I'm Not Black, I'm Kanye
May 7, 2018 6:22 AM Subscribe
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posted by Celsius1414 at 6:46 AM on May 7, 2018
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:46 AM on May 7, 2018
(I have ad-blocking and no subscription and read it fine. If it's a cookie-based limit, try opening in an Incognito/Private window?)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:02 AM on May 7, 2018 [22 favorites]
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:02 AM on May 7, 2018 [22 favorites]
(Just dump your cookies for that particular site and you'll be golden)
posted by Divest_Abstraction at 7:02 AM on May 7, 2018
posted by Divest_Abstraction at 7:02 AM on May 7, 2018
"The planks of Trumpism are clear—the better banning of Muslims, the improved scapegoating of Latinos, the endorsement of racist conspiracy, the denialism of science, the cheering of economic charlatans, the urging on of barbarian cops and barbarian bosses, the cheering of torture, and the condemnation of whole countries. The pain of these policies is not equally distributed. Indeed the rule of Donald Trump is predicated on the infliction of maximum misery of West’s most ardent parishioners, the portions of America, the muck, that made the god Kanye possible."
I bet this passage appears in history books.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:24 AM on May 7, 2018 [69 favorites]
I bet this passage appears in history books.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:24 AM on May 7, 2018 [69 favorites]
Just finished this. My God that man can write.
If you are tired of Kanye talk, it's actually about much more than Kanye.
posted by selfnoise at 7:24 AM on May 7, 2018 [35 favorites]
If you are tired of Kanye talk, it's actually about much more than Kanye.
posted by selfnoise at 7:24 AM on May 7, 2018 [35 favorites]
Yeah this is an outstanding essay.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:35 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:35 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
To be black in America is to be heart broken. Perhaps American needed Trump to bring to the surface the latent racism that permeates everything. This essay, combined with the Childish Gambino video posted yesterday, describes to white America the experience of Black America. I just wish white America would believe it.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:49 AM on May 7, 2018 [51 favorites]
posted by bluesky43 at 7:49 AM on May 7, 2018 [51 favorites]
read this on my morning commute and was just floored. what a voice.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 7:53 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 7:53 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
(send to Instapaper, eagerly await tonight's reading session)
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 7:55 AM on May 7, 2018
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 7:55 AM on May 7, 2018
He's a great writer, and every single essay exposes a terrifying clarity of thought. You do not want T-NC to think about you for long. What musician could expect a comparison with MJ to be utterly damning?
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 7:56 AM on May 7, 2018 [33 favorites]
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 7:56 AM on May 7, 2018 [33 favorites]
I don’t always agree with him and sometimes find myself frustrated by him, but the man has an absolute gift. I am most impressed by his pouring his raw honesty into it - talking about his own struggles with fame, with the seductive poison of remaining apart. The paranoia that comes with celebrity.
posted by corb at 7:59 AM on May 7, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by corb at 7:59 AM on May 7, 2018 [14 favorites]
There are some writers who are easy to read, they may be deep or shallow, but they express what they do in a way that flows easily from the page and makes the reading itself a light experience.
Coates is not such a writer.
Coates is something else, he is compelling. His writing is not easy to read but rather impossible to stop reading until you reach the finish and then you feel exhausted, worn, wrung out by the experience.
Every article he has written has dragged me along until the last words and left me intellectually limp and almost beaten.
His writing does not crystallize and make clear things I have already been thinking, or gently introduce me to new experiences. Instead he grabs my brain and pours into it his own experiences and life and there is something immovable about him and his words. They do not clarify my own mind, but change it, distort it like weights on a rubber sheet, and I am better for it.
I don't know if I feel this way because I am white and my lived experience has been so radically different from his, or if it is simply the way he thinks and writes.
But I read what he writes, and it is like hard exercise that I cannot stop. It improves me in ways that are not easy. And I cannot stop reading it, because it is true and powerful and hard and bright and burns new thinking into me.
posted by sotonohito at 8:04 AM on May 7, 2018 [64 favorites]
Coates is not such a writer.
Coates is something else, he is compelling. His writing is not easy to read but rather impossible to stop reading until you reach the finish and then you feel exhausted, worn, wrung out by the experience.
Every article he has written has dragged me along until the last words and left me intellectually limp and almost beaten.
His writing does not crystallize and make clear things I have already been thinking, or gently introduce me to new experiences. Instead he grabs my brain and pours into it his own experiences and life and there is something immovable about him and his words. They do not clarify my own mind, but change it, distort it like weights on a rubber sheet, and I am better for it.
