Ta-Nehisi Coates on complexity, clarity, and truth.

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0:01:25 As you know, this show is called The Gray Area and when we created it in 2022, that name
0:01:30 felt right because it represented my instincts as a host.
0:01:44 I really do believe that the world is complicated, far too complicated for any of our ideologies
0:01:46 to capture perfectly.
0:01:54 And our desire for simplicity is understandable, but often it comes at the expense of truth.
0:02:01 It’s not that I don’t have any principles or a point of view.
0:02:06 I do, and if you listen to this show, you know that.
0:02:13 But this temptation to oversimplify is something we try to resist on the show.
0:02:17 And we’ll keep doing that because I think it’s essential.
0:02:23 But when does the impulse to embrace ambiguity become its own pathology?
0:02:29 The world is complex, sure, but sometimes we have to pass judgment.
0:02:33 Sometimes we have to be willing to say that something is true and something is false,
0:02:36 that something is right and something is wrong.
0:02:40 So how do we know when things really are that clear?
0:02:51 And how do we avoid the impulse to lie to ourselves when we know they’re not?
0:03:06 I’m Sean Elling, and this is the Gray Area.
0:03:10 Today’s guest is Ta-Nehisi Coates.
0:03:15 He’s an author, essayist, and one of our most celebrated living writers.
0:03:20 He’s just published a new book called The Message, which is a collection of three very
0:03:22 personal essays.
0:03:27 The book has garnered a lot of attention because whenever Coates publishes something
0:03:30 new, it’s an event.
0:03:34 But it’s also stirred up quite a bit of controversy because the longest essay in the book is about
0:03:38 his trip to Palestine.
0:03:43 If you know almost nothing about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the one thing
0:03:49 you’d probably be comfortable saying is that it’s complicated.
0:03:54 This is an assertion Coates challenges directly in the book.
0:04:00 For him, the moral arithmetic is simple, and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian population
0:04:13 is fundamentally wrong.
0:04:17 Obviously lots of people take issue with this.
0:04:22 And this is something Coates and I explore in our conversation.
0:04:29 But this isn’t a debate show, and I didn’t invite him here for an argument.
0:04:34 I invited him because I think he’s smart and sincere, and I don’t think he writes
0:04:40 anything without having put a great deal of thought into it.
0:04:44 So by having him on the show, I hope to have a discussion about the role of the writer
0:04:50 and the intellectual and what it means to describe the world with moral clarity.
0:04:57 Coates challenged me, and hopefully I challenged him in ways that felt generous and fruitful.
0:05:02 It certainly was for me.
0:05:05 Tana Hasi Coates, welcome to the show.
0:05:07 Thanks for having me.
0:05:08 It’s great to finally talk.
0:05:10 I think this is the first time.
0:05:13 I still remember reading your blog back in the day.
0:05:14 Yes, really.
0:05:16 It’s been quite a ride for you ever since.
0:05:17 Congrats on all the success.
0:05:18 Oh boy, oh boy.
0:05:19 Yes it has.
0:05:20 Thank you.
0:05:28 You know, I have to say, what I’ve always appreciated about you, whether I agreed with
0:05:36 whatever you happen to be saying or writing at the moment, is that you seem to be genuinely
0:05:37 thinking out loud.
0:05:41 You have a point of view, obviously.
0:05:46 But you’ve always struck me as someone earnestly seeking the truth.
0:05:49 And I cannot say that about a lot of people in our game.
0:05:57 Do you think about your writing and your intellectual project, for lack of a better word, in that
0:06:01 kind of open-ended way?
0:06:02 I do.
0:06:03 I’ll say two things.
0:06:09 The first thing is, and I didn’t always notice, but I think the truth of writing in terms
0:06:16 of its power is maybe a little bit earnest and maybe a little naive on my part.
0:06:23 And your writing is at its strongest when you’re not lying.
0:06:27 And when you’re not lying to yourself too, not just to your readers, but to yourself.
0:06:32 There was a period, I think back in the early arts or so, where there was a lot of confessional
0:06:33 memoirs.
0:06:36 People were really just, there was a lot of exhibitionism.
0:06:38 So I don’t mean that.
0:06:43 But it does have to be a real kind of vulnerability, a real searching.
0:06:47 And sometimes that vulnerability can be expressed not even as memoir.
0:06:51 Maybe it happens in the reporting and your willingness to push yourself in certain places
0:06:53 that don’t feel comfortable.
0:06:58 Maybe it does happen in terms of exploring something that is internal to you.
0:07:02 Maybe it happens in your ability to revisit certain things that you thought were actually
0:07:03 truth.
0:07:11 But I do think a vulnerability, a willingness to have an open-ended, I don’t know, just
0:07:13 tell the truth.
0:07:15 I think that really, really, really matters.
0:07:18 There’s a kind of strength you get from it.
0:07:26 The way I can only express it is that my feet, when I was in writing, by the time I get to
0:07:28 the end, feel firmly on the ground.
0:07:35 And you don’t feel firmly on the ground because I know exactly that I’m right.
0:07:40 But as silly as this might sound, I know that I’m not lying.
0:07:41 I do know that.
0:07:43 I’ve achieved the kind of, which is a process, right?
0:07:44 Because we lie to ourselves too.
0:07:45 You know what I mean?
0:07:47 That actually is a process.
0:07:49 So I think there’s great power in that.
0:07:53 The second part of it is something that I’ve really had to learn to live with and get over.
0:07:59 And that is that, unfortunately, people view your work in isolation.
0:08:02 They don’t see it as a journey, as a stop.
0:08:08 They see it as a complete thing, be it at articles, be it at books or whatever.
0:08:14 And so there’s really not an expectation that there’ll be a growth period that is happening
0:08:18 over the course of your work, even though you hope that’s what happens.
0:08:20 You kind of get frozen in stone.
0:08:27 But I’ve decided, and this is also kind of daily work too, that the public has its relationship
0:08:28 with my work.
0:08:29 And that’s fine.
0:08:32 And they have the right to have that perception with my work.
0:08:37 And my perception or my relationship with my work has to be separate.
0:08:40 It’s just two different things, and I have to be okay with that.
0:08:42 And I can’t ask them to have my relationship with it.
0:08:44 Are you ever really okay with that?
0:08:49 I mean, look, every writer wants to be read, and you’ve reached a level most don’t.
0:08:52 But your work becomes this thing.
0:08:56 It becomes this symbol in the hands of other people, and you almost lose control of it
0:08:57 in a way.
0:08:58 And that’s got to be a weird–
0:08:59 It’s not great.
0:09:00 It’s not great.
0:09:03 It’s not your feeling at all.
0:09:05 But I do think you have to accept it.
0:09:06 Yeah.
0:09:10 One of the things I decided that I was going to do, and I did not do this for any other
0:09:13 book, I was like, I really, I can’t read reviews this time.
0:09:16 I can’t read articles about me.
0:09:18 I can’t consume that.
0:09:21 Not because I think that those articles are worthless, or because I think those reviews
0:09:23 are worthless.
0:09:29 But as I heard somebody say relatively recently, it really is none of my business.
0:09:33 That is the relationship between readers, between critics, between discourse, and the
0:09:34 work.
0:09:37 And they have a right to that relationship.
0:09:43 But I have a right to this kind of private relationship also, and I have to really safeguard
0:09:44 that.
0:09:52 I feel like every interesting writer, truly interesting writer, and you are certainly
0:10:00 that, has some kind of anchoring worldview, even if it’s never quite explicit.
0:10:06 And when I think about your work, and maybe it’s just me because I happen to share this
0:10:11 sensibility, the word that comes to mind is tragic.
0:10:19 Do you choose a different word or is that about right?
0:10:24 This is kind of an illustration of the relationship question I was just talking about.
0:10:27 I can’t really pick that.
0:10:28 You know what I mean?
0:10:32 I don’t have the ability, and this is why critics are important, and this is why people
0:10:33 are writing about it is important.
