What Ta-Nehisi Coates and White Supremacists Have in Common

NOTE:  I'm not sure I still agree with my own post here.  - Greg, 9/14/17

Earlier this year I penned some reflections on the National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates entitled Between the World and Me.  With issues of race constantly providing the subtext behind headlines throughout the past several years, my choice to carefully consider the arguments and thoughts of the eloquent and now famous Mr. Coates was my own pitiful yet deliberate attempt to better understand what life in these United States must be like inside a black body.

Yet much of what I uncovered deeply troubled me as a Christian committed to the narrative of God's redemptive work in the world as revealed through the person of Jesus Christ.  Though Coates' book provides a much needed glimpse into the nature of life within black skin, it offers a profoundly anti-Christian solution to the problem of race in America:  violent resistance and endless struggle.  Critiquing the pacifist Christian thought of Martin Luther King Jr., Coates believes that blacks will never gain equality with whites by playing nice.  Sit-ins and acts of nonviolent resistance may make a certain amount of progress, but for complete equality violent overthrow of the systemic status quo can be the only solution.  

Ta-Nehisi Coates has become one of the
leading voices among black civil rights activists

Though the author does not state his aims quite as starkly as this, his solution to the inequality between races in America reveals itself in his mockery of Dr. King.  The arc of the universe, Coates retorts, doesn't bend toward justice! No, the universe that we encounter is purely "physical, and its moral arc [is] bent toward chaos then concluded in a box" (28). In contrast to Dr. King, Ta-Nehisi praises the violence and militant rhetoric of Malcolm X, writing, "If he hated, he hated because it was human for the enslaved to hate the enslaver, natural as Prometheus hating the birds.  He would not turn the other cheek for you.  He would not be a better man for you.  He would not be your morality" (36).  This is the activism of a man committed to a materialist understanding of the cosmos: There is no "God" and he will not "make right" all of the wrongs of our world.  If there is to be justice, it must be seized, not prayed for.  The oppressed cannot overcome violent oppressors while maintaining some semblance of a moral high ground since morality itself is a fiction created by the oppressors to maintain their power.

In short, Coates advises his son to abandon all hope of reconciliation.  The world has only ever known the law of the jungle:  either eat or be eaten.  In his most honest reflection on his nihilistic beliefs, the concerned father writes, "Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about this world is meant to be... These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope" (71).  Coates believes solely in struggle and the eternal recurrence of the same. Black power vs. white power -- these two can no more be reconciled than can a lion and a lamb.

Interestingly, this is precisely the worldview and ethical reasoning embraced by white supremacists. Since the election of Donald Trump, the hate-mongerers seem to be emerging from their caves.  The so-called "Alt-Right," a euphemism for white supremacists, are no longer consigned to obscure corners of the internet; rather, now they are giving interviews on NPR and other national news outlets.  Indeed, the new chief strategist and Senior Counselor to President-elect Donald Trump, Stave Bannon, has acted as one of the spearheads of this movement for years, according to many watchdog groups.

Jared Taylor in 2008

Perhaps the most vocal and prominent white supremacist today, Jared Taylor, openly posits that peaceful co-existence (let alone reconciliation!) between peoples of different races has proven itself throughout human history to be an impossibility.  Political power, according to Taylor, is a zero-sum game.  That is, if blacks or latinos or any other non-white group gain a certain amount of political power, they attain it only by forcibly removing it from whites.  Taylor's solution, therefore, is to create a completely white nation that excludes all other peoples from entry.  His message is simple: "Unless whites are prepared to exclude people [of color], then they will be shoved aside. ...I will fight [for segregation] until my last breath" (Quote is from an interview with Jorge Ramos in his documentary Hate Rising, which can be viewed here).

For Taylor, as with Ta-Nehisi Coates, beings exist by nature human in a state of struggle, competition, and violence.  If power and influence is to be gained or maintained, then it must come at the expense of "the other."  Put simply, Coates and Taylor agree on this: racial reconciliation is a pipe dream, a utopian fantasy that will never and can never be achieved.  The strong eat the weak.  And it is always, obviously, better to be among the strong.  

