In Defense of Ta-Nehisi Coates

Yesterday, Dr. Cornel West dissed renown writer Ta-Nehisi Coates on Facebook. He are a few excerpts from Dr. West's post:

Coates is a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power...Coates’s fear-driven self-absorption leads to individual escape and flight to safety – he is cowardly silent on the marvelous new militancy in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Oakland, Cleveland and other places...Coates can grow and mature, but without an analysis of capitalist wealth inequality, gender domination, homophobic degradation, Imperial occupation (all concrete forms of plunder) and collective fightback (not just personal struggle) Coates will remain a mere darling of White and Black Neo-liberals, paralyzed by their Obama worship and hence a distraction from the necessary courage and vision we need in our catastrophic times.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Anyone who is familiar with my blog knows that I highly respect Dr. Cornel West. I usually defend him. However, today, I cannot and I will not defend Dr. West. He is simply wrong, dead wrong.  Instead, I am defending Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Dr. West asserted that Coates "avoids any critique of" President Obama. Contrary to that assertion, Coates has written several articles criticizing President Obama. Here are a few examples. In his article entitled How the Obama Administration Talks to Black America, Coates wrote:

But I also think that some day historians will pore over his [Obama's]many speeches to black audiences. They will see a president who sought to hold black people accountable for their communities, but was disdainful of those who looked at him and sought the same. They will match his rhetoric of individual responsibility with the aggression the administration showed to bail out the banks and the timidity it showed in addressing a foreclosure crisis, which devastated black America (again). They will weigh the rhetoric against an administration whose efforts against housing segregation have been run of the mill. And they will match the talk of the importance of black fathers with the paradox of a president who smoked marijuana in his youth but continued a drug war which daily wrecks the lives of black men and their families. In all of this, those historians will see a discomfiting pattern of convenient race-talk.

I think the president owes black people more than this. In the 2012 election, the black community voted at a higher rate than any other ethnic community in the country. Their votes went almost entirely to Barack Obama. They did this despite a concerted effort to keep them from voting, and they deserve more than a sermon. Perhaps they cannot practically receive targeted policy. But surely they have earned something more than targeted scorn.

In his article entitled Color-Blind Policy, Color-Conscious Morality, Coates wrote:

And you will hear no policy targeted toward black people coming out of the Obama White House, or probably any White House in the near future. That is because the standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy. It is not hard to see why that might be the case. Asserting the moral faults of black people tend to gain votes. Asserting the moral faults of their government, not so much. I am sure Obama sincerely believes in the moral invective he offers. But I suspect he believes a lot more about his country which he chooses not to share.

In Fear of A Black President, Coates wrote:

Whatever the political intelligence of this calculus, it has broad and deep consequences. The most obvious result is that it prevents Obama from directly addressing America’s racial history, or saying anything meaningful about present issues tinged by race, such as mass incarceration or the drug war. There have been calls for Obama to take a softer line on state-level legalization of marijuana or even to stand for legalization himself. Indeed, there is no small amount of in­consistency in our black president’s either ignoring or upholding harsh drug laws that every day injure the prospects of young black men—laws that could have ended his own, had he been of another social class and arrested for the marijuana use he openly discusses.

Clearly, those three articles alone rebut Dr. West's claim that Coates avoids criticizing Obama.

Next, Dr. West falsely claimed that Coates "is cowardly silent on the marvelous new militancy in Ferguson, Baltimore..." It is becoming painfully obvious that Dr. West is not familiar with Ta-Nehisi Coates' writings. In several articles, Coates discusses the rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore. In Barack Obama, Ferguson, and the Evidence of Things Unsaid, Coates states that:

Black people know what cannot be said. What clearly cannot be said is that the events of Ferguson do not begin with Michael Brown lying dead in the street, but with policies set forth by government at every level. What clearly cannot be said is that the people of Ferguson are regularly plundered, as their grandparents were plundered, and generally regarded as a slush-fund for the government that has pledged to protect them. What clearly cannot be said is the idea of superhuman black men who "bulk up" to run through bullets is not an invention of Darren Wilson, but a staple of American racism.

