Ta-Nehisi Coates on Obama, West and Critics
Ta-Nehisi Coates, fascinating as always, comments on the comments on the comments about what Cornel West said about the President.
You can read it here, but this, to me, is the summative passage:
In the matter at hand, there is no real difference between the tribalism offered by D’Souza and his ilk, and the tribalism offered by West and his defenders. There is no real difference between Tea Partiers who insist that NAACP are the actual racists, and those who believe Obama is a “black mascot” damning the influence of identity politics. There is no real difference between those who push their agenda by implying that Obama isn’t really American, and those who push their agenda by implying that Obama isn’t really black.
Both are afflicted with a species of blindness, and intellectual sloth. Understanding and debating actual policy is hard. Enumerating perceived slights and name-calling, and dubbing it a black agenda, is not.