I don't know if I feel this way because I am white and my lived experience has been so radically different from his, or if it is simply the way he thinks and writes.
But I read what he writes, and it is like hard exercise that I cannot stop. It improves me in ways that are not easy. And I cannot stop reading it, because it is true and powerful and hard and bright and burns new thinking into me.
posted by sotonohito at 8:04 AM on May 7, 2018 [64 favorites]
I saw this, too. And Michael Che on SNL. And a Meme was born.
Mr K. is the motherlode du jour. Such a rich vein of the Stupid will make much money from eyeballs on ads alone. And life will go on.
posted by y2karl at 8:10 AM on May 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
Mr K. is the motherlode du jour. Such a rich vein of the Stupid will make much money from eyeballs on ads alone. And life will go on.
posted by y2karl at 8:10 AM on May 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
The more I learn about Kanye the more I'm not entirely unconvinced he isn't some cryptic state-created media figure, possibly gone rogue or off his script.
Because this shit is deeply weird, and it doesn't seem to be the usual hyper-celebrity weirdness.
posted by loquacious at 8:16 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
Because this shit is deeply weird, and it doesn't seem to be the usual hyper-celebrity weirdness.
posted by loquacious at 8:16 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
I just wish white America would believe it.
I was happily ignorant for a long, long time. I'm listening now and I believe it.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:19 AM on May 7, 2018 [14 favorites]
I was happily ignorant for a long, long time. I'm listening now and I believe it.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:19 AM on May 7, 2018 [14 favorites]
And I am with everyone on Ta-Nehisi Coates. He is extremely clear, cogent and elegant in style. His words are music. He graces the English language. And he is right.
But so is Michael Che.
The mind boggles, the intellect stands abashed...
Ibn Hazm
posted by y2karl at 8:25 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
But so is Michael Che.
The mind boggles, the intellect stands abashed...
Ibn Hazm
posted by y2karl at 8:25 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
I envy his ear. But I am endlessly grateful for what I continue to learn from him.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:48 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by middleclasstool at 8:48 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's rare that I read prose I'd describe as "searing" but this essay qualifies. And I think the observation at the center, that Kanye wants to be free in the way a rich white man is free and that he's working that drama out in public, is entirely correct.
He won't get there. If you weren't born a white man in this country it doesn't matter how hard you try to act like one.
posted by potrzebie at 8:51 AM on May 7, 2018 [7 favorites]
He won't get there. If you weren't born a white man in this country it doesn't matter how hard you try to act like one.
posted by potrzebie at 8:51 AM on May 7, 2018 [7 favorites]
He won't get there. If you weren't born a white man in this country it doesn't matter how hard you try to act like one.
Side note: I definitely don't disagree with this and we can see this right now with stuff like Cosby and Weinstein and throughout American History - and I should explicate my weird comment.
I think a lot of the "weirdness" I sense around Kanye and other black American hypercelebrities is really the premise of the article - the weird blackface and minstrelsy of "permitted" black entertainment, permitted by primarily white/wealthy media companies.
So Kanye gets to sell millions of records. 50 Cent gets to sell millions of records. The narrative of what is permitted often seems to be a lot of misogyny, sexism, racism and violence.
But if you actually get directly politically active like The Coup or others and not speak in code or undertones, or try to push outside that permitted narrative... and also happen to be black you're either subtly or overtly attacked by the same (primarily white) media conglomerates that also often own the major recording companies.
My thoughts on all of this aren't entirely clear beyond feeling that something has been rotten in mainstream hip hop's Denmark for something like 20 years now. I remember hip hop in the 80s and even into the 90s being a lot more positive, political and less dark (as in mood, duh) and less overtly violent from the beginning. I know that right now that at the roots and streets hip hop is much more overtly political, activist and generally positive and woke.
I can't help but see a pattern, and that pattern is probably racism.
posted by loquacious at 9:14 AM on May 7, 2018 [9 favorites]
Side note: I definitely don't disagree with this and we can see this right now with stuff like Cosby and Weinstein and throughout American History - and I should explicate my weird comment.
I think a lot of the "weirdness" I sense around Kanye and other black American hypercelebrities is really the premise of the article - the weird blackface and minstrelsy of "permitted" black entertainment, permitted by primarily white/wealthy media companies.
