Cornel West Gets Real About His Beef With Ta-nehisi Coates
by Devyn Springer
The world (or, rather, the social media world) seemed to have been set still for a second due to a moment of thin chaos; the internet was cleaved for the first time since Beyonce'south surprise album, and nearly anybody seemed to look around to collectively hash out brother Cornel West's recent article, which is a heavy-handed critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates' politics and his latest book. The article, in which W's opening paragraph refers to Coates' politics equally "apolitical pessimism," went viral instantly, and the responses to it likewise have fabricated great rounds across the internet.
Every bit someone deeply interested in critique, and in love with words, my initial excitement to read vivid responses and well-put takes on the entire situation turned to abysmal thwarting and my ain kind of political pessimism for the state of Black politics in 2017.
I certainly did not want to nor plan on writing most this situation, donned a beef by social media. I felt that me adding my iii cents on the thing would be like an unneeded form of Black inception: a response to Coates' response to Westward, and also to the responses of that interaction as a whole. However, later reading a recent piece for Slate by writer Ismail Muhammad, who writes in response to the recent unavoidable beef between writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West, I felt the need to add words and a critical response to the responses.
Muhammad states in the opening paragraph:
"Alongside the likes of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison and, of class, James Baldwin, West's work is role of the canon that teaches younger writers how to recall and write about race. It is incommunicable to imagine a author like Ta-Nehisi Coates having come into existence without a book like West's 'Race Matters,' which, in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, helped popularize the thesis that anti-Blackness racism was inextricably entangled with most every aspect of American politics and civilisation – including, most crucially, our backer economic system."
I agree largely with this argument and, moreover, would propose that those listed writers and the handful of early on race scholars in this category non simply taught us how to call up and write near race, just also attempted to show u.s. how to talk about and act on race and racial discrimination; they were not merely concerned with theorizing, historicizing, conceptualizing or writing almost race, rather offering solutions, alternatives, challenges and transgressions; they were audience-conscious, praxis-oriented in many cases, and calculated in the power they analyzed.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison and James Baldwin and the handful of early race scholars in this category not only taught us how to think and write almost race, merely also attempted to bear witness us how to talk almost and human activity on race and racial discrimination; they were not just concerned with theorizing, historicizing, conceptualizing or writing about race, rather offering solutions, alternatives, challenges and transgressions.
All the same, information technology is in Muhammad's next sentences and statement thereafter that led me hither, writing the slice I didn't want to. In what tin can only be described as a dramatic description of power dynamic, Muhammad writes:
"Due west's importance to contemporary Black thought is what makes his recent Guardian broadside confronting Coates so disheartening. Not only is it a example of i of Black idea's elder statesmen attempting a hatchet task on a younger author, Westward thoroughly botches the task via disingenuous readings from which a reader is tempted to conclude i of two things: Either he hasn't read 'We Were Eight Years in Power' very closely, or he has intentionally misrepresented Coates' writing in an attempt to eternalize his own brand."
I do non normally prefer cake-quoting unabridged passages, just a statement like this, constitute in the opening section of an article seeking to dissect a now-heated debacle betwixt Black intellectuals, is misguided at all-time, scarily biased at worst, and needing to be read in full to empathize its weight in intellectual dishonesty. An inherent dichotomy is beingness fabricated, in much of the aforementioned vein as found in Michael Eric Dyson'due south sloppy 2015 appeal to liberalism, that positions West as some canon gatekeeping, academically authoritative figure, and simply mean person with immoral and ill intentions.
Moreover, it constructs Coates as someone who did not receive a huge McArthur grant which helped catapult him into fame and platforms like the vast majority of u.s.a. Black writers will never feel, his position as a national correspondent at one of the largest and most world-renowned journalistic outlets, and the several years he has spent existence adorned by white liberals with the championship of "phonation of Black America," was praised by drone-operator-in-master himself Barack Obama and, more recently, was described as "the laureate for Black lives." In brusk, pretending that Coates' electric current stature, platform and social upper-case letter are not comparable, if not far greater than that of West is simply dishonest.
