I remember reading, years ago, a profile on Chinese-American rapper MC Jin written by none other than Coates himself. Coates, writing in 2004, seemed exhilarated that a “Quick-Witted, Egg-Roll-Joke-Making, Insult-Hurling Chinese-American Rapper” was demolishing black rappers in battles. Then I read Between the World and Me and saw that he did a complete 180. Fascinating to watch play out.
There’s also a mention of Hsa Hsu in there... didn’t know Hsu had been in the writing scene all the way back then.
I believe this accurately captures many of the nuances of Coates's work, but I'm afraid that liberals are simply too paralyzed by their own anxieties to grapple with, or even to acknowledge, any of the shortcomings of Coates's work. Yes, every writer has shortcomings, even Ta-Nehisi Coates. Unfortunately, liberals' self-inflicted failure to think outside the self-prescribed boundaries of their own ideology leaves them unable to comprehend, much less answer, any of the obvious questions that immediately come to mind when a non-liberal reader encounters Coates's work for the first time.
The career of Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic was an interesting bridge between early 2000s blogging and the proliferation of newsletters and Substacks we can observe today. Which is to say, he led the growth of auto-didact writing/opining about culture for a passionate niche audience *that is willing to pay*. Many conservative writers (and a few leftists like Cornel West) found him infuriatingly overrated by liberal Atlantic readers, but he was a prelude to everyone getting their own version of that. There was a technological shift going on from older established mediums to intellectual niches (at best) and sensationalism and pandering (at worst.)
Of course, the content of his writing in addition to its medium signified the radicalization of national American politics following Obama's reelection. There was a demand for subversive authenticity and telling it like it is, which people are only now really getting sick of. People would cringe at Obama's earnest 2004 DNC address in 2015, but probably won't in 2025. I don't think of Coates as an intellectual phenomenon so much as a cultural one of that period (let's call it the long 2010s), like the Dark Knight Trilogy. The Coates language of "black bodies and spaces" was a bit like Nolan's screenplay of a playboy millionaire breaking the rules to fight terrorists, it was enticingly dark and brooding then, but people are over it now.
I'd say it's a mix of Butler and Eve Sedgwick for gender stuff (I'm tempted to say that Butler provides the philosophical framework and Sedgewick's actual positions are more important), and I look forward to future posts (maybe a pod episode?) on Coates! I really esteem a lot of his work (his article on black conservatism is something I still go back to again and again) but I haven't followed his career as closely as some, and frankly I hadn't realized until quite recently that he'd fallen out of favor with... whatever political tendency we identify ourselves as: Heterodox liberals? Alienated centrists? Left-neoconservatives? (that last one is a joke!)
I remember reading, years ago, a profile on Chinese-American rapper MC Jin written by none other than Coates himself. Coates, writing in 2004, seemed exhilarated that a “Quick-Witted, Egg-Roll-Joke-Making, Insult-Hurling Chinese-American Rapper” was demolishing black rappers in battles. Then I read Between the World and Me and saw that he did a complete 180. Fascinating to watch play out.
There’s also a mention of Hsa Hsu in there... didn’t know Hsu had been in the writing scene all the way back then.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/magazine/just-another-quickwitted-eggrolljokemaking-insulthurling.html
Great ending.
I believe this accurately captures many of the nuances of Coates's work, but I'm afraid that liberals are simply too paralyzed by their own anxieties to grapple with, or even to acknowledge, any of the shortcomings of Coates's work. Yes, every writer has shortcomings, even Ta-Nehisi Coates. Unfortunately, liberals' self-inflicted failure to think outside the self-prescribed boundaries of their own ideology leaves them unable to comprehend, much less answer, any of the obvious questions that immediately come to mind when a non-liberal reader encounters Coates's work for the first time.
https://www.takimag.com/article/the_first_rule_of_white_club_steve_sailer/
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/beyond-hope-beyond-change/
The career of Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic was an interesting bridge between early 2000s blogging and the proliferation of newsletters and Substacks we can observe today. Which is to say, he led the growth of auto-didact writing/opining about culture for a passionate niche audience *that is willing to pay*. Many conservative writers (and a few leftists like Cornel West) found him infuriatingly overrated by liberal Atlantic readers, but he was a prelude to everyone getting their own version of that. There was a technological shift going on from older established mediums to intellectual niches (at best) and sensationalism and pandering (at worst.)
Of course, the content of his writing in addition to its medium signified the radicalization of national American politics following Obama's reelection. There was a demand for subversive authenticity and telling it like it is, which people are only now really getting sick of. People would cringe at Obama's earnest 2004 DNC address in 2015, but probably won't in 2025. I don't think of Coates as an intellectual phenomenon so much as a cultural one of that period (let's call it the long 2010s), like the Dark Knight Trilogy. The Coates language of "black bodies and spaces" was a bit like Nolan's screenplay of a playboy millionaire breaking the rules to fight terrorists, it was enticingly dark and brooding then, but people are over it now.
I'd say it's a mix of Butler and Eve Sedgwick for gender stuff (I'm tempted to say that Butler provides the philosophical framework and Sedgewick's actual positions are more important), and I look forward to future posts (maybe a pod episode?) on Coates! I really esteem a lot of his work (his article on black conservatism is something I still go back to again and again) but I haven't followed his career as closely as some, and frankly I hadn't realized until quite recently that he'd fallen out of favor with... whatever political tendency we identify ourselves as: Heterodox liberals? Alienated centrists? Left-neoconservatives? (that last one is a joke!)