Ta-Nehisi Coates

As We Use To Say When I Played World Of Warcraft...

...WTFPWNDBBQ

Please Stop It

Guys, I gotta run and catch a plane, so I don't have the time to do this the justice it deserves. That said, I keep hearing this "sexism vs. racism" argument put forth by Hillary's supporters, who rightly sight the list of sexist slights toward Hillary, but wrongly conclude that Obama has no such list. Most foolishly, they conclude that public slights are the worst part of the problem of racism or sexism. There is a reason you will never hear me engaging in Oppress-A-Thons in which we compete to see whose grievances are worse. The reason is simple--I know the limits of my experience.

So, I just need to say this before I scream. Please, stop with the "sexism is the last acceptable prejudice" or "Obama has endured less racism than Hillary's endured sexism" or the blithe quoting of Shirley Chisolm or the "sexism is the most binding force in America," or the "We're lucky to be black." You don't have to run me down to make your point. Have a drink. Take a run. Cut on the boob-tube. Or better yet, open a goddamn book that tackles something that's larger than your own, evidently, accursed existence. Do something that will prevent you from speaking on evils you've never had the privilege of dancing with. I beg of you--just stop it. You aren't qualified to speak on this. And the more you talk, the more we know.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of hyperlinks. Not joking about that plane. Something more analytical, and less raw when I get back. Be safe guys.

Hillary Clinton: Feminism Incarnate

At least that's what some of her people would have you believe. What else are we to make of comments such as the following:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said "we feel abandoned by this organization today."
Rep. Shelley Berkeley called the endorsement "extremely unnecessary" and "inappropriate.
Rep. Jane Harmon called it "a betrayal."

That would be reactions to NARAL's endorsement of Barack Obama. I don't know what to say to this. I think I won't say too much because I bet there are a rack of feminists out there who would take umbrage at the idea of this somehow being representative of all feminism. And frankly, it's not like I'm working in an area of expertise. But so much of this, as a black person, looks familiar that I almost feel like I'm watching the story of my life. Dig the "respect" and "disrespect" meme that's begun to rear its head. Whenever, I hear people talking about "disrespect," I think of 1-15 football teams, or more aptly, brothers on the corner going to war over an alleged wrong look. The "Disrespect Card" is the marker of the man--or woman--who's got nothing else in the tank. In my life, it's been the instigator for more ghetto-ass insanity than I care to remember. Not quite the same, I know, but the requisite foolishness, and element of perceived slight is still there. For more on this, I think I'll hand the mic off to my betters.

I'll also schill a bit more for Obama. Here he is in front of Planned Parenthood:

Things That Aren't Racist

OK, lets just stop this whole idea that anytime you say a word that could be a racial slur, it's automatically a slur, no matter the context. Tom Davis made the mistake of using the term tar-baby in the same memo in which he was discussing Barack Obama:

“Remember,” Davis writes, “Hispanic voters are a swing group in this election and future elections. John McCain, being from a border state, may be out of sync with many Republicans but he has standing among Hispanics. Barrack Obama has not made the sale to Hispanic voters. Thus, this issue is a tar baby for anyone who touches it, with land mines everywhere.”

Uhm, it's classless that he spelled his Obama's name, but come on, that IS a definition of tar-baby. 

Say Anything

Again, courtesy Andrew. Here's our last Democratic president:

“I never thought it would be the Democratic Party that didn’t want to count votes in Florida,” he said at a rally at the University of Montana. “I thought that was a Republican strategy -- or strategery as the case may be. And I just ask you all this, do you really believe Florida would be getting this kind of treatment if the vote had turned out the other way?”

I saw Clinton's presidency from the perspective of a high school and college student. There is so much more that I wish I had known then. This dude makes me ill.

Some Footage From West Virginia

Fascinating...