So Kanye gets to sell millions of records. 50 Cent gets to sell millions of records. The narrative of what is permitted often seems to be a lot of misogyny, sexism, racism and violence.
But if you actually get directly politically active like The Coup or others and not speak in code or undertones, or try to push outside that permitted narrative... and also happen to be black you're either subtly or overtly attacked by the same (primarily white) media conglomerates that also often own the major recording companies.
My thoughts on all of this aren't entirely clear beyond feeling that something has been rotten in mainstream hip hop's Denmark for something like 20 years now. I remember hip hop in the 80s and even into the 90s being a lot more positive, political and less dark (as in mood, duh) and less overtly violent from the beginning. I know that right now that at the roots and streets hip hop is much more overtly political, activist and generally positive and woke.
I can't help but see a pattern, and that pattern is probably racism.
posted by loquacious at 9:14 AM on May 7, 2018 [9 favorites]
The conclusions about Kanye were not surprising or deep, but the road to them was fun.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:15 AM on May 7, 2018
posted by Going To Maine at 9:15 AM on May 7, 2018
Am I the only one who looks at Kanye and sees someone in the grips of mania?
This is a fine essay, and analyzing the hyperbolic thoughts of those in abnormal mental states sometimes paints a truer, if hyperbolic, portrait of society.
However, it's somewhat pointless to analyze someone who's clearly nuts with this level of intellectual rigor.
Imagine a psychotic person on the street talking about delusions that the CIA and NSA were following his every movement and poisoning his food. That might be an interesting time to talk about how we do live in a surveillance state. That wouldn't, however, be the problem, per se. The problem is that someone who needs help isn't getting it.
It feels like instead of addressing Kanye's issues, people are addressing their own. Both are fine things to talk about, but its ridiculous to ignore the former.
posted by sp160n at 9:19 AM on May 7, 2018 [5 favorites]
This is a fine essay, and analyzing the hyperbolic thoughts of those in abnormal mental states sometimes paints a truer, if hyperbolic, portrait of society.
However, it's somewhat pointless to analyze someone who's clearly nuts with this level of intellectual rigor.
Imagine a psychotic person on the street talking about delusions that the CIA and NSA were following his every movement and poisoning his food. That might be an interesting time to talk about how we do live in a surveillance state. That wouldn't, however, be the problem, per se. The problem is that someone who needs help isn't getting it.
It feels like instead of addressing Kanye's issues, people are addressing their own. Both are fine things to talk about, but its ridiculous to ignore the former.
posted by sp160n at 9:19 AM on May 7, 2018 [5 favorites]
"Kanye West's mental health" has been a perennial topic in pop-commentary for at least 10 years.
posted by Think_Long at 9:32 AM on May 7, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by Think_Long at 9:32 AM on May 7, 2018 [8 favorites]
No, you're not the only one. It is probably impossible to post about Kanye's latest behavior without someone suggesting that he's mentally ill - at least not if you allow comments.
But you don't need mental illness to explain Kanye. Maybe he is mentally ill, but we don't know that, and and people can be narcissistic, ignorant assholes without being mentally ill. It happens all the time, especially with people who are famous or powerful. And what's more, that kind of behavior deserves to be discussed as something more than just a symptom of mental illness, because it's also a symptom of a kind of societal illness.
(People also suggest Trump is mentally ill. Is he? Maybe! But he could also just be a shitty person.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:32 AM on May 7, 2018 [33 favorites]
But you don't need mental illness to explain Kanye. Maybe he is mentally ill, but we don't know that, and and people can be narcissistic, ignorant assholes without being mentally ill. It happens all the time, especially with people who are famous or powerful. And what's more, that kind of behavior deserves to be discussed as something more than just a symptom of mental illness, because it's also a symptom of a kind of societal illness.
(People also suggest Trump is mentally ill. Is he? Maybe! But he could also just be a shitty person.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:32 AM on May 7, 2018 [33 favorites]
Please let me introduce you to a glorious and hilarious Twitter thread about a white dude in a black barbershop on this very subject.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:36 AM on May 7, 2018 [37 favorites]
Chad: "I understand what you're saying about protecting your community, but Kanye is throwing you under the bus by aligning with white supremacy, and to say that 'he's going through something' is in direct contrast to his own claims and his wife's claims that he's just fine."We need to stop speculating about his mental health.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:36 AM on May 7, 2018 [37 favorites]
My thoughts on all of this aren't entirely clear beyond feeling that something has been rotten in mainstream hip hop's Denmark for something like 20 years now.