What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools, and that violence—like nonviolence—sometimes works. "Property damage and looting impede social progress," Jonathan Chait wrote Tuesday. He delivered this sentence with unearned authority. Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America. They describe everything from enslavement to Jim Crow laws to lynching to red-lining.

On the issue of Baltimore, Coates boldly asserts in Nonviolence as Compliance that:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

Lastly, Dr. West incorrectly claims that Coates does not analyze capitalist wealth inequality. Well, Coates' article entitled The Case for Reparations
addresses wealth inequality. Coates writes:

Black families, regardless of income, are significantly less wealthy than white families. The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. When financial calamity strikes—a medical emergency, divorce, job loss—the fall is precipitous.

And just as black families of all incomes remain handicapped by a lack of wealth, so too do they remain handicapped by their restricted choice of neighborhood. Black people with upper-middle-class incomes do not generally live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Sharkey’s research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. “Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods,” Sharkey writes, “that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children.”

In sum, Dr. West's claims about Ta-Nehisi Coates are false. By making such unsubstantiated assertions, Dr. West has undermined his own creditability and reputation. As prominent scholar, Dr. West should have done his research before posting fallacies on Facebook. Such conduct raises disturbing questions about Dr. West's real motives. Apparently, the substantive issues are not Dr. West's motivation. Egoism and jealousy are.  Dr. West should apologize and delete that post.

History Will Absolve Cornel West

The Obama Era will be noted as the era of black silence. For the most part, the black professional "left" is virtually silent and passive in its approach toward President Obama. Instead of speaking out and aggressive demanding more from the President, they became Obama's surrogates and mouthpieces. They sold their integrity for access to the President. Instead of speaking truth to power, they surrender to power.  They have been co-oped by power.

Of his peers, Cornel West was one of the few to maintain his integrity and consistency. For that, I commend him. West speaks the truth about the Obama Administration's failure to adequately address many issues impacting black and poor people. West speaks the truth about Obama's pro-Wall Street policies. West speaks the truth about America's brutal and merciless drone policy. He speaks the truth about America's relentless imperialism under the first black president.

Decades and centuries later, history will absolve West and question people like Michael Eric Dyson.

Is Cornel West Right About Obama?

About a week ago, Salon posted an controversial interview with Cornel West. Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

So that’s my first question, it’s a lot of ground to cover but how do you feel things have worked out since then, both with the economy and with this president? That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.

No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are—we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody—a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility...

That’s exactly what everyone was saying at the time.

That’s right. That’s true. It was like, “We finally got somebody who can help us turn the corner.” And he posed as if he was a kind of Lincoln.

Yeah. That’s what everyone was saying.

And we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist. It’s like, “Oh, no, don’t tell me that!” I tell you this, because I got hit hard years ago, but everywhere I go now, it’s “Brother West, I see what you were saying. Brother West, you were right. Your language was harsh and it was difficult to take, but you turned out to be absolutely right.” And, of course with Ferguson, you get it reconfirmed even among the people within his own circle now, you see. It’s a sad thing. It’s like you’re looking for John Coltrane and you get Kenny G in brown skin.

I support President Obama. I voted for him twice. I have written blogs and posted YouTube videos defending the President from right wing attacks. I will continue to do so.

However, I support the brother Cornel West as well. His persistent, consistent, constant and piercing criticism of President Obama is, for the most part, painfully true. Even Obama's most loyal and devoted supporters know that West's analysis is factual and true. That is evident by their utter and complete failure to provide any solid or substantive response to his interview. Instead, they desperately try to drown out his bold voice with an ocean of insults and ad hominem attacks.

West is wrong about one thing. Obama never campaigned as a true progressive. Ending poverty was not a top priority during his campaigns. He never campaigned as a black activist. He never promised to be a strong advocate for African Americans. In fact, his rise to national prominence was based, at least in part, on his post-racial rhetoric about one America. During the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama said:

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there's the United States of America."