0:10:37 It’s very hard for me to see it in that way.
0:10:40 I’m too close to it to name that.
0:10:42 So that might be true.
0:10:44 Your guess is as good as mine.
0:10:45 Probably better.
0:10:46 You know?
0:10:47 Yeah.
0:10:51 I mean, I’ve heard you describe yourself as a cold, hard materialist man.
0:10:58 It’s not that this shit’s not going to work out, but it’s probably not going to work
0:10:59 out.
0:11:00 It probably won’t.
0:11:01 It probably won’t.
0:11:03 But I’m a romantic too, you know?
0:11:08 There’s that part of me too, and you hope that it does.
0:11:09 You hope you’re wrong.
0:11:10 You might be wrong.
0:11:18 But part of the reason why I was asking is that I was wondering if you thought a certain
0:11:25 relationship or certain tragic sensibility was necessary if we’re going to avoid the
0:11:32 temptation to lie to ourselves, about ourselves, and the world, and other people, and the
0:11:33 future.
0:11:36 I just think you just got to be honest.
0:11:40 I think you just got to be like, like you have the courage to be straight.
0:11:41 Now, here’s the hard thing.
0:11:49 It requires you to maintain a certain distance from political aims, even if you have sympathy
0:11:51 for some of those aims.
0:11:59 One of the things I lament if I have a critique is that there are a number of writers of my
0:12:06 generation and maybe a little older some and a little younger others who I think have
0:12:10 been consumed by mean politics.
0:12:14 So not politics at large, but electoral politics.
0:12:20 I guess what I’m trying to say is I don’t want to be an arm of the Democratic Party.
0:12:27 I need to have, obviously, I have a politic to me, but I have to have the ability to try
0:12:34 to explore that politics to know when it says something that is hopeful, know when it says
0:12:40 something that I think is not so hopeful, and to be relatively straight about that, even
0:12:46 when it may not necessarily advantage my political aims.
0:12:48 I can give you a very specific example of this, actually.
0:12:55 It is really clear to me that the world I want to live in, that I would be much closer
0:13:00 to that world with Kamala Harris than Donald Trump, right?
0:13:06 So there is a version of this where you say if I know that, and that’s my preferred political
0:13:11 outcome, I will not say certain things until Kamala Harris is elected.
0:13:16 I will not write certain things until because I’m trying to figure out, you know what I
0:13:18 mean?
0:13:21 And that’s where I think you start getting a little dangerous.
0:13:27 That’s what I mean about the kind of contamination, and you want a little distance between the
0:13:28 two things.
0:13:33 But once you start making those calculations, you’re already compromised in a sense.
0:13:34 You are.
0:13:35 You are.
0:13:40 But I do think there are a number of people who are effectively Senate aides when they’re
0:13:42 actually writers or journalists.
0:13:43 Yeah.
0:13:45 A lot of money to be made in that game.
0:13:46 That’s true.
0:13:47 That’s true.
0:13:48 Let’s get into the new book.
0:13:55 I know you started out wanting to write a book about writing, and then it sort of shapeshifted
0:14:05 into a deeper examination of how stories shape and illuminate and sometimes distort reality.
0:14:11 How did this project evolve, and did you land in a different place than you intended?
0:14:15 It’s probably less about writing than I wanted to.
0:14:19 Like, I began with this Orwell quote where he’s basically saying, look, if there wasn’t
0:14:24 so much important shit happening right now, I would be, you know, just writing beautiful
0:14:25 things to amuse myself.
0:14:28 I mean, he doesn’t say it like he says it much better than that, but that’s effectively
0:14:30 what the quote says.
0:14:36 And I really feel that, like I really, like I, like I love the beauty of language, and
0:14:39 I find it very interesting how you conjure that beauty, what you do with it, what effects
0:14:46 it has, how it makes you feel, you know, like all of that is really interesting to me.
0:14:50 But the fact that a matter is living in a time like we live in, maybe living at any time
0:14:55 in American history period, or maybe in history period, you know, that doesn’t really feel
0:14:59 appropriate because you have concern about your fellow human beings, and here you have
0:15:04 this thing, and you notice this thing can make people see things that are normally maybe
0:15:06 obscure to them.
0:15:13 And so what the book ultimately became about was not simply writing, but how writing can
0:15:16 clarify and how writing is sometimes used to obscure, in fact.
0:15:21 And so you’ll see that there are places in there where the old mission of the book remains,
0:15:22 you know what I mean?
0:15:25 Where I kind of, you know, pull out and say, Hey, look at this, this person did this, look
0:15:29 how they use language here, you know, the way I think about writing when I’m actually
0:15:30 doing it.
0:15:34 But the politics of the book became the larger thing.
0:15:38 You obviously enjoy writing for the craft of writing, for the beauty of language, but
0:15:43 then you also feel this pull, this obligation, because you give a shit about the world to
0:15:47 speak about what’s happening, and defend whatever your values and priorities happen to be.
0:15:50 And sometimes those things can come into conflict, how do you navigate that?
0:15:56 I would say that they actually kind of neatly work together.
0:16:00 This is, if I can, I know I just said that thing about not being in conversation, you
0:16:05 know, and what I would say is, especially to young writers who might be listening right
0:16:17 now, if you can write beautifully, clarifyingly, I actually think it brings you closer to using
0:16:22 your craft to have the world that you want to see.
0:16:26 I get people come up to me all the time and they, you know, so what are you doing?
0:16:28 Like, how did you do this?
0:16:30 Why did you get to write X, Y and Z?
0:16:32 Why wouldn’t you say X, Y and Z?
0:16:33 People listen.
0:16:34 You know what I mean?
0:16:35 Like, I don’t understand it.
0:16:38 50 people before you said this.
0:16:39 You know, why is that okay?
0:16:44 And if I can just be an asshole for a moment, the asshole in me says, do you realize how
0:16:46 much time I spend thinking about writing?
0:16:53 Like, how much time I spend on every sentence, because, you know, it’s like a chef, right?
0:16:56 Like you eat something and you’re not sure why it’s good.
0:16:59 Like, you can’t say every little thing about why it’s good, but you know, like, when it’s
0:17:00 really, really good, right?
0:17:02 Like, you do know that.
0:17:07 If you give a fuck about the writing, like you give a fuck about the cooking, people
0:17:09 enjoy it more.
0:17:10 You know what I mean?
0:17:14 And that means is because they enjoy it more, they’re more apt to read it.
0:17:20 So the thing you’re trying to get across is actually more likely to be consumed.
0:17:23 If you give a fuck about how it sounds.
0:17:27 If you give a fuck about how efficient it is, well, I’m really cursing a lot.
0:17:28 You’re on the right show.
0:17:32 This is actually how I’m in class, by the way.
0:17:34 I can’t help it, man.
0:17:36 So you’re in this is a safe space.
0:17:37 Yeah.
0:17:38 No, no.
0:17:41 If you like, if you give a fuck about the words, man, if you give a fuck about the sentence,
0:17:46 I mean, like one of my, now I’m on my rant, one of the most frustrating thing in the world
0:17:50 is like, you pick up your average, you know, iPad page or you look at like, like the internet
0:17:57 is a wash in opinion and it’s a wash in opinion of people who could give a rat’s ass about
0:18:03 like their sentence structure and what they’re doing, it is like rife with fucking cliche.
0:18:04 You know what I mean?
0:18:07 Like, repeated notes that they clearly heard from somebody else.
0:18:14 No attempt to like, think about like how they’re saying something that is original and new.
0:18:18 Are they even reflecting the beautiful original thought that they had themselves?
0:18:19 Have they found the language?
0:18:21 Have they found the words?
0:18:23 Does anybody read poetry anymore?
0:18:27 Does anybody read novels for the language of it?
0:18:31 Because if you can do that, I mean, it’s amazing.
0:18:36 Like to be in this world where like, I know that people care about language.
0:18:37 I know they do.
