is something inherently, residually wrong with black people. far less frequently to impoverish black folks find a public ally willing and able to insert without qualification their humanity, dignity and absolute worthiness. coates has done so unwaveringly. and watching it happen in realtime has been stunning. i am pleased to welcome to the table, ta-nesehi coates. and we invited jonathan chait, but he was not available. thanks for being here. thanks for having me. this has taken on a high level of public interest. to what do you attribute that at this moment, given that you write about these kinds of things regularly, why has this captured public attention? i don t know. i never know what s going to catch fire and what s not going to catch fire. but i think there s a deep, deep
veiled racial attack, and they pointed to the hypocrisy of ryan s insistence on cultural persistence for policy. and as is frequently the case, coates on march 18th made a contribution to this discussion that was especially insightful. he pointed to the similarities between congressman ryan s culture statement and president obama s repeated inknvocations cousin pooky when talking to a black audience. coates was interested less in lambasting this president, than reminding us about the slippery assumptions that are ubiquitous. white conservatives do this pathologyizing, of course, just look at congressman ryan. white liberals do it, see president clinton s determination to end welfare as we knew it. black conservatives do it. just look at the new black conservative magazine, american
are we slowing down? things are great. it s very easy to have that perspective. you saw that at the end of the civil rights movement, all these white liberals were like, hey, guys, why are we slowing down? what s going on? it s interesting, this language of moral and emotional fatigue. on the one hand, i was so irritated by those comments of mr. sullivan s readers that could read the kind of analysis of coates, and see it as just an expression of depression. on the other hand, i don t want to lose that there is an emotional cost to the work of race, particularly for those who are on the margins of that inequality. absolutely. one of the things is we live in a country that is deeply and profoundly uncomfortable with black rage, right? and at the same time, we have always attributed to people of color and to women, this sort of hyperemotionalism. and it s a way to pare down the kind of radicalism and rigor of the critique, right, and to not listen. so what we have to be doing is thin
chate who responded by defending the idea that culture is, at least in part, responsible for the perpetuation of african-american poverty. he wrote, it would be bizarre to image that centuries of slavery followed by systemic terrorism, segregation, discrimination, a legacy wealth gap, and so on did not leave a cultural residue that itself became an impediment to success. coates then responded, quote, chate believes it s bizarre to think otherwise. i think it s bizarre that he doesn t bother to see his argument as if it s actually true. oppression might well produce a culture of failure, it might also produce a warrior spirit and a deep commitment to attaining the very things that have been so often withheld from you. there is no need for theorizing, the answers are knowable. and that is when it started to get good. chait, march 28th, barack obama versus the culture of poverty. coates, march 30th, other
you want to live around other white people, your choices are pretty limited in terms of income of the neighborhood. what this means for kids is that their social networks won t just include doctors, lawyers, other professionals, they will include people who are gang members. they will include people who are either unemployed or work very low-wage jobs. and this will be the case for the rest of their lives. and so, what sherman is writing about, with desean jackson s experiencing, what they re both experiencing is something that s very exon to many african-americans. and not even those who live in predominantly white neighborhoods. i grew up in a mostly white neighborhood. and even so, my church, my parent s friends, we had connections to people who were not middle class. and that s just a fact about black life, that, i think, is almost unknown to white people. so part of what i have found fascinating about the chait/coates debate and about where you responded, and about where you r