No one should be surprised when the Obama Administration and its parrots constantly repeat the silly mantra that "he is not just the President of Black America." You will never hear any other group of people embracing and repeating such a self defeating and pathetic slogan. Imagine the Jews saying Obama is not just the President of Jewish America. Imagine the LGBT community saying that Obama is not just the President of gay America. Imagine the Latino community saying that Obama is not just the President of immigrant America. Imagine white feminists saying Obama is not just the President of women. Those groups would never spout such nonsense. Unlike the black community, those groups do not surrender. They do not accept symbols over substance. They vigorously push their agenda. Unfortunately, we are pacified by symbols and gestures. We are so intoxicated and infatuated with the concept of black president that many of us have lost our minds and our principles.

Anyway, no one should be surprised by Obama's attempt to reach a grand bargain with the repugnant Republicans. During his first campaign, Obama did not promise to a strong opponent of the Republican Party's right wing agenda. Instead, he sold the American people the post-partisan pipe dream of changing the way that Washington does business. He promised to find common ground and to bridge the partisan divide. Obviously, that goal was unachievable. If it was in fact a goal, the President has failed miserably. Partisanship has never been more intense and stark than it is now. The Republican Party and the Tea Party have done everything in their power to obstruct Obama.

Moreover, no one should be surprised by Obama's stance on the crisis in Israel and Gaza. Obama never campaigned as an advocate for the Palestinian people. Like all of his predecessors, Obama bowed before the altars of AIPAC and Israel. During his first and second campaigns, Obama laced up his shoes and tap danced for them like Bojangles.

During his first campaign, Obama said that he would bomb terrorists in foreign land like Osama bin Laden without authorization from those nations. No one should be surprised by Obama continuing and expanding Bush's drone policy. Again, Obama never posed as a true progressive. Otherwise, West is correct.

Many avoid that truth by contrasting Obama and his past election opponents like Mitt Romney and John McCain. Clearly, Obama was the better choice in those elections. That is why I voted for him. Unfortunately, both parties are owned by Wall Street and AIPAC. In this two party corporate dictatorship, true progressive candidates and parties are not viable alternatives. Too often, they are unelectable. They do not have sufficient funding and resources to compete with the Democrats and the Republicans on a national level. They do not garner the same level of media attention as the corporate parties. Until that changes, we are forced to settle for people like Barack Obama.

#FreePalestine: Why Are Most Black Leaders and Groups Silent?!

"There comes a time when silence is betrayal." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.



Israel is massacring hundreds of innocent civilians in Gaza. Unfortunately, as Glen Ford stated in the video, most prominent black leaders and organizations have remained silent in the face of those horrific atrocities. Why?!?! Sadly, some opinions are for sale. When the so-called conscience of the nation is silent, bought and bossed, injustice prevails.

There are a few brave souls that have the courage to speak out. One of them is Cornel West. I commend him.

Our Fight is Far From Over!

The choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama was clear and obvious. The idea of Romney being president was frightening and unthinkable. We are all relieved that Obama won.  The reelection of Barack Obama is a tremendous victory.  Obama's reelection confirms that America has made some progress as a nation. We now know that his election was not an anomaly. For hundreds of years, the White House was an office reserved for white men. With the election and reelection of Barack Obama, that racist notion has been shattered into millions of pieces.

Before we start popping bottles and dancing in the streets, we must realize that our work is far from done. The reelection of Barack Obama is a significant symbol of progress. However, it is just that, a symbol. Despite all of chatter about changing demographics and the new electorate, white supremacy is alive and well. Racial disparities continue to exist in every sphere of life, including education, wealth, health, criminal justice, etc.

The backlash against Obama's reelection is evidence that racism and hatred still thrive in America. The flood of racist tweets following Obama's reelection proves the racial hatred continues to exist. After the election, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, Southern right wing fanatics signed petitions seeking to secede from the nation. Again, more proof the racial hatred continues to exist.



Despite the changing demographics, the Right will find ways to preserve white supremacy. For example, the Right is attacking the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action. Over a month ago, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas.

Moreover, as reported in the Washington Post, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Shelby County v. Holder.  In that case,  the court will consider whether Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Section 5 requires jurisdictions with a history of discriminating against African American voters to seek preclearance from the United States Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia before they can change their voting laws. Without such preclearance requirements, states such as Texas and South Carolina would have been able to pass strict voter ID laws. Such laws are designed to suppress the black vote.