0:18:40 You know, I can tell they just don’t know that they care.
0:18:44 And I just wish more writers took more time.
0:18:48 I wish we took more time because we’re in competition with so many other media at this
0:18:49 point.
0:18:50 Right?
0:18:51 Like we went around, why is nobody reading?
0:18:52 Why aren’t the kids reading?
0:18:53 Mother fucker.
0:18:54 Why aren’t you writing?
0:18:57 Why aren’t you writing?
0:18:58 You know what I mean?
0:19:00 Like why aren’t you giving a fuck about writing?
0:19:02 What are you doing complaining about the read?
0:19:03 That’s your responsibility.
0:19:04 That’s your job.
0:19:08 You know, and so that’s Professor Coates.
0:19:09 That’s my rant.
0:19:10 Profane and sorry.
0:19:16 I want to follow you down this road so bad, but I also don’t want to float a thousand miles
0:19:17 away from your book.
0:19:19 Oh no, this is the book though.
0:19:20 No, you’re not.
0:19:21 You’re right on the book.
0:19:25 The book is about because actually there’s a politics attached to this because if you
0:19:30 really do care about the issues, right, like you are doing all you can early in the book
0:19:34 I talk about how like, you know, I’m reading this article in sports illustrated, right,
0:19:38 about the sky got paralyzed on the field and I couldn’t put the shit down.
0:19:41 I’m seven years old is Daryl Stingley, right?
0:19:45 And I’m reading this because Tony Dorsett, Dallas Cowboys running back is on the cover.
0:19:48 And I can’t put this shit down, man.
0:19:49 Why can’t I put it down?
0:19:51 Like, what is what is holding me?
0:19:52 What is the attraction?
0:19:53 What is the gravity?
0:19:59 What a gravity is this writer has worked with Daryl Stingley and done the work of trying
0:20:04 to conjure a voice that is in Daryl Stingley’s voice, right?
0:20:09 Which means now there’s a kind of intimacy because the person is telling me about this
0:20:14 horrible thing Stingley was a paralyzed on a hit that’s happened to them.
0:20:19 And even though I don’t know it because I’m seven years old, I can’t put this thing down.
0:20:23 And when I finally finish it and put it down, the story is lodged in my head.
0:20:25 So much that I go ask my father about it.
0:20:29 And my father sends me to other books and I go read those books and I’m upset because
0:20:32 the answer’s on in those books and there’s no internet, right?
0:20:33 1983.
0:20:34 You know what I’m saying?
0:20:36 There’s no Google or anything.
0:20:40 And I can’t let this thing go.
0:20:42 What is that?
0:20:43 That’s writing.
0:20:46 And that’s what any writer, you know, really, really wants to do.
0:20:50 And so like when the book is talking about politics, whether it’s bookmanning in South
0:20:55 Carolina, whether it’s searching for your identity in Senegal, whether it’s watching
0:21:01 other people war over their identity in the West Bank or in Palestine or in Israel.
0:21:06 The thing that I am trying to do is hold you there, hold you there in the way that I was
0:21:08 held when I was seven years old.
0:21:12 And I’m trying to hold you there for political reasons because I care about this politics
0:21:16 and I have the right, like I care, the right, like this is the most important thing in the
0:21:22 world and make you feel that hopefully while you really got it right.
0:21:25 This is good, man.
0:21:27 It’s storytelling, right?
0:21:35 I mean, I’ve heard you say many times that politics is downstream from culture, which
0:21:39 is to say what happens in a political world is a function of the stories.
0:21:40 Yes.
0:21:41 We tell each other.
0:21:46 Yes, you and I are talking and there’s this larger national conversation we’ve been having
0:21:53 about history and how we tell it and what we leave out and why it matters.
0:21:58 And you have this line in the essay on South Carolina where you say that literature is
0:21:59 anguish.
0:22:04 And I guess it’s not that hard to understand why writing and talking about history is such
0:22:05 a fight.
0:22:11 We have this eternal struggle over narrative supremacy, whose story gets told, whose story
0:22:15 gets marginalized, who are the heroes, who are the villains?
0:22:21 And it feels like all of this shit, like this is what politics is, a high stakes storytelling
0:22:23 competition.
0:22:24 Do you see the world that way?
0:22:28 Does it drive not only what you write, but how you write?
0:22:29 Yeah, I do.
0:22:32 I mean, I don’t want to be too reductive, but yes, it’s very important.
0:22:37 It’s where I was thinking the other day, right, like why is, you know, and I’m literally
0:22:41 asking this as a question, I don’t mean this as like a critique.
0:22:46 Why does Kamala Harris need you to know that she owns a gun?
0:22:47 Why?
0:22:49 Like what is going on?
0:22:55 And if I want to answer that question, I would suggest it probably has something to
0:22:57 do with the stories we tell about gender.
0:23:01 It probably has something to do with stories we tell about race, though probably less so
0:23:03 than gender.
0:23:07 It probably has something to do with like dirty Harry, probably has something to do
0:23:11 with like cowboys and how we think about, you know, law and for you breaking my home,
0:23:12 you’re going to get shot.
0:23:14 Like, why are you saying it that way?
0:23:15 What are you appealing to?
0:23:19 I’m not saying, you know what I mean, like again, I’m asking this as a question of technique
0:23:20 and form.
0:23:24 And I guarantee you, like you start picking that apart.
0:23:25 What is she trying to get to?
0:23:26 You’re going to get the stories.
0:23:31 You will get to questions of storytelling and tropes that she’s pulling on that are
0:23:36 themselves derived and have been exemplified by other stories.
0:23:39 But if it’s so obviously inauthentic, what’s the point?
0:23:41 I don’t know that it’s obviously inauthentic.
0:23:42 Yeah.
0:23:46 I mean, I’m asking, I guess the way I said it kind of sounded like an assertion.
0:23:51 I mean, it sounds inauthentic to us and maybe it is obviously inauthentic to a lot of people.
0:23:53 I mean, I’m really cynical about this kind of shit.
0:23:54 Right?
0:23:55 For me, it’s really simple, right?
0:23:59 You just had a bunch of political operative types, do a bunch of focus groups and apparently,
0:24:02 you know, this words, these language, these stories, these imagery poles.
0:24:03 Yes, but why?
0:24:04 Yes, but why?
0:24:05 But why, Sean?
0:24:06 Why?
0:24:07 Because I don’t know, middle-aged white guys in Pennsylvania are into it.
0:24:08 I don’t know.
0:24:09 But why are they into it?
0:24:10 That’s what I’m saying.
0:24:12 Like, you start like, what are they into?
0:24:17 Like, if you keep asking the question, you will undoubtedly get to somebody’s commercial,
0:24:18 somebody’s movie.
0:24:19 Yeah.
0:24:20 I would like to think somebody’s novel.
0:24:22 The novel is probably underneath of the movie.
0:24:24 Somebody’s TV shows, something they saw.
0:24:25 You know what I mean?
0:24:27 That really ingrained this idea.
0:24:28 Well, what’s your answer?
0:24:29 What’s your answer to the why?
0:24:30 I don’t know.
0:24:31 I haven’t thought about it long enough.
0:24:32 Come on, professor.
0:24:33 I knew he was just thinking about this.
0:24:34 He just embarrassed me in front of the whole class.
0:24:35 Now, you at least got to drop some off.
0:24:36 I know.
0:24:37 If I was just in class, I would go around the room.
0:24:39 Like, when we would talk about it and then, like, you know, we would go back and forth
0:24:41 and we would arrive at some sort of answer.
0:24:43 I don’t actually know.
0:24:44 Sorry.
0:24:45 It’s all right.
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0:28:50 What’s been the most surprising thing to you about the reaction?
0:28:54 To this book so far, you knew you were going to take all kinds of shit because everyone
0:28:58 who lunges into this discourse on Israel and Palestine takes shit.
0:29:02 But has anything really surprised you?
0:29:05 I’m surprised at the surprise.
