What makes you think so, or have you become confused because I don’t like butthole humor.
Brooks has entered his Nanny phase. He wants us to accept his values and morals as superior.
Including, presumably, his infidelity, lying, and cowardice.
I could have been cleaning the lint from my dryer filter but instead I read your link.
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um, that would make you an exceedingly slow reader… among other things. so, ok fine, i wasted your time. i’d rather not waste anymore of it. bye!
better deal with that lint!
Heh. Can’t wait to read what Driftglass has to sy to this…
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I like to read what you have to say because I have the chance to imagine where the capital letters ought to go.
after the lint, you might enjoy reading some e. e. cummings.
I reject the notion that no person of one color or group can adequately understand anothers person’s experience in a different group or color. Do plenty of one get it wrong about the other? Of course. If it were true that one cannot speak of the “other”, art, music and literature wouldn’t exist.
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Are you white?
The man is a bad writer, and his prejudices ooze from every pore. The first time I read a column of his in the NYT I couldn’t believe my eyes that they had hired someone who could neither write well nor think well.
As much as I disagreed with Bill Safire’s politics his columns were witty and his focus on language and its vicissitudes made it all worthwhile. This guy is worthless.
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A smidgen of consciousness, immediately wiped away by his “Well Actually” dissent.
Can’t expect white privilege that prominently displayed to change overnight.
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Brooks could have started, and ended, the column with just that one sentence and been correct for once.
Let me just add as a white person - I’ve discovered in the last year or so that it really REALLY isn’t that difficult to just shut up and listen when a black person is relating their feelings and experiences living as a black person in today’s America. Really, it isn’t - and the reward for it is learning so much more than you could ever think. It is eye opening, it is a revelation that despite people thinking they CAN somehow understand it or relate to it, you determine pretty quickly that your entire framing of what you’ve been taught through a carefully crafted white lens about the “black experience”, is almost to a word a complete fabrication made up of whole cloth. Have to say I do carry some shame it took me this long to recognize that. But…I’m listening. And I’m learning one hell of a lot. So thank you to those who take the time - even unknowingly - to teach those of us willing to learn.
I wish more of us would get that and give it a try.
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I don’t have a problem with what Brooks has said here, because to me it typifies the thought process of people who consider themselves intelligent, but go about trying to understand someone else intellectually, when that other person’s experiences are completely alien to them.
I’m a white boy (actually, it’s been decades since I was a boy). I remember reading “Monster” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and, while they were both fascinating, I could feel myself failing to accept the validity of what they said. I finally figured it was because I had no relevant experience in common with the authors–they really inhabited a different world.
I think I would like to read this book. While I disagree that it’s my–or anyone’s–responsibility to accept the author’s views (after all, art is meant to make you think–not tell you what to think), for me, the place to start is to understand that I have no grounds to deny the validity of what is said.
“No intelligent reader – white or otherwise – should want to be condescended to in that way.”
I don’t think it’s condescension. This is a two-way street, uphill both ways, with a steep learning curve. Brooks’ questions, like it or not, are legit. He’s not disagreeing to disagree or criticizing to criticize. His article even says the book '“is a mind-altering account of the black male experience. Every conscientious American should read it.” His questions are both an attempt to understand and an expression of frustration that we’ve very much reached a point where dialogue is now impossible. Disagreement, even when respectful, earns you a label. Questioning earns you a label. Challenging earns you a label. Testing earns you a label. Not understanding earns you a label. Simply being oblivious because you weren’t raised to be aware earns you a label. Having some light dawn on your inadequate understanding and then being clumsily curious or inquisitive earns you a label. Dialogue, and the learning and progress that follow, cannot take place in that environment. Both sides are guilty. That includes the Teatrolls who run around yelling about “PC-ism” and “the race card” from an extremist position and the liberals who have consistently resort to knee-jerk reactions, thereby providing said Teatrolls with the fuel for their claims. I am guilty of the latter myself at times.
Point is, I suppose, I didn’t really read Brooks’ criticism of the book’s premise that the “American Dream is flimflam” as an expression of frustration that the black experience had been revealed to him to be something other than he believes it is or should be. I read it as frustration that, if Coates’ position about the American Dream is correct or to be silently accepted or considered unassailable, then what I said above about dialogue catalyzing progress is entirely meaningless, because black and white Amurika have nothing more to talk about or say to one another. What a sad sad vantage point from which to view our chances.
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I would suggest reading the book prior to making your comments, just sayin’…
The problem with Brooks is that I think he assumes it IS his responsibility to accept Coate’s POV. It’s not. It’s not any white person’s responsibility to accept it or understand it.
What writers like Coates seem to want you to do is LISTEN to it, LEARN from it, and pass along that education to others like us. Something we as white people have real trouble doing when a black person is speaking, without somehow turning it into something we absolutely must relate to otherwise it holds no validity.
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In all honesty, I’ve never understood why people are so ignorant about other people’s stories and so unwilling to listen to them. Of course, I’ve gotten into trouble for wanting to know more about other people’s stories and asking about them. It feels weird to hear people actively not listening to others.
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I am a mid 70’s white guy who read ‘black like me’, this piece is way more powerful…
It seems to me Brooks doesn’t assume the responsibility you mentioned so much as he feels pressure, and probably a desire, to acknowledge the validity of the “black experience,” while also wanting to keep something–what that is is up for debate–in reserve.
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