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Ta-Nehisi Coates Sucks at French and it’s Your Fault
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On September 10, 2014 @ 11:15 am In The Point | 19 Comments
40 acres and a jackass
Get ready to roll your eyes. No more. More than that. It’s Ta-Nehisi Coates times.
In the ongoing adventures of Ta-Nehisi Coates, he tried to learn French, but had trouble because of segregation. Yes a man born in 1975 in Baltimore has trouble with French because of segregation.
There were years when I failed the majority of my classes. This was not a matter of my being better suited for the liberal arts than sciences. I was an English minor in college. I failed American Literature, British Literature, Humanities, and (voilà) French…
Like many black children in this country, I did not have a culture of scholastic high achievement around me. There were very few adults around me who’d been great students and were subsequently rewarded for their studiousness. The phrase “Ivy League” was an empty abstraction to me. I mostly thought of school as a place one goes so as not to be eventually killed, drugged, or jailed. These observations cannot be disconnected from the country I call home, nor from the government to which I swear fealty.
Right.
Because it was Uncle Sam who was responsible for Coates’ lack of interest in French. Despite the fact that Coates did manage to graduate high school and attended college.
It wasn’t his fault. It was America’s fault.
The whole country.
Nothing is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ fault. Not even his stupid name. If he failed a class, it was because of America. Not his parents, not the people around him. Not him.
America.
If you want to see the roots of a culture of irresponsibility based around perpetual victimhood, look no further than Coates.
For most of American history, it has been national policy to plunder the capital accumulated by black people—social or otherwise. It began with the prohibition against reading, proceeded to separate and wholly unequal schools, and continues to this very day in our tacit acceptance of segregation…
Segregation. In 1980s and 1990s Baltimore.
And so a white family born into the lower middle class can expect to live around a critical mass of people who are more affluent or worldly and thus see other things, be exposed to other practices and other cultures. A black family with a middle class salary can expect to live around a critical mass of poor people, and mostly see the same things they (and the poor people around them) are working hard to escape. This too compounds.
But what about Ta-Nehisi Coates? A peek at Wikipedia tells us that his father was an itinerant Black Panther (that explains the name) with seven kids. His mother handled his education.
In our time, it is common to urge young black children toward education so that they may be respectable or impress the “right people.” But the “right people” remain unimpressed, and the credentials of black people, in a country rooted in white supremacy, must necessarily be less.
Sure that must be why despite dropping out of college, Coates has a gig with top media publications. It’s why Obama is in the White House.
Because White Supremacist America just keeps the black man down. Somehow keeping him down involves giving him the power and privilege to make a jackass out of himself in public.
And who is responsible for his jackassery? White America. Obviously.
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