And definitely not the pickled herring.
posted by y2karl at 9:43 AM on May 7, 2018
And definitely not the pickled herring.
posted by y2karl at 9:43 AM on May 7, 2018
As an aside from Kanye, Trump, etc: I deeply appreciated Coates talking about his experiences with fame and how it has changed his life and the way people relate to him. You hear this sort of thing about celebrities. Imagine what it must be like to constantly hear you're the "foremost voice" of an entire ethnicity, and imagine how people around you would react to that.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:53 AM on May 7, 2018 [24 favorites]
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:53 AM on May 7, 2018 [24 favorites]
Angela Davis: “Straight black men and white women will always be the weakest links in the struggle for equality because they view equality as achieving status with white men.”
posted by mrmurbles at 9:59 AM on May 7, 2018 [70 favorites]
posted by mrmurbles at 9:59 AM on May 7, 2018 [70 favorites]
I didn't think writing could affect me this way anymore.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:24 AM on May 7, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:24 AM on May 7, 2018 [6 favorites]
The piece takes a while to build, but holy shit, when it does:
posted by joyceanmachine at 10:46 AM on May 7, 2018 [45 favorites]
What Kanye West seeks is what Michael Jackson sought—liberation from the dictates of that we. In his visit with West, the rapper T.I. was stunned to find that West, despite his endorsement of Trump, had never heard of the travel ban. “He don’t know the things that we know because he’s removed himself from society to a point where it don’t reach him,” T.I. said. West calls his struggle the right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom—a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the freedom of rape buttons, pussy grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of oil and invisible wars, the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.And it gets even stronger from there. Holy shit.
posted by joyceanmachine at 10:46 AM on May 7, 2018 [45 favorites]
Funny timing for an article about a black man wanting freedom from being black in America. I was running in the local park today (people running, walking, playing tennis, sunny, it was lunchtime) and an older white woman waves me down and then points to her left. "Do you know if there's security in this park?" Me: "Uh, no?" Her: "There's a man standing by my car." Me: "Uh, okay. I'm sure it's fine."
I go running on and what do I see? A black guy, about my age, standing on the path, looking at his phone, enjoying the weather, like we all were.
posted by Automocar at 11:05 AM on May 7, 2018 [30 favorites]
I go running on and what do I see? A black guy, about my age, standing on the path, looking at his phone, enjoying the weather, like we all were.
posted by Automocar at 11:05 AM on May 7, 2018 [30 favorites]
Wow, that was a hell of a piece of writing, on several fronts.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:35 AM on May 7, 2018
posted by wenestvedt at 11:35 AM on May 7, 2018
Automcar: Funny timing for an article about a black man wanting freedom from being black in America.
A friend of mine posted on FB last week that he got locked out of his own building's small gym room. His own neighbors, who he'd been exercising alongside moments before, wouldn't open the door to him. He's the principal of an architecture firm in the area and not exactly unknown. He is also, of course, black.
The next day on FB he posted a picture of himself, working out again, with his keys and a lopsided, disappointed, very knowing half-smile.
He deserves better. His neighbors need to do better. WTF.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:46 AM on May 7, 2018 [29 favorites]
A friend of mine posted on FB last week that he got locked out of his own building's small gym room. His own neighbors, who he'd been exercising alongside moments before, wouldn't open the door to him. He's the principal of an architecture firm in the area and not exactly unknown. He is also, of course, black.
The next day on FB he posted a picture of himself, working out again, with his keys and a lopsided, disappointed, very knowing half-smile.
He deserves better. His neighbors need to do better. WTF.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:46 AM on May 7, 2018 [29 favorites]
He writes wonderfully, is insightful as usual, but I think very off base in his comparisons of MJ to Kanye.
posted by girlmightlive at 11:59 AM on May 7, 2018
posted by girlmightlive at 11:59 AM on May 7, 2018
Girlmightlive, would you care to expand on why?
posted by matrixclown at 12:10 PM on May 7, 2018
posted by matrixclown at 12:10 PM on May 7, 2018
Imagine what it must be like to constantly hear you're the "foremost voice" of an entire ethnicity, and imagine how people around you would react to that.
