Tucker Carlson of Fox News wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates, among other things, in his book “Ship of Fools” (2018). Here is some of what he said:
“His father was a member of the Black Panther Party who had seven children by four women.”
“Coates was an introverted boy who loved comic books. He failed eleventh-grade English but nevertheless was able to enroll in Howard University. He attended for five years but failed to graduate, in part because he failed classes on British and American literature.”
On Coates’s writing style:
- “leaden” writing
- “tremendous length” – one of his essays was 16 pages long!
- “a meandering structure that never quite gets to the point”
- “everything is about white racism”
On Coates’s most famous book:
“Between the World and Me is an unusually bad book: poorly written, intellectually flabby, relentlessly shallow and bigoted. No honest reader with an IQ over 100 could be impressed by it. …
“It’s a measure how thoroughly the diversity cult has corroded the aesthetic standards of our elites that the book was greeted with almost unanimous praise, which is to say, lying.”
On Coates’s essay about Trump’s racist appeal as the first White president:
“In fact, Trump outperformed Mitt Romney with black and Hispanic voters. Coates does not address this.”
On Coates’s appeal:
“Elites feel like good people when they read Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s exactly the kind of book you’d like to be seen bringing to the beach. What they don’t want is to change their lives in any meaningful way. Coates doesn’t ask them to. Admit you’re bad, Coates says. Gladly, they reply. Nothing changes except how elites feel about themselves. Coates is their confessor. His books are their penance”
This bit is a Black reaction, or, at a stretch, a White progressive one. It is a point that Cornel West and John McWhorter made.
White conservatives like Carlson, by definition, would be against such change and would hardly decry its lack. Instead, seeing the social order as more or less just, they would tend to see Coates as eaten up by an unreasonable hatred for White people and his writing as deepening the divide in the country, threatening said social order. And in fact, Carlson went on to make just those points.
For example, in “Between the World and Me” Coates at one point talks about a White woman pushing his son on an escalator. After that Coates says:
“The plunder of black life was drilled into this country in its infancy and reinforced across its history, so that plunder has become an heirloom, an intelligence, a sentience, a default setting to which, likely to the end of our days, we must invariably return.”
Carlson’s reaction:
“This is nutty. It’s also dumb. But more than anything, it’s hostile. Coates despises White people. He doesn’t hide it.”
and later:
“there’s no question that irresponsible rhetoric like Coates’s, and the equally irresponsible response it received from elites, was inflaming racial tensions in America. Yelling about imaginary racism was making people hate one another.”
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- Tucker Carlson
- White conservatism
- Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Cornel West on Ta-Nehisi Coates
- John McWhorter on Ta-Nehisi Coates
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What I have read by Ta-Nehisi Coates has been introduced to me on Abagond, and I like his thoughts as they give me unique points of view. His perspectives are such that even numb nuts like Tucker Carlson tries to dismiss them as “nutty” and “dumb”. Carlson brings a butter knife against a man who wields a sword.
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Replace “Elites” with “White Liberals” and I kinda agree with Tucker Carlson on this. White liberals want to absolve their white guilt, and reading books or other writings by Ta-nehisi Coates would be a way to help them feel better about themselves and maintain their liberal self-image. This is not followed by any follow-up action or any measure to address the status quo.
And admittedly, Coates seems to be targeting white liberals as his audience much of the time. I don’t think either Cornel West or McWhorter were wrong about that. Maybe White Liberals who stopped going to church do need a new religion.
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Between The World And Me was a good read.
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Abagond, not sure why you are punishing yourself with this douch nozzle Carlson. This is so mentally and spiritually unhealthy. Seeing Carlson’s stupid punchable clown face and reading his bigoted perspectives. I don’t know why you are subjecting yourself to this horrible exercise.
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@dorisjean23: So eloquently stated.
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@Mary Burrell – Thank you Mary, and I agree with you about Carlson’s “stupid punch-able clown face” – he (Carlson) makes me so judgemental against him. I don’t like being like that, LOL.
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A conservative response to POC’s criticism of this country will always have the words ‘stupid’, ‘dumb’ and ‘idiotic’ and will little to no sensible or logical rebuttal that’s beyond elementary school levels.
Meanwhile, white liberals will back Coates so long as he doesn’t mention one observation about them that may upset them. If he does, white liberals will flip and resort to fragile white reactions.
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Shiiiid…
I remember Coates’ blogging/commenting before his gig at the Atlantic.
Many old-school bloggers refer to him as T’Nussy (The Pu$$¥) because of his sissy-assed responses to racism.
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