Ezra Klein: "Ta-Nahisi Coates Is Not Here To Comfort You"

I liked TNC more before he became a progressive hero. I still admire the guy for calling it like he sees it...but I can't overlook the fact that he writes things like this:

   "We have a 20-to-1 wealth gap," Coates replied. "Every nickel of wealth the average black family has, the average white family has a dollar. What is the world in which that wealth gap is closed? What happens? What makes that possible? What does that look like? What is the process?"
   Even imagining that world, Coates makes ample space for tragedy. When he tries to describe the events that would erase America's wealth gap, that would see the end of white supremacy, his thoughts flicker to the French Revolution, to the executions and the terror. "It's very easy for me to see myself being contemporary with processes that might make for an equal world, more equality, and maybe the complete abolition of race as a construct, and being horrified by the process, maybe even attacking the process. I think these things don't tend to happen peacefully."

If a white person said something analogous, he'd be vilified by the left. Rightly so, in fact. It'd be patent racis...whoops...I mean white supremacy! Actually, I'm less annoyed by the pro-racial-violence slant than I am by that BS about race being a "construct"...which is, well, BS... (Also, last I checked, the wealth gap was more like 14:1. Still appalling...but...well...better than 20:1, at least. Not to quibble.)

   So, yeah...Coates comes across as one of those guys who's almost impossible not to like and admire...but I'm starting to feel a bit uneasy about liking and admiring him.
   But, seriously, it's hard not to have some admiration for this kind of straightforward honesty:

    “You’ve had a hard time in some interviews expressing a sense of hope in this country,” Colbert said. “Do you have any hope tonight for the people out there, about how we could be a better country, we could have better race relations, we could have better politics?”
   “No,” Coates replied. "But I’m not the person you should go to for that. You should go to your pastor. Your pastor provides you hope. Your friends provide you hope.”
   This wasn’t the answer Colbert was looking for. “I’m not asking you to make shit up,” he said. “I’m asking if you personally see any evidence for change in America.”
   “But I would have to make shit up to actually answer that question in a satisfying way,” Coates shot back.

More along the lines of honest errors, there's the end bit of this:

There was a time when Coates believed in hope and change, or at least wanted to believe in it. "It was hard not to reassess yourself at, say, the sight of John Patterson, the man who'd 'out-niggered' George Wallace to become governor of Alabama in 1959, endorsing Obama," he writes. But then, in quick succession, came Shirley Sherrod, and the humiliation of the “beer summit," and the reaffirmation, for Coates, of "the great power of white innocence — the need to believe that whatever might befall the country, white America is ultimately blameless."

I dunno, man...I guess we know very different white people. I thought basically every white American was plagued by guilt about slavery. Interesting question, actually. Somebody oughtta do a poll. Seriously.