Ta-Nehisi Coates puts the “mask” on Dr. Ben Carson
… and so removes his own.
Dr. Ben Carson has been called a “Political Mandingo” and Uncle Tom on the pages of Daily Kos and elsewhere, and Republicans’ “black friend” by Touré Neblett,
Now Ta-Nehisi Coates, who usually writes at The Atlantic, has a guest Op-Ed at The New York Times which perniciously speaks of Dr. Carson as wearing a mask, He Wears the Mask:
Since the dawn of the Obama era, conservatives have been on the lookout for such a man. In 2004 they dispatched Alan Keyes cross-country to take up the mantle of the Conservative Black Hope and deliver an early knockout to Obama. Keyes had never lived in Illinois and his voters barely knew him, and voted accordingly. But it did not matter who he was. What mattered was their plan….
Having seen their icon thrashed in 2004, in 2009 conservatives looked to Michael Steele, the first African-American to head the Republican National Convention, to face off with the first black president. But Steele had an on-again off-again relationship with the party line, and was thus ill suited to be a Conservative Black Hope, even if the hip-hop Republican often talked like one.
Coates then rattles off other Republican Black Hopes, and concludes:
Not all black conservatives see it as their job to tell white racists that they embody the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. It is certainly possible to oppose Obamacare in good conscience. No one knows this more than Ben Carson. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he may have been the most celebrated figure in the black communities of Baltimore. Carson responded to that adulation by regularly giving his time to talk to young people, who needed to know that there was so much more beyond the streets.
I was one of those young people. I don’t doubt that Carson was a conservative even then. I knew plenty of black people who loved their community and hated welfare. But white conservatives were never interested in them, and they were never as interested in Ben Carson as they are right now. When the presidency was an unbroken string of white men, there were no calls for him to run for the White House. And then he put on the mask.
This really is a disgusting argument, that every time a black conservative rises it is just a charade, the white man’s dream to fool everyone. The argument presupposes that true blackness only belongs to Coates and not to Allen West, or Mia Love, or Dr. Ben Carson, or other black conservatives.
Coates likes to hold himself out at an intellectual steeped in history, someone above the race-baiting of the Democratic Party. With this column trying to put a mask on Dr. Carson, Coates took off his own mask.
Look for Coates to become a regular columnist at The Times eventually.
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Comments
Obama has been great for black people. Look at how he is keeping them in poverty, with high unemployment and everything. Yeah, he’s a great guy, and that Ben Carson fellow…he’s trying to take that away from Obama. He’s trying to tell black people to do for themselves, and pull themselves up out of the ghettos. How dare he???
Coates fools no one. He is what he is: a plantation negro who believes every free man of African descent must be a plantation negro, too. If folks display any independence, Coates, in the manner of other plantation negroes, will do what he will to bring the free man back into bondage. It is scary, leaving the plantation. Individual thought and achievement are scary, too. Plantation negroes cannot have icons like Carson out there, talking, functioning, achieving because such free men show the cowardice of the plantation negro and the monster lie that is his life.
The Left always lets us know who they are afraid of. Always.
Yes, they vilify, demonize, minimize their “enemy” who are really friends of humanity.
They, (the liberals/progressives), are the real enemy of progress, fair play and integrity…
Coates is a bigot of the first water.
Meaning, he imputes characteristics and motives to people…largely on race alone…that are not connected to any reality.
While I’m sure there are people who are “white racists” in the right side of the political spectrum, they are NOT by any stretch the mainstream, and are not condoned in their views.
Contrast this to the racists on the left end of the political spectrum who ARE condoned, or, indeed, vaunted. Starting with Pres. Freakout and on down…
These people need to be reminded that Martin Luther King Jr. was a REPUBLICAN. I’m sure they would be calling MLK Jr. “The great republican black hope” if he were alive today. But then again, if MLK Jr. were alive today, the civil rights movement would not have stooped to race baiting for the sake of political expediency, would it?
Never try to have a logical argument with a racist or a pig.
What is interesting is that Coates defines financial success, helping others, being a positive leader for all races and an inspiration to youth as characteristics of being ‘white’.
It would be interesting to ask Coates what he defines as characteristics of being a successful black, since those things apparently are not on his list.
So Coates was only interested in Obama because he is black. Before that, there was an unbroken string of white men who didn’t interest him. He seems to say that Carson inspired him when he was a young man and Carson preached love of community and self sufficiency. But the message didn’t sink in because white conservatives were not interested. Huh? So Coates moved in the other direction. Towards the white liberals who let him write for the NYT and keep black people in a perpetual state of poverty in every major democrat run city in America. Since the inaguration of LBJ, white liberals have been on the lookout for people like Coates to re-inforce their message of dependency and tales of woe. And they keep dispatching people like Coates, Sharpton, Neblitt, O’Brien, Martin, et al to spread this wonderful, uplifting message of what? Hope & Change? Occupy? Food stamps? Government subsistence? I would suggest that Coates look beyond skin color for a change. After all, Obama is really a white liberal.
Coates does more to divide us than even the KKK. He promotes and profits from a distrust between people. It’s a tragic irony that the people who hold MLK, the man, in great esteem, also act to denigrate and belittle his legacy. MLK’s insight was recorded in one principle: individual dignity.
Thy pretend to esteem MLK. Hwever, their race baiting color consciousness shows the depth of their actual disdain for him and his ideas. Carson is of the Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, MLK school of self sufficiency. Coates is of the massa day ain’t done school of dependency. So, not much in common with MLK.
Yes, that will get you banned. We don’t use that language here, even if people opposed to black conservatives do.
