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Friday Nite Videos | June 21, 2019

Portside
Impeachment | John Oliver. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall | English and Spanish Subtitles. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Opening Statement on Reparations. Our Ignorance About Gravity. When White Supremacists Overthrew a Government.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Opening Statement on Reparations at US House Hearing

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates told lawmakers at a House committee hearing that the debate over reparations is “a dilemma of inheritance.” Coates called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for saying a day earlier that reparations were not “a good idea” because no one who is currently living is responsible. Coates told lawmakers that many of the inequalities created by slavery persist today, including in the form of economic and health disparities.

Ta-Nehisi Coates Is an Optimist Now

Eric Levitz New York magazine
A conversation about the revived debate over reparations, the 2020 Democratic primary, and the power of pop culture to advance progressive change

books

Why Do White People Like What I Write?

Pankaj Mishra London Review of Books
Writers once busy in prestigious magazines rationalizing war and torture are now confronting the obdurate pathologies of American life that stem from America’s original racial sin. Coates wonders why those once fierce in defending bloody imperial missions now embrace him for describing American power from the rare standpoint of its internal victims. Yet the danger for Coates is not so much seduction by power as a distorted perspective caused by proximity to it.

Tidbits - December 28, 2017 - Reader Comments: Poverty in the U.S.; Refugees; Coates and West; Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers; AI Jobs; Russia and Korea; Catalonia and Spain; Chicago and HUAC; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Poverty - Running thru the U.S.; Refugees; Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West; Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers; AI Jobs Revolution and nature of work and workers; Russia and Korea; Catalonia and Spain; Portside's New Look; Subversive Involvement: Chicago and HUAC - Tribute to Dr. Quentin Young - Chicago - January 12

Ta-Nehisi Coates & Cornel West: Black Academics and Activists Give Their Verdict

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel Wes Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West. ‘We cannot simply abandon debate when it has become intense.’ Composite: Andre Chung/WashintMelvin Rogers, Patrisse Cullors, Carol Anderson, Shailja Patel The Guardian
Commentators Melvin Rogers, Patrisse Cullors, Carol Anderson and Shailja Patel discuss the impact of the debate and struggle for racial equality.

Racism May Have Gotten Us Into This Mess, But Identity Politics Can’t Get Us Out

Briahna Joy Gray New York Magazine
It’s often argued that centering economics means abandoning racial or other identity groups that have fought hard for well-deserved political leverage. But political messaging is not a zero-sum game. The question is not “identity politics or economic justice,” but how to adopt a complementary union of the two.

The First White President

Ta-Nehisi Coates The Atlantic
The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.
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