Christians stand opposed to both Coates' violence and Taylor's violence.  We who follow the Crucified God, who place our trust in the One who is making all things right, and who believe that one day the kingdom of God will descend upon this earth, bringing about the miracle of reconciliation between black and white, lion and lamb -- we of all people must devote our lives, our reputations, and our resources solely to the cause of reconciliation.  Though undoubtedly Christians are taught to stand in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, meaning that the cause of Ta-Nehisi Coates may be embraced at least in part (and Taylor's completely rejected), the identity politics and inherent violence of both must be rejected.  Christians live according to a new pattern, a pattern that foreshadows the shalom of God's perfect reign which was revealed momentarily in the person of Christ and will be revealed eternally in us all at the eschaton.

The real division emerging within our society today is not between the conservatives and liberals, the urban and the rural, the educated and uneducated, the white-collar and blue-collar worker, or the religious and the secular; rather the real division is between those who promote reconciliation and those who, committed to their own identity politics, accept (even promote!) division and animosity as a permanent, immutable state of affairs.  Those who claim to follow in the way of Jesus know where they must stand.

Coates on Coates: A Book Review of Between the World and Me

Hailed as one of the best books of 2015 and winner of the National Book Award, critics continue to heap approbations on the newest work of the critical race theorist and emerging black intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Written in the form of a letter to his fifteen year old son, Coates writes about what life in a black body is like in a world build upon the systematic enslavement and destruction of black bodies.  Though we are allowed to overhear this conversation between one black man and his son, it is clear that the real audience for this book is the white "race," a people Coates constantly refers to as "the Dreamers" due to their singularly undivided focus on attaining the American Dream -- an edifice that they have constructed by means of oppressing and (ab)using black bodies.  What is the Dream? "It is perfect houses with nice lawns.  It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways.  The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts.  The Dream smells like peppermint and tastes like strawberry shortcake."  And, try as he might to attain the Dream, it remains ever inaccessible to his people because "the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies" (11).

Though deeply cynical and acerbic in its tone, Coates does powerfully communicate to the white reader many sharp insights into life and struggles of black women and men.  Coates exposes the ways in which large-scale systems -- legal policies, city districting and policing, cultural attitudes, and so on -- operate to disadvantage those with black skin.  Particularly insightful is Coates' recurring argument that the enslavement of black bodies was and is a profoundly physical act, not some abstract idea.  Racism destroys particular people with particular experiences, preferences, and characteristics.  This racism "is a visceral experience... it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscles, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth" (10).  The insidious ideology of white supremacy possesses a foul taste, a rancid smell, and leaves dead bodies in its wake.  If Coates' highly emotive language feels like a punch in the gut, it does so for good reason.

Regrettably, Coates structures his argument in such a way that a white man like myself is denied permission to voice any disagreement lest I be charged with the crime of "privilege" or even "racism." (Nevermind the fact that as a black man Coates seems to know precisely what is going on in the white mind).  And though I plead guilty to the former, recognizing the way my social status has shaped my own perception of the world around me, I want to resist the latter label.  Likewise I reject the tendency ubiquitous among both the far left and the far right to deny certain people the right to dissent, to express reasoned disagreement, and to subject every idea to rigorous scrutiny.  If we cannot dialogue, after all, what hope do we have to arrive at even a modicum of understanding?  Yet this, it seems, is precisely what Coates considers to be impossible.  Rooted dogmatically in the Nietzschean ethic of "will to power," the author's arguments throughout the book assume that relations between whites and blacks must ever remain marked by struggle, conflict, and even violence.  Assuming that white people can change, that they might one day be anything other oppressors, that they will stop plundering black bodies for their own personal economic gain, Coates tells his son, is harmful idealism that distracts from the pragmatic, ongoing project of the struggle for black power.  In this world, one either eats or gets eaten.  And the Dreamers have been feasting on black flesh for far too long.

