Ta Nehisi Coates ‘The Message’: Exhibitionism as Art

I have a saying that I resort to sometimes. It runs, “I miss my White friends.” By this I mean that in my life, a few times in elementary and middle school, a few times in my college years, and a few times in my vocational life, I’ve had White friends that I considered ‘real’ friends. Male and female, the relationship was sincere and casually reciprocal, and my associates quite often benefited me, and I benefitted them in sometimes particular and generic ways.

And yet now in my life, living in an all-Black neighborhood, having gone to HBCUs, all Black churches (if not denomination), and no external commercial or vocational opportunities or activities for confluence, and I have lost contact with nearly all my White friends accumulated throughout previous years. It was only 5 or 6 at the most at any time, and they have since dwindled down to one by the vagueness of life. Indeed, I miss my White friends.

Ta Nehisi Coates misses his White friends too, though he would never tell you. By the time Coates and his ‘Black bodies’, his pitiable and pitiful psychological expositions on his own unique brand of psycho-trauma therapy, that he exports into the mass Black American consciousness is completely degenerate. Let his admirers and supporters describe him in a simple google search.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author who deals extensively with the theme of black bodies, arguing that “the question of how one should live within a black body… is the question of life”¹. He reflects on the visceral, crippling nature of racism, arguing that the systemic abuse of black bodies is deeply entrenched in America’s history². Coates examines the interior, entering the Black body, his own Black body and the Black bodies gathered all around³. He shows how racism operates through the control, manipulation, and exploitation of black bodies and the resulting fragility of black bodies within a racist society¹.

What is altogether worse is that this babbling psychodrama he probably inherited from his father, described online as a ‘former’ Black Panther. Former as in ‘reformed’, or former as in ‘it got tired and I just got a job and left’? In completing the intellectual and psychological intergenerational curse, Coates has in all probability indoctrinated his son with that type of self-defeating, self-destructive ways of describing your interaction with ‘the world’ (sans God-mere Black Bodies). Coates wrote a book some years ago entitled ‘Between the world and me’, filled with his advice to his 15-year-old son about navigating the world as a ‘Black Body’ (among other Black, Brown, and non-Black bodies). At 15? Really Ta Nehisi? You really want your child to understand the mysteries of ‘racism’ and ‘being’, via Papa Coates perception of the immutability of White racism? Is that not too much pressure for a 15-year-old? For instance, Coates brand of social liberalism has told him his son is free to determine his own sexuality, but Coates letters to his son, suggest his son needs to master the vagaries of ‘racism’ (as defined by Papa Coates). Indeed, that is a lot of pressure. Coates book ‘Between the World and Me’ has the expressed intent of influencing his son to perceive the world and racism as he does. Trust me, like the fictional movie, ‘The World According to Garp’, Coates son will get his own version of racism, and I can tell you off the bat it will be different from his father’s because he will be raised with the perks and proceeds of his father’s academic intellectual career (if not actual book sales). Being raised in affluence tends to insulate a person from overt racism and the need for a lot of reflection about it. As a matter of fact, without knowing the facts, I’d argue the boy probably doesn’t go to public schools in Baltimore, or if he does, they are upscale public schools in upscale areas. I’m not suggesting anything is wrong with that, but how could an author that prides himself on naked ‘Black Body’ authenticity, and its historic devaluation, confronting White culture, to prove that it should be valuable to White people, not confront Black people to make sure that his child’s urban education treats every Black and Brown child as valuable. That is to say, treats the child as important enough as a ‘Black Body and Mind’ to be capable of reading on grade level (nationally), capable of doing math on grade level (nationally), capable of having level of social studies, science, and the arts that is at least pursuant to grade level national standards. Not only that, would God, that Coates demanded of Black people, not that little Black children and Brown children get affirmed into action at the finest White mainstream schools, but that because ‘Young Black Bodies and Minds’ are so important to us as Black people, demand of us, that every Black child in America deserves AT LEAST an education commensurate with the objective standards of the surrounding mainstream culture and even international standards such as IB curriculum, and real AP curriculum. Demand it of us Negro intellectual, don’t demand that White people provide it for us, and make places for us, let’s do it ourselves. Raising our children knowing full well the majority of them are going to schools that will not graduate the children reading, doing math, and other skill and knowledge sets on grade level, and thus not prepared to be competitive or do well at the next educational levels is a crime against them that we of Negritude are committing against our own children. Perhaps it is even criminal! It is our version of dehumanizing our children to think that without White intervention, or sitting next to a White child, they are not capable of being educated to the ‘highest’ standards, as determined by objective test scores or anything else. That is a disservice to Black children. But what Black intellectual challenges Black people and the Black community to demand more from our children, Black community support for academics, intellectualism, and scholastic enrichment designed not only to present a competent education that any child of any race could go to an all-Black inner-city school and get a nationally competitive education, but that even surpasses national and international standards in some cases, and specifically delivers African American sources of unique enrichment and spirituality. That is what Black people owe ourselves, not leadership that carps, worries, and protests about what White folks owe us. The salient question is ‘What Black America owes itself’, because whatever it is, we sure aren’t getting it, unless Meg the Stallion, Tyler Perry, Ru Paul, Dirty Red, and Cardi B and paternity court are supposed to be indicative of it’.