Poor Ta-Nehisi, he and his ilk just can’t grasp, that THIS IS the 21st Century NOT THE 18th, 19th or 20th Century. Dr. Ben Carson understands that. HE HAS Moved On. You and those like you, including WHITES, will FOREVER live IN the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries!
if we don’t support a black candidate its due to racism.
if we do support one its due to racism.
you know what I say?
fuk them.
Coates is a ‘useful idiot’ who apparently volunteered to slander a member of his own race based solely on his skin color. I use the term ‘idiot’ because of the absence of logic, and the presence of prejudice, in his thought processes. Can’t know, but I suspect MLK, assuming he believed what he preached, would be disgusted with him, Toure Toura Lou, Sharpton, Wright, et al – nothing but craven race hustlers.
Unless you’re shark fishing how is that idiot useful?
Vicious White Liberals are the most Racist.
Vicious White Liberals cover their historical trail of race subjugation by A) defining “White” as conservative then B) attack “Whites.”
None of this could be possible without Vicious White Liberals in control of the Vicious White Liberal Media.
Vicious White Liberals are absolutely frightened to death of the NRA. Why bring up the NRA? Because it is non-partisan and multiracial and has the history to prove it.
Historically, many partisans on the left and right have urged the NRA to be partisan and in their wisdom, declined to go there.
Truly speaking… the non-partisan multiracial character of the NRA is a power which Vicious White Liberals’ partisan weapons have failed to conquer.
The 2nd Amendment was written as a preservation of the civil right to keep and bear arms of all Americans regardless of party or race. period.
When Vicious White Liberals attack the 2nd Amendment, they attack a civil right as cherished as the 1st Amendment.
I have noticed that many Conservatives are unaccustomed to righteously and appropriately using the race card on Vicious White Liberals but that is changing and gaining momentum.
Defending the civil rights of the Black Man and every other race of American people is what the NRA does and it joins previously opposing partisan forces together to fight the Vicious White Liberals.
“But white conservatives were never interested in them”, Coates says, referring to black people who ‘loved their community but hated welfare’. This implies that Coates wants and expects minorities to be treated special. He wants them to be fawned over rather than be treated as equals by those who recognize a person’s innate desire to be self-reliant, and who want to be responsible for themselves. He may say he hates welfare, but he is blind to the cause and origin of this hideous program that has kept three generations (and counting) of people in poverty and slavery on the Plantation they refuse to see. I am always reminded of Bill Cosby who strayed off the Plantation several years ago to preach about the lack of education and the self-defeating culture displayed by some minorities. He was immediately vilified by the NAACP and other liberals. Stories of his infidelity arose and dominated the news rather than his message of common sense. Bill quickly went back to the Plantation and has not stepped out again.
not sure why but for some reason today this one bugs the hell out of me.
Coates is a jerk. He likes to censor anyone who disagrees with him and plays the race card like grandma used to play solitaire.
Kudos to doc Carson for cueing up Roger Glover’s 3rd solo album.
Ta-Nehisi. Is that Swahili for “the sissy”?
In most any arena of media there is the old guard, gone or going soon, the current name players, and the young Turks striving to break through. We see the Toure’s and Coates’ of the liberal ‘news’ media trying to gain attention by pushing the envelope of the this same tripe we’ve been seeing for forty years, always more nasty, more Down With The Struggle than the last round, pushing the Racism franchise to new limits. If your meal ticket is racism, you have to create it where it doesn’t exist if you want to keep eating and keep reading your menus from left to right.
Roland Martin rose and sank in a few short years, like so many other ‘shocking’ new voices on lib cable TV ‘news’ – to the young Turks in that arena, this means opportunities open up all the time and you’d better be on the edge of reality the whole time you’re up there, should you ever make it. They’re the quickest route to the top, these nasty, cynical guerilla-style verbal attacks, “look at me!” utterances from intellectual teenagers, these community activist-slash-‘journalists’ clawing upwards from provincial sidewalks in Baltimore or Boston, Chicago or St. Louis, hopefully to the penthouse studios in NYC or LA, where they fancy themselves national leaders, historical figures even. You have to piss people off to get there, and get them writing about you, tweeting about you, buzzing on you. (The young Turk wannabes of Hollywood and popular music do just the same, those who break through ultimately looking like pathetic hypocrites as they try to maintain the young Turk rebel posture from the streets outside their multi-million dollar mansions).
Let ’em talk, I say. The NAACP crowd has cried wolf so often, the charge of racism has lost all meaning. Few believe it without video evidence, that is, they no longer trust the accusers. So, they must make the accusations nastier and wilder. The old stuff ain’t workin’ anymore, and their franchise is dying. Note the shrillness -or silence – of late from the Global Warming catastrophists. Same thing, same reason. The old stuff ain’t workin’ anymore.
Let ’em talk. Anyone who buys this shit is beyond logic and reason and intellectual self-reliance anyway. There is a limit to how far the envelope can be pushed before the results become risibly indefensible even to fellow young Turks.
Let ’em talk. It’s the last gassy vapors left in their tank. Obamacare is going to crash and burn. Even sheep will get riled if they go long enough without food. The menu of entitlement benefits can’t NOT be reduced in the very near future – unless the whole freakin’ country breaks down. Either way, the evidence of the abject failure of collectivist socialism will become undeniable, the results in the field intolerable. Their own sheep will tell them to shut up.
What bothers me so much about Coates’ article is not the article itself, but the responses to it, most I would wager, make by white liberals.
And what exactly does Coates think HE has acheived in his lifetime that allows him to insult and slander a man who truely grew up in poverty and became a world renowned surgeon?
Dr. Carson knows what life is like on the [Democrat] plantation, as does Starr Parker, who has written numerous books on how the left has destroyed the black community. And for anyone to call him a “token” as one response did, shows the intolerance of the [intolerant] left.
The problem Coates has is that he doesn’t understand that it is he, not Dr. Carson, that is the real tool.
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