Given his rejection of theism and the uniquely Christian hope that the arc of the universe bends toward justice, it should not surprise us that Coates offers no suggestions for a way forward other than armed popular resistance.  Trashed as idealistic gas is the pacifism of Martin Luther King; in its place Coates seeks to revive the militant tactics of the Black Power Movement and the violent rhetoric of his hero Malcolm X ("If he hated, he hated because it was human for the enslaved to hate the enslaver, natural as Prometheus hating the birds.  He would not turn the other cheek for you.  He would not be a better man for you.  He would not be your morality") 36.  For this reason, Coates denigrates those heroes of "Black History Month" who staged sit-ins, marched for freedom, and "seemed to love the worst things in life -- love the dogs that rent their children apart, the tear gas that clawed at their lungs, the fire hoses that tore off their clothes and tumbled them into the streets" (32).  Nonviolent methods are lauded by whites because pacifism poses no genuine threat to white power, Coates cynically argues.  It is an oppressor's morality.  Besides, any willingness to suffer or die nonviolently for a cause depends upon the conviction that history is aiming at a particular end or telos.  Yet that is not the world we inhabit, according to the author.  Ridiculing those who believe that the meek will inherit the earth, Coates inhabits a universe that is purely "physical, and its moral arc [is] bent toward chaos then concluded in a box" (28).

As a Christian and a theologian, I must part ways with Ta-Nehisi Coates at this juncture.  Though he has much to teach me about endemic racism, the social and physical conditions of urban poverty, the black diaspora, the shortcomings of the white Dream, and much more, I must (at the risk of being discarded as another privileged white oppressor) declare my belief in the possibility of reconciliation and transformation.  Christ's prayer for those who crucified him remind us today that the cycle of violence -- long though it may have lasted -- can grind to a halt through the power of forgiveness.  History is not condemned to be, as Coates believes, one long game of "king of the mountain" in which whites stand on top of the pile, shoving down black and brown pretenders to their throne.  In contrast to all of this stands the kenotic movement celebrated by Paul in Philippians 2, the master who washes his servants' feet, the black baptist preacher who instructs his followers to overcome hatred with love.

For though Coates' vitriol positively drips with righteous indignation, he never offers to me a convincing reason why I ought to share his outrage at injustice.  For if the world we inhabit really is mere chaos that ends in a box, for what reason might I consider surrendering my status as a white male?  If that's the game we're playing, then I will do what I will do, compelling others to serve my own purposes and making no apologies for doing so.  Coates either overlooks the danger of the oppressed becoming the oppressor or else he tacitly approves of it.  And it is this great struggle which provides Coates and his son with meaning and purpose in their lives.  In perhaps the most honest moment in this letter, the author states the conclusion that he is compelled to embrace: "Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about this world is meant to be... These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope" (71).  This is a profoundly dark and cynical perspective from which to advocate for "racial justice," one which effectively renders terms like "good," "true," "beautiful," and "just" devoid of any meaning beyond the personal and subjective.  And so I have every right to reject the author's idea of justice just as much as I might claim to dislike tomatoes.  Who is he to argue with me?  On what grounds will he convince me otherwise?

Thankfully, I believe in the God of Justice and Peace who provides content and definition to such ideas, enfleshed in his very body hung on a cross and resurrected.  Just as guns will one day be reforged into garden tools and just as the lion will one day lay down with the lamb, so too I cling to the hope that "one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls" and we will know peace.  This was Dr. King's dream.  One day we will all wake up to find that this reconciliation is the fabric with which this universe was woven all along.

Should Economics Be Ethical?

Tonight I am posting a few reflections inspired by a video at this link:

Video on Income Distribution

In many ways, this video speaks for itself and needs no commentary.  And yet, I know that many will strongly disagree with the point that its creator is trying to make.  The question of income distribution and what is to be done about it marks one of the key fault lines in modern US politics.  I would like to address just two of the objections raised by those libertarians and fiscally conservative thinkers to the line of argument presented in the video.

