I was also wondering why we don't see more of Ta-Nehisi Coates on our corporate media given he's one of the better writers out there when it comes to the subject of race relations in the United States.
Ta-Nehisi Coates: African Americans Have ‘Right to Be Skeptical’ of Lectures about Nonviolence:
This humble scribe was just wondering this morning why Ta-Nehisi Coates is not on more of them television panels, especially discussing issues such as Ferguson. And then hey! There he was on Face the Nation.
Guest host Norah O’Donnell asked Coates about an Atlantic post he wrote this week in which he argued, “Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America.”
Transcript via CBS:
O'DONNELL: Ta-Nehisi, I want to ask you about something you wrote this week. You said: "What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools and that violence, like nonviolence, sometimes works. Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America." What did you mean by that?
COATES: Well, I meant that that's just American history.
The fact of the matter is, you can take it from the broader perspective of America. I think people have this idea that the American Revolution was -- like the tea party was an actual tea party, it was somehow nonviolent.
The fact of the matter is, the roots of this country are information a very, very violent. Enslavement, which is at the roots of this country, the black population of this country was enslaved longer than it's been free, that is basis of who we are.
The theft of land from Native Americans, that is the basis of who we are. When we talk about all the things that we love about America, democracy, freedom, et cetera, I don't think that we should lose sight of how -- the foundation of which those things were built.
And they were not built that nonviolently. That is not to say that looting is right, that looting is correct. But I think that when the government, which often acts violently towards African-Americans, turns around and lectures black people about nonviolence, we have a right to be skeptical of that.
Are you listening Sean Hannity?? I know. He's not.
[ad]
