Maybe a bit naive, but I don’t always think instances where children are modeling or whatever (in pageants or in parades) to be sexual unless they are dressed in a provocative way or something.
I'll just say that beauty pageants are far more guilty of sexualizing children than pride parades are.
I'm not talking here about the young trans child who dances in clubs. That's a more complicated scenario and more difficult to dissociate from sexuality, for sure.
Just on number of years both things have existed alone, beauty pageants are worse for it. Especially if you consider that the type of "beauty" these kids are being measured by, and are conforming to in their attire, is entirely an adult one.
What exactly is the secret of Ta-Nehisi’s success? Why has he vaulted over more talented black intellectuals such as John McWhorter and Thomas Chatterton Williams (who have both been unloading on Coates lately)?
It’s definitely not his erudition. McWhorter scoffed recently:
The elevation of that dorm-lounge performance art as serious thought is a kind of soft bigotry, which is as nauseating as it is unintended.
What is the consistent kid version of beauty?
(And who cares what kids fucking think?)
I just figured I could eliminate 3 paragraphs of mental gymnastics to state the approved opinion concisely in one sentence. You could do that as well. This is why French intellectuals after Bastiat are so passé.
Pat is, unless I'm somehow mistaken, a TNC apologist, while I have consistently agreed with McWhorter.
Haha, wow so passive aggressive...
Maybe not, but I think I've been pretty straight forward as to my perspective that African Americans were wrongfully brought to the US/treated, but that also the victim mentality won't help them move forward and neither will "reparations" or "ethnic masochism" or any other liberal feelgood political panacea. Apologies don't fix the past and have little informative value on the future.
I disagree, I fully support the Democrats paying reparations to the descendants of slaves.
I find Coates's writing to be provocative and brilliant, and his interpretations compelling. I also find McWhorter to be measured, perceptive, and an enviable intellectual. I think the difference between us is that I don't see these two things as mutually exclusive.
I see being an intellectual and not being an intellectual as being mutually exclusive, and Coates isn't even remotely approaching intellectual status.
I would appeal to Coates ....... as an exhibit source. His writing exhibits something about black experience, whether we take that experience to be local or national, and he expresses it in a particularly thoughtful way.
he also opens himself up to scrutiny on those perspectives and slant.
Was this ever in question?
To respond to your original comment about our respective alliances, I don't own any of Coates's books. I do own a copy of The Language Hoax, though. I think you misinterpret my fondness or interest in certain writings as support for the content of those writings. I'm interested in Philip Roth, but I don't think one should live one's life according to Portnoy's Complaint. Literary studies don't unconditionally or uncompromisingly champion their texts of choice. It's more complicated than right or wrong.
America's worst run cities vs how many years since they had a Republican mayor:
D.C.—109
Detroit—57
NYC—12
San Francisco—55
Oakland—58
Flint, MI—44
Cleveland—30
Hartford, CT—48
Chicago—88
Los Angeles—18
Atlanta—140
St. Louis—70
Philadelphia—67 See a correlation?