Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White

[Stellar]

Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White

David Brooks

Dear Ta-Nehisi Coates,

The last year has been an education for white people. There has been a depth, power and richness to the African-American conversation about Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings that has been humbling and instructive.

Your new book, “Between the World and Me,” is a great and searing contribution to this public education. It is a mind-altering account of the black male experience. Every conscientious American should read it.

There is a pervasive physicality to your memoir — the elemental vulnerability of living in a black body in America. Outside African-American nightclubs, you write, “black people controlled nothing, least of all the fate of their bodies, which could be commandeered by the police; which could be erased by the guns, which were so profligate; which could be raped, beaten, jailed.”

Written as a letter to your son, you talk about the effects of pervasive fear. “When I was your age the only people I knew were black and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid.”.....

more at link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opinion/listening-to-ta-nehisi-coates-while-white.html?contentCollection=opinion&action=click&module=NextInCollection®ion=Footer&pgtype=article

[enough]

1. Sounds like Brooks isn't doing much listening.

Just blowing hard, from his usual comfortable position. Self-satisfaction oozes from every word that man exudes.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. There are plenty of other white people who think like that.

I think you distort American history.

Yeah, that's your white privilege showing, David.

At first I thought the title should be 'Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates while David Brooks'. But sadly, he actually got the title right. All too many white people will have those same knee-jerk defensive reactions, possibly (or probably) most of them.

David Brooks is the mistake from which we pale folks need to learn. Not to learn the 'lessons' he tries to teach, but to learn not to think like he does.

[CTyankee]

4. I ws cringing while reading that column this morning. The man was WHINING...

Brooks is an embarrassment...

[Starry Messenger]

2. Brooks is getting a well-deserved drubbing in the comments.

What a buffoon.

[mcar]

5. Brooks is such a hack

He really believes he is an objective observer of the human condition, doesn't he?

[sufrommich]

6. He needs to retitle this article to:

You Need To Watch Your Tone,Young Man!

[chervilant]

7. At 7:28 this morning, Steve from NYC wrote

Mr. Brooks: You are displaying your privilege in two profound ways.

"I read this like a slap and a revelation." Really? I'm a 68 year-old white man and my reaction to Mr. Coates's raw honesty is empathy and exhaustion. That you find his truth "a slap and a revelation" suggests that you haven't been paying attention.

And, of course, it is a great American tradition for white folks to tell black folks how they "really" should feel. What sense of privilege permits you to reinterpret his life experience? You write, "I think you distort American history." You distort his history by attempting to co-opt it into your happy, white view.

Lots of "white" folks haven't been paying attention. Lots of "white" folks become defensive about racism.

Then, the dialogue shifts to "white" folks' feelings, and -- yet again -- a discussion about racism is subverted.

Too many of our brethren are dying at the hands of racists -- many of these racists are cops. Just this last weekend, Sandra Bland was murdered by racist cops, and the dialogue about "alleged suicide" continues...

Like Steve from NYC, I am exhausted -- mentally exhausted. I have cried many tears for each needless death. I have felt deep rage towards every hateful racist murderer.

But, I will never have to fear for my life, or the lives of my children, at the hands of hate-filled racists, because I'm "white." And, whether I like it or not, therein lies the privilege that underpins all racism.

[Stellar]

12. Whoa, that was fantastic!

[Johonny]

8. The mythical phrase "American dream" is a slap in the face to every American

David Brooks you stupid fucking moron, perhaps the dream itself as flimflam.

We graduates high school, goes to college, works long hours, several jobs, over and over every day in America and never get ahead. That is life for 99% of America. Upward mobility is dead. The aristocracy is the norm. And water carriers that claim false idols like the American dream is all that is left. Fuck you, David Brooks and can Yale finally reimburse every student that took David Brooks class on Character. The man has none. This fact is proven every day in every way by the toad himself.

[Darb]

9. I watched Ta-Nehisi on Charlie Rose. I was captivated by him.

I really, really liked him. He is not afraid to say what he feels, what his experiences are and does it in a profoundly strong manner. I had never heard of him nor have I read anything that he has written, but I will now for sure.

He is a powerful speaker.

[Stellar]

10. Was that recent? I'd love to watch. nt

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

11. Ah David Brooks, the sober Peggy Noonan. nt

[frylock]

13. !

[CTyankee]

16. Oh, yes! I note that Peggers is off most TV shows because she shows up either

half in the bag or so hungover she can't talk straight...

[Cal Carpenter]

14. No Mr Brooks, he may be 'distorting' your romanticized illusions

of American history, but he speaks TRUTH.

This is the best fucking book I have read in a loooooong time. It is so timely it is like it fell from heaven.

What white people need to do is take a step back, and then another step back, and then three or four more steps back and read it with a WIDE OPEN mind and quit REACTING and just ABSORB the TRUTH of it.

If you feel guilty or offended, that's your OWN DAMN FAULT. Reflect on that later, after you finish the book.

And by the way, people, stop being so fucking surprised that Atticus is a racist. I mean, really....

Signed,

A white person who read the book while white and has NOTHING in common with Mr Brooks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Thanks I wanted to get the book

but could not get the spelling... weekend read.

[artislife]

17. The last year has been an education for white people.

That about sums it up.

Last year

Nothing in the preceding 400 years landed in the grey matter of white skulls?

For white people

Way to wrestle issue and put it squarely on who it affects the most-------not.


It was pretty hard to get past that sentence.


It feels as if what is really going on, must go through a series of filters so that the information can land. It's like the feeling bad about oneself is more painful than actual racism. I have to get off this thread...my soul hurts.