Ta-Nehisi Coates dropping more gems on why blacks still getting screwed

[Gold]

The race problem will never be solved as long as the US stands.

What can be adjusted is quality of life.

Exactly. People don't really realize how big the issue is.

We would need a good 250 years of blacks owning whites (and every other minority) and having total domination in the financial/political/military aspects of this country. No white person in any position of power, or generating any personal income or wealth, for 250 years.


That's what would be required to level the playing field. So unless that happens, these dreams of a post racial america are just that... dreams

 

[Gravity]

Didn't bother reading but I suspect that it's a hit piece for team Hillary. Can't fukk with Coates.

 

[Aufheben]

"Who is going to give us the biggest crumbs" is sadly the only realistic position we can take in America and tbh globally as long as Western hegemony reigns.

and i pretty much agree with this. but you can see things changing

people are more desperate and that's why you see people like TRUMP and SANDERS even on the agenda these days, because people want radical change

or in Europe with SYRIZA and PODEMOS, which for a time looked like real political alternatives that might lead to SYSTEMIC change

 

[Professor Emeritus]

When the New Deal lifted incomes in the South, we didn't seen an eradication of white supremacy although Southern Whites gained electricity and clean running water. Moreover, they tried to prevent it from reaching black homes and hands.

I haven't gotten deep into this connection, but now that you mention it, within one generation of the New Deal lifting incomes in the South, Black people were able to end state-sponsored segregation, get the vote, get the protection of the law, etc., after 5 generations of being denied such things. In fact, that movement started quite soon after the New Deal made conditions better. Isn't possible that the New Deal helped to create the landscape (like elevating Blacks above the point where they were just barely scraping by and giving them the leeway to focus on broader issues) where Civil Rights became possible?

Yeah, the White supremicists "tried" to prevent the benefits of the New Deal from reaching Black households, but it largely didn't work. The state of the Black household in the South improved a TON from the 1930s through the 1950s without any race-based legislation at all, and now that I think about it it probably had a lot to do with the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, a movement which could create race-based legislation was finally possible.


Similar phenomenom could happen now - a more educated, less criminalized, less poverty-stricken America is probably also an America where serious talk about reparations is a hell of a lot more likely to happen.

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

I haven't gotten deep into this connection, but now that you mention it, within one generation of the New Deal lifting incomes in the South, Black people were able to end state-sponsored segregation, get the vote, get the protection of the law, etc., after 5 generations of being denied such things. In fact, that movement started quite soon after the New Deal made conditions better. Isn't possible that the New Deal helped to create the landscape (like elevating Blacks above the point where they were just barely scraping by and giving them the leeway to focus on broader issues) where Civil Rights became possible?

Black people were excluded from most New Deal programs in the South. The only way FDR could have gotten the support of Southern Democrats at the time was by upholding Jim Crow.

‘Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time’ by Ira Katznelson

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

I haven't gotten deep into this connection, but now that you mention it, within one generation of the New Deal lifting incomes in the South, Black people were able to end state-sponsored segregation, get the vote, get the protection of the law, etc., after 5 generations of being denied such things. In fact, that movement started quite soon after the New Deal made conditions better. Isn't possible that the New Deal helped to create the landscape (like elevating Blacks above the point where they were just barely scraping by and giving them the leeway to focus on broader issues) where Civil Rights became possible?

Yeah, the White supremicists "tried" to prevent the benefits of the New Deal from reaching Black households, but it largely didn't work. The state of the Black household in the South improved a TON from the 1930s through the 1950s without any race-based legislation at all, and now that I think about it it probably had a lot to do with the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, a movement which could create race-based legislation was finally possible.


Similar phenomenom could happen now - a more educated, less criminalized, less poverty-stricken America is probably also an America where serious talk about reparations is a hell of a lot more likely to happen.

In reply to your edited post:

Even after the New Deal and War on Poverty by LBJ, reactionary white voters turned the tide by the end of the 1960's led to the rise of Nixon and Reagan. Moreover, it led to triangulaters like Clinton. Your idealistic version of the 20th century doesn't really hold true.

 

[Aufheben]

Even after the New Deal and War on Poverty by LBJ, reactionary white voters turned the tide by the end of the 1960's led to the rise of Nixon and Reagan. Moreover, it led to triangulaters like Clinton. Your idealistic version of the 20th century doesn't really hold true.

he's right the Civil Rights movement grew out of the post WWII boom during the 50s and 60s when blacks were able to achieve some relative opportunity

the neoliberal era of Reagan basically erased all of that but it was some success

 

[WhereIsTheLove]

You guys are falling for this?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

In 1932, FDR only got 23% of the Black vote. In 1936, FDR got 71% of the Black vote. He never dropped below 67% of the Black vote in the next two elections. Why do you think the voters switched to FDR in massive numbers if the New Deal wasn't helping them at all?

