No More Dreams

To qualify as a public intellectual, one cannot rely on the sheer strength of their mental faculties. Furthermore, the public intellectual’s role in society is not to simply showcase their cognitive abilities. The public intellectual must adhere to a certain code of ethics; they must strive towards a particular ideal. To Prof. Stephen Mack, an adversarial disposition is an essential aspect of this ideal.

It is also, however, the obligation of every citizen in a democracy. Trained to it or not, all participants in self-government are duty-bound to prod, poke, and pester the powerful institutions that would shape their lives. And so if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling. The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about (Mack). 

For Prof. Mack, the public intellectual has a duty to keep political discourse intriguing and threatening. Indeed, if an intellectual wants to engage with others in the agora, they have an obligation to lambast political apparatuses, question religious dogmas and dismantle intellectual edifices. A public intellectual should haunt their readers’ dreams, forcing them to doubt their most closely held beliefs. That is why Ta’Nahesi Coates—National Book Award winner and writer for The Atlantic—is the preeminent public intellectual of our current epoch.

One of the defining characteristics of Ta’Nehisi Coates’ work is its candor. Speaking plainly about unpalatable topics like white supremacy and “the plunder” of “the black body,” Coates writing is menacing to a significant portion of America (Between World 36, 14). Insisting that white supremacy was instrumental in the creation of American democracy, Coates has provided his readers with a dreary, yet beautiful, portrait of black life. Describing the MacArthur Genius’ early work at The Atlantic, Benjamin Wallace-Wells states, “Against the optimism of the Obama ascendancy, Coates offered a bleaker view: that no postracial era was imminent, that white supremacy has been a condition of the United States since its inception and that it might always be” (Wells). When reading Coates’ oeuvre, one is constantly forced to confront their role in perpetuating the systematic domination of the black community.

For Coates, white supremacy manifests itself in a myriad of ways. Whether it is overt forms of discrimination, like the “carceral state,” or more discreet variations, white rule permeates throughout all parts of American life (“The Black Family”). In a sense, it is these subtle forms of oppression—ignorance of the plight of black people, the belief in American democracy—that infuriate Coates the most. When media journalist Dylan Byers questioned Ta’Nehisi Coates’ naming of Melissa Harris Perry, a black female, as “America’s foremost public intellectual”, the Howard University graduate used the criticism to illustrate a profound point concerning white power (“The Smartest Nerd”). Seeing the pernicious effects of “bigotry” in Byers attack, Coates responded beautifully.

Here is the machinery of racism—the privilege of being oblivious to questions, of never having to grapple with the everywhere; the right of false naming; the right to claim that the lakes, trees, and mountains of our world do not exist; the right to insult our intelligence with your ignorance. The machinery of racism requires no bigotry from Dylan Byers. It merely requires that Dylan Byers sit still (“What It Means”). 

In this rebuke of Byers, one sees why Ta’Nehisi Coates is a vital public intellectual. By challenging us to recognize white supremacy as the driving force behind America’s development, he, in turn, weakens the hold racism has on our society. Enraging the entire political spectrum—Buckley conservatives, neo-liberals and class reductionists— with his designation of white domination as America’s greatest evil, Coates stays true to Prof. Mack’s model of the public intellectual. Indeed, he is someone who “keep[s] the pot boiling.” Pushing his black brothers and sisters towards “the struggle,” not the “Dream,” Ta-Nehisi Coates forces all Americans to reckon with the sins of its forefathers (Between World 42, 13).

Coates & The Right (And Neo-Liberals Too!)

            For decades, a debate has raged on in America: Is the American Dream inextricably linked to the oppression of the black community? In fact, in the 1960s, an actual debate was staged between one of Coates’ intellectual heroes, the black writer James Baldwin, and the founder of National Review, the conservative William F. Buckley. During the opening remarks, a Cambridge student (representing Mr. Buckley) made the most convincing case against the notion that the American dream was built on the backs of African-Americans. According to Kevin M. Schultz, “The student on Buckley’s side then gave a sterling talk, showing a keen awareness of the dynamics of the room. He said, over and over again, that the success of the American Dream has occurred ‘in spite of the suffering of the American Negro, but not because of it” (Schultz). Disputing the claim that white supremacy is an intrinsic part of the American Dream, conservatives argue that while the atrocities committed against blacks stand as a serious contradiction of the American Dream, they do not define it. As a responsible public intellectual, Ta’Nehisi Coates urges us to be rigorous and question this conservative analysis of the American Dream. “America begins in black plunder and white democracy, two features that are not contradictory but complimentary” (“The Case for Reparations”).