0:29:06 What do you mean?
0:29:09 I can’t say going into the CBS interview is the first interview.
0:29:10 Well, I guess there were a couple of tape ones.
0:29:11 That was the first one.
0:29:12 That was the first live one.
0:29:13 Yeah, that was the first live one.
0:29:16 Tom Hush, I want to dive into the Israel-Palestine section of the book.
0:29:18 It’s the largest section of the book.
0:29:23 And I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took
0:29:27 away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes
0:29:28 away.
0:29:34 So, I’m surprised that that section would not be at a place in the backpack of an extremist.
0:29:35 I was not surprised that it was raised.
0:29:42 And I was not surprised by the aggression, tenacity, whatever you want to call it, with
0:29:43 which it was raised.
0:29:47 Or I should say, I knew that was going to happen eventually.
0:29:48 I didn’t know it was going to happen there.
0:29:51 So, I was surprised in the sense that, “Oh, it’s right now.”
0:29:56 And it took me a minute to catch up with, “Oh, it actually really is right now.”
0:29:59 But this is what it is.
0:30:03 I mean, I’m surprised that people are like, “I can’t believe that happened.”
0:30:04 It’s so funny, man.
0:30:07 I’ll give you some.
0:30:08 When we were…
0:30:10 I’m about to embarrass some people.
0:30:15 My great publicist, Greg Cooby, who is somewhere watching this right now, I’m embarrassed him.
0:30:16 In the green room.
0:30:20 I said to him, “Who is this tremendous publicist that should get an award for all of this?”
0:30:21 I said to him, “You know, he’s booking all of these shows.”
0:30:23 I said, “Have they read the book?”
0:30:25 Like he said, “Have they read the book?”
0:30:26 “You sure?”
0:30:27 And I told him.
0:30:28 I told him, “They’ll read it.
0:30:29 They’ll read it.”
0:30:32 I’m like, “Okay.”
0:30:33 Because this is going to…
0:30:34 You know what I mean?
0:30:41 I understand I am going to go into some arenas where you don’t usually say the state of Israel
0:30:43 is practicing apartheid.
0:30:48 That’s just not a thing that you usually hear people saying in places like that.
0:30:51 And so, I am going to say that.
0:30:54 And what’s going to come out of that, I have no idea.
0:30:57 But I hope people understand that this is what’s happening.
0:31:02 What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that
0:31:07 is a Jewish safe place, and not any of the other states out there?
0:31:09 There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state.
0:31:13 I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.
0:31:17 I guess in my mind, I was like, “It’s no way that I say that.”
0:31:19 And people say, “Well, that’s very interesting, Tana.
0:31:21 I see what do you mean by that?”
0:31:22 You know?
0:31:25 And I knew that that would never, like that was not going to be the reaction.
0:31:28 So, I was very clear on that.
0:31:35 And then the interview went how it went, and I probably was a little surprised that people
0:31:36 were surprised.
0:31:40 I’m a little surprised at the fear around it, you know?
0:31:41 Yeah.
0:31:45 The deliberate choice to write about this, you know, the essay on Palestine, it’s the
0:31:47 longest in the book.
0:31:56 And you knew before that appearance on CBS that this is just an impossibly charged issue.
0:31:58 Why wait into these waters?
0:31:59 Why this conflict?
0:32:00 Why not?
0:32:02 I don’t think it’s impossibly charged.
0:32:06 When I went over there, there are things that it’s actually hard to disentangle.
0:32:12 Like, it’s really hard to understand, like, what is actually, you know, happening.
0:32:13 I will give you an example.
0:32:19 Like, I’ve written about this, to disentangle the force of race versus class on the lives
0:32:22 of African Americans, and understand what is actually happening there.
0:32:26 It’s actually quite difficult to see what is acting where, it doesn’t mean you can’t
0:32:27 do it.
0:32:28 You can, you know what I mean?
0:32:30 And some, you know, great academics especially.
0:32:33 You know, I had to do this for great case for reparations, you know, to really understand.
0:32:34 That was hard.
0:32:37 Like, people were, you know, running regression studies, looking at, I mean, it was actually
0:32:41 quite, quite hard, you know what I mean, to understand that.
0:32:52 This is so clear, like, it was so clear, and when I saw that, and maybe this is like naive,
0:32:55 you know, like, maybe even, maybe you’re right, you know, maybe it is impossibly charged,
0:33:03 but I was just like, oh, this is easy, like, not easy, like, easy to do, like, easy to
0:33:06 write, but it’s like, the math is clear, like, there is, you know what I mean, like,
0:33:11 this is so clearly what I, the word I used at the time when I, when I saw it was Jim
0:33:12 Custle.
0:33:13 Obviously, Jim Crow.
0:33:18 You tell me, you got one set of roads for one group of people, another set of roads
0:33:23 for another group of people, and the roads you have for the other group of people are
0:33:25 impossibly longer.
0:33:30 They take more to get from point A to point B. Those roads have like checkpoints, and the
0:33:34 checkpoint sometimes materialized, I don’t know, and this is all fact, like, whatever
0:33:36 you think about it, like, maybe you think that’s the way it should be, but this is
0:33:37 what it is, right?
0:33:40 This, this is actually what it is, right?
0:33:46 You’re telling me that one group of people has constant access to running water, and
0:33:50 the other group of people don’t know when their water might be cut off.
0:33:54 You’re telling me that, that other group of people, depending on where they live, if they’re
0:34:01 in a particular area on the West Bank, it might be illegal for them even to collect rainwater.
0:34:07 You’re telling me one group of people has access to a civil system of criminal justice
0:34:11 so that when they get arrested, they know their rights, they tell why they’re arrested,
0:34:17 lawyer, et cetera, and you’re telling me the other group has no access to that, that they
0:34:22 can be arrested, that no one needs to tell them why they’re being arrested?
0:34:23 What is that?
0:34:26 I’m glad we got here, you know, because- Like, what is that?
0:34:35 I mean, that is just the uncontested thing of what it is, so to me, that’s okay.
0:34:36 Yeah.
0:34:39 I mean, you’re on the show.
0:34:44 It’s called the gray area, for a reason, and I’m giving you black and white.
0:34:45 Yeah.
0:34:46 I love that.
0:34:48 I mean, this is the shit, man.
0:34:51 This is what we’re here for.
0:35:01 It’s called that because I think life is messy and complicated, and the temptation to blot
0:35:07 out complexity for the sake- Hold on now, hold on, Professor, just hold on.
0:35:13 The tendency to blot out complexity for the sake of a more simple story is understandable,
0:35:18 but I do think it can become dangerous in its own way, and I’m constantly attuned to
0:35:19 that threat.
0:35:23 I do attuned, actually, and I like that this is a reflex.
0:35:27 You challenge in the book, and you’re challenging here because it really forced me to think
0:35:30 about it as I was reading it, and I’m thinking about it now.
0:35:34 This isn’t a debate show, and it’s not a certain CBS morning show.
0:35:35 Right, right, right.
0:35:37 I don’t give a shit about winning arguments or creating spectacle.
0:35:42 I really want to understand what someone is thinking and what I can learn from them.
0:35:45 But, Sean, it is complex.
0:35:47 It’s just not complex in the way they say it is.
0:35:49 Okay, so you’ve got to help me understand that.
0:35:56 It is extremely complex, but it’s not in the way the complexity that they’re selling you
0:35:57 is not the complexity.
0:35:59 See, that’s what I want to iron out, right?
0:36:02 So, when I was reading it in the book and listening to you when you compare Palestine
0:36:07 to the Jim Crow South, my reaction while reading that is, “Yeah, these are both moral
0:36:11 obscenities, but they’re different, and I do think it’s complicated.”
0:36:12 Right.
0:36:13 So tell me about that.
0:36:14 Tell me about that.
0:36:15 Why I think it’s complicated?
0:36:16 Yeah.
0:36:17 Why would you say it’s different?
