I stopped watching CBS Mornings years ago because whenever it deigned to report on a serious news subject, it regularly treated that subject with such insincerity that I spent all of my precious pr…
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1 Oct 2024
Ta-Nehisi Coates versus the limit of unimaginative whiteness
I stopped watching
CBS Mornings years ago because whenever it deigned to report on a serious news subject, it regularly treated that subject with such insincerity that I spent all of my precious pre-work mornings screaming at my television. So color me surprised when I saw the show trending for
an interview the trifecta of hosts did with Ta-Nehisi Coates about his new book,
The Message, in which they attempt to contend with several deep subjects at length.
Well, “trifecta of hosts” is generous. While four people were sitting on the stage, the interview largely consisted of host Tony Dokoupil taking Coates to task for having the nerve to suggest that the narrative of a put-upon Israel defending itself from terrorists might not be entirely accurate. Also, “contend with several deep subjects” is also a bit of a misnomer. After a seemingly noble attempt by co-host Nate Burleson to get Coates to speak on the subject of writing – the engine that sparked the creation of the book – the subject mostly came down to Palestine. No one other than Dokoupil and Coates speaks for five minutes, after which Gayle King sputters her way into the moment in a fluffy attempt to wrap things up. All of this I found to be drenched in irony, as Dokoupil kicks off his portion of the interview with a stunningly racist opening.
As co-host Burleson would say in his capacity as a sports commentator in any other given hour of the day, let’s look at the tape:
At the
1:27 mark Dokoupil practically leaps out of his chair to inquire of Coates what the hell he thought he was doing writing about Israel in anything other than a sympathetic manner:
“Ta-Nehisi, I want to dive into Palestine section of the book. It’s the largest section of the book. And I have to say, when I when I read the book…I imagine if I took your name out of it – took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away – the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. And so then I found myself wondering, why does Ta-Nehisi Coates – who I’ve known for a long time; read his work for a long time; very talented, smart guy – leave out so much? Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the First and the Second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits and is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”
This is one of those questions that isn’t a question, no matter how many ways you ask it. Dokoupil’s lead-in has a lot of things wrapped up in it – his Jewishness, his feelings, his knee-jerk Zionist defense mechanisms – but what’s also present is a very white, very American thing: his white supremacy.
The racism on display is too clear to be subtle, but if you’re not paying attention it might get by you because it’s swathed in Israel/Palestine cover. Dokoupil drives his offense with several, now very common to the point of eye-rolling tactics: he tugs at the purse strings by pointing out white largesse while simultaneously framing Coates as unserious; he attempts to discredit Coates; he name drops their prior relationship; and finally, he decimates all nuance around the subject with reductive, binary challenge.
“
I imagine if I took your name out of it – took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away – “
Purse strings tug/unserious.
“…
the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”
Attempt to discredit, in this case as one would a zealot.
“
And so then I found myself wondering, why does Ta-Nehisi Coates – who I’ve known for a long time; read his work for a long time; very talented, smart guy…”
Name drops prior relationship. (Which is interesting because if they were actual friends they probably wouldn’t be having this conversation for the first time on national television. Or at least shouldn’t.)
“
Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the First and the Second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits and is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”
Decimation of nuance with a false binary challenge kicker.
Dokoupil is essentially saying,
“You usually say things I like, but now you aren’t. The entertainment political and media industries of this country have conferred many successes and opportunities upon you. Why are you biting the hand that feeds you? We didn’t give you all of these wins to turn around and be criticized. Why aren’t you being a good Black person?” It is a very paternalistic vibe that Black folks are quite familiar with. At the very least I know I wasn’t the only one yelling at a
CBS Mornings segment in the last 24 hours.
The good news is, Coates knows what to do with this. He is a long-time journalist, so he knows what this is. He’s also not an armchair writer; he’s on the ground with the subjects he speaks about.
Over and over Dokoupil uses what has become very basic, day-one Zionist defenses (assuming you started the clock 359 days ago and not several generations back). They are “questions” that are easily discounted once you sprinkle a little context on them. It doesn’t take much, and Coates knows just how to season his responses. He flips the questions. He turns reductive arguments into macro truths. Coates suggests we don’t have to interrogate the question of whether or not Israel has a right to exist when it clearly does, and that rights has nothing to do with it. He blows Dokoupil’s suggestion that he might have a problem with a Jewish state by clarifying that his issue isn’t with Jews, but ethnocracies and apartheid. Like most Zionists, Dokoupil isn’t interested in unpacking those clarifications because he knows at least one of two things: that things like ethnocracies and apartheid are bad, which means he would have to admit that Israel is doing a bad thing, thus losing the argument; or that he can’t publicly dig into what he actually believes because his objective façade will implode under the weight of his support for such heinous systems. Dokoupil does not offer a response to Coates’ real world anecdotes about lived injustice or the simple statement that “either apartheid is right or it’s wrong” because what would anyone look like in 2024 saying “apartheid is good?” Pointing out the apartheid predating October 7, 2023 moves the goalposts beyond Israel’s ability to justify their actions. Coates rope-a-doped him.
All in all, it’s a jaw-droppingly racist moment that transforms into a clinic about, not how to deal with white supremacy, but how not to deal with it. We don’t have to waste time educating someone who is smart enough to ask the kinds of questions that Dokoupil was asking. His problem isn’t that he doesn’t know what Coates is talking about; it’s that he thinks what he feels and wants is more important than what Coates feels and wants, or Palestinians for that matter. And in this interview, on this otherwise typically annoying morning display of power pandering and capital worship, his unstoppable whiteness met an immovable force called realness. Not simply truth, but the display of that truth imposed in such a way as to reveal the whiteness in its naked, uncaring form.
I wanted to dig into whether or not Coates’ book was actually doing any of the things that Dokoupil suggested, but his assertions had almost nothing to do with the content of Coates’ book. I have it in hand and can tell you that I can see why Dokoupil struggled with it. The section on Palestine is measured, fair and not saying any of the things he suggests. As a rule, Coates only wants to talk about what he’s talking about, not what he isn’t, and that’s true for his books as well. This interview shows that simple value in action, and in real-time, no edits, no do-overs. It is a value we should all endeavor to employ when dismantling oppressive systems and the narratives that fuel them.