Objection #1:  The WHOLE pie is getting bigger.  Yes, the poor may be poorer relative to the wealthy, but in absolute terms, they are actually better off than before.  Economics is not a "zero sum game."

Response:  This is a well-worn argument from laissez faire capitalists of all shapes and sizes.  And, to some extent, it is true.  Even though the income distribution is less equal than before, it can be demonstrated that the poor have benefitted in certain ways by participation in the larger system of free market economics.  When the waterline rises, all the boats rise with it.  

However, although this argument works if we look at the last 60 years since WWII, I am not sure that it is as conclusive if we narrow the scope down to the last 30 years.  In terms of buying power and wages relative to the cost of living, the poor in today's economy, according to some economists, are actually worse off than they were in 1980.  I would argue that the days of the "whole pie getting bigger" are over.  The boom of the post-WWII economy did benefit all Americans economically, but that is not the current reality.  We might also note that there were MORE financial regulations during the period of the 1950s and 60s than there are today.  For more on this, see this wonderful little video:  Senator Warren Lays the Smack Down

Secondly, I question what we mean by "better off."  This question goes beyond the realm of economics and into the realm of philosophy, theology, and sociology.  Is the generation of wealth the ultimate good for a society?  Is the creation of more stuff the telos of human behavior?  Moreover, does obsession with production, accumulation, and general creation of wealth even lead to greater levels of happiness?  I recall reading an article several years ago (if I find the source I will add the link later) which compared the poor of America's inner cities to the poor of India's slums.  In terms of absolute wealth, the American poor were far better off.  They ate more food, slept in more comfortable homes, had access to better drinking water, and even enjoyed luxuries like television.  The poor of India, on the other hand, lacked many or all of these.  But here is what's so fascinating:  the poor of India reported greater levels of happiness and satisfaction in their lives than did the poor of the United States.  Perplexed by this finding, the researchers dug deeper and ultimately determined that the residents of India's slums were happier due to the sense of community, fraternity, and solidarity that they found among their peers.  The poor of America's inner cities, in contrast, experienced fragmentation, alienation, isolation, and fear.  We could draw many fascinating conclusions from this, but for my purposes here I would simply state that the creation of wealth in and of itself does not necessarily benefit humanity or lead to greater levels of happiness.  The assumption of many economists that a "higher standard of living" is a self-evident, inherent good fails to recognize that achieving "a higher standard of living" is not the end goal of human existence.  There are greater goals.  One of those greater goals, I would argue (based on my theology) is the experience of community and unity with one another.  The vast inequality in the distribution of wealth that we find in the United States actually breaks down this sense of community and instead creates envy, class warfare, and various and sundry (I have always wanted to use that phrase in a blog post) forms of social strife.  Thus, a) the argument that the pie is getting bigger may not even be true anymore and b) even if it is, that does not necessarily mean that humanity is better off.

Objection #2: Economics is an amoral discipline.  It exists on its own and cannot be bothered with questions of morality and ethics.

Response:  Do I really need to respond to this?  Evidently I do because I distinctly recall hearing a self-described member of the religious right (a member of my church and leader in my youth group during my high school years) and a Republican staffer for the Illinois state congress stating, "We simply cannot start thinking of economics in moral terms.  The two have nothing to do with one another."  For a firmly committed libertarian, that is indeed the line that one must take to be consistent.  Ayn Rand saw this perfectly well.  You see, it all depends on what story you believe in.  If the world is nothing more than a dog-eat-dog, winner-takes-all free-for-all devoid of any larger meaning-making metanarrative, then there is no moralizing to be done.  In fact, injecting morality into the conversation is to appeal to a trick of nature, a weakness in the human evolutionary process, a particularly powerful and malicious meme (to use Dawkin's term) that deceives us all.  I don't have time to go into this philosophy here because books have been written on it, but suffice it to say that thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Satre, Epicurus of the third century BCE, and Ayn Rand have maintained that without God (and the larger metanarrative that S/he provides), the only true meaning in life is self-gratification.  There is no right or wrong; there are just brute facts.  And the truly enlightened individuals who realize this (the übermensch) are able to cast off the shackles of morality and embrace the glory of their own will to power.  This is why Rand can write a book entitled "The Virtue of Selfishness."  