To be concise with my words and non beat around any burning bushes: The sensationalization of West's words is null more than a dramatized projection. The saying "a hit canis familiaris hollers" rings true in the way that this harsh, yet honest and nowhere near new critique of Coates by West has been made into a spectacle and deemed "footling."
However, Westward's words are far from "reckless," as Muhammad describes them, or "picayune rivalry" as The New Yorker'due south Jelani Cobb nastily wrote on Twitter in a thread seeping with a personal disdain for W. Positions, or rather the cocky-sustaining methods of the Black bourgeois liberal class, become immensely articulate in these responses to West.
To assume a critique as "piffling" for challenging the [lack of] attention placed on the lives of those in the Third World, dying at the easily of U.S. imperialism and those domestically who received structural violence that was pushed to the back burner of an Obama-era plough-a-blind-eye Black liberal form is to assume that the lives of those people must as well exist nothing more than mere "petty" argument forage – a point of rhetoric – and thus, non a contention of our own humanity. There is nothing "piffling" in West's reading of Coates; the issues of imperialism, cis-hetero-patriarchal domination and capitalism, every bit well as Coates' mass appeal to a largely white group of centrists and liberals alike, should be heavily critiqued.
To assume a critique equally "petty" for challenging the [lack of] attention placed on the lives of those in the Third World, dying at the easily of U.Southward. imperialism and those domestically who received structural violence that was pushed to the back burner of an Obama-era turn-a-blind-eye Black liberal class is to assume that the lives of those people must likewise be null more than mere "little" argument provender – a point of rhetoric – and thus, not a contention of our own humanity.
Of course, West himself is no saint either. As someone who touts the line of vague radicalism, ambiguously resting somewhere between democratic socialist and Marxist while rallying behind reformist candidates like Bernie Sanders, he opens himself for similar levels of critique. I have heard West speak a handful of times and when I last heard him speak, it was at a rally-briefing-panel type of thing happening in D.C. in support of Bernie.
Equally someone who sits much left of Bernie on virtually every position (I'chiliad much more Monica Moorehead/Lamont Lilly than Bernie Sanders/Nina Turner on any solar day), West's endorsement of whatever Democratic candidate feels like a contradiction to the politics he once proposed in "Race Matters," "The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought" and "Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Confronting Imperialism," likewise as to the politics he harps on Coates for. In responding to West's piece itself, I would agree with the conclusion of Coates as someone leaning towards neoliberalism, but would reserve the title equally neoliberalism'south "face" of the Blackness freedom struggle for any i of these blue belong activists who've been on CNN and campaigned for a Clinton more times than I can count on my fingers. And, to go even further, his own gendered language, leadership and writing could exist called to question a few times as well for teetering too thinly betwixt charismatic and masculinist.
While I sit with and discuss these critiques openly and often in chat and in my classroom with folks, I nevertheless respect W magnificently for his actual work in activism, both historically and currently. He uses his platform for adept, raises money for groups and events that are needed, was nowadays for protests in Baltimore, Ferguson, aided h2o protectors at Standing Rock, and was one of those faith leaders saved past Antifa at contempo Charlottesville.
And I believe the larger question around criticism, deciding when it is in "good faith" and when someone is just "hating on" someone, as Charles Mudede unsaid of Due west in writing for the Stranger, is when and why such criticisms are implored. Are they in response to something or someone? Are they defensively ad hominem in nature, and would they have been publicly expressed otherwise?
Because, in reading the multitudes of responses to West from Black conservative writers jumping to defend Coates, a multitude of critiques of Westward are lacing the lines of these lowly scathing hot takes. Everything from mention of his past friendship with Tavis Smiley to assumptions that West fundamentally misunderstood Coates' latest book, which started this debacle, to invoking West'southward position every bit a professor as some foreign buck confronting his defence of poor people.
