Ta-Nehisi Coates: What is Skip Gates Thinking?
[Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle.]
Better people than me have tackled this really weird piece in the Times on Friday, by Henry Louis Gates arguing against reparations....
Gates' contention that "there is very little discussion" of the African role in the slave trade is interesting. Among Africanists, trumpeting the fact that Africans sold slaves is akin to a physicist trumpeting inertia. Perhaps Gates meant that among non-academics there is very little discussion. Yet in his own piece Gates cites African heads of states talking to presumably non-academic African-American audiences about that which he claims is rarely discussed. As Eric Foner notes in today's Times, "virtually every history of slavery and every American history textbook includes this information." Perhaps Gates meant that among "reparations advocates" hold "very little discussion" on the subject. But since Gates doesn't name, cite, quote or nod at a single such "reparations advocate," there's no way to know.
Most importantly, Gates himself, has talked about it for at least a decade. Calling Gates, the foremost black scholar of his generation, which he is, does not say enough. Gates has streamlined black studies for the broad, faintly curious, American market. In addition to heading the Du Bois Center at Harvard, Gates edited the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, and currently edits the the leading black website on the internet....
The most notable aspect of Gates original PBS piece, which you can watch in full here, and this editorial, is a kind of crude black nationalism in reverse. The crude nationalist asserts that slavery was a white racist plot, and blankmindedly assumes that his racial truth of today, somehow also held true half a millenea ago. Likewise, Gates implicitly asserts that in trading slaves, Africans somehow violated a common, fraternal "African" spirit. Thus Gates laments "African selling other Africans into slavery," and, in his Times piece, shakes his head at the "sad truth" of African slave-trading. What goes unasked is whether the Fanti, the Ga or the Mende of the past even saw themselves as "African." The crude nationalist and Gates come out blaming different people, but both commit the fallacy of judging the sins of the past via the racial tribalism of today....
I don't support reparations, I support all people grappling with all aspects of American history--including the role of people who looked like us, but are not us, in the slave trade. Seeking that understanding because you're looking for someone to blame taints the process, it shades your vision, and before long you're ascribing identities to people who never claimed them.
I learned that in Linda Heywood's class--the same Linda Heywood who Gates cites as a source. I've told this story several times on this blog, but suffice to say I came to Howard University with some simplistic answers about race, was swiftly disabused of them, and since then, have been left, in the main, only with questions. One of the few things I know is this--Blame is useless to me. Blame is for the dead.
Read entire article at The Atlantic
Better people than me have tackled this really weird piece in the Times on Friday, by Henry Louis Gates arguing against reparations....
Gates' contention that "there is very little discussion" of the African role in the slave trade is interesting. Among Africanists, trumpeting the fact that Africans sold slaves is akin to a physicist trumpeting inertia. Perhaps Gates meant that among non-academics there is very little discussion. Yet in his own piece Gates cites African heads of states talking to presumably non-academic African-American audiences about that which he claims is rarely discussed. As Eric Foner notes in today's Times, "virtually every history of slavery and every American history textbook includes this information." Perhaps Gates meant that among "reparations advocates" hold "very little discussion" on the subject. But since Gates doesn't name, cite, quote or nod at a single such "reparations advocate," there's no way to know.
Most importantly, Gates himself, has talked about it for at least a decade. Calling Gates, the foremost black scholar of his generation, which he is, does not say enough. Gates has streamlined black studies for the broad, faintly curious, American market. In addition to heading the Du Bois Center at Harvard, Gates edited the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, and currently edits the the leading black website on the internet....
The most notable aspect of Gates original PBS piece, which you can watch in full here, and this editorial, is a kind of crude black nationalism in reverse. The crude nationalist asserts that slavery was a white racist plot, and blankmindedly assumes that his racial truth of today, somehow also held true half a millenea ago. Likewise, Gates implicitly asserts that in trading slaves, Africans somehow violated a common, fraternal "African" spirit. Thus Gates laments "African selling other Africans into slavery," and, in his Times piece, shakes his head at the "sad truth" of African slave-trading. What goes unasked is whether the Fanti, the Ga or the Mende of the past even saw themselves as "African." The crude nationalist and Gates come out blaming different people, but both commit the fallacy of judging the sins of the past via the racial tribalism of today....
I don't support reparations, I support all people grappling with all aspects of American history--including the role of people who looked like us, but are not us, in the slave trade. Seeking that understanding because you're looking for someone to blame taints the process, it shades your vision, and before long you're ascribing identities to people who never claimed them.
I learned that in Linda Heywood's class--the same Linda Heywood who Gates cites as a source. I've told this story several times on this blog, but suffice to say I came to Howard University with some simplistic answers about race, was swiftly disabused of them, and since then, have been left, in the main, only with questions. One of the few things I know is this--Blame is useless to me. Blame is for the dead.
Related Links
- Kwabena Akurang-Parry: Some Perspectives on Henry Louis Gates's Reparations
- Stanley Crouch: Gates' Cold Shower on the Reparations Debate
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: What is Skip Gates Thinking?
- David Beito: Henry Louis Gates Jr. Making Sense on Ending the"Slavery Blame-Game."
- Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Ending the Slavery Blame-Game