I certainly wouldn’t claim that Coates is the one voice of black America, nor as a white person (so far as that has any meaning) do I see his analysis as a reason to “suffer pain and humiliation again and again.” I just found it to be an insightful and well-written piece that sketched in a link between the economic insecurity of Il Douche’s spite-voter supporters across all classes and their racism, in part involving the backlash against an African-American member of the nation’s elite social class attaining the Oval Office.
I’m not sure how any rational person of any race who’s been paying attention for the last year and a half can deny that racism has played a part in the election and the events that followed, and Coates goes one step further by accurately discussing the “why” and “how” of the matter and by establishing the history of how they came about.
Putting aside your straw man of the white-guilt afflicted liberal, perhaps you might critique the essay itself. Why exactly do you consider it “swill”? What do you think is the problem with undertaking an intellectual examination of anti-black racism as a core malaise in American history and culture?
