Coates thinks Sanders's reluctance to embrace reparations for black Americans in recompense for the historical "plunder" of blacks under slavery and Jim Crow betrays a misunderstanding of the nature and extent of racial injury. He thinks Sanders is willing to see black people made whole only as a byproduct of our statistical overrepresentation among the beneficiaries of a more progressive American social policy regime. That's not enough, far from enough, for Mr. Coates. And so, black people ought to think long and hard before supporting Sanders. We ought not to drink the socialist Kool Aid.

I am not here endorsing Bernard Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination. But, I am declaring -- as forcefully as I can -- that this criticism from Ta-Nehisi Coates is off base. A Sanders presidency, in comparison to the alternatives at hand, would probably be good for poor black people.

Coates's error here is, however, quite instructive. It betrays for all the world to see the moral poverty and political immaturity of his overarching worldview. Here's what I mean: Sanders understands that racial inequality in America is an evil legacy of our morally indefensible past, and he aims to do something about it -- but NOT primarily through racially targeted programs which designate black people as their sole beneficiaries. This is the right goal, and the only feasible way forward. The main point of an old essay of mine on reparations (published in 2006 and linked below) is the distinction I draw between what I call "qualitative" and "quantitative" claims. I favor the former, which Sanders effectively endorses. Reparations of the sort that Coates and his supporters envision deals in the latter. They're chasing after a pipe dream.

For my money, establishing a general presumption that racial disparities -- whatever their source -- are per se morally offensive is a major thing, not a small gesture. It would be worth a lot more than some cash transfer. It would mean that every aspect of policy in every arena of public decision making would be formulated differently, with an eye toward diminishing those disparities -- via targeted or universal interventions, or both, depending on what is feasible and effective in specific cases -- housing, education, employment, criminal justice, health care, taxation, immigration policy and so forth. (There is no reason to presume that one approach -- universal or racially targeted -- would be best in all of these policy arenas...)

Another concern which I take up in my essay, and which escapes most advocates of racial reparations, is that public moral leadership is a two-way street. We blacks have something to give the country as well as being due something from the country. Toward the end of his life, when formulating a "poor people's campaign" and opposing the Vietnam war, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership was all about leveraging the political capital he'd gained from the black freedom struggle in order to transform the entire country into a more humane and decent society. Unlike the black power advocates and the celebrants of some kind of separatist black nationalism, King was trying to lead his country toward a righteous stance in a post-industrial, globalizing world, standing on a foundation that had been built by the protests and mobilization of black masses. Was Dr. King gullible? Was he a "sucker" for believing that a universal, transracial "we" is possible here? I don't think so. But, such a belief is definitely out of fashion in our day.

What a novel notion -- rather than blacks looking to get paid qua being black, I'm prepared to envision black people leading the way in a transformation of the American social welfare state that would make it more humane for everybody. This is what Bernard Sanders proposes to do, as well. Does that make me a "sucker" too? Or a moral visionary? "You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one..."

Of course, this is not something I'd expect for Ta-Nehisi Coates to understand -- after all, he's willing to tell the world, without apology, that he felt no sympathy at all for the (white) American police and firefighters who were incinerated in the 2001 World Trade Towers collapse. He has nothing but contempt for this transracial "we" that I'm talking about. By contrast, I have nothing but contempt for Coates's lack of human charity and his racial narcissism. He is someone who can only view the world through the jaundiced eye of the purported racial victim.

Coates's approach is profoundly in error, IMHO. It is wrong politically; but, even more importantly, it shows an impoverished, narrow-minded -- even racist! -- understanding of what genuine social justice consists of. We blacks can and should also be givers, not just takers, in this debate. (No, of course, I am NOT here saying that black have given nothing to the country. What I'm saying, unapologetically, is that we have yet more to contribute, something important, something that only we can give...) And, one of the main things we have to give -- based on the suffering of our ancestors and the salience of our voices in contemporary American public discourse -- is a capacious and generous and expansive and humane vision -- and the political leverage that can help realize such a vision -- about the right ordering of our social institutions in America, tout court.

Embracing reparations politics, in its parochialism and its nursing of racially defined injury, entails surrendering an opportunity for blacks to provide moral leadership for the country. Rather than "White America has done US wrong; it's time for THEM to pay up," my preferred narrative is something like this: "Look at the injury that we've endured! It must be repaired. It can be repaired in many ways, but we advocate repairing it in ways that benefit not only ourselves, but others who have been injured too. Ultimately, our claims are about HUMAN rights, not RACIAL entitlements. We are interested in making the country better, not simply in being made whole. Indeed, without making our country better for everyone, we can never be made fully whole..." This, I might add, is precisely what Bernard Sanders is saying.

There's nobility in this. And charity. One might even say -- though Ta-Nehisi Coates would never be caught dead saying it -- Christian charity! Unlike the tort law model of make-whole relief, moving in my preferred direction holds out the prospect of redressing the racial stigma problem too because, properly conceived, "reparations" should be all about repairing relationships, not merely soliciting transfers.

And, by the way, the irony is that it will only be via some form of this kind of transracial solidarity that one could ever enact black reparations in any case! How would John Conyers's bill (to establish a Congressional commission to explore payment of reparations to blacks for historical racial crimes) ever get out of committee without some non-black constituencies endorsing it? No transracial "we" means no such majority in favor, which means no black reparations... So everybody in this debate -- including Ta Nehisi Coates, though he's evidently unaware of this -- is buying into one form of transracial humanism or another, if they expect their advocacy to amount to something more than words on the page...

Finally, I'll note that glib comparisons of the situation of Black Americans with that of the Japanese who were interred during WW II, or with some Native American groups, or with German-Jewish relations post-Holocaust, are not apt here. What's at stake in the debate about black reparations in the US is of major significance in defining the nature and extent of this country's social policy, and the ideas that undergird it, for generations to come. These stakes, and the socio-political dynamics, are completely different than these other cases.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3268539&forum_id=2#30804000)

Ta Nehisi Coates refuses to come on the Glenn Show and have an open debate about the issues on which we disagree. He prefers to lob invectives from his bunker at the Atlantic, depicting me as a "hater" at his blog -- someone who envies his success, whose thirst for acclaim is unquenchable. But, he offers no arguments in rebuttal of my trenchant critiques of his ideas. I don't expect this to change, given the vast disparity in our respective mastery of relevant social scientific and social philosophic literatures. But, on the off chance that he's ready to face the music and argue about these important matters in public, I'm doing him the favor of tipping my hand. Here's a crib sheet, Ta Nehisi. So, come out, come out, wherever you are!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3268539&forum_id=2#30804079)

http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/1794

it's hard not to cringe at tnc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3268539&forum_id=2#30804131)