All in all, the vitriol and somewhat laughable outrage confronting West has been on of personal contention, not academic, political nor literary, which happens to be the same argument being used against Westward'south words to Coates. It reminds me of the way Hillary Clinton supporters take dog-piled Susan Sarandon for over a year now over her refusal to vote for the Clinton war machine: It is a magnificently laughable shit evidence, in which an unabridged class of well rested Democratic stooges are upset that i small flea in a sea of fur decided to bite.
Some other bespeak that cannot exist overlooked is West's employ of the give-and-take "neoliberal" and the seemingly visceral avoidance of its application by those who, well, are neoliberals. When discussing neoliberalism – a term that is not new but easily over-applied due to its wide nature – we are discussing the socioeconomic relation of individual entities, both corporations and persons, to public buying, economic development and capitalist contest.
As writer Eve Ewing succinctly put information technology on Twitter, neoliberalism is "the idea that club benefits most when people, ideas and services are governed by marketplace competition wherein those virtually deserving ascension to the elevation." Thus, inside this common formulation of the credo, it becomes a booster not only for capitalism, but for encouragement of marginalized individuals and communities to engage in and even support the backer motorcar.
As writer Eve Ewing succinctly put it on Twitter, neoliberalism is "the idea that order benefits about when people, ideas and services are governed by market competition wherein those most deserving rise to the top."
Much of this criticism of Coates for beingness a "neoliberal" comes for his conceptualizations of Barack Obama'southward power, whether symbolically or literal. Having read several of Coates' past essays, which almost always go viral, likewise every bit his award-winning 2015 book "Betwixt the World and Me," I accept admittedly only read about three quarters of his latest book, "We Were 8 Years in Power."
Merely even having not finished this current read, resting on his past work, his marveling at Barack Obama's "symbolic" power has always been troubling to me; Coates often steps to the signal where he should grab Barack by the collar of his shirt to scold him, yet steps abroad every time. In his October essay, "The First White President," which is fatigued from his new volume, Coates puts forth the notion that Trump's presidency is a big scale form of white backfire, stating: "Replacing Obama is not enough – Trump has made the negation of Obama's legacy the foundation of his ain. And this likewise is whiteness."
Coates' marveling at Barack Obama'south "symbolic" power has always been troubling to me; he often steps to the point where he should grab Barack past the collar of his shirt to scold him, yet steps away every time.
A formulation and conclusion as such can merely exist fully realized by first undergoing two political notions.
The starting time is the idea that whiteness can exist delinked and extracted from the position of president of the U.s.a. at all. That whiteness, every bit a relation to grade, a relation to the ways of production, a racial location of dominance, and a socio-political, institutional centeredness is not sewn into the very fabrics of the White House in its entirety.
From its inception, the presidency has been antonymous to this notion. A role congenital on a foundation of Native genocide, slavery, purposely constructed legal systems and institutions, the U.S. presidency is and always will be a powerhouse of hegemonic civilization that perpetuates whiteness as the standard.
Even when we have Black faces in the White House, even when a Ben Carsen is allowed to pace pes on the campus, even when folks sloppily, as West points out about Coates, compare Barack Obama to Malcolm X, there is all the same no denying that whiteness is inextricable from the presidency of the The states of Amerika so long as this country exists.
The 2nd notion is that Barack Obama'due south legacy, both his material and symbolic deportment while acting every bit U.Southward. president, really did transgress against whiteness. Surely, we can understand the white backlash that may accept led to a Trump presidency without dipping into intellectual dishonesty to paste a false anti-whiteness legacy against Barack.
This is 1 of the biggest reasons nosotros must dead the conversations on Barack's "symbolic power," because it gives manner for massive intellectual dishonesty on his legacy and excuses for his egregious capitalist, imperialist politics (as West states: "the 563 drone strikes, the assassination of U.S. citizens with no trial, the 26,171 bombs dropped on five Muslim-majority countries in 2016 and the 550 Palestinian children killed with U.South. supported planes in 51 days, etc.").