I can ‘go you one better than that’ about just how much respect Coates has for ‘Black bodies’. His latest book entitled ‘The Message’ was apparently (as in I haven’t read it and do not plan to) written as reflections on recent trips to Ghana (Goree Island where slaves were corralled and ’embarked’ to the new world), South Carolina (Midlands/Richland County), and the Middle East (including Gaza and Lebanon). Yes, this current obsession of Coates qualifies as an interest in ‘Black and Brown Bodies’ but why so far away? There are plenty ‘Black and Brown Bodies’ in distress suffering in his hometown of Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans. Indeed, some of those areas have higher rates of consistent violence than Gaza, which Coates had so much to say about. What is worse, Black people in those urban cities in America are largely inflicting it on themselves, which is a dynamic certainly Coates himself would say means the situation of Blacks in America is more negative that persons in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza are fighting a perceived outside enemy and slaughtering him the streets like animals, Blacks in America are inflicting the violence upon themselves, a far, far greater tragedy in psychological and intellectual terms. That tragedy is only compounded by what Coates and his ilk of Black liberals’ think is the real problem; White institutional violence and racism against Blacks such as police malevolence. But I guarantee you, if you break into Coates big pretty house in a White or recently formerly White neighborhood, he is going to call the police, the racist, pig police to protect his property rights and the rights of his and his families ‘Black Bodies’. He is not going to call The Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, he is not going to call Al Sharpton, nor the SCLC, lawyer Benjamin Crump, Rev. Barber, Berneice King, nor the Negro Urban League. He is going to call 911 and whatever color the cop is that shows up, Coates expects that cop to enforce his property rights because just like Oprah, the Rock and their property in Hawaii, they paid good money for that land, and they expect their property rights to be maintained by the White man’s authorities whether the ‘Natives are getting restless or not’! Just like Kamala said recently, I bet if you break into Te Nehisi Coates house, Black body or not, you are going to get shot, in defense of what capitalism and property rights as defined by White people entail. How is it then that Coates had to go to Africa and Gaza to get in touch with some Black and Brown bodies.