Do I need to say it?  These ideas are not Christian.  They are the antithesis of Christianity.  Nietzsche loathed Christians because they had been deluded into thinking that humility was actually a virtue.  He scoffed at their ignorance.  Well, Friedrich, I'm a Christian.  And as such, I believe in right and wrong.  I believe in good and evil.  I can look at the war in Syria and claim, "That is a bad thing."  The nihilist cannot do that.  I can also look at an economy in which 1% of the population controls 35.4% of its wealth and say, "That's a sad state of affairs.  In fact, it's wrong."  

I will state it very simply:  Economics is a moral discipline.  It, like all that exists, exists because God created it.  And it falls under the umbrella of that which has meaning and value, that which has moral weight, that which "stands under judgment."  As Jim Wallis is fond of saying (and I agree with him), "A budget is a moral document."  The way that the earth's limited resources are used reveals what we value -- and there are good uses of it and bad uses of it.  The Christian who is firmly convinced that God is God over all things must then evaluate every pattern of thinking according to the nature of God.  Economics does not get a free pass.  It too must be evaluated as ethical or unethical.  (To the schizophrenic Christian libertarian, I say, "Please stop fragmenting your mind.  You're gonna hurt yourself.  Economics and ethics aren't two different universes; they're inextricably bound.  Better yet, economics is subservient to ethics... or at least it ought to be.")  It seems ridiculous to me that I must even write this because it seems so obvious, yet some Christians have been so utterly duped by the language of capitalism that they actually say things like "We simply cannot think of economics in moral terms."  

Once economics is opened up to the critique of morality, I believe we are then right to claim that such an absurdly unequal distribution of wealth as we currently have in America is not only lamentable, but positively immoral.  Measures must be taken to fight it.  We must even leverage the authority of the government to at least partly address this imbalance for the sake of the common good.  The tools that we use to accomplish such a Herculean challenge are crude, but they are better than nothing -- I'm speaking of tools such as the progressive income tax (*gasp* Fox News watchers everywhere are calling me a socialist right now), a robust social safety net, public education, labor laws (which tries to counterbalance the power of that amoral übermensch who will not hesitate to squash a Filipino textile worker in order to increase his bottom line), strict financial regulations (in the hope we won't have a repeat of 2008), and on and on.  We are not aiming for perfection through these tools.  That's not possible.  But a more just society IS possible.  And a provisional, limited peace can be upheld until the ultimate, unadulterated shalom of God descends upon the earth.

Should economics be ethical?  Yes.  And right now the video that inspired this post shows us that we're not doing a very good job.

The Letterman "Apology"

I'm not much one for celebrity gossip, but when I heard that David Letterman was making headlines on the front pages of newspapers across America, I checked out what was going on. Turns out that the Indianapolis native had had an affair with an intern several years before and that someone was attempting to blackmail him for $2 million with this insider information. So Letterman called the attorney general, wrote the man a fake check, and the blackmailer was caught, but Letterman still had to confess to his "sin." I watched a clip of Letterman's "apology" with great interest, wondering how this late night icon of television would present himself. I shouldn't have been surprised by what I saw, but I was. Here's the clip:

What a wonderful illustration of so many aspects of our culture. Notice the following:

1) There is no apology here. This story is just played off for humor.

2) Sex outside of wedlock is not considered "immoral" or "sinful" in any way.

3) Letterman expresses not even the slightest concern for his wife or child or others he may have hurt.

4) He communicates to all of America that sex outside of wedlock is funny.

5) The audience actually applauds his behavior.