All of these imperialist actions, from consistent drone strikes to the destabilization of Libya to the record breaking deportations of immigrants, despite Coates' description of Obama'southward tenure equally "i of the most scandal-complimentary administrations," should be seen not only as massive scandals, merely pillars that are key to upholding whiteness as it manifests through violence. Whiteness is not some abstract entity we must gaze upon with pity and pessimism, as Coates does. Rather it's a relation to capitalism, white supremacy and cis-hetero-patriarchy that manifests through violence, violence which Barack Obama's "symbolic" something was praised for.
All of these imperialist actions, from consistent drone strikes to the destabilization of Libya to the tape breaking deportations of immigrants, despite Coates' clarification of Obama's tenure as "i of the nigh scandal-gratuitous administrations," should exist seen not simply as massive scandals, but pillars that are central to upholding whiteness as it manifests through violence.
Thus, the symbolic power assessed and seemingly praised past Coates, those defending him, and the likes of similar politicians and writers is neoliberal in nature when it inadvertently praises Obama'south role in commercialism, when it inadvertently (and directly, often) supports Obama'south "climb" to the tiptop of this organization that steps on millions more of united states.
Making racism, and therefore whiteness, an abstract and seemingly detached reality is the only mode one can understand West's criticisms as "petty." If anything, the metaphysical sense that he writes in and the often pessimistic conceptualizations he arrives at are the truly "petty" adventures, wherein he trades material and dialectic for metaphysical and flowery linguistic communication.
Discussing Coates' idealized metaphysical view of racism for Viewpoint Mag before this twelvemonth, organizer and writer R.Fifty. Stephen states:
"For millions of poor Black people, racism is the corrosive water pipes poisoning their bodies. Schoolhouse closures, crumbling and unstable housing, and all the intimately practical things necessary for everyday life are the measure of racism. These racist realities are not separable from questions of class. In fact, they are expressions of form politics. The racialized tragedies faced daily past the masses crave the states to embrace class struggle, not Coates'southward demobilizing metaphysical maxims well-nigh how white people 'must ultimately cease themselves.' Solidarity from below, between deli workers, truck drivers, secretaries and whatever number of everyday people is worth magnitudes more special acknowledgement from elites."
Which leads me to my terminal and final function, which seems to be missing from everyone'south defensive pieces responding to the "beef": If not those like Westward, then who is to concur those similar Coates accountable? In the creation of W as a boogeyman or "fallen" man, equally was similarly done years ago around his comments on Barack Obama that did not sit well with Blackness liberals, we have lost the notion of accountability.
Coates is non an organizer or an activist. And, every bit far equally I am enlightened, West is non an organizer, simply is at least seen as some form of celebrity activist by popular standards of today (although, when the bulk of your "activism" surrounds presidential elections and campaigning, I challenge that application fully). This is not to say one is ameliorate than the other, rather that their ears are conspicuously to the basis in crucially dissimilar spaces.
Thus, the question of who they heed to in lodge to hold themselves and exist held accountable must besides be crucially different. While ane may be critiqued and hailed by the academy equally what seems like a sole source of affidavit, the other is concerned with the vocalisation that arises upwards from the grass. And while some might bemoan this as "unfair" to Coates, that is indeed often the nature of truth.
Both of these cis-het men we've spent a week discussing are seen every bit Blackness intellectuals, with West having taken up great infinite over the past few decades as the philosophical representation of Black America in many aspects (though many have profoundly challenged this). And while both of these cis-het men accept taken on their corresponding roles equally Blackness intellectuals, there is a key departure in understanding each.
This difference and its importance comes into play in the philosophy of West himself, which was deeply influenced by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci's concept of the intellectual, and their role in society, equally seen in West's works such as "Prophetic Fragments" and "Breaking Staff of life." Post-obit in Gramsci's philosophical model, West divides the public intellectual into the "organic" intellectual and the "traditional" intellectual, and applies this to what he sees equally a crisis for Black leadership today, stating that the former intellectuals are "activistic and engaged" and deeply concerned with applying the abstract to the everyman, while the latter are "nesting in comfortable places far removed from the realities of the common life" and "academic and unattached."
