When I hear or read Ta-Nahesi Coates, I almost immediately grasp the truth of what he’s telling us and also in the manner in which he tells us. But my reaction is to be quite depressed at what seems to be our social inertia when it comes to race and the recognition of the fact that I still have “no fucking clue.”
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That’s exactly what I tried to say above, but you said it better.
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If only someone would confront Brooks with your superb comments.
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No David Brooks, don’t choose the silence. You have the keyboard and the voice. Start telling the white folks how wrong they are. They might hear it .
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On the abstract notion of the American dream, Brooks writes: “My ancestors chose to come here,” whereas Coates’ “came in chains” as a possible reason that Coates dismisses the dream as “flimflam” in his book.
My own family (mongrel Northern-European) talks about various fantasies based on our ancestors, although typically only the ones they like or want to connect with. The past may inform how our culture developed, but cut the bullshit about any angst-driven cultural norms based solely on the past. While not having read the book, I imagine the writers issues aren’t based on his own familial fantasies of the past and based on his hard-earned experiences in our current culture. I’m sure if Brooks suffered under frequent and pervasive discrimination for nothing more than his skin color, it wouldn’t matter if his ancestors were royalty carried here in a palanquin on the backs of whales.
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this is a must read:
“Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates Whilst Snuggled Deep Within My Butthole”
by Objective White Man
Charles Blow is an African American writer at the Times who writes from his perspective as black man in America. He’s a smart, reasoned thinker and occasional philosopher, and his column appears twice a week as does Brooks’ column. But Brooks’ columns gets cited here regularly and I don’t recall ever seeing a Blow column, and I have to assume it’s because Brooks gets people to clicking. Getting us riled up or keeping us informed shouldn’t be the only choices
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Not. If I want informed opinions about buttholes and taking a a dump I’ll check with a proctologist.
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I found this quote from Brooks laughable.
By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.
Excessive realism? Does he mean the truth, reality or the nightmare? Seriously Brooks admits that the American Dream is fantasy, but he doesn’t want to do the heavy lifting to try and change it. Excessive realism…what a putz.
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whatever. david brooks has only one use and that’s as source material for parody. your loss…
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"Is it my job to respect your experience and accept your conclusions?”
No, your job is to be a right wing freak. However, your conscience should respect everyone’s experience and accept everyone’s conclusions, even those with whom such a right wing dipshit might disagree.
Entry one in pissing contest: Your idea of parody is different than mine and I feel no loss at all.
Well said indeed!! I am a huge fan of Coates. I applaud his honesty
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what the? i don’t even know what you’re talking about. you must not have read it… or did you?
You said it quite nicely
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Amen to that.
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You are telegraphing the nature of your disagreement by anticipating that it will be seen as a display of privilege. But it is conceivable that one’s disagreement could be formed out of pure reason, not one’s experience of privilege.
Do you have to respect his experience? Yes. Too often, the experiences of black people are dismissed, either with a sheen of faux articulateness resulting from Brooksian privilege, or more commonly, as being those of a so-called race hustler, or someone playing something known as a ‘race card’.
Do you have to accept his conclusions? Of course not. But if you don’t accept them, you should be able to describe your reasoning as to why you don’t accept them. And if it comes down to, ‘you have to act like privileged white people like me and pretend that all the discrimination stuff is in the past’, well, don’t be surprised if people disagree, do not accept your conclusions, and rip on you for not respecting his experience.
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or are you a david brooks fan?!? is that what’s going on? please tell me you aren’t.
I followed your link and I read this and I wasted a lot of time.
somehow i doubt you wasted that much.