The economic situation of the average African American improved a ton from the 1930s to the 1950s. That's a pretty tough historical fact that you have to work around.

Black people were excluded from most New Deal programs in the South. The only way FDR could have gotten the support of Southern Democrats at the time was by upholding Jim Crow.

‘Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time’ by Ira Katznelson

Yes, there were attempts made to make the New Deal programs help White people more than they helped Black people.

That doesn't change the obvious fact that New Deal programs still helped Black people a TON.

By 1935 the WPA was employing 350,000 Black Americans a year, 15% of the WPA's entire workforce.

Another 350,000 were employed at some point by the CCC, eventually reaching 11% of their workforce.

The PWA put quotas for minimum numbers of Black workers that had to be hired for every project.

The National Youth Administration had Black supervisors overseeing the outreach to Black youth in every state in the South and had helped 300,000 Black youth.

The New Deal education programs taught more than 1 million illiterate Black Americans how to read.

The Federal Music Project, the Federal Theater Project, and the Federal Writing Project all funded and promoted the work of Black artists.

 

[ogc163]

The race problem will never be solved as long as the US stands.

What can be adjusted is quality of life.

This. But unfortunately the Black middle class and the talking heads (Coates, Deray) that are representative of that group focus mainly on White acceptance and the increase of Black representation in elite circles.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

In reply to your edited post:

Even after the New Deal and War on Poverty by LBJ, reactionary white voters turned the tide by the end of the 1960's led to the rise of Nixon and Reagan. Moreover, it led to triangulaters like Clinton. Your idealistic version of the 20th century doesn't really hold true.

Black President, two Black Secretary of States, Black Attorney General, Black Senators and Governors and 40+ Black US Reps.

Explain to some Southern Black sharecropper in the 1930s that that's going to be the situation in his kid's lifetime "but nothing really changed".

Repubs trying to roll back voting rights, but ignore that voting rights are FAR better than they were before 1965. Southern voting access has gone from like 5% to 90%.

Way more work needs to be done in education, but ignore that the % of the Black population with a high school diploma has gone from 25% to 80% in the last 50 years. And college graduation rates are far higher than ever before.

More work needs to be done in health care, but Obama's health care act has more Black families covered than before.

More work needs to be done in jobs, but the median income of the Black family continues to increase, and its far ahead of where it was in the pre-New Deal days.

More work needs to be done in the criminal justice system (that's probably been the most regressive part in recent decades), but even Southern states have been passing criminal justice reform left and right as we speak, because they don't want to pay millions of dollars for new prisons anymore. You even have Republican presidential candidates calling for fair sentencing laws. Can you imagine the laughs that would have gotten 50 years ago?


I ain't saying that we've reached the mountaintop. But to act like the works of the past didn't lead to progress is ridiculous. We're doing WAY better at this than we were when our granddaddies were born.

 

[Ms. Elaine]

Didn't read the thread but I don't support him because he seems a bit too naive and idealogical for my tastes. I don't think he understands the limitations of the office.


Obama made a lot of promises too before he was hit with reality.

 

[Jean toomer]

That's whole point of the article you dumb fukking c00n. If you would read for once in your life and not just spew your preconcieved bullshyt all over a topic. fukk. Read the fukking article you illiterate jackass then come back and address me.

Appreciate the article and the perspective. Personally I think Coates is writing the most provocative salient pieces on race in years. The Coli is in some ways representative of the current black experience in the political system: superficial, lack of contrarian views, with a dash of herd mentality that does not hold candidates accountable.

 

[Jean toomer]

Coates in the last few months has been pissing me off...its like he's trying to justify his own existence.

His book was weak and outside of that famous piece on red-lining, I really gotta wonder if he just doesn't like hearing his own voice at this point.

Respectfully disagree re: his recent book being "weak". It was a completely different personal account of his racial self awakening within the context of his friends unjustifiable killing. Comparing this to the article on reparations and gerrymandering is a bit strange. To each his own though. I thought it was a beautiful book.

 

[Poitier]

Appreciate the article and the perspective. Personally I think Coates is writing the most provocative salient pieces on race in years. The Coli is in some ways representative of the current black experience in the political system: superficial, lack of contrarian views, with a dash of herd mentality that does not hold candidates accountable.

lol