Ta-Nehisi Coates on Snoop, Gayle King, and Questions About Kobe
<...> I say this as a black man. It is perhaps naive to expect black men to be betteroppression is always demeaning and rarely ennobling. But black men, perhaps more than other men, have some inkling of what its like to have a body that can be taken for someone elses pleasure. Indeed, we know more than we want to say, because if we ever said it all we might never stop crying. Maybe that really is the root of this.
Its certainly not about protecting anyones memory or their families. Men who want to hurt have been using the language of protection all my life. Its certainly isnt about Weinstein. Only a fool tolerates serial killing because Ted Bundy was once a neighbor.
Whatever its about, theres really no way to be neutral here. Gayle King dared speak of a man as though he were one, and a lot of us fucking lost it. We did not calmly express our dislike of the question. We were too weak for that. We threatened. We dragged. And we attacked. A friend, watching all this said, damn, Gayle has a son. To which I could only respond, these dudes have sons too. And this is what were teaching them. Its wrong. We should want more.
We should be better.
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