Thus, one should understand this distinction, which has guided West'due south political life and views of Black leadership for several decades now, as the means through which his criticisms of Coates can exist situated within. With West, his criticisms and harsh handlings of truth are always for the purpose of some moral, spiritually guided leadership he feels is his duty to press upon the traditional intellectual, to "hold fire" to their feet and make them dance for the people.
With W, his criticisms and harsh handlings of truth are ever for the purpose of some moral, spiritually guided leadership he feels is his duty to press upon the traditional intellectual, to "hold burn down" to their feet and make them dance for the people.
And who is to say this is wrong? Westward in his ain words admits his ability to flop between the organic and traditional intellectual, hoisting it as a strength of his, stating:
"When it comes to abstract, theoretical reflection, I use Marx, Weber, Frankfurt theorists, Foucault and so on. When it comes to speaking with the Blackness masses, I utilise Christian narratives and stories, a language meaningful to them only filtered through and informed by intellectual developments from de Tocqueville to Derrida. When it comes to the academy itself, there is yet some other kind of linguistic communication, abstract but frequently atheoretical, since social theorizing is mostly shunned; philosophers are only ill-equipped to talk about social theory: They know Wittgenstein but not Weber, they know J.L. Austin simply not Marx."
It doesn't thing whether we believe in this stardom of intellectuals or non (we should) considering West does, and he believes himself to be in the organic intellectual category, fifty-fifty if questionably so. Thus, his placement of Coates in the opposing category, which is inherently applied if not stated, means that only others in the traditional intellectual category, or those who can code switch into that linguistic communication, are able to communicate proper critique to Coates and push him further.
In an obviously intentional characterization of West, many responses to his piece have too left out mention of his hour long interview with The Root from Monday, in which he admits that he and "brother" Coates had a conversation on the phone prior to him writing the Guardian commodity. I have merely met West a handful of times, simply I can imagine that that phone conversation had a "call in" nature to it rather than a "call out" tone.
In the interview with The Root, West clearly refers to Coates as his "brilliant" brother who is from the "same tradition" as he is, admits they both fail often, that he pressed him personally on Coates' views on Obama, and voiced his deep disagreement on the notion of a "Good Negro Authorities" Coates toys with. To assume that his intentions are of ill-conjecture, or based in some ignorance of Coates' fundamental positions, is nonsensical at best and intellectually quack at worst.
Truthfully, I cannot round out this exploration of Coates, West and the bushes burning around them without mention of the (appalling) response of Coates that was given via social media. Instead of one of the most stylistically developed writers of our time taking to pen to respond to West, or entering a podcast, or calling any media outlet that would probable curve over backwards for an interview with Coates on the matter … he tweets.
And not simply did he tweet, he tweeted a thread of all his previous published manufactures in an endeavour to "debunk" many of the criticisms Due west put along. What is kickoff wrong in this response is the assumption of ignorance confronting West implored as a public spectacle – that Coates was stepping around the idea that W just didn't know, and pressing that idea onto his digital sphere of over a one thousand thousand followers – and that the answer to all of the problems lies in his writings themselves, as if they weren't what was being critiqued.
In several of the manufactures he used in his clapback thread, which was much more "No Frauds" than "shETHER," the very things he was critiqued on were nowadays within them. In his articles he cites every bit his "pressing" Obama on drones, he is simultaneously inadvertently praising Obama as "scandal-gratuitous" and a "securely moral human."
He cites his famous call for reparations, one of the essays that has helped catapult him to such mega stardom, which uses the settler-colonial, capitalist, ethno-religious-nationalist occupying state of State of israel equally a guideline for Black "reparations" while completely ignoring the very existence of Palestinians and their urgent oppression.