0:36:21 You know, like, first of all, do you think the Jim Crow South was uncomplicated?
0:36:24 No, just complicated in a different way.
0:36:25 Right?
0:36:26 I mean, I can tell you why I think they’re different.
0:36:27 Okay.
0:36:28 Go ahead.
0:36:32 I think it matters that many Palestinians still support the October 7th attacks.
0:36:33 Right.
0:36:34 Right.
0:36:39 I think that black people in the Jim Crow South wanted to be treated as equal citizens
0:36:40 in a fully democratic America.
0:36:41 I think that matters.
0:36:46 I don’t think it’s generally true that Palestinians want equal rights in a fully democratic Israel.
0:36:50 And if they had that, they might vote to end its existence as a Jewish state.
0:36:51 And you know what?
0:36:57 If I was a Palestinian who was pulling my friends and my family out of the rubble, I’d
0:36:58 probably vote the same way.
0:37:05 I mean, personally, I hate the idea of a state based entirely in religious or ethnic identity,
0:37:09 but I’m not Jewish and I don’t live in Israel, and I understand why this is a problem for
0:37:10 them.
0:37:11 Right?
0:37:14 And I also think it matters that Jews are also indigenous to that land, have nowhere
0:37:15 else to go.
0:37:17 I think that complicates the picture in other ways.
0:37:18 Right?
0:37:19 That’s my feelings.
0:37:23 Now you can go ahead and respond.
0:37:27 So I am of the mind, and everybody does not have to agree with this, but I just want to
0:37:29 clarify a real distinction.
0:37:32 And then I want to go through the example you gave because I actually think it’s actually
0:37:33 quite helpful.
0:37:34 Yeah.
0:37:39 I am of the mind that discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion is never
0:37:41 acceptable.
0:37:46 There is nothing in this world that will make separate and unequal.
0:37:49 And as far as I am concerned, and I will use this word, and we can debate this word if
0:37:54 we need to, there is nothing that makes apartheid, nothing.
0:37:58 So that’s where the, like when we talk about, like that’s not complex for me.
0:38:02 It’s like the death penalty is not really complex for me because you cannot guarantee
0:38:05 to me that the state will not execute an innocent person.
0:38:06 You just can’t.
0:38:07 You can’t.
0:38:10 I mean, I might not be for it even if you could, but among other reasons, like, so I’m
0:38:15 against it period, like there aren’t exceptions to that.
0:38:25 It’s hard as an African American for me to argue for exceptions for apartheid.
0:38:26 And I will tell you why.
0:38:33 See, the thing you have to do is not judge Jim Crow from right now or I would argue slavery
0:38:34 from right now.
0:38:37 You have to put yourself in the shoes of the people that were there in the debates at
0:38:38 the time.
0:38:42 And I assure you, they did not think it was simple.
0:38:47 And I like this reasoning about complexity is actually, you talked to Thomas Jefferson,
0:38:48 right?
0:38:52 He would have said, did say, you know what, I think this is a moral abomination.
0:38:55 But we have the wolf by the ear.
0:39:01 That’s how he described the practice of holding people and selling them for profit into slavery.
0:39:03 What did he mean by we have the wolf by the ear?
0:39:08 He means we need to let it go, but we dare not.
0:39:12 He’s trying to get you in his mind, the complexity of enslavement.
0:39:19 If not for the civil war, if not for like a cataclysmic war that kills what, 800,000 Americans
0:39:22 or something, certainly there’s no stroke of the pen abolition.
0:39:23 Why?
0:39:25 Because they describe, what are we going to do with them?
0:39:26 Where are they going to go?
0:39:27 You know what I mean?
0:39:28 All of these, you know, sort of issues.
0:39:33 In addition to this, in addition, what they would say is democracy is fit for a certain
0:39:34 class of people.
0:39:35 This is what they believe at the time.
0:39:38 So you have to take it seriously, even if it sounds ridiculous to you right now.
0:39:40 Democracy is fit for a certain class of people.
0:39:42 These people have not been educated.
0:39:46 They’re just a few generations out of the wilds of Africa where they worship some savage
0:39:47 God.
0:39:48 They’re barely Christ.
0:39:50 Like this, these, this is the logic.
0:39:54 If you moved into the 20th century, you’re getting closer to our lifetimes.
0:39:57 People would have said, what about crime?
0:39:59 Crime in these people’s neighborhoods, they would have cited the statistics and they would
0:40:00 have been real.
0:40:01 They would have been real.
0:40:05 Crime in these black courtes, these circuit is ridiculous.
0:40:07 If we integrate, we will inherit that.
0:40:09 We will now have to deal with that.
0:40:14 So like to them segregation was also complicated.
0:40:19 So I think in those instances, you have to just like, this becomes right or and wrong.
0:40:25 You know, like I think what’s crime not higher and black, yeah, it was, yeah, it was.
0:40:29 Can I guarantee that if they free all enslaved people and they try to, you know, move into
0:40:31 America actually went remarkably smooth.
0:40:32 So that’s not a good example.
0:40:36 I’m going to turn out those arguments were a cover for something else as they might be
0:40:38 here by the way.
0:40:43 But what I’m saying is in that time, it is not as if people were like, this is simple
0:40:44 and clear.
0:40:45 They were not.
0:40:57 So I have to ask myself, do I believe that a demographic project, which is what Israel
0:41:05 is and what they say out loud, does that goal accord with my humanistic values?
0:41:10 Do I want my country supporting that?
0:41:14 And I don’t think I do because the moment you say that, you must discriminate.
0:41:15 You have to.
0:41:16 Yeah.
0:41:22 There is no world in which you have a Jewish democracy and a Jewish state.
0:41:26 But you just, and not, and again, I always had to be careful about this.
0:41:27 It’s not the Jewishness of it.
0:41:28 You understand?
0:41:34 Like I believe this about ethnicity period across the board.
0:41:35 I haven’t been to Palestine.
0:41:38 Oh man, you should go.
0:41:41 But I know it’s bad and I know what you saw there is wrong.
0:41:46 And I don’t believe there is any such thing as a moral occupation because whatever the
0:41:51 reasons for it, you cannot occupy a people without visiting cruelties upon them.
0:41:53 It’s full stop, right?
0:41:58 For me, the first question I go to, the main question is, is it necessarily the badness
0:42:01 of the situation, which is incontestable and egregious and obvious.
0:42:06 It’s how the hell do we stop it?
0:42:12 And for me, all these complications that I was mentioning earlier, that’s the stuff
0:42:15 that has to be accounted for if there’s any hope of a way forward.
0:42:19 But you’re not here to proffer some two-state solution or figure out a solution.
0:42:23 And it goes back to that interview on CBS.
0:42:28 There is no, I mean, I don’t actually have a solution, but I do, I do.
0:42:36 We are sitting here asking ourselves why we don’t have a workable solution while we exclude
0:42:38 one of the two significant parties.
0:42:41 And I guess my politic would say the most significant party, because that’s just where
0:42:46 I come from in terms of the oppressed, from the conversation.
0:42:55 How can you decide what is going to be the solution when every night, when I cut on TV
0:43:02 and I watch reports from the region, I can name only one person who was a Palestinian
0:43:08 heritage who I regularly see articulate a solution or an idea.
0:43:15 How do we get to a solution when our journals, our newspapers, our literature that dominates
0:43:20 the conversation is not just the void of Palestinian perspectives, but it’s the void of Palestinians
0:43:21 themselves.
0:43:27 We are not having a conversation about solutions because we’ve basically prevented a whole
0:43:31 group of people from entering into the frame.
0:43:33 And so it’s like, we’re kind of putting the cart before the horse.
0:43:38 We’re frustrated that we don’t have a solution, but like, we’re not actually talking to somebody.
0:43:39 You know what I mean?
0:43:42 It’s like, you know, you go into the, sorry, I cook, so I have all of these like cooking
0:43:43 metaphors.
0:43:44 No, I love it.
