The Chait-Coates controversy on white racism

I want to provide links here to installments in the Chait-Coates discussion of the last few weeks, including some of the various comments from other on it. Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine and Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic discussed various aspects of white racism as it currently manifests in the United States.

First, let me mention a piece from today by Coates, This Town Needs a Better Class of Racist The Atlantic 05/01/2014, in which he provides a well-nuanced look at how the justified disapproval of crass racists like Massa Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling can co-exist with widespread de facto racial discrimination against African-Americans. Noting the similarity of Massa Cliven's expressed beliefs with those of prominent and respectable conservatives, he observes:

But style is the hero. Cliven Bundy is old, white, and male. He likes to wave an American flag while spurning the American government and pals around with the militia movement. He does not so much use the word "Negro" — which would be bad enough — but "nigra," in the manner of villain from Mississippi Burning or A Time to Kill. In short, Cliven Bundy looks, and sounds, much like what white people take racism to be.

The problem with Cliven Bundy isn't that he is a racist but that he is an oafish racist. He invokes the crudest stereotypes, like cotton picking. This makes white people feel bad. The elegant racist knows how to injure non-white people while never summoning the specter of white guilt. Elegant racism requires plausible deniability, as when Reagan just happened to stumble into the Neshoba County fair and mention state's rights. Oafish racism leaves no escape hatch, as when Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond's singularly segregationist candidacy.

The articles I flagged on the Chait-Coates controversy include the following:

• Coates, The Secret Lives of Inner-City Black Males The Atlantic 03/18/2014
• Chait, Barack Obama, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Poverty, and Culture New York 03/19/2014
• Coates, Black Pathology and the Closing of the Progressive Mind 03/21/2014
• Chait, Barack Obama vs. the Culture of Poverty New York 03/28/2014
• Coates, Other People's Pathologies The Atlantic 03/30/2014
• Tressie McMillan Cottom, A Nasty Piece of Cornbread: Chait, Coates, and White Progressivism Tressiemc 03/30/3014
• Andy Seal, Historians and the F-Word US Intellectual History Blog 04/04/2014
• Chait, The Color of His Presidency New York 04/06/2014
• Joan Walsh, Jonathan Chait’s epic race fail: How a story about racism and Obama goes horribly wrong Salon 04/07/2014
• Chauncey DeVega, Politics is Professional Wrestling: New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait Reveals White Racist Conservatives Are Now 'Victims' of Anti-Racism's 'Terrifying Power' in the Age of Obama WARN 04/07/2014
• Jamelle Bouie, Color Blind Slate 04/07/2014
• Chauncey DeVega, An Additional Thought on Jonathan Chait's Essay 'The Color of His Presidency': Why Are White Liberals So Afraid to Call Republicans Racist? WARN 04/08/2014
• Chauncey DeVega, Jonathan Chait's Unintentional Teachable Moment: 10 Lessons About White Supremacy in the Age of Obama WARN 04/10/2014
• Andy Seal, Fatalism and the Age of Fracture US Intellectual History Blog 04/11/2014
• Chauncey DeVega, Did You See Jonathan Chait's Letdown of an Interview About Conservative Racism and White Victimology on MSNBC? 04/11/2014
• Elias Isquith, Objectively bad: Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Jonathan Chait and return of the "view from nowhere" Salon 04/12/2014
• Chauncey DeVega, Jonathan Chait Versus the Melissa Harris-Perry Show: An Intellectual Rope-A-Dope? Who do You Think Won? 04/13/2014
• Armando, Jonathan Chait's new form of hippie-punching: Playing the 'GOP are not racists' card Daily Kos 04/13/2014
• Chait, Is the Rising Democratic Majority Doomed? New York 04/23/2014

Tags: white racism, segregation