The incomparable Kojo Nnamdi (those of you in the D.C. area know him well) makes a pretty good point about the arrogance of youth:
Hey Ta Nehisi,
Kojo is old friend of my Dad's. Word has it they met while battling over space at event where both of them were trying to sell books. This was in the era when so many of us thought that all the world's knowledge could be found in the latest Chancellor Williams. Of course Kojo is correct, and should know because my father, while influenced by his activist youth, certainly isn't the same man he was in his Black Panther days. I sometimes get carried away. The older I get, the less this happens. But still, every once awhile the old ego slips in.
I only have
one observation on your blog post "More stupid hand wringing over
Nigger." It's the sentence "I will believe that till the end
of my days" in reference to the use of nigger by black people as a
lovely, lovely thing.
I'm here to tell you that at your age,
you have no idea what you will believe till the end of your days. I used
to think that I would believe in Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Nkrumahism,
socialism, Marxism/Leninism ,revolution, and Gil Scott-Heron's "The
Revolution Will Not be Televised" for the rest of my days. But as
you get older, the world changes. Like the brutal excesses and the fall
of socialism in Eastern Europe, your world view changes, and if it doesn't,
you'll find yourself clinging to outdated ideas and futilely trying to
apply them to a changed reality.
You don't want to practice nostalgia
ideology, as too many of my friends do today, stubbornly insisting that
they'll ultimately convince black folks, and the world, of the correctness
of positions they held in the sixties and seventies.
BTW, I still love "The Revolution
Will Not Be Televised," but no longer delude myself that black people
are in a revolutionary situation.
One love,
Kojo.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I second Kojo's email. I'm only 37, but, man, have my attitudes changed since I was 20. And I could track them pretty well by my interpretation of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Even though the first place I heard it was a damn Nike commercial, I thought it was a savvy bit of media hacking to get The Man to disseminate the message that The Man wouldn't get it. Then, when the Internet came along, I thought it was a bit of prescience, and that the revolution would be online.
Now I think the revolution is already happening, has been for decades, really, but so slowly and gradually that it gets no media coverage at all.
And I thank god the world keeps making more young people, to keep reminding us old farts to try to do right.
Posted by MikeT | July 18, 2008 9:33 AM