Now, I know there is something comical about listening to some actor or actress who has just been paid millions of dollars to recite lines on film tell you about his or her pet charity to “Free Tibet” or end world hunger. Most of the time, you have to wonder if they understand their adopted cause at all or if they were just put up to it by their publicity agent. And I’m familiar with the black-tie liberal crowd that gathers around to support the latest fad, whether it be ending Apartheid or supporting the Palestinians or the Sandinistas. These so-called limousine liberals are silly in a way, and never more so than when they spout off about global warming before embarking on a cross-country trip on their private jet.
What makes them silly is that they are so insulated from the things they claim to care about. There’s nothing wrong with having an Upper East Side soiree to raise money to end police brutality, but those folks are never going to be brutalized by the police themselves, nor is it overly likely that anyone they know personally will be brutalized by the police.
So, yeah, I get it that there’s a certain degree of cartoonish liberal smugness in how some white intellectuals embrace the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Isn’t it cute how much they care?
Yet, these are caricatures. They’re the kind of caricatures that Republicans love to paint about wealthy white liberals who seem to give a damn about pretty much anything other than their own personal success.
Now, I like to read Ta-Nehisi Coates for a few reasons. One is that I like how he writes, and I’m always trying to improve my craft by studying other writers. Another is that he doesn’t just spout off about whatever is troubling him in the moment. He does extensive research and spends a lot of time putting out his big magazine pieces, and he obviously did this, too, with his recently published book. But the main reason I enjoy reading him is because I learn something I did not know. In his reparations piece for the Atlantic, he taught me pretty much everything I know about the history of redlining in urban housing.
So, it’s not just that he’s bringing a new perspective to the table, although he’s doing that, too. He’s educating people. And you don’t have to draw the same conclusions from his research that he does in order to benefit from it.
Now, if what you’re taking away from his body of work is that he really doesn’t like white people and that the white people who value his work are a bunch of self-loathing latte-sipping Volvo-driving jackasses, well…
…I think you’ve pretty much missed a good chance to become a better person.
I also think that there isn’t anything smug or cartoonish about feeling that a great wrong was done to black Americans from slavery to Jim Crow to housing policy to the drug wars and the mass incarceration period of the last several decades. How to redress those wrongs is a worthy subject of debate, and has nothing to do with self-loathing. Mocking anyone who appears to give a shit about what’s happened to the black community in this country is what’s genuinely worthy of contempt.