Ta-Nehisi Coates: Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations?

[tishaLA]

396. You construe it as an attack; I don't

Neither does Mr Coates. He is interested in the discursive shift from revolution to pragmatism when the conversation shifts from, say, economic justice to reparation. I would suggest that it's much more of an attack on Clinton (or Clintonism), in fact, because he basically says that he doesn't have the high expectations of her that he has for Sen Sanders.

And, as someone correctly pointed out in the AfAm group, the subject of the essay isn't really Sanders at all, but reparations; Sanders is the white liberal who made the statement, but in so doing, he could be any number of white liberals who have vivid political imaginations about "average Americans" but become gun shy when it comes to black folks. Mr Coates wishes that imagination were equally expansive about issues concerning the African American community

I did watch Mr Dixon's video (it was posted earlier today). I don't have a lot to say about it, to be honest. I felt like a lot of it was unnecessarily person re: Krugman and Coates and, in many instances, he seems to misrepresent Mr Coates' positions. I was happy to hear that he supports reparations, and in so doing agrees with the overarching narrative of Mr Coates' work, understand that he feels disappointed that Mr Coates dedicates a clause in one sentence to Mr Krugman, and feels Mr Coates is holding Sen Sanders to a higher standard than Secretary Clinton. If he is honest, tomorrow, or whenever he next posts a video, I would hope to hear that he saw Chris Hayes and retract large portions of his criticism.