Pt. II

Ironically, when Coates first entered public intellectual life in America, I supported him in principle and wholehearted. That is to say because he existed, seemed to have thought very deeply about Negro affairs, and wasn’t dumb, I assumed his public presence as a Male Negro Intellectual to be a good thing. I have been arguing since my college days at HBCU, South Carolina State University, that Black people needed a slightly more robust intellectual tradition and that any representation and promotion of academic Black intellectuals and/or Black public intellectuals was automatically a good thing. The problem is that Coates would have done well to consider the qualitative and quantitative differences between Black ‘Academic Intellectuals’ and Black ‘Public Intellectuals’. For example, when I began delving into Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Buber, and other philosophers generally considered ‘existentialist’, naturally I was directed towards Jean Paul Sartre and Simone Beauvoir. Upon examination I found their writings to be lacking in readability and likability, if not complexity, and their assumptions about self-definition immediately repulsed me. For instance, Sartre’s ideas that “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself”, and “Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choice” strike me as not only anti-religious but silly as well. As admiring of Nietzsche as I was and still am, I consider his atheism to be not only the source of his great strivings, but his eventual insanity as well. The point is that during much of Sartre’s career he was a ‘public intellectual’ in that he, Simone Beauvoir, and their social milieu, captured French popular culture of the time. They enjoyed ‘popular’ and public support. They were on TV being interviewed, and their plays, lectures and literary activities sold as ‘popular’ French culture of the day. Furthermore, French culture and society took Sartre’s political leanings and political beliefs seriously, not just as some sort of intellectual projection, but as a kind of ‘pop public French cultural’ phenomena that impacted the development of socialism, Marxism and the left in French culture of the 60’s. That is the definition of a ‘public intellectual’.

Coates on the other hand is an “Academic” Black intellectual. He makes his money on the lecture circuits. Though from what I understand he left Howard University without a degree, I am quite sure liberal universities all over the country have invited him to lecture and give his take on the vagaries of racism against ‘Black and Brown Bodies’. Other Black academic intellectuals include persons from the right and the left like Cornell West, Henry Louis Gates, Shelby Steele, and Larry Elder. The important point about ‘Black Academic Intellectuals’ is that not only do they not have an audience in mainstream White ‘pop culture’ for their specific ‘intellectual brand’, they do not have an audience in the Black community either! That is to say, Black people don’t listen to them. Who are their audience then? White people, and usually a minority of White people at that and impotent Black liberals. That is precisely why the White mainstream ‘powers that be’ have absolutely no fear of these types of ‘Black Academic Intellectuals’. Nothing they say is going to encourage Black people do any damn thing, let alone ‘stop the violence’ or ‘organize’. The White power structure uses them to make it seem like Black people are doing all this thinking about their socio-economic predicament, but the very Negroes it chooses to promote to do the thinking, have absolutely no cache or credibility with ‘the streets’ or Black people in general. They are assumed by Black people to have a certain ‘value’ because White folk love them and employ them, but the average Negro knows damn well the speculations of West, Gates, Steele, Elder and Coates have nothing to do with actual Black life.

The streets don’t listen to Coates, and Black people in general don’t listen to him, excepting the sort that is extremely liberal in the first place. This type of idiotic Negro is the type that must purchase the latest book that jumps through all sorts of academic, economic, historical and illogical hoops in order to prove once again that 50-plus years after the Civil Rights Movement, and Black people being more or less ‘responsible’ for the direction of their own individual lives and communities, White people are the source of all our past, current, and probably future problems. This type of liberal Black reader loves to get the hippest and latest books from Oprah’s book clubs, Best Seller lists, and other such effluvia, to cover the fact that they aren’t the least bit interested in any of the best books, from the best authors ‘of all time’! That is precisely why Coates wrote a book with signifficant sections on Africa and the Middle East, with South Carolina sandwiched somewhere in there as filler. Thus talking about Africa and Gaza instead of his problems at home. Apparently he doesn’t know ‘charity begins at home’. But that is precisely the point I’m making.

Coates knows damn well nothing he, nor any of the aforementioned ‘Black Academic Intellectuals’ added together would slow or stop Black on Black violence; or increase Black self-esteem and spirituality. Nothing they did if they traveled to every urban area in America with their books and speechifying would increase Black economic productivity or increase our estimation in the eyes of White folks and the world. Even though that is what we need, Coates can’t give it to us. So Coates gives us warmed over critiques and impressions of the slave deportation facility on Goree Island on the Senegalese Coast. That’s why he thinks the most important thing he has to say to Black America is a warmed over critique and impressions of the sufferings of the Palestinians and the people of Gaza…as though he knows more about that and its implications than the implications of the shit going on in his own backyard. For that matter, as completely unproductive as the ‘Million Man March’ was, if the current crop of Black Academic intellectuals called a ‘Million man or woman, or Trans anything, there would be far less attendees than at Trump’s so called largest inaugurations of all time (and they would probably be mostly White). That is Black America’s complete ignoring of the post-modern ‘Black Academic Intellectual typified in Coates.