Coates’ fame sure drove Cornel West mad.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:38 PM on May 7, 2018 [15 favorites]
Coates’ fame sure drove Cornel West mad.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:38 PM on May 7, 2018 [15 favorites]
Phenomenal essay. Thanks for sharing.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:42 PM on May 7, 2018
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:42 PM on May 7, 2018
I think Ta-Nehisi Coates is an excellent writer--passionate, soaring and thoughtful--However, I find a bit of hubris/arrogance in anyone who presumes to know what another person, feels, thinks,fears and hopes. Writing with certainty and clarity does not necessarilyt mean either. He may well be more right than wrong but it is speculation aven if well conceived
posted by rmhsinc at 1:12 PM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by rmhsinc at 1:12 PM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
What I think Kanye doesn’t realize that Coates does, is Kanye is “free” only as long as he reinforces the current hegemony. The moment he doesn’t, he will be publicly stripped and whipped for his disobedience.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:23 PM on May 7, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:23 PM on May 7, 2018 [11 favorites]
Great, great essay full of unblinking insight but also deep empathy.
On a minor note, the way he captured Michael Jackson mania, as experienced by an elementary school kid in the early 80s was so profoundly familiar to me I was blown away. I experienced Thriller through white ears but still had an unconscious sense, through noticing my classmates and neighbors, of the scale of Michael Jackson at that time.
posted by latkes at 1:36 PM on May 7, 2018 [6 favorites]
On a minor note, the way he captured Michael Jackson mania, as experienced by an elementary school kid in the early 80s was so profoundly familiar to me I was blown away. I experienced Thriller through white ears but still had an unconscious sense, through noticing my classmates and neighbors, of the scale of Michael Jackson at that time.
posted by latkes at 1:36 PM on May 7, 2018 [6 favorites]
Angela Davis: “Straight black men and white women will always be the weakest links in the struggle for equality because they view equality as achieving status with white men.”
posted by mrmurbles at 9:59 AM on May 7
[34 favorites +] [!]
This quote struck me, so I googled it. It appears in a single viral tweet that was immediately fact checked by Twitter at large. Unfortunately viral twitter didn’t care that the quote is either made up or simply misattributed to Angela Davis. Either way, it is not from “Women, Race, and Class.”
I know many scholars have explored the parallels between white women and black men, and I’m not going to pretend to be qualified to talk about them at length. But I do think that here, in this thread, this seems like a conveniently hot take that does a disservice to both Coates’ work and West’s failures.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:43 PM on May 7, 2018 [18 favorites]
posted by mrmurbles at 9:59 AM on May 7
[34 favorites +] [!]
This quote struck me, so I googled it. It appears in a single viral tweet that was immediately fact checked by Twitter at large. Unfortunately viral twitter didn’t care that the quote is either made up or simply misattributed to Angela Davis. Either way, it is not from “Women, Race, and Class.”
I know many scholars have explored the parallels between white women and black men, and I’m not going to pretend to be qualified to talk about them at length. But I do think that here, in this thread, this seems like a conveniently hot take that does a disservice to both Coates’ work and West’s failures.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:43 PM on May 7, 2018 [18 favorites]
This piece came at me from multiple people today. It was sprawling and at one point I got worn down, but it's definitely a great piece and someone already posted what I thought was it's gut punch.
I saw a guy blasting Kanye from his motorcycle just a few hours ago. At this point, I'm still too hurt, and I just want to not think about Kanye because the more I do, the less likely it seems I'll ever be able to rid my psyche of his beats, his lyrics, his lines.
Besides, to me it has long felt like Kanye was off and nobody knew quite why or how, that I don't think I could ever piece it all together from all that I know of him. Like TNC, I listened from almost the instant he got here. I remember that early freestyle video where people were wondering if that was enough to get him picked up.
I like TNC's writing because he writes a lot about the shared history a lot of us have, that a lot of people don't know about or understand. The moonwalk/MJ/Billie Jean stuff was so perfect. Like every little black girl was going to marry michael jackson. Like every single one. My family members included. So I loved those portions of his writing where he talked about Mike. To this day when I watch MJ spin around unzombified in Thriller, it gives me goosebumps.
So I like sharing that feeling with him through his writing. But like Cosby, I just want Kanye to go away now. Leave me.
posted by cashman at 4:28 PM on May 7, 2018 [9 favorites]
I saw a guy blasting Kanye from his motorcycle just a few hours ago. At this point, I'm still too hurt, and I just want to not think about Kanye because the more I do, the less likely it seems I'll ever be able to rid my psyche of his beats, his lyrics, his lines.
