One of Cornel West's (many) complaints about Ta-Nehisi Coates as I comprehend it, is (according to West) that Coates speaks of White supremacy as if it were intractable. Well, at the risk of inserting my puny self into a war between giants, have I not suggested as much in the last two years of regular writing? I may not be in Coates' realm as a writer, nor West's as a thinker, but I believe we have largely drawn the same conclusion and it is one, I fear, that is hard to avoid. We - Coates and I - are hardly alone in drawing that conclusion. It's kind of unavoidable at this point. 500 years in, I'm gonna say that intractable is the least we can say about supremacy.
Supremacy is intractable. It is not invincible but dammit, it most assuredly is intractable. I'm not sure why there would be an argument about that.
West's other complaint (one of them) is that Coates' treatises don't pay sufficient homage to the generations of fighters in the history of Black America. But that is (respectfully) ridiculousness.
To pick up a pen to write your truth about White supremacy and your place in it, is an act of defiance. To do so and quote Malcolm X, to reference the work of MLK Jr, to speak of Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth or Audre Lourde or bell hooks is not only an act of defiance it is also an act of reverence for those who have had the temerity - as you do - to write before you.
And so yes, we fight. For some of us, the fight is in every word we write, every pen stroke is an act of rebellion against an intractable foe.
We stand up. We kneel down. We fight to draw breath. But none of that renders the thing we fight one whit less intractable. Hell, the fact that there are so many writing, and singing, rapping, sculpting, painting, and otherwise channeling their frustrations and rage through various artistic endeavors is evidence of the intractability of the problem. And so to West I would pose this question: WHERE IS THE LIE? Seriously, where is the lie? Is White supremacy not intractable?
Have not White women and men chosen to vote for an alleged pedophile over a Democrat who took klan members to trial over the deaths of four little Alabama girls?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?Supremacy is intractable. It is not invincible but dammit, it most assuredly is intractable. I'm not sure why there would be an argument about that.
West's other complaint (one of them) is that Coates' treatises don't pay sufficient homage to the generations of fighters in the history of Black America. But that is (respectfully) ridiculousness.
To pick up a pen to write your truth about White supremacy and your place in it, is an act of defiance. To do so and quote Malcolm X, to reference the work of MLK Jr, to speak of Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth or Audre Lourde or bell hooks is not only an act of defiance it is also an act of reverence for those who have had the temerity - as you do - to write before you.
And so yes, we fight. For some of us, the fight is in every word we write, every pen stroke is an act of rebellion against an intractable foe.
We stand up. We kneel down. We fight to draw breath. But none of that renders the thing we fight one whit less intractable. Hell, the fact that there are so many writing, and singing, rapping, sculpting, painting, and otherwise channeling their frustrations and rage through various artistic endeavors is evidence of the intractability of the problem. And so to West I would pose this question: WHERE IS THE LIE? Seriously, where is the lie? Is White supremacy not intractable?
Have not White women and men chosen to vote for an alleged pedophile over a Democrat who took klan members to trial over the deaths of four little Alabama girls?
Did not young men scream "Jew will not replace us!" and wail about blood and soil in the streets of Charlottesville not too long ago?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Did not Briana Brochu 'play the race card' and avoid the federal hate crime charge she absolutely should have caught?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Did not *working class (and all other class) White voters* choose a man who is clearly mentally unstable as the leader of their country because beJesusChrist the n*gger was finally out of the House of White Supremacy?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Are not White "Evangelicals" are more wedded to Whiteness than to Christness?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Where. Is. The. Lie?
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