In “The Case for Reparations,” Coates shows how a significant portion of white America exerted, and still exerts, control over the black community. According to Coates, white supremacists formed the basis of American society and democracy through the unrelenting exploitation of “the black body.” During slavery, “The vending of the black body and the sundering of the black family became an economy unto themselves, estimated to have brought in tens of millions of dollars to antebellum America” (“The Case for Reparations”). Later, in places like Chicago, redlining forced black people to make deals with predatory lenders. Subsequently, these lenders forced black families to sign contracts, which, as Coates puts it, “combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither” (“The Case for Reparations”). Looking through this historical prism, the native Baltimorean thoroughly repudiates the idea that the “pillaging” of blacks did NOT form the foundation from which the American Dream, and state, arose (Between World 10). “The destruction was not incidental to America’s rise; it facilitated that rise. By erecting a slave society, America created the economic foundation for its great experiment in democracy (“The Case for Reparations”).

Based on the scourge of white supremacy, the American Dream is something Ta’Nehisi Coates implores black people to ignore. Though those at conservative publications like National Review would have us believe that, “The founding of the United States ushered in the modern democratic experiment, along with new concepts of freedom and human rights” thinkers like Coates teach us to avoid such facile arguments (May). Understanding his role as a public intellectual, Coates beseeches his son, and black people as a whole, to avoid illusions, to avoid what he refers to in Between the World and Me (his magnum opus) as, “the Dream.” Though the illusion is intoxicating, Coates avoids the “the Dream” because it relies on “the plunder” of “the black body.” “The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts…And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies” (Between World 13).

As a black man, Coates cannot pursue “the Dream,” knowing full well it was built on the “pillaging” of the “black body.” Coates argues against “the Dream” not only because of its sinister origins, but also because of how it constrains creative expression. Here, Coates, understanding his role as a public intellectual, implies that ignoring the wounds of white supremacy is not only an immoral act, but also an act that stunts intellectual growth.“The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing” (Between World 47). Instead, Coates prescribes to his son, and to all black people, “the struggle,” or the fight to protect ones black body from the plundering of the white man. Coates conception of the struggle provides black people with a blueprint to find salvation, to find “meaning.” “And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom…Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name,” Coates says to his son (Between World 133). For Ta’Nehisi Coates, “struggle, in and of itself, has meaning” (Between World 64). Not only is the black person’s struggle a fight against white oppression, but it is also a struggle for enlightenment, for truth. Though, at the end of Between the World and Me, he harangues his son to avoid helping the white people become disillusioned, to find their own struggle, Coates’ universalism is evident. As a public intellectual, Coates pushes ALL of us into “the void,” into the “struggle,” asking us to illuminate the ignorant world around us with the light of knowledge (Between World 48).

One of the most pervasive arguments against Coates’ work is that it somehow ignores the role personal responsibility plays in building a safe and nurturing community. His critics accuse him of ignoring how cultural factors have negatively affected the black community. In his critique of Between the World and Me, Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, discusses what, in his opinion, is sorely missing from Coates’ masterwork.

He gives the impression of denying the moral agency of blacks, who are often portrayed as the products of forces beyond their control. He returns again and again to a kid who aimed a gun at him when he was young. I’m perfectly prepared to believe that the legacy of racism played a greater role in that act than I might think at first blush, but surely the kid himself bears some responsibility (Lowry)?

From Lowry’s conservative perspective, when Coates places the perils of the black community squarely on the shoulders of white supremacy, he allows black people to abdicate their personal responsibility. Furthermore, conservatives are not the only ones who level this criticism at Coates. Even neo-liberals (in the Clintonian sense of the word) like Jonathan Chait do not concur with Coates’ assessment of Black America.

For Jonathan Chait, Coates is simply incorrect when he ignores culture in his explanation for the plight of the black community. Writing in NY Mag, Jonathan Chait states, “…ultimately, Coates is circling back to an argument that prevailed among liberals in the 1970s and 1980s, and which Democrats abandoned, correctly” (Chait). While Chait does acknowledge and emphasize racism more than his conservative counterparts, he still claims personal responsibility plays a role, something Coates categorically denies. In his rebuttal to Chait (who wrote for the neo-liberal magazine The New Republic when they pushed welfare reform), Coates uses empiricism to refute the notion that a lack of personal responsibility contributed to the “degradation and humiliation” of the black community (“Black Pathology”). Speaking on the crisis of the black family, the most contentious issue in the personal responsibility debate, Coates uses historical evidence to show how, in the early 20^th century, a high percentage of black households were two-parent household. The problem did not lie with them; it lied with the white supremacists that terrorized these black families.