On the day that the Supreme Court hears arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, thousands of black people and progressives should swarm the outside of the courthouse and demand that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act be upheld. Our turnout should mirror the massive pro-immigration demonstrations. If we do not act, the gains of hundreds of years of struggle may be erased with the stroke of the pen. 

Obama's reelection is not the end. It is just a means to an end. Voting is just one tool in our arsenal for reform and progress. Other vital tools are lobbying, protesting and litigation. While the Republicans do their soul searching, we must develop strategies to make the next four years better than the last four years.

Progressives cannot sit on our couches and wait for Obama to perform miracles. We cannot exchange the truth for access and notoriety. Obama is a politician, nothing more and nothing less. He is not a freedom fighter. We must never forget that. If real change is to happen, it will be because movements have put pressure on the President and the Congress.

Instead of being surrogates and apologists for Obama, progressives and African Americans must be prepared to stand up to the Republican Party and the White House. Our blogs should not be echo chambers for the White House and MSNBC. We must be bold and truly independent.

We must speak truth to the President and the Congress. We must demand that the government launch a major initiative targeted to address high employment and poverty in the black community. The "rising tide" definitely has not lifted all boats. As reported on RT, "while national unemployment decreased to 7.9 percent in Oct. 2012, the numbers are grim for African-Americans, whose unemployment rate jumped from 13.4 percent to 14.3 percent in just one month, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics." Instead of personally attacking Cornel West and Tavis Smiley for raising these issues, we should analyze the substance of their remarks. As Tavis Smiley wrote in the Huffington Post,

We celebrate this electoral victory today, but what about tomorrow? How tragic would it be at the end of eight years to be confronted by economic data which suggests (as the data does now) that in the Obama era Black folk lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category? I shudder at the very thought. So should you.

In addition to demanding economic justice, we must demand that the federal government address the problem of the mass incarceration of black people.  We must demand the total and complete end of sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine. Even under the Fair Sentencing Act, there is still an 18 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. On another note, we should demand that the President use his pardon power to free all political prisoners such Mumia Abu Jamal and other victims of the Cointelpro era. 

We must demand that the President resist the terrorist tactics of the GOP.  The Republicans are essentially holding the American people hostage in order to preserve tax cuts for the rich.  Last time, Obama surrendered and agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. We cannot allow him to surrender this time.  We cannot allow him to cave to the GOP's austerity demands. We cannot let him wimp out and cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Along with domestic policy demands, we should make several demands with respect to foreign policy.  According to thecable.foreignpolicy.com, U.S. may remain in Afghanistan past 2014.  We must demand an immediate end to the senseless war in Afghanistan.   Furthermore, during his first Presidential campaign, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. He said that it was inconsistent with America's values. We must hold the President to that promise. We must demand that the Obama Administration stop allowing U.S. drones to bomb innocent civilians. Moreover, as bombs drop on innocent women and children in Gaza, we cannot remain silent while the President continues to defend Israel.

If the President ignores our demands, we must be prepared to make telephone calls, sign petitions and yes, march on Washington. The election is over. There are no more excuses for inaction. It is now or never. Our fight is far from over.

This article is cross-posted on Jack and Jill Politics.

President Obama Must Stand Up and Address Racism!

"A time comes when silence is betrayal." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a thought provoking article for the Atlantic entitled Fear of a Black President.  I encourage everyone to take time to read his brilliant article.  In it, Coates writes that:

Part of that conservatism about race has been reflected in his reticence: for most of his term in office, Obama has declined to talk about the ways in which race complicates the American present and, in particular, his own presidency...      

Daniel Gillion, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies race and politics, examined the Public Papers of the Presidents, a compilation of nearly all public presidential utterances—­proclamations, news-conference remarks, executive orders—and found that in his first two years as president, Obama talked less about race than any other Democratic president since 1961. Obama’s racial strategy has been, if anything, the opposite of radical: he declines to use his bully pulpit to address racism, using it instead to engage in the time-honored tradition of black self-hectoring, railing against the perceived failings of black culture.     