New Yorkers And Washingtonians

So the first two readings for my memoir--The Beautiful Struggle--are tonight and tomorrow. The first is here and New York, the second is in D.C. Below is the info:

Wednesday May 14, 6:00
Hue-Man Books
2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd. between 124th and 125th
212-665-7400

Thursday May 15, 6:30
Hosted by Vertigo Books
Reading at the Sumner School, 17th & M NW
301-779-9300

Affirmative Action, Sista Souljah And Obama

Noam Scheiber has a very interesting take on Obama as a politician with an uncommon aversion to, well, politics:

Obama has tended to shun similar stunts when they relate to race. The run-up to South Carolina was rife with talk that post-racial Obama was morphing into a decidedly pre-post-racial candidate. To reverse the slide, blogger Mickey Kaus suggested he give a speech embracing class- rather than race-based affirmative action, something Obama had flirted with in the past. Kaus had a point: The atmospherics would have been irresistible to ambivalent whites. I pushed a milder form of the idea on my own blog. Not long after, I got a response from an Obama adviser: Never gonna happen. Urging Sister Souljah politicking on him was the surest way to provoke a scowl.

Matt quotes the same section in making an argument for an Obama switch from race-based to class-based Affirmative Action. For the most part, I also believe in the class-based approach. First of all, forgive me, but I'm not much concerned about the middle class black kid--and there are a lot of them now--who has to go to a lesser state school because he didn't get his first choice. He should have applied to Howard University, and maybe Hampton, anyway. My greater worry is for poor kids for whom college is simply not an option. The fact is that there are disproportionate number black kids who fit in that box.When Obama said his daughters shouldn't receive Affirmative Action, I think a lot of black folks understood that. I think there are plenty of white folks in this country who certainly won't enjoy the privileges that my very black seven year-old son will enjoy as a child.

But a word on the Kausesque Sista Souljah suggestion. Obama is right to resist this. A switch from race-based Affirmative Action to class-based Affirmative Action is an honorable policy. Embracing that policy in order to demonstrate to whites that you aren't a nigger-lover is loathsome. The fact is that the net African-American population in states like West Virginia and Kentucky is minuscule, and race-based Affirmative Action has almost nothing to do with why those states are economically depressed. I would go so far as to say that if you surveyed the average white voter and asked him to list his concerns, abolish Affirmative Action wouldn't even come up.

I think people often forget that Obama is actually black, and saying to a black man that he should kick the shit out of his own to show he's down with the club is, in the main, insulting. I would submit that Obama finds the Sista Souljah tactic distasteful as human being, but also as an African-American. Using black people as a bogeyman to, quite literally, scare up votes is an old tactic. Let's not marry that vile strategy to something that actually is a decent idea.

Josh Says What You Guys Have Been Saying Since Saturday

It's Appalachia:

There's been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama's problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama's problem isn't with white working class voters or rural voters. It's Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he's getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky.

If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.

I doubt any of this will stop fools and nitwits, like this one, from essentially defining "white voters" as "white people who don't like Obama." Still it's refreshing.

From Slate: Feminism Means Never Having To Say You're Toast

Via Andrew, this is from Dahlia Lithwick:

Emily asked a good question yesterday about the proper feminist reading of Hillary Clinton’s weird new Bartleby phase—wherein she is all but mathematically eliminated; superdelegates are running screaming for the exits; the office furniture is being carted out onto the moving vans; and yet still she soldiers on, undaunted, because real women “don’t give up in difficult situations.”

I suppose you can call all this “feminism.” But, as my husband pointed out this morning, if the inability to concede error or defeat—even in light of irrefutable, empirical evidence and in the face of spiraling support and tanking morale—is feminism, George Bush must be the feminist icon of the ages.   

It's been interesting watching the end of the Clinton campaign, because I feel like a certain amount of it hearkens back back to an era of black politics--namely the Sharpe James/Marion Barry era. I wrote a piece some time ago noting the resemblance between Marion Barry and Bill Clinton, but I never considered the bleed effect to Hillary. The way Hillary and her allies make her a stand-in for the entire feminist cause or the entire white working cause, has an eerie resonance with how Barry and James etc. would make themselves the personification of black oppression.

The complicating factor of course is that there there are sexists, there are racists, there are elites who've exploited working whites. Of course the demagogue often conflates the sexist/racist/elitist with anyone who dares criticize that person. Still, expecting a rational response from the victims of irrational bias is probably asking too much. I take great pleasure in the fact that the very racism that Obama has had to deal with in this campaign has forced him to be a better candidate. No black person--and I'd argue no white woman--can win the White House crying "Poor Me." I'd like to tell you that the era of identity politics in the black community is over. But of course, I can't.