The point here is rich and repeated in American history—it was not "cultural residue" that threatened black marriages. It was white terrorism, white rapacity, and white violence. And the commitment among freedpeople to marriage mirrored a larger commitment to the reconstitution of family, itself necessary because of systemic white violence (“Black Pathology”).

For Coates, to say that a lack of cultural values contributed to the current situation of black people is, in a sense, to exonerate white oppression. Whether it was slavery, redlining or “ghetto loans” from Wells Fargo, to Coates, the incessant plundering of the black body and black wealth by the white patriarchy stands as the only explanation for the current milieu black people find themselves in (“The Case for Reparations”). Looking at how, for example, immediately after the abolition of slavery former slaves eagerly sought out education, Coates provides us with the best rebuttal to the personal responsibility arguments promulgated by the likes of Lowry and Chait. Whenever black people strived for greatness, security and a placid life, white power was there to steal their wealth, to attack their bodies.

Coates & The Left

            The sign of a profound public intellectual, Coates not only infuriates the Right and the Center, but also his comrades on the Left. With his focus on reparations, Ta’Nehisi Coates has found leftist class-reductionism to be a dubious explanation for why black people play such a subservient role in white America. With his focus on LBJ’s delineation of “white poverty” and “black poverty,” and the criticisms of Bernie Sanders that stemmed from this distinction, Coates has caught a lot of flak from the Left, including a handful of black leftists (“The Case for Reparations”). In an interview with Doug Henwood, Prof. Adolph Reed shows nothing but contempt and scorn for Coates’ work. “I say that their race first politics is a class politics. It’s not an alternative to class politics it’s a politics of a different class. It’s not a working class politics, it’s an aspiring PMC politics that’s hinged in material terms ultimately on race relations administration as a career path” (Reed). For Coates however, this Marxist class-only perspective obscures the reality of the black struggle, a struggle created in the face of white supremacy. This is not simple class exploitation. In “The Case for Reparations ,” Coates states, “Liberals today mostly view racism not as an active, distinct evil but as a relative of white poverty and inequality. They ignore the long tradition of this country actively punishing black success—and the elevation of that punishment, in the mid-20th century, to federal policy” (“The Case for Reparations”). For Coates, whether it’s John C. Calhoun’s racist pronouncement (“The two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black”) or Lyndon B. Johnson’s description of “white poverty” and “black poverty,” America has provided us with countless examples of how white supremacy is a force unto itself, separate from class domination (“The Case for Reparations”).

            One of the main points of contention between Coates and class-focused leftists deals with the idea of reparations. For many on the Left, reparations focus too much on the plights of one marginalized group at the expense of ignoring the socio-economic turmoil of other communities. For the presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an avowed democratic-socialist, reparations are too “divisive” (Sanders). For a leftist writer like Cedric Johnson, Coates’ call for reparations is based on a bourgeoisie race politics. In his Jacobin Magazine article, “An Open Letter To Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Liberals Who Love Him,” Johnson makes this sentiment clear to the reader.

The claim that social democracy and socialism are always and everywhere at odds with racial progress is simply false. It is not supported by the actual history of progressive struggles and the substantive ways they transformed black life. Ultimately, Coates’s views about class and race — and this nation’s complex and tortured historical development — are well-meaning and at times poetic, but wrongheaded. The reparations argument is rooted in black nationalist politics, which traditionally elides class and neglects the way that race-first politics are often the means for advancing discrete, bourgeois class interests (Johnson).

Though Johnson’s article is somewhat persuasive, Coates focus on white supremacy still feels like the more compelling perspective. When parsing class-first arguments like Johnson’s, Coates points out that, not only can socialism ignore racism, it can be racist in itself. In his critique of Bernie Sanders, Coates eloquently elucidates this point. “This is the ‘class first’ approach, originating in the myth that racism and socialism are necessarily incompatible. But raising the minimum wage doesn’t really address the fact that black men without criminal records have about the same shot at low-wage work as white men with them” (“Why Precisely”).  