His approach is not new. It is the approach of Booker T. Washington, who, amid a sea of white terrorists during the era of Jim Crow, endorsed segregation and proclaimed the South to be a land of black opportunity. It is the approach of L. Douglas Wilder, who, in 1986, not long before he became Virginia’s first black governor, kept his distance from Jesse Jackson and told an NAACP audience: “Yes, dear Brutus, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves … Some blacks don’t particularly care for me to say these things, to speak to values … Somebody’s got to. We’ve been too excusing.” It was even, at times, the approach of Jesse Jackson himself, who railed against “the rising use of drugs, and babies making babies, and violence … cutting away our opportunity"...     

Whatever the political intelligence of this calculus, it has broad and deep consequences. The most obvious result is that it prevents Obama from directly addressing America’s racial history, or saying anything meaningful about present issues tinged by race, such as mass incarceration or the drug war. There have been calls for Obama to take a softer line on state-level legalization of marijuana or even to stand for legalization himself. Indeed, there is no small amount of in­consistency in our black president’s either ignoring or upholding harsh drug laws that every day injure the prospects of young black men—laws that could have ended his own, had he been of another social class and arrested for the marijuana use he openly discusses. ”

For example, when Trayvon Martin was lynched, it took President Obama about a month to issue any statement, and that response came after a reporter raised the issue. When urged to directly address unemployment and poverty in the black community, the President says "a rising tide lifts all boats" and that "he is not the President of Black America."   

African Americans are the President's base. We are his most loyal supporters. According to news reports, black support for Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is at zero percent. Approximately 94 percent of African Americans support the President. In exchange for our support, our issues should be at forefront of the President's agenda.  He should and must speak out about race and racism.  Sentimental symbolism and black cultural references are not sufficient.

The President boldly addresses the issues of facing LGBTs, Latinos and women.  However, when it comes to race, the President is silent. Sadly, we enable the President to remain silent by mindlessly chanting and convincing ourselves that "he's not the President of Black America." No other lobbying group takes such a self-defeating and self-censoring attitude. You will never hear other groups say, "He's not the President of gay America. He's not the President of feminist America. He's not the President of immigrant America."  Other interest groups relentlessly promote their agenda without apology. We must do the same.

We cannot afford to remain silent. As reported in the Huffington Post, the unemployment rate for African Americans was 13.6 percent in May, compared to a national unemployment rate of 8.2 percent. For black men, the unemployment rate was 15 percent in May. For black women, the unemployment rate was 12.3 percent.

Moreover, according to the Associated Press, "the ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net." Experts expect the poverty rate to increase from 15.1 percent to 15.7 percent, the highest level since 1965. Poverty disproportionately affects black people and Latinos. According to the New York Times,

"Minorities were hit hardest. Blacks experienced the highest poverty rate, at 27 percent, up from 25 percent in 2009, and Hispanics rose to 26 percent from 25 percent. For whites, 9.9 percent lived in poverty, up from 9.4 percent in 2009. Asians were unchanged at 12.1 percent."

The “a rising tide lifts all boats” approach and attitude has not worked. Instead of demonizing people like Cornel West and Travis Smiley for pressuring President Obama to address the issue of poverty, we should join them.

In all fairness, none of those problems started under President Obama's administration. Certainly, the President has implemented policies that benefit African Americans such as the Affordable Health Care Act, the Fair Sentencing Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans and other policies.  Obviously, such policies are more important than rhetoric. 

However, the President must directly and specifically speak about race and racism. He must develop targeted programs to address disproportionate unemployment and poverty in the black community. He has a moral obligation to the countless African Americans who fought and died for the right to vote. He owes it to the overwhelming percentage of African Americans who voted for him in 2008.  Stand up, Mr. President!

This article is cross-posted on Jack and Jill Politics.

   

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Cornel West Responds to The Critics!

Watch the full episode. See more Tavis Smiley.

Recently, Cornel West sparked a firestorm of controversy by making disparaging remarks about President Barack Obama. More specifically, West described Obama as a "mascot for Wall Street". West also said that Obama's "formation is culturally white" and that Obama has a "certain fear of free black men." Listen to West's response to the controversy and tell me what you think.

Who is Right, Cornel West or Rev. Al Sharpton?

Shout out to my Facebook family for posting this thought provoking video. Who is right, Cornel West or Rev. Al Sharpton? Please tell me what you think.

Cornel West on Bush, Kanye West, Obama and Charlie Rangel