Coates cites his famous call for reparations, one of the essays that has helped catapult him to such mega distinction, which uses the settler-colonial, backer, ethno-religious-nationalist occupying state of Israel as a guideline for Black "reparations" while completely ignoring the very existence of Palestinians and their urgent oppression.
On the claim that he does not focus on (or even mention usually) the lives of [Black] TLGBQ folks, he responds with an essay from 2010 on race and same-sex wedlock, a political hot topic used as a scapegoat for "solidarity/allyship" by many liberals that allows for an ignorance of an entire host of structural, interpersonal and institutional oppression nosotros experience that tin can be explored instead of aforementioned-sex union.
And, as if this milquetoast and lazy response wasn't enough, he then deleted his Twitter after tweeting his arraign of "feminists, white supremacists, and leftists all in understanding," which is a argument that is merely lazy. All three of those mentioned – feminists, white supremacists, and leftists – are invested in disagreeing with and/or sharing critiques of Coates for vastly different reasons, and to presume Richard Spencer's authenticate on Due west's critique of Coates is in earnest and wholesome intention, while simultaneously bemoaning the "poor intentions" of Due west, is exactly the problem.
Every bit Adam H. Johnson reminded folks on Twitter, "Richard Spencer is a troll and his endorsing of [West] is non testify that [West's] position is a nazi position. Spencer supports paid maternity leave and David Duke opposed the Iraq War." For Coates and the trove of writers and commentators (who seem to be working harder to defend Coates than he is himself) to equate leftists and feminists cosigning Due west's criticisms with the endorsement past Spencer shows the miscommunication, commitment to intellectual dishonesty and trend to dial left rather than right.
This plus the deletion of his account entirely exposes the need to demonize, make spectacle of, talk effectually and ultimately disengage from criticisms from both the mentioned "feminists" and those to the left of him. This response is, for lack of meliorate words, disappointing coming from the wordsmith of our generation. He did not actually engage with the neoliberalism category he has been largely placed within, nor did he wholly engage with the critiques that have existed and festered for several years now.
In another review filled with criticism of "We Were Eight Years in Power," Black feminist writer Imani Perry says she wants to ask Coates: "What do you brand of these encounters at an intimate level, every bit a Black man whose professional rising was deeply bound to a president who was, in the manner of myth, both reviled and reified? And more specifically, what do yous make of them in the age of spectacular Black death and economical disaster? Or, to riff on W.E.B. Du Bois: How does it feel to be both a problem and an answer?"
I believe to answer that and to move past such criticisms, Coates must kickoff honestly face the truth of where he believes he falls inside this problem and respond. He has to proceed being a voice of a generation, simply be that voice more honestly if possible, and more radically definitely.
Coates has to continue existence a voice of a generation, but exist that voice more honestly if possible, and more than radically definitely.
The answers to the problems are all wrapped together in the beautiful writing of a homo whose politics are notwithstanding forming, but on such a large scale that these criticisms must come with an urgency, every bit West delivered them. He has to meet the "neoliberal" descriptor, which has been aptly applied to anybody from Kamala Harris to bluish vest activists, and all that comes with that term head on, non through tweets or heavily emotional punches at the left rather than into the books and streets that can pb him towards righteousness.
If he is to go on being called the voice of my people, he has to move from being a traditional intellectual who walks the line of bookish and objective writer into the infinite of organic intellectual that he likely sees himself as, who is activistic in nature. And I could continue to ramble, but the bespeak becomes glaringly clear no matter how yous argue it: Ta-Nehisi Coates simply doesn't get information technology.
Devyn Springer is an Atlanta writer, organizer and artist who recently published his debut book, "Grayish-black: Poetry from the Ribs," which is available on Amazon. He is content editor at Offtharecord.com, communications director at the Walter Rodney Foundation, and a member of Workers Earth Party. You can view more of his work and contact him at devynspringer.journoportfolio.com.
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Source: https://sfbayview.com/2017/12/coates-doesnt-get-it/
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