today.
That is simplistic to the point of absurdity though, man. No election ever has to do with just one thing, much less Presidential elections that feature 2 year+ campaigns and are covered 24/7 by increasingly biased media on both sides.
Trump's election had to do with an exhaustive plethora of factors, one of which was the relative weakness of Clinton as a candidate, but that is hardly the only factor. Economics played a massive role into peoples' decisions, as did their world view and America's place in it, and yes, racial factors, whether that was hard-r "Racism" or simply differing views on race and its importance in society, also played a part.
There were near infinite events that all came together to produce the outcome that exists now. It is not simply "Clinton" and you can't claim that a different Democrat, much less Bernie, would have had led to a Trump loss.
Hillary Clinton was clearly the leading factor in Trump's victory. Trump's favorability rating on election day in Rust Belt states he won is approximately the same as today (from August, although the numbers haven't changed much)--in other words, bad then and bad now:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/trump-favorable-rust-belt-electi…
How else do you explain a Trump victory in states where his favorability rating on election day was 40% or sub-40%? It's called Hillary Clinton. That's not "absurdly simplistic"--that's basic logic.
Trump received fewer votes than Romney in Wisconsin, but while Romney lost the state by 5.8%, Trump won it by 0.8%. So it was a function of both Trump crushing it with working class whites (his 39 point margin with that group is even larger than Reagan's margin in 1984) and lower turnout from the Obama coalition.
If Coates' argument was simply that there were white racists who voted for Trump, no argument from me. But his thesis goes much deeper than that. Coates sees white racism and supremacy as a permanent feature of American society, an original sin that cannot be washed away, and will indefinitely infect every corner of our country. Coates does not recognize the tremendous racial progress we have made, nor does he believe that such progress should be applauded. For Coates, whites are complicit-consciously or subconsciously-in this great crime and must be held accountable. Any result or policy that may adversely affect blacks are the direct result of white supremacy. Just like how Marxists see all of human history as a struggle between the capitalists and the proletariats, Coates sees American history as one of whites vs minorities.
Correct. Trump did crush it with working-class whites. Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here, but my larger point is that if the Democrats had nominated almost any other Democrat they would have won. Trump was wildly unpopular on election day and pulled out the victory because the Democrats nominated the one person in America who could have possibly been a worse candidate than Trump. The Democrats, in their cognitive dissonance regarding the election outcome, try to explain away their and Clinton's utter incompetence by scapegoating white's and their alleged racism. The Democrats ignore reality at their own peril--as this thread demonstrates, they've drawn the exact wrong conclusions from their 2016 loss.
Totally agree. The only thing I can add to this is to say that Coates and his cohorts subscribe to a wicked philosophy. It's not even just intellectually bankrupt; it's evil. And this is Ben Shapiro's point--the left's campaign of intersectionality, of pitting Americans against Americans and ranking victim groups, has led predictably to a small but vocal minority of white people pushing back in preaching their own evil identity politics. All identity politics is evil.
In my eyes, this is a relatively fair characterization of Coates worldview. It may be one-dimensional, which I think is largely your point, but within the purview of this dimension there is a considerable amount of truth to be sourced.
Racism and race relations have clearly progressed from their ugly inception. But as part of this evolution, racism has also evolved and mutated into forms that are less overt but just as pernicious. Racism, in the form of slavery, was at first institutional. When the emancipation was enacted, the vestiges of institutional racism manifested themselves in structural racism. This took the form of Jim Crow laws, segregation, severe redlining practices in real-estate, ect. In modern day form, racism is largely implicit. It's been swept out of daylight and into the subconscious. Perhaps, these are stages of progress, but the core substance does still remain. I don't think that Coates is entirely irrational for believing that continued mutations are as likely, or more likely, than total eradication.
NO LIVES MATTER.
Literally. Fuck most people.
Fuck NONTARGET birches!
The deviation from traditional conservative/republican politics, in my mind holds some truths that there was a necessary shift that Trump could bring to the politics. So, there is a question of what was it? Because, it wasn't competence that got Trump elected. He was clearly the most earthshaking candidate, but what was it that pushed it? Since we all know that he spoke out in a controversial way on a lot of topics that involve race, that was clearly a winning strategy. It might not have been the deciding factor, but it was certainly very much apart of his appeal which separated him from the most fringe of republican candidates, to the most conservative/moderate. Mind that there were about 17 candidates in the republican primary in 2016.
Trump won the nomination and the Presidency by rejecting the Washington status quo of the past generation. His candidacy was a rejection of Bill Clinton's neo-liberal economic policies (especially on trade), W Bush's neoconservative wars, and Obama's cultural and social liberalism. The most important issue that set Trump apart during the GOP primary was immigration, the "radical" belief that America is a sovereign nation with sovereign borders that should enforce its existing immigration laws faithfully. Unfortunately, lot of the other GOP candidates are beholden to corporate lobbyists who want cheap illegal labor.
We should also remember that millions of Americans voted for Trump in spite of his outrageous comments, not because of it. Both Trump and Hillary were disliked; the Trump voters weighed the pros and cons of each and concluded that it's better to have change in the form of a vulgar loudmouth businessman than the status quo exemplified by someone who kept crowing about how it was her turn to be President because she's a woman.
You make a good point about Trump shaking up the status quo. But, isn't that the point of what existed before? The politicians with composure, who exemplify modern training to conduct matters of American interest, foreign and domestic, were the status quo. Leaving that behind for Trump is the same as choosing a more unstable world. He's opening the floodgates for extremists and leading us down a path of chaos and no order. It's an issue.
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