Besides, to me it has long felt like Kanye was off and nobody knew quite why or how, that I don't think I could ever piece it all together from all that I know of him. Like TNC, I listened from almost the instant he got here. I remember that early freestyle video where people were wondering if that was enough to get him picked up.
I like TNC's writing because he writes a lot about the shared history a lot of us have, that a lot of people don't know about or understand. The moonwalk/MJ/Billie Jean stuff was so perfect. Like every little black girl was going to marry michael jackson. Like every single one. My family members included. So I loved those portions of his writing where he talked about Mike. To this day when I watch MJ spin around unzombified in Thriller, it gives me goosebumps.
So I like sharing that feeling with him through his writing. But like Cosby, I just want Kanye to go away now. Leave me.
posted by cashman at 4:28 PM on May 7, 2018 [9 favorites]
It's definitely a good piece; very thoughtful and well-written as always. Yet I tire of Coates's incessant adherence to racial essentialism in (as far as I can tell) most everything he writes.
In this essay, my favorite part is the passage where he reflects on the absurdity of fame.
posted by phenylphenol at 6:18 PM on May 7, 2018
In this essay, my favorite part is the passage where he reflects on the absurdity of fame.
posted by phenylphenol at 6:18 PM on May 7, 2018
Unfortunately viral twitter didn’t care that the quote is either made up or simply misattributed to Angela Davis. Either way, it is not from “Women, Race, and Class.”
Fair enough, apologies for posting it. I saw it a couple of places and it just didn't occur to me that Angela Davis is the kind of person people would misattribute quotes to. Lesson learned!
posted by mrmurbles at 6:25 PM on May 7, 2018
Fair enough, apologies for posting it. I saw it a couple of places and it just didn't occur to me that Angela Davis is the kind of person people would misattribute quotes to. Lesson learned!
posted by mrmurbles at 6:25 PM on May 7, 2018
I would disagree that Coates particularly embraces racial essentialism. He simply recognizes that black people are, factually, treated as a monolithic entity by white America. I'd argue that he dislikes that situation, but it is the situation in which we exist. What one black person does all black Americans are blamed for and held to account for.
posted by sotonohito at 6:53 PM on May 7, 2018 [28 favorites]
posted by sotonohito at 6:53 PM on May 7, 2018 [28 favorites]
Girlmightlive, would you care to expand on why?
Sorry for taking so long to respond.
Coates seems to believe that MJ sincerely tried to be white; there are many who do believe this, and I think it creates lazy writing, and I'm sad that it's such a focal point of the article. It's not new, either.
MJ did indeed have vitiligo, enough of it to feel that it was easier to blend into the white parts than the darker ones. He straightened his hair, had nose jobs, so there were parts of his appearance he controlled, some he didn't control, and I don't think either one makes it so obvious that Coates can tell us what he was trying to be. MJ said many times he was proud to be black.
I know what it's like to be told I'm trying to be white and I honestly just push back on that on reflex.
Coates also implies that MJ ignored some racial or political viewpoints in an attempt to be white, and that's not true on the surface. He was engaged, perhaps in some occasional shallow, "kumbaya" ways, but he wasn't shy about making a (liberal) political stand on many issues up to the end of his life.
So Coates feels some kinda way about Michael, and he can, but he's attributing his own feelings and making it sound as if that's how Michael felt, which I have a problem with, especially when there's a lot one can say to refute it.
posted by girlmightlive at 7:38 PM on May 7, 2018 [10 favorites]
Sorry for taking so long to respond.
Coates seems to believe that MJ sincerely tried to be white; there are many who do believe this, and I think it creates lazy writing, and I'm sad that it's such a focal point of the article. It's not new, either.
MJ did indeed have vitiligo, enough of it to feel that it was easier to blend into the white parts than the darker ones. He straightened his hair, had nose jobs, so there were parts of his appearance he controlled, some he didn't control, and I don't think either one makes it so obvious that Coates can tell us what he was trying to be. MJ said many times he was proud to be black.
I know what it's like to be told I'm trying to be white and I honestly just push back on that on reflex.
Coates also implies that MJ ignored some racial or political viewpoints in an attempt to be white, and that's not true on the surface. He was engaged, perhaps in some occasional shallow, "kumbaya" ways, but he wasn't shy about making a (liberal) political stand on many issues up to the end of his life.