Coates knew damn well niggas, who should have been his primary audience, ain’t interested in that. Some out of pure undefiled ignorance, but some simply because of lack educational resources to understand why knowledge of the world and global culture is important. Let’s be unapologetically clear about the myopia (or perhaps hyperopia) of American Blacks, we Negroes in America are quite upset that Tyreek Hill got pulled over by the racist Miami police in his $100,000 car, or a lady got shot by the police simply with her hand on a pot of water, and the words ‘I rebuke you in the name of Jesus’ on her lips, but all you hear is crickets and echoes from our Negro rappers, politicians and ‘Black Academic Intellectuals’ on the subject of Haiti, which is far closer than Goree Island, Africa and the Middle East, and perhaps an argument could made is equally deserving of Coates ‘genius’. Coates and other Negro intellectuals of his ilk know damn well not to say anything about Haiti, because all they have to say revolves around blaming White people for Haiti’s hundreds of years of varying forms of independent Diaspora misery, and demanding that White people go to Haiti and ‘fix it’ (that is to say ‘fix’ the victims of their crimes); which is the same ridiculous nonsensical approach liberal Black intellectuals have towards our problems as American Blacks. Everything is the White man’s fault, and only the White man’s repentant agency and activity can save us, not our wisdom, agency, activities, and relationship with God.

This bizarre kind of ignorance on the part of Coates and current American Negro culture is because Coates understands precisely who the audience is for his tales of ‘Black Body’ racist misery and oppression. Like Amandla Stenberg (see the Star Wars ‘Acolyte’ movie disaster), he views his role and responsibility as a Negro artist (intellectual), as making ‘White folks cry’ or getting them to ‘feel some type-a-way’ about their historic culpability as racist patriarchal capitalists, and what their obligations are to the current generational crop of Black and Brown people. In an interview Amandla Stenberg (who not coincidentally is a mulatto like Kaepernick) suggested with a straight face that her job as a ‘woke actress’ was to make White people cry. She meant it in a positive way. In her mind the idea was that her job as a ‘mulatto’ woke actress is to participate in films that break racial and sexual stereotypes. Yes, dear Negritude, a mulatto woman in her 20s with a millionaire European father and an African mother, is determined to wake the world up as regards racism, transphobia, and homophobia. Dear girl, ‘what mighty big teeth you have grandma’! And yet what this reveals about her, Kaepernick, and Coates is that they are pathologically obsessed with White people, and making White folk ‘feel some type-a-way). This is why instead of starting a foundation, raising money, starting a think tank with real academics, developing athletic programs for Black boys in school, or actually doing something in Negro urban communities, etc, Kaepernick wanted to kneel, stick it to the ‘White man’ in his face while the White man sang the national anthem. Silly Kaepernick, that was ‘unnecessary roughness’.

Then like the self-obsessed idiots they are, Coates, Stenberg, Kaepernick, et al, anoint themselves ‘woke’ social justice warrior artists, and demand that Black and White get in lockstep with their ridiculous views, and anoint them this generations crop of Negro leadership. Stenberg does this in her ridiculous obsession to expose racism, as though no niggas in America knew racism existed or that we had ‘Black Bodies’ until Amandla Stenberg and Dr. Coates told us. In essence, Coates obsessive use of the phrase ‘Black Bodies’ that he presents to his White audiences, is his way of like Stenberg, ‘making them cry’ because in his estimation, they have to confront their racist notions and assumptions about ‘Black Bodies’ through his books.

