I imagine that I won’t get nearly as much crap about it as Frederick de Boer is apparently getting for shrugging and essentially going Ta-Nehisi Coates’ is all right, but he’s no James Baldwin*, though. Because I’m more or less expected to both admit the truth (Coates is a decent enough writer who has discovered that there’s a living in telling white people how much they and their ancestors suck) and not care that this opinion bothers people. But I kind of disagree: Ta-Nehisi Coates does owe his current success to white guilt – or, rather, his specific success. I’m sure that he’d be able to make a decent enough living writing advertising copy, or something. But, shoot, white guilt pays the bills, so if the Left’s going to pout that money onto the ground then where’s the harm in holding out the soup tureen?
Mind you, I sometimes wonder how long Frederick de Boer is going to be able to last out there among the Left. I can’t imagine that he hasn’t noticed that, of the two broad factions out there, he’s not in the one that tolerates heresy all that well. Ach, well, that’s a topic for another post.
Via @EsotericCD.
Moe Lane
*Having taken a class in James Baldwin in college** – from what I remember, yeah: James Baldwin was a noticeably better writer.
**Dude who taught it was a non-professor playwright who did shows in Trenton. I took his playwrighting class in college, he was a massively cool guy, so I said Hey! I’ve got an elective handy and he’s doing the Baldwin course. I may have been the only white guy in there, not that anybody actually gave a tinker’s dam.
.
I’m assuming that’s a typo, but if it isn’t — well-played.
I have no idea who Baldwin is, I do unfortunately know who Coates is. A black racist that white people, specifically white liberals but also a good portion of the *smart set*, love to flatter
* within the GOP, most notably on twitter, there is a group of young professionals ( usually millenials and gen-xers) who by virtue of working mostly in the DC area spend most of their time trying to convince the many liberals they meet that they are not like the uneducated heartland hicks that populate most of the GOP.
Virtually no-one writing for a living today, and I include myself, is as good a writer as James Baldwin, so that’s kind of an unfair standard to hold anyone to.
Coates is generally an interesting writer, even when he’s writing something not terribly interesting, and his ongoing self-education on the Civil War has been very enjoyable.
No argument on Baldwin: I still vividly remember Stranger in the Village, and I haven’t read it in twenty years.