So Coates feels some kinda way about Michael, and he can, but he's attributing his own feelings and making it sound as if that's how Michael felt, which I have a problem with, especially when there's a lot one can say to refute it.
posted by girlmightlive at 7:38 PM on May 7, 2018 [10 favorites]
Coates never reads to me as a racial essentialist, far from it. He writes very well about the American experience from a black perspective, and always seems to access something deeper than the topic at hand. As a European I appreciate that, even if I don't always agree with his political analysis.
This piece taps into something I've been feeling about Kanye's output for a while. I don't much care for his art but I can usually see what makes it so good and why. Over the last few years, I've found his work increasingly disturbing because I see a considerable talent applied in the service of some very regressive messages about the nature of culture, gender, power and class. If he's never really challenged the status quo, by now he's certainly reinforcing it. For me, it's debatable whether the key aspiration is propping up white supremacy so much as participating in the parasitic, amoral celebrity culture it perpetuates and reaping the rewards.
He's long been an acceptable face of glamorous black machismo which fits comfortably into the multicultural global elite. I'm not at all surprised that he happily defends it because this is where he lives now. Any critique of his position in that milieu has long since vanished. It might have something to do with the in-laws.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 6:27 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]
This piece taps into something I've been feeling about Kanye's output for a while. I don't much care for his art but I can usually see what makes it so good and why. Over the last few years, I've found his work increasingly disturbing because I see a considerable talent applied in the service of some very regressive messages about the nature of culture, gender, power and class. If he's never really challenged the status quo, by now he's certainly reinforcing it. For me, it's debatable whether the key aspiration is propping up white supremacy so much as participating in the parasitic, amoral celebrity culture it perpetuates and reaping the rewards.
He's long been an acceptable face of glamorous black machismo which fits comfortably into the multicultural global elite. I'm not at all surprised that he happily defends it because this is where he lives now. Any critique of his position in that milieu has long since vanished. It might have something to do with the in-laws.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 6:27 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]
Wow. Coates can write, goddamn.
tl;dr - No celebrity is an island, entire unto themselves; and every celebrity's flailing makes the rest of us flail too because we are ever more involved in the making of celebrity; and therefore never send to know for whom the beats of Billy Jean play: they play for me.
posted by MiraK at 7:47 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
tl;dr - No celebrity is an island, entire unto themselves; and every celebrity's flailing makes the rest of us flail too because we are ever more involved in the making of celebrity; and therefore never send to know for whom the beats of Billy Jean play: they play for me.
posted by MiraK at 7:47 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
*shakes fist at autocorrect* I meant BILLIE Jean, of course.
posted by MiraK at 8:48 AM on May 8, 2018
posted by MiraK at 8:48 AM on May 8, 2018
I looked, and there are various opinion pieces accusing Coates of being an essentialist. Just Google 'essentalism' plus his full name. It looks to me they rely on an interrelated collection of self-identified 'liberal' arguments, including American individualism, appealing to responsibilization and agency, and a number of other talking points, like white guilt self-flagellation and anti-reparations and anti-affirmative-action because 'nobody is entitled', the list goes on. Under their ideology, Coates is destroying liberal values, enabling white supremacy, and engendering learned helplessness. A few of these are black Americans, but they all level the essentialism rhetoric, which to me looks parallel to reverse racism talk, I.e. that Coates' writing is harmful, because he's committing reverse essentialism. Sigh.
posted by polymodus at 3:08 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by polymodus at 3:08 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
Such a great, difficult read. I totally felt the impelling need to read on that others mentioned. All the good things about the content have been said above (and, as is typical in posts on one of Coates's pieces, we all seem to write better in our comments when we arrive on the blue fresh from reading his writing for 10 minutes or so), so I wanted to highlight two more tangential things:
1. Ipsifendus, I love the lyric reference in your post title
2. I loved the discussion in the essay about the times of enigma and wonder before the internet, before twitter. Like all nostalgia, this idea probably appeals to me as much for its golden-hued distortions as anything else, but he's really captured something there, in the backdrop to his essay.
posted by mabelstreet at 7:26 AM on May 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
1. Ipsifendus, I love the lyric reference in your post title
2. I loved the discussion in the essay about the times of enigma and wonder before the internet, before twitter. Like all nostalgia, this idea probably appeals to me as much for its golden-hued distortions as anything else, but he's really captured something there, in the backdrop to his essay.
posted by mabelstreet at 7:26 AM on May 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
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posted by lazaruslong at 6:40 AM on May 7, 2018 [5 favorites]