0:43:48 And you do your mac and cheese and, you know, it turns out terrible and you’re like, why
0:43:49 did this turn out?
0:43:50 Well, do you have a recipe?
0:43:54 Like, do you actually, did you take the time to come up with, you know what I mean, the
0:43:55 ingredients?
0:43:56 Did you talk to anybody?
0:43:59 Like, or did you just go and, you know, go pasta and milk and you know what I mean?
0:44:00 And, you know, do you know anything about a rue?
0:44:02 Do you know anything about that?
0:44:03 You know what I mean?
0:44:04 Do you know anything about like what cheese melts and what’s that like?
0:44:06 Have you had these conversations?
0:44:11 This is on us, by the way, this is journalism’s great sin.
0:44:14 And this is how, and I’m going to say something like, you know, I call it, I’m about to say
0:44:15 the extremist thing.
0:44:17 It’s like, I call it a CBS, right?
0:44:19 This is our contribution to apartheid.
0:44:23 Because we are the agents by which people are dehumanized.
0:44:25 You know, and I want to make that very, very specific.
0:44:30 When you exclude people from the conversation, when they don’t have a role in your journalism,
0:44:34 when they don’t have a role in your film, when they don’t have a role in your TV, when
0:44:40 they don’t have a role in your books, they cease to exist as people and become these
0:44:46 kind of cartoon cutouts that other people make of them, and they become much more easy
0:44:48 to kill.
0:44:51 That’s on us.
0:44:54 It’s extreme, but I believe it.
0:44:55 Like I think it’s true.
0:45:01 I don’t know, man, I do, I think our moral imagination needs to extend in both directions
0:45:08 as far as possible, but I, the more I’ve listened to you and as I made my way through your book,
0:45:10 I think I understand where you’re coming from.
0:45:17 I understand writing this as a kind of corrective feeling like there was a lack of empathy for
0:45:21 the Palestinian experience, because their story hasn’t been told enough, hasn’t been
0:45:22 represented enough.
0:45:23 I can understand that.
0:45:24 I really can.
0:45:30 And if I’m being honest, I mean, I think if I went there, like you, and saw the suffering
0:45:35 firsthand, all of this would feel a whole lot less abstract to me, and it would hit
0:45:36 differently.
0:45:38 And I don’t know how that would change, how I think about it.
0:45:41 So when are you going to go, Sean?
0:45:43 I don’t know.
0:45:44 You should go.
0:45:45 I don’t know.
0:45:46 I know it’s hard.
0:45:50 And I look, I just, I’m putting you on the spot, but it was extremely hard.
0:45:51 I’m going to fail this class, aren’t I?
0:45:52 No, no, you’re not.
0:45:53 No, no, no.
0:45:54 Here’s, look, look, look.
0:45:55 First of all, you are a journalist.
0:45:56 That’s the first thing.
0:45:57 Okay.
0:45:58 That’s my first case towards you for going.
0:46:02 The second case is this is being done in your name, man.
0:46:03 And we’re going to pay for it.
0:46:05 We’re going to pay for it one way or the other.
0:46:07 We will pay for this.
0:46:08 We will pay for this.
0:46:13 I, God, I’m now, I think it’s your responsibility to go.
0:46:14 I’m sorry.
0:46:15 I really do believe that.
0:46:22 I really, really do believe that because you are someone who is obviously curious, obviously
0:46:23 want to, you know, know things.
0:46:30 And the reason why I’m pushing you is because that kind of vague sense of injustice is exactly
0:46:31 what I had.
0:46:34 That is exactly how I felt, man.
0:46:35 But can I push you a little bit on that?
0:46:36 Sure.
0:46:37 Go ahead.
0:46:38 Here’s the thing.
0:46:39 I have no doubt about that.
0:46:48 But if I went to Israel and toward the villages that were plundered on October 7th, I’d feel
0:46:50 the same kind of indignation and rage.
0:46:51 You should though.
0:46:52 So what do you do with that?
0:46:54 But I don’t think those are contrary.
0:46:55 Yeah.
0:46:56 No, I don’t mean to say they’re contrary.
0:47:02 I’m just saying I would still be left feeling the sense of hopelessness really at the, the
0:47:06 tragedy of it all and the fact that it just seems to be.
0:47:07 I think you would no more though.
0:47:09 I think, I think you would no doubt about that.
0:47:13 And I think you can judge how you would feel until you go.
0:47:15 And you know what?
0:47:20 One of the reasons I haven’t opined on this issue very much is that I feel like I don’t
0:47:21 know what the hell I’m talking about.
0:47:23 That’s why you, that’s why you go.
0:47:28 And I don’t want to be one of those assholes who opine on things that they don’t understand.
0:47:33 But it doesn’t, it doesn’t, you know, opiate the responsibility for going.
0:47:35 That’s why you go.
0:47:36 That’s why you go, man.
0:47:39 And I don’t know.
0:47:43 I mean, I think you should not now I’m being professor again, like you just don’t know
0:47:45 until you go through it.
0:47:46 You don’t know what’s, what’s going to happen.
0:47:53 I do want to speak to your instinct though that a horror at the desecration and destruction
0:48:00 of human life on October 7th is somehow contrary or somehow stands even in conflict, I would
0:48:04 argue with the opposition to apartheid.
0:48:07 And I’ve thought about this quite a bit, right?
0:48:16 There is a long record of people who have causes that I would find sympathetic erupting
0:48:19 in a kind of violence that I recoil from.
0:48:20 Okay.
0:48:22 I’m going to speak as I’ll just speak from the perspective of an African American and
0:48:26 African American history and all my black people are about to cast me out for what I’m
0:48:27 about to say.
0:48:34 But I think it’s a good example, 1830s, Nat Turner is enslaved in Virginia, has no rights
0:48:38 over his body, has no rights over his family, have no rights over their body.
0:48:40 Anything can be done to him at any moment.
0:48:46 He has no control over himself and decides in that situation, he’s locked out of a political
0:48:49 system, can’t vote his way out, can’t do anything.
0:48:52 And it’s at that moment that the way out is violence.
0:48:56 And the way out is not just violence, the way out is massacre.
0:49:00 That is to say, not a violent rebellion in which we strategically target things, for
0:49:06 instance, like John Brown targets the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, but actual slaughter, okay?
0:49:13 That means every slave master, every slave mistress, every child must die, gathers together
0:49:15 his army and they kill everybody they come across.
0:49:23 They hack infants and the crib, kill women, men, etc.
0:49:27 You know, I was raised with Nat Turner as a hero of resistance and it’s understandable
0:49:30 why Nat Turner would be a hero of resistance.
0:49:34 But the older you get, especially if you’re going to write, you’re going to write.
0:49:35 You know what I’m saying?
0:49:38 Not if you’re just going to sort of construct the unmethodology that all people construct.
0:49:42 But if you’re going to write, you’re going to interrogate your own stories, you take
0:49:51 a deeper look at that and you say, “Does the complete degradation of my life make it
0:50:02 right for me to take the life of any member of that class that is responsible for that?”
0:50:07 It never sat with me, and even as a child it didn’t, you know?
0:50:10 I heard you say your oppression won’t save you.
0:50:11 It won’t.
0:50:14 It won’t save you from these moral conflicts.
0:50:21 It won’t save you from these like moral quandaries, but Sean, my feeling that that doesn’t sit
0:50:24 right with me, my belief that somewhere on those plantations there was an enslaved black
0:50:28 person that looked at that and said, “I can’t get with this.”
0:50:32 It doesn’t make enslavement right.
0:50:33 You understand?
0:50:37 Recoilant at horror at that death does not somehow make it difficult to pass judgment
0:50:40 on the system.
0:50:43 I actually think they emanate from a, I hope they emanate.
0:50:48 I think they emanate from a similar value, and that is the value of human life.
0:50:54 I guess there’s this broader question about how much context do we need in order to pass
0:50:57 moral judgment, and I’m not sure how answerable that question is.