This is a good point to discuss Ms. Stenberg’s response to what happens when instead of making White people cry out (in human sympathy), you make them cry out angrily (in reaction to an affront). Because she was a gay colored girl playing a Star Wars role, she wanted to elicit sympathy from the White man/White male traditional Star Wars nerd/fan that dehumanized her and other Black and Brown and LGBTQIA+ characters, by not giving them dominant roles in the “Traditional Star Wars Universe”. By loving her ‘new’, ‘updated’, and inclusive characterization of the Star War Canon and lore, they as White mainstream patriarchal Star Wars watching elites could make up for past crimes against Black and Brown gays and the LGBTQIA+ communities in Star Wars previous iterations. Because obviously, George Lucas is a White man, there must be something about it that is problematic about ‘anything’ he did. So Amandla, Kathleen Kennedy and the lady that played Mother Aniya set out to fix poor George’s White male patriarchal work of fantasy fiction, and did their press junkets proud to say that they made the ‘gayest’ Star Wars ever. When this rubs people the wrong way, and many people that grew up on the franchise and wanted to share it with their children and grandchildren realized they could no longer do so in full faith, fans that should have been money in the bank, scattered. When the blowback came, Amandla’s response…Mulatto Amandla’s response…Danish father grew up privileged Amandla Stenberg’s, response living a life of privilege with a Hollywood career since her role in the Hunger Games movies with Jennifer Lawrence, response to the blowback from the largely White male traditional fan base, by doing a ‘diss track’. You can’t make this shit up. She does a ‘diss track’ where she puts her ‘Black Womanly Body’ on full display by gyrating, grinding, and twerking her pussy print/camel toe in short shorts, all the while exclaiming ‘Don’t fuck with yo discourse’ knowing full well the Star Wars franchise is supposed to at some level be suitable for children. How could she possibly miss the point that she is complaining about the dehumanization and sexualization of Black women and the LGBTQIA+ community, by dehumanizing herself and Black women’s sexuality by dancing provocatively. Not only that she has trivialized Black ‘diss track culture’. I’m not a fan, but for her to appropriate the form is just as bad as when people like Takashi 6/9, or other mulatto or White rappers, act hard. But the type of exhibitionism that Coates and Stenberg promote, in the name of forcing White people to deal with their inherent ‘racism against Black bodies warrants this type of ridiculous exhibitionist behavior and that they do it in the name of intellectual and art is ridiculous.

Part III

Recently in the news, Coates is upset because he feels he got disrespected and handled wrong by the White mainstream media as he was doing his press junket for his latest book. First of all, Dr. Coates, for a Negro author ‘Academic Black Intellectual’ or ‘public Black intellectual (a la Sartre), you have White friends in high places. I miss my White friends too. Your White friends have allowed you to rise very high, garnering awards and White mainstream (if liberal) approval along the way. These are a few of his awards and symbols of approval from White mainstream institutions in his lists of Awards and Grants.

A MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow, Coates has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his Atlantic cover story “The Case for Reparations.”

He is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department at Howard University.

Ta-Nehisi also enjoyed a successful run writing Marvel’s Black Panther (2016-2021) and Captain America (2018-2021) comics series.

Despite his philosophy clearly, some White institutions, whether they respect ‘Black Bodies’ in the aggregate or not might be debated, but clearly, as evidenced above, some elements of the White power structure like Te Nehisi Coate’s ‘Black Body’. But think critically, dear ‘Sons and Daughters of Ham’, does it even make sense, a Black ‘Public or Academic Intellectual’ that get approval from White mainstream organizations and institutions? 450 years of racism and oppression in the Western Hemisphere, slavery, Tuskeegee experiments, lynching, Jim Crow and ‘Black Codes’, medaival chaingangs operating in the rural south conscripting Black men for…idleness (totally reflected in Black men’s contemporary relatiobnship to the Post-Modern American Criminal Justice System). Now all of a sudden in 2015, the same people you claim did all that, begin promoting a Negro intellectual without a college degree, who apparently wants to do the intellectual equivalent of prancing around ‘butt assed naked’ with the Lizzo and Amandla Stenberg like aim of making White mainstream America and its ideas on beauty and normalcy, respect their ‘Black bodies’. Trust me, if White people were scared his ideas, their propigation, and the possibility of their fulfillment, represented a ‘threat’ to them or their place in the hierarchy he not have gotten the awards and publicity he had, nor would he have had the opportunity to promote his latest book on National Television, for a National White mainstream media conglomerate, where he claims he got disrespected.

