Ta-Nehisi Coates takes on TNR and Andre Sullivan
I ran across Andrew Sullivan’s blog post “Excuse Me, Mr. Coates.” I sometimes read Ta-nehisi Coates’ stuff and was taken aback. Sullivan’s tone in those few words indicated a feud. It peaked my curiosity.
I read Sullivan’s piece before I read Coates’ piece. Not good. The impression Sullivan gave was that Coates’ piece was a vile attack on The New Republic (TNR). It was not. It was a rather straight forward fact based piece for all to see.
Coates’ observations on TNR is reflected in many liberal organizations. Inasmuch as these organizations pretend to be progressive, seldom do people of color have power within them or are even there. An ivory tower false elitism permeates their ranks that generally make many of these organizations insular. They bear little resemblance to the world they claim to want.
Coates describes an anthology of TNR writing titled “Insurrections” edited by TNR’s Franklin Foer.
There is only one essay in Insurrections that takes race as its subject. The volume includes only one black writer and only two writers of color. This is not an oversight. Nor does it mean that Foer is a bad human. On the contrary, if one were to attempt to capture the “spirit” of TNR, it would be impossible to avoid the conclusion that black lives don’t matter much at all.
That explains why the family rows at TNR’s virtual funeral look like the “Whites Only” section of a Jim Crow-era movie-house. For most of its modern history, TNR has been an entirely white publication, which published stories confirming white people’s worst instincts.
Andrew Sullivan took offense to that reality based statement.
As for the case that there was a “Whites Only” sign on the door: Has Ta-Nehisi really never read the extraordinary coverage of black history, literature, intellectual life, and poetry that TNR routinely published? Leon’s back-of-the-book was filled with such essays and reviews. Has it even occurred to him either that the campaign for welfare reform in the front of the book, for example, was conceived by liberals who believed the existing system was hurting black America? That it was a good faith effort precisely to care about an underclass “beyond the barrier”?
In effect, some of my best friends are Black, or some other. But he missed the point. Empathy is never enough. Unless people who lived an experience have access to the table, the positions of power, it is all for naught.
Ta-Nehisi Coates articulates many other faux pas by TNR, its racist owner Martin Peretz, a panel of whether it was appropriate for jewelry store owners to discriminate against black men, and more.
What drew the biggest defense by Andrew Sullivan is the manner in which Coates spoke about Sullivan’s excerpting of the Charles Murray’s book “The Bell Curve.”
When people discuss TNR’s racism, Andrew Sullivan’s publication of excerpts from Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve (and a series of dissents) gets the most attention. But this fuels the lie that one infamous issue stands apart. In fact, the Bell Curve episode is remarkable for how well it fits with the rest of TNR’s history. …
It’s true that TNR’s staff roundly objected to excerpting The Bell Curve, but I was never quite sure why. Sullivan was simply exposing the dark premise that lay beneath much of the magazine’s coverage of America’s ancient dilemma.
What else to make of the article that made Stephen Glass’s career possible, “Taxi Cabs and the Meaning of Work”? …
What else to make of TNR sending Ruth Shalit to evaluate affirmative action at The Washington Post in 1995? “She cast Post writer Kevin Merida as some kind of poster boy for affirmative action when in fact he had risen in the business for reasons far more legitimate than her own,” David Carr wrote in 1999. …
TNR might have been helped by having more—or merely any—black people on its staff.
Sullivan continued to defend his release of “Bell Curve” excerpts. This particular statement actually had my blood boiling.
And the debate about race and IQ, for me, was never about someone’s humanity. It was and is about empirical evidence about a testable thing – IQ – that is one small sliver of what it is to be human, and a variety of competing explanations for it. The question was a relatively simple one: what can account for the clear differentials in IQ between the racial categories used by the US in its vast data sets?
As an engineer well versed in science I can categorically claim the above statement is simply stupid. It is made by many who really do not understand science, degrees of freedom, and corruptibility of data sets.
What can account for clear differentials is a data set that does not encompass all that defines intelligence. As an example, I scored extremely high on IQ tests because my environment and education was similar to the general population for whom said test was made, even though I was from another country. These scholars cannot conceivably make a test with a data set to encompass absolute intelligence or one that reflect the realities of all the tested.
Much of the data in America used for categorization suffer a similar dilemma. From predisposition to crime, to education, etc. If TNR had a diverse staff of plain speaking intellects that would be obvious.
Liberal organizations look just like America. Within these organizations there are racists. Within conservative organizations there are many non-racists as well. The problem is that the leadership and the staff of these organizations rarely reflect the America they are calling for.
I have been recently impressed with MSNBC’s attempt at mitigating this with many of its new anchors. At Move To Amend we have centralized our organization on race, class, and gender specifically to ensure that as a real progressive movement is built, it not only looks like America but absorbs the essence of all the diversity that ensures that all Americans’ values within our mosaic are implemented.
This discussion between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Andrew Sullivan is much deeper than the superficiality of the discussion within liberal rags and TNR in particular. To which I say, Ta-Nehisi Coates, one down, what about the rest?