0:50:58 You’ve got to go.
0:50:59 Because, what?
0:51:00 Fair.
0:51:01 Fair.
0:51:02 Fair.
0:51:03 Fair.
0:51:05 This is what I thought.
0:51:06 You sound like me.
0:51:07 No, I mean…
0:51:08 You sound like me.
0:51:09 This is what I thought.
0:51:13 Even for the trip, I was like, “Boy, this is going to be really complicated.”
0:51:17 I thought the morality of it would be, and I think quite of it is, and I want to say
0:51:23 this, is there’s a reason why I began that chapter in Yad Vashem, and it is because the
0:51:30 fact of existential violence and industrial genocide brought to the Jewish peoples of
0:51:36 this world is a very, very real thing.
0:51:43 It’s like, how do you confront that and reconcile that with Israel, because you want that group
0:51:45 of people to be okay?
0:51:49 You feel like maybe that group of people is entitled to certain things, I mean that in
0:51:50 the best kind of way.
0:51:54 They’re entitled to a kind of safety given what happened to them.
0:51:59 You feel deep, deep sympathy, and so before I went, I was like, “Wow, this is going to
0:52:04 be morally like dicey.”
0:52:05 I think you should go.
0:52:07 I’m not even saying you’re going to agree with me.
0:52:13 I’m not saying you’re going to end up where I ended up, but I think you should go.
0:52:23 Do you think both sides of this conflict can tell a story about it that makes them right
0:52:24 and the other side wrong?
0:52:29 And at this point, are there so many victims and perpetrators on both sides because the
0:52:38 cycle of violence and retaliation stretches back so far that it’s a kind of, I’m searching
0:52:40 for a word and I can’t find it.
0:52:42 I don’t think it stretches back that far.
0:52:43 It’s 1948.
0:52:46 It’s 900 years.
0:52:47 I guess in historical time.
0:52:50 I interviewed people that were alive for the book.
0:52:53 I interviewed people that were very much alive in 1948.
0:52:54 So I don’t even think it’s back that far.
0:52:59 I think that we say things like that, no disrespect, but I think we say things like I had to make
0:53:00 it harder than it actually is.
0:53:03 It’s a lifetime that is not even over yet.
0:53:13 And what I would say is my opposition to apartheid, to segregation, to oppression does not emanate
0:53:18 from a belief in the hyper morality of the oppressed or even the morality of the oppressed.
0:53:23 See, the civil rights movement kind of fooled us with this because it was kind of a morality
0:53:26 play and it was a very successful strategy.
0:53:32 But whether Martin Luther King was nonviolent or not, segregation was wrong.
0:53:37 Even when Malcolm X was yelling by any means necessary, like segregation was still wrong.
0:53:39 It was still wrong.
0:53:43 The system, so for me, it’s not even a matter of sides being right.
0:53:49 The system that governs both sides is wrong.
0:53:56 So for you personally, I remember once hearing you talk about the vulgarities of.
0:54:01 Punditry, pundits are not in the truth seeking business.
0:54:03 Pundits make pronouncements.
0:54:06 That’s the whole stupid mindless game.
0:54:07 But you’re not like that.
0:54:08 You have never been like that.
0:54:10 You’re not even on Twitter for God’s sake.
0:54:12 Thank God.
0:54:15 Are you on Twitter?
0:54:16 I am.
0:54:17 You gotta get off Twitter too, man.
0:54:18 I know.
0:54:20 Get off Twitter and you gotta take a plane.
0:54:26 But one reason I retreated into podcasting is I don’t feel that pressure to pronounce
0:54:31 in that way, and even doing it in a serious way for me felt futile, but I don’t have your
0:54:33 stature and I don’t have your reach.
0:54:34 So it’s different for you.
0:54:35 I imagine.
0:54:40 Do you think you can make a difference here or is that not even part of the calculus?
0:54:43 Is it just I need to write what I saw period?
0:54:49 I do need to write without what I saw is uncomfortable to say.
0:54:52 I think this moment matters.
0:54:56 I was talking to a buddy yesterday, a good friend, well, actually a colleague.
0:55:02 Let me not overstate my relationship, but a very, very intelligent young writer and
0:55:03 a sharp young writer.
0:55:09 And we were actually sitting around the tables, a Muslim woman and another writer there.
0:55:12 And we were all in sympathy in terms of our politics.
0:55:16 And she’s kind of making a point that this thing that’s happening right now, it’s
0:55:20 towards actually, it matters, it’s making a difference.
0:55:27 And I was saying, I went out like I’m going to do some book tour and then I’m out of here,
0:55:28 man.
0:55:32 You know, I’m going back to my French studies, like I’m out, you know, and I’m not out because
0:55:33 I’m scared to say what I want to say.
0:55:35 I’m not out because of the heat.
0:55:39 I am out because I just, it just feels unnatural.
0:55:46 And part of it feels unnatural is A, I’m not Palestinian, but B, it feels contrary to being
0:55:51 to writing, which is always seeking, you know, always trying to learn, always trying to figure
0:55:52 it out, always asking questions.
0:55:57 And so like when you’re kind of making these pronouncements, as I admit, I am now.
0:56:01 You wonder, am I actually betraying the craft?
0:56:04 You know, should I have just written a book, put it out and you know, Donna Alana Ferrante
0:56:09 or whatever, like, you know, like there’s always that voice in the back of your mind.
0:56:20 When I was over there, man, what they said to me over and over again was just tell them
0:56:23 what you saw.
0:56:49 And this is probably a little impure, but I feel a debt to tell them what I saw.
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1:00:39 There’s a line in your book that feels relevant that I’d like to read if you don’t mind.
1:00:40 Sure.
1:00:45 You say, “A belief in genius is a large part of what plagues us, and I have found that
1:00:51 people widely praised for the power of intellect are as likely to illuminate as they are to
1:00:52 confound.
1:00:59 Genius may not help a writer whose job is, above all else, to clarify.”
1:01:02 I thought a lot about that, and I thought about Orwell, who you quote in the opening
1:01:06 pages of the book, and I heard you say that the opening letter of the book is a kind of
1:01:12 homage to Orwell’s why I write.
1:01:18 Lionel Trilling once wrote of Orwell, and we just did an episode on him, so it’s fresh
1:01:19 in my mind.
1:01:25 He said that if we ask what he stands for, what he was a figure of, it’s the virtue of
1:01:29 not being a genius.
1:01:34 It’s such a great line, and I come on the show every week, man, and I praise the virtues
1:01:43 of doubt and uncertainty, and I believe in that, but refusing to describe things simply
1:01:50 and clearly can become a kind of moral and intellectual crime.
1:01:52 Orwell was right about that.
1:01:58 You’re right about that too, and I still think sometimes things are really are complicated
1:02:03 and not so neat, and maybe the challenge of being a writer and really just a human being
1:02:07 is being honest and wise enough to know the difference, and yeah, sometimes it is really,
1:02:09 really hard, but you know what else?
1:02:16 Sometimes withholding moral judgment can be its own kind of cowardice.
1:02:21 Yeah, and I just want to take it back.
1:02:25 When that day comes, the Palestinians are back in the frame, but they are invited to
1:02:30 tell their own stories, and they are invited to sit at the table, and they take their place
1:02:31 at the table however you want to put it.
1:02:35 I have no doubt that what will come out of that will be quite complicated.
1:02:38 South Africa is complicated.
1:02:42 They defeated apartheid, but did they change the basic economic arrangements?
1:02:47 My understanding is not as much as a lot of people would have wished, better than apartheid,
1:02:48 but it’s not done.
1:02:50 It is indeed quite complicated, right?
1:02:56 The victory is indeed quite complicated, but the morality of apartheid is not.
1:03:02 What is hard for me is, I’ve been on a couple shows now where I’ve had some debate about
1:03:11 this with people, and they never challenge the fact of what’s going on.