It is therefore obvious why White folks would have him on their shows. White folk know damn well, the average nigga doesn’t give a dam about ‘that shit Coates is saying’; or what he thinks. The only people who love him are other Black liberal academics, who make dissertations and art just to make White people ‘feel some type-a-way’ that they think elicits sympathy for the Negro position. This they call ‘leadership’ and them fulfilling their duties to the poor Negroes, ‘Black Bodies’, that aren’t blessed to have received the material or professional rewards Dr. Coates has. Meanwhile, they are on TV, and lecturing professionally doing all the rounds of the liberal circles (instead of the streets), and not struggling in the least, evidenced by his latest book ‘The Message’, which proves that with all the shit niggas is going through in urban America and Haiti, he has time to take pilgrimages to well worn spots (all too well-worn spots) in Africa and the Middle East including Gaza, presently a war zone. It takes money to travel ladies and gentlemen…or perhaps Coates travel is being…subsidized…like Clarence Thomas’, but with different benefactors?

Thusly, White folk know they have absoutely nothing to fear from Coates and his ‘rhetoric’. Black people don’t care, and please allow me to speculate why, simply as a closet psychologist. One thing I’ve noticed about Coates presentation and his aesthetic is that it is brutally minimalist. ‘Black Bodies’. His, is a very northern (cold) and urban (self-relliant) social or political critique. His thought and his philosophy, like his writing is not attractive (at least to me). It doesn’t invite, it rubs you the wrong way on purpose, with the idea of the friction caused making it stick like velcro. He as the writer is on one side, the reading public (as stated earlier largely a White audience and Negro liberals) is on the other. Coates doesn’t so much invite you into his world, he does the opposite. He repels you on purpose, then claims the fact that you are repelled by him means that you are inherently racist…against ‘Black Bodies’ and thus you need to buy his books so you can be repelled by your own racism. The average Black person, male or female, doesn’t have time for all that; and the only type of White people that would be fooled by such a thing socialist-atheist White liberals. Yes the socialist-atheist White liberals have a new ‘original sin’…but instead of being blaming it on Adam or Eve (for that requires religion), they believe the White male patriarchy committed the original sin, and must forever go on apologizing for it, even when the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians, and the Middle East are quite capable of beating them in certain industries and fiellds, culminating in the ultimate chess game between nations and peoples, geopolitics and warfare.

Again, White folk understand they have nothing to fear from Coates and his ‘Academic Intellectual’ ilk. They write books with the aim of ‘touching’ White folk, to make White folk see the humanity in Black people (Coates Black Bodies). The first issue with that strategy is that it is evidence of one of the remaining links in the psychological chains of slavery. So called Black artists and intellectuals inadvertently make White people the center of all Black art by this insidious means. Everything has to be about White folk, how they enslaved us, why they enslaved us, how Black socio-econmic performance today is intrinsically linked to pervasive cultural and political institutional racism today; and thus in order to fix ‘Black’ or even ‘African’ problems, somehow the key to this is the continued projectile vomiting of discourses and deliberations on intersictionality, patriarchy, sexism, racism, microinsuults, etc. It is as though Blacks in American cannot and will not interpret themselves and their own condition and agency by means that aren’t dependent on White folks (either catering to them or making them feel uncomfortable). That Black artist and public intellectuals would worry more about White folk than they do Negroes is a necessary consequence of their obsession with White people and trying to get in White people’s heads to try to ‘make them recognize Black humanity, and the error of how they treated us all these years’. All the while they are obsessed with ‘what is wrong with White people’ and White culture’ socio-economics and culture continue to stagnate at best and more often than not finds itself retrogressing.