This is all truly remarkable. America has not only rejected the old-fashioned notion of monogamy as normative, we have gone beyond this and come to applaud the failures and sins of one another. We do this because it assuages our own guilt. When we hear Letterman say, "I have had sex with women on this show," we do not expect a tearful penitence; we laugh. C. S. Lewis says that evil reaches its pinnacle when we not only accept it within ourselves, but delight in it when we see it in others in order to make ourselves feel less evil. I think he has pegged our nation perfectly.

The First Abolitionist

The rise of modern ethical values such as tolerance, equality, and fraternity is supposedly rooted in Western Enlightenment ideals of the 17th and 18th centuries -- or so secular historians would have us believe. Not so, challenges David Bentley Hart in his masterful work "Atheist Delusions." The narrative of Western history which most of us have come to accept, which I had accepted before Hart opened my eyes, sounds something like this:

Once there were rich, diverse cultures that embraced polytheism. No god was seen as superior to another god and, therefore, no religious war needed to be fought. These happy pagans celebrated uninhibited sexuality and enjoyed fine food and wine. Unfortunately, a monothestic, exclusionary religion named Christianity emerged within the pluralistic culture of Rome and eventually began to extinguish all dissenting religious opinions through power, wealth, and corruption. This monster-religion wedded itself to kings and princes in the West and, as a result, scientific advancement was stunted, wars over miniscule points of doctrine were waged, and the freedom of ideas vanished into history. Christianity brought upon the West nothing but ruin -- the dark ages, the Crusades, the perpetual ignorace of the masses, the wars of religion, etc. Thankfully, a few brave individuals sparked a philosophical and rational revolution which would eventually overthrow the tyranny of the Church in what we today celebrate as the Enlightenment. Today's modern values concerning individual human life, ownership of private property, tolerance and pluralism, and the liberty to pursue happiness found their birth only after the tyranny of the Church had been overcome and unadulterated reason was allowed to prevail. In other words, today we celebrate the civil rights movement, the equality of women, the freedom of the press, and so on and so on because a few brave men snubbed the Pope. Or so the great scholars Dawkins, Hitchens, and Co. would have us believe.

Hart debunks this mythology piece by piece. He demonstrates how Christianity has been a force for good in the West and how the grander ideals of our moral consciences are rooted in the biblical, Judeo-Christian story rather than in the godless Voltaires that Dawkins so admires.

One example. Much to my delight, I have recently discovered that abolitionism was born not out of the post-Enlightenment West. No, the earliest abolitionist is none other than Gregory of Nyssa. And the precursor to all the brilliant diatribes of Fredrick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth was preached during Lent in the year 379.

Hart explains: "Whatever it is we think we mean by human 'equality,' we are able to presume the moral weight of such a notion only because far deeper down in the historical strata of our shared Western consciousness we retain the memory of an unanticipated moment of spiritual awakening, a delighted and astonished intellectual response to a single historical event: the proclamation of Easter. It was because of his faith in the risen Christ that Gregory could declare in his commentary on the Beatitudes, without any irony or reserve, that if Christians truly practiced the mercy commanded of them by their Lord humanity would no longer admit of divisions within itself between slavery and mastery, poverty and wealth, shame and honor, infirmity and strength, for all things would be held in common and all persons would be equal one with another" (180).

Just imagine... the thought of abolitionism was almost unthinkable to most Unionists even during the American Civil War in the 1860's! (We are, by and large, incapable of thinking outside of our context. Hence we who read Western history are often aghast to find even the most powerful of intellects spewing forth prejudice and ignorant hatred). And yet we find sprouting up within the fertile soil of post-resurrection Christianity a single shoot already reaching to the sky and crying, "Free all slaves! Slavery as an institution is vile!" Abolitionism does not date back merely to the mind of William Wilberforce; it can be found over 1300 years earlier in the mind of a Christian mystic and theologian.

This is but one example of Hart's demolition of the atheist's narrative of history. But I revel in it. I glory in the rich, life-giving, beauty-embracing ethic of my faith. David Hart gives Hitchens the academic middle finger and I applaud it and laugh with delight as he does.