1:03:18 So when I say half the population is enshrined at the highest level of citizenship, and everyone
1:03:24 else is something less, they don’t say, “Tanahase, that’s not true.”
1:03:27 And I say, “Yeah, and that’s not great.”
1:03:31 When I go through that whole litany, and I don’t have to do it again, and I did earlier
1:03:34 in the show, they say, “Yeah, and that’s not great.”
1:03:40 And then, I don’t know, we just kind of get lost in this morass, I feel like.
1:03:44 But perhaps this is just where I sit, man.
1:03:49 When your parents grew up in Jim Crow, when they were born into Jim Crow, that is an immediate
1:03:51 no go, immediate.
1:03:54 I don’t know what comes after this, but that is wrong.
1:03:55 That’s wrong.
1:03:57 You know what I mean?
1:04:00 What is after that might be quite complicated and quite hard?
1:04:05 But that is not the answer, at all.
1:04:11 I’m sitting in a cave in the South Hebron Hills with a group of people, and they’re telling
1:04:15 me about their fears of being evicted out of a cave, man.
1:04:20 When I look at, “Hey, you know that’s complicated.”
1:04:24 And I know for a while, it’s not.
1:04:33 What to do is probably complicated, but if you begin from a basis of, “This is wrong.”
1:04:40 And then the very difficult work of figuring it out, maybe you can proceed after that.
1:04:46 Bringing this back to stories, the power and the danger, I suppose, is part of the problem.
1:04:54 Do you think that too many of us are just too diluted by convenient stories?
1:04:55 Yes.
1:04:57 Yes, I actually do think.
1:04:58 I was thinking for a second.
1:04:59 Yes, I do.
1:05:03 Look, man, what does it say?
1:05:05 And this is where I kind of went to.
1:05:06 I thought about this.
1:05:12 I didn’t get to spend enough time on this essay, but it’s like, you know, I go to Yad Vashem.
1:05:14 Yad Vashem is harrowing.
1:05:22 God, man, I walked in and there’s a brilliant art exhibit where they string together home
1:05:28 movies during the time when the technology was relatively new in all the Jewish communities
1:05:32 in Europe before the Holocaust.
1:05:35 And it’s just like people going through there every day.
1:05:36 It’s not a special, no slogan area.
1:05:40 It’s just like people, and what you see is like the humanity, like there’s a deep, deep
1:05:41 humanity.
1:05:46 It is effective because it says this is what’s about to be snuffed out in the worst possible
1:05:47 way.
1:05:55 And you see it and then you go through it and they are experts, you know, really narrating
1:06:01 the story of what happened and you sit with that horror.
1:06:04 And I sat with that horror and then, you know, when I went there, it was, you know, by that
1:06:10 point, I’d seen the occupation and everything and then I come back and I’m working on this
1:06:17 essay and I find out that less than a mile from there, you know, there was a massacre
1:06:21 perpetrated by the inheritors of that legacy.
1:06:24 It’s like, how do you sit with that?
1:06:29 And I called a Palestinian friend of mine and he said, you know, I’m not surprised they
1:06:30 do this shit all the time.
1:06:36 He said, they built a museum of tolerance on top of a Muslim graveyard.
1:06:37 This is literally true.
1:06:42 Like anybody to think, like just Google it, Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance Graveyard.
1:06:43 They did it.
1:06:46 It was something like from LA, by the way.
1:06:50 And you think, what am I supposed to derive from that?
1:06:51 Like how am I supposed to feel about that?
1:06:59 Like how do I maintain my sympathy, how I felt in that moment, watching those worlds
1:07:05 about to be destroyed with the fact of what the inheritors of that did?
1:07:07 That is complicated.
1:07:09 That is hard, I admit.
1:07:17 There is an assistant, a nation, a movement, an institution of people that can exist without
1:07:20 a story to justify itself.
1:07:26 And to the extent that that’s true, maybe we’re just condemned to live with certain illusions,
1:07:29 certain myths, certain blind spots.
1:07:34 And maybe we can’t do otherwise because the truth is unbearable.
1:07:36 We can do better than this, though.
1:07:38 We can do better than this.
1:07:39 Yeah.
1:07:40 I think that’s right.
1:07:41 Yeah.
1:07:46 You know, there was a poignant moment in the chapter on Cynical where you’re talking about
1:07:50 your dad and, I don’t know, maybe you were a kid, I don’t remember, but he was telling
1:07:53 you about a book he had just read on the 18th century.
1:07:55 Maybe we don’t get back to Africa.
1:07:56 Yeah.
1:07:59 It was the 18th century rebellion and Guyana and his sadness and how it ended.
1:08:03 And it ended with the leaders of the revolt turning against each other and collaborating
1:08:05 with the people who had enslaved them.
1:08:10 And the realization is that the stories of some pure, uncorrupted people was just a
1:08:14 myth, just a story that the people there were like the people everywhere else.
1:08:20 And it’s a sobering thing to accept, but maybe accepting it is the beginning of some kind
1:08:21 of wisdom, I hope.
1:08:22 Yeah.
1:08:23 I do.
1:08:24 Maybe we don’t get back to Africa.
1:08:25 Like, that hurts.
1:08:32 Maybe like that utopia that we thought existed before we were brought over here and we’ve
1:08:36 been trying to get back to, through the reconstruction of our history, through the reconstruction
1:08:39 of our stories, our heroes, through reconstruction of our very names, right?
1:08:42 Like my very name comes out of that.
1:08:44 Maybe it’s feudal.
1:08:51 Like there is no global, no glorious unfettered utopia that we herald from that we need to
1:08:52 restore.
1:08:53 It’s a mess.
1:08:56 It was always a mess.
1:08:57 It’s going to be a mess.
1:08:58 We were enslaved.
1:09:02 We’re not like the heroes in some grand fable, you know what I mean?
1:09:06 Where we were X, Y, Z, it was destroyed and now we will restore it.
1:09:07 That’s not what it is.
1:09:11 We’re just left with our own human frailty.
1:09:14 We do not have the seed of divinity in us.
1:09:17 We’re not special.
1:09:23 To the extent that we are, it will be by what we do, not by who we are, and certainly not
1:09:25 by what happened to us.
1:09:29 Because where do you take from it, right?
1:09:31 Oh, you mean we just got enslaved?
1:09:32 That’s it?
1:09:33 That’s just what happened?
1:09:36 Like some dude just sold me onto a ship.
1:09:37 You know what I mean?
1:09:39 Didn’t this like, that’s hard.
1:09:41 And of course, that’s not it.
1:09:42 You know what I mean?
1:09:43 That’s not it.
1:09:44 There’s a lot more, right?
1:09:48 But the more is not about putting a crown on your head or gilding, you know, your history
1:09:52 or your story.
1:09:56 We’re just Sisyphus in the rock and either roll that motherfucker up the hill or get rolled
1:09:57 over by.
1:09:59 No, I think there’s progress, though, right?
1:10:03 I think actually in that realization, there’s a kind of liberation.
1:10:05 That’s sad at first.
1:10:09 And then it’s like, you know what, actually, it’s kind of okay.
1:10:10 It’s okay.
1:10:11 I went through this.
1:10:12 I talk about this in between the wilderness.
1:10:19 I went through this in college, where you have to confront the fact that black people
1:10:23 sold other black people into slavery.
1:10:28 And that is hard to accept until you realize there was no such thing as black among those
1:10:29 people.
1:10:32 Like they didn’t, like these kind of frames that you’re putting on them, they didn’t actually
1:10:33 have them.
1:10:37 You know, those weren’t ideas that were developed and you are asking people to justify something
1:10:43 that you feel as a kind of healing that can actually come out of that, you know?
1:10:45 Yeah.
1:10:52 You probably asked all the time, surely by your students at Howard, for advice on how
1:10:59 to be a writer and an intellectual in this world at this moment, what do you tell them
1:11:00 besides stay the hell off Twitter?
1:11:01 Yeah.
1:11