What is needed from Coates and other Black artists and intellectuals is products that can ‘TOUCH’ and ‘MOVE’ Black people not White people! Look at the rates of violence in our inner cities, clearly Black people need to be motivated and stimulated to see the ‘value’ and ‘humanity’ in themselves, not sit around listening Michael Eric Dyson tell him all the reasons White people haven’t seen our humanity and need to be ‘confronted’ to see it (as if Black quality of life has anything to do with whether or not Republican representative Nacy Mace pronounces Kamala Harris name correctly). I refer to Kamala Harris as (Killa Kam) pronounced like the rapper Cam’Ron pronounces his name. I wonder are the Kamala Harris name police going to come after me too. Maybe if Dyson were more concerned to use his admittedly quite considerable brain power and rhetoric influencing Black boys to stop slaughtering each other in the streets instead of ‘confronting White people’ we could experience an increase in the quality of Black life. Perhaps, if Dyson and Coates saw it as important that our girls have the self-esteem to make good decisions with their bodies, and were ‘touched’ and ‘confronted’ to see the value and humanity in Black life, they would not go around as 6% of the population having 60% of the abortions. I’m all for the right to abortion, but damn, why is it normalized that Black women are the one’s ‘taking advantage’ of the procedure at higher rates than other races of women? I wonder are Black women ‘taking advantage’ of the procedure like Stacy Abrams and Kamala would have us believe, or are the ‘White mainstream powers that be’ taking advantage of Black women?

But no, Coates wants to make White folk feel ‘some type-a-way’. You may be wondering what made Coates fall out with his White friends if as I presume, a few years ago, Coates was the darling of the White liberal world. Coates was the Black intellectual equivalent of ‘Arnold’ from the TV series Different Strokes, Webster, the little Black character Webster from tv show Webster), and the Tootie of the TV show Facts of Life. Liberal White people loved him! What them Coates get roughed up recently in a mainstream news media interview and signalled a fallling out with Coates White friends? I’m glad you asked.

When Coates attacked the Black Church and Black Christianity as retarding Black people’s progress, his Black liberal friends and Black feminists and Womanists, as well has his White liberal friends, mostly socialist-atheist-LGBTQIA+ both sectors patted him on the back and congratulated him on being a ‘free thinker’ willing to contradict the historic power and importance of the Black church in American Black life. One might even go so far as to say that many of the awards he got from the White mainstream liberal community were in response to his critiques against the church in general, the Black church in particular, and capitalism. This made him the darling of the White liberal set for time, as they are always looking for the next ‘Arnold’, ‘Webster’, and ‘Tootie’ they can stick somewhere and act like they are progressive. White folks aren’t crazy, they know very well the types of ‘Negroes’ they choose to ‘elevate’ and why. Weakening the power and authority of the Black church in the Black community has a dual destructive effect. 1) It weakened traditional notions of sexual functions and roles, thus paving the way for the promotion of LGBTQIA+ values in the Black community. 2) It undermines the most consistent organizing base the Black community has, paving the way for organizations like BLM and ANTIFA to recruit Black youth sensitive to the need for change that otherwise would have channeled their activigies into Black church and the political agenda(s) of the Black church. This had the effect of diffusing Black organizational capabilities.

Coates constant and unremiting attacks on the Black church and Christianity were thus welcomed by the White mainstream powers that be, yet at the same time, Coates was convinced he was ‘confronting’ the White mainstream powers that be, the same way Don Quiote went around chasing windmills convinced he was confronting great foes. And now Coates feels abandoned by his liberal White friends, Why now? Coates relentlessly attacked the Black church, and did not draw down the ire of the White liberals nor the Black liberals. Not only that, Coates attacked the White man and the patriarchy just as intensely, consigning White men (even liberal ones unless they were gay or transexual) to some kind of weird world where the only way they can have a seat at the table that they made (presumably off the backs of Black and brown people and women), is by making seats (artificially or not) at the table for everybody White men have oppressed in the past 2500 years. In addition, in order to get a seat at the aforementioned table, poor oppressed White men (unless they are gay) now have to go around apologizing to the people’s they have oppressed for 2500 years non-stop, for being such horrible human beings. The penance is done by making seats at the table, apologizing constantly. With all due respect to the sufferings of my ancestors and the those White men have oppressed for 2500 years since Greco-Roman days, the apologies have been caricatured so much, that its almost like White men are going around with a ‘scarlet letter’, emblazoned upon them that instead of symbolizing ‘Adultery’ as it did in the case of Hester Prynne, now symbolizing the White man’s eternal punishment for racism. But don’t get it twisted. Don’t blame Black people for this, even though its unChristian to not ‘forgive’ and objectively not the case in post-modern America, this is all due to White liberals and their promotion of Black intellectuals who are not only obsessed with White people, but combine this with and anger and resentment that is self-destructive to Black, and America in general.

Fascinatingly enough, it was White women that stood the most to gain from the transaction. This kind of playing of musical chairs in the post-modern Greco-Roman, Euro-American. I’m noticing that even in the DEI blowback, White women catch less heat than Black men and women in high positions. White women and the LGBTQIA+ communities played the Civil Rights hustle better than Black people. They took the strategies of the Civil Rights movement and applied them to the White patriarchy in their own behalf(s). In addition, when White women and the White LGBTQIA+ community rise his, the ‘threat’ to the White majority is signifficaly less shifts populated by Black men and/or Black women. So from Kathleen Kennedy to Elizabeth Warren, etc. White women rose higher faster and with more durability than any BLack during the affirmative action periods. And now back to our original proposition. Why has Coates White liberal friends now left him.

Coates attacked the Black Church, Christianity in general, and the White patriarchy, all the while having White liberal friends in high places. Let us now delve into what made his White liberal socialist-atheist LGBTQIA+ firends abandon him. Before that discussion however, I need to note that as his White liberal friends have abandoned him, his Black liberal friends will soon follow on their coat tails. Why? Black liberals, Black feminists, and Black womanists are dependent on White liberals, because as adduced earlier about Black Academic intellectuals, they have absolutely no resonance with the mainstream Black public. They’d never get enough in donations from Black people or HBCUs to support their lifestyles, so they rely on the funding provided by White liberals and White lliberal instituitonas and think tanks, to fund them and their agenda. Anyway, apparently, White liberals took offense to Coates portrayal of the Arab Israeli conflict. Supposedly, Coates an obviously well read and thoughtful man, needed a trip to Goree Island and the Middle East, to come to the conclusion that Israel is an occupying force of nominal Europeans or Jews White enough to pass since the Diaspora, that are in the case of Gaza and the Palestinians, oppressing Black and Brown people. It’s not funny, but its almost comical, that Black liberals in their tendency towards reductionism (intentional and unintentional microinsults, institutional racism, inherent racism pervasive racism etc.,) have lumped essentially all Jews into the category of if you look like a White man, act like a White man, and have big guns like a White man, you are ‘the White man’ writ large, and as such represenbt the ‘evil’ White male global patriarchy according to such logic.

But to go playing with the Jews, attacking them lilke Coates attacks the Black Church and CHristianity, attacking them like he attacks the White male Capitalist patriarchy, is a step Coates White friends couldn’t take (at least not for Coates). Attack the Black church or any church, thats ok to the White liberal socialist-atheist LGBTQIA+ class. Attack White men and the White male patriarchy, White men are big boys according to the White liberal elite, they can handle it. But Coates toached the third rail of American liberalism, for that matter even Black historical liberalism, because any casual reading of American history shows that the relationship between Black and Jews was complex oftimes, but as a general rule, American Jewish culture was more sensitive to the plight of Black than even so called White liberals.

In conclusion, the White mainstream powers that be, probably did not tell the on air journalist to publicly grill Coates about his comments on the Arab-Israeli conflict. I haven’t read Coates books and do not plan to, but I can tell you that the majority of Coates overt and covert White friends have left him. I miss my White friends too Dr. Coates.