Pushing back against the Left, Coates follows a line of argumentation that is inherently skeptical about the potential for broad, class-based initiatives to ameliorate the horrible condition of black people in America. To him, the only solution is the payment of reparations. “Reparations are not one possible tool against white supremacy. It is the indispensable tool against white supremacy. One cannot propose to plunder a people, incur a moral and monetary debt, propose to never pay it back, and then claim to be seriously engaging in the fight against white supremacy” (“The Case for Reparations”). Coates proposal is not an easy one for white America to grapple with. To Coates, simple economic redistribution is not enough; the barbaric plundering of the black community is a specific grievance with a specific solution. This solution will finally pay-back the wealth that was stolen from blacks during their time in America. Not only that, evoking his concepts of “the struggle,” and “the Dream,” Coates, in “The Case for Reparations,” claims reparations are the only way for WHITE people to find redemption and end white supremacy.

Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say—that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt. What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history (“The Case for Reparations”).

For Coates, reparations can spur American towards a new beginning. In Coates world, reparations hold the key to “a new nation,” one that does have white supremacy as its founding principle.

Conclusion

Whether one is sitting in a crowded café amongst Marxist scholars, or in a church service filled with god-fearing Christians, they are bound to find an erudite person who yearns to debate the merits of Ta’Naheisi Coates’ writings. Though these people may have nothing but effusive praise for the man, they probably find his arguments to be absurd. Actually, not only do the aforementioned people almost assuredly find his thinking to be preposterous, they also feel that his tone is too menacing, too dangerous. For those on the Left and the Center, the framework of white supremacy that Coates applies in his polemics is too vindictive, too honest. To those on the Right, Coates’ tone, his abrasiveness, is too harsh, too real. However, as Coates’ detractors seek to ruin him, they, unwittingly, validate him as a public intellectual. Indeed, it is because Coates is adept at eliciting such passionate reactions that he is the public intellectual of our times.

Works Cited

Chait, Jonathan. "Barack Obama, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Poverty, and Culture." NY Mag. NY Mag, 19 Mar. 2014. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/obama-ta-nehisi-coates-poverty-and-culture.html>.

Coates, Ta'Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Penguin Random House, 2015. IBooks.

Coates, Ta'Nehisi. "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration." Atlantic Oct. 2015: n. pag. The Atlantic. The Atlantic, Oct. 2015. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/>.

Coates, Ta'Nehisi. "Black Pathology and the Closing of the Progressive Mind." The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 21 Mar. 2014. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pathology-and-the-closing-of-the-progressive-mind/284523/>.

Coates, Ta'Nehisi. "The Case for Reparations." Atlantic June 2014: n. pag. The Atlantic. The Atlantic, June 2014. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/>.

Coates, Ta'Nehisi. "The Smartest Nerd in the Room." The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 6 Jan. 2014. Web. 3 Sept. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-smartest-nerd-in-the-room/282836/>.

Coates, Ta'Nehisi. "What It Means to Be a Public Intellectual." The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 3 Sept. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/what-it-means-to-be-a-public-intellectual/282907/>.

Coates, Ta'Nehisi. "Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations?" The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 19 Jan. 2016. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pathology-and-the-closing-of-the-progressive-mind/284523/>.

Johnson, Cedric. "An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Liberals Who Love Him." Jacobin. Jacobin Magazine, 2 Mar. 2016. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/ta-nehisi-coates-case-for-reparations-bernie-sanders-racism/>.

Lowry, Rich. "The Toxic World-View of Ta-Nehisi Coates." POLITICO. POLITICO, 22 July 2015. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/the-toxic-world-view-of-ta-nehisi-coates-120512>.

Mack, Stephen. "The Supposed Decline of the Public Intellectual." Web log post. The New Democratic Review. Stephen Mack, 24 Aug. 2016. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.stephenmack.com/blog/archives/2016/08/the_supposed_de_1.html#more>.

May, Clifford D. "In Defense of American Exceptionalism." National Review. National Review, 2 June 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.nationalreview.com/article/268588/defense-american-exceptionalism-clifford-d-may>.

Reed, Adolph. "Adolph Reed on Sanders, Coates, and Reparations." Interview by Doug Henwood. Naked Capitalism. Yves Smith, 5 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Sept. 2016.

Sanders, Bernie. "Bernie Sanders On Reparations." Interview by Fusion. Youtube. Youtube, 13 Jan. 2016. Web. 2 Sept. 2016.

Schultz, Kevin M. "William F. Buckley and National Review’s Vile Race Stance." Salon. Salon, 7 June 2015. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://www.salon.com/2015/06/07/william_f_buckley_and_national_reviews_vile_race_stance_everything_you_need_to_know_about_conservatives_and_civil_rights/>.

Wallace-Willis, Benjamin. "The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates." NY Mag. NY Mag, 12 July 2015. Web. 2 Sept. 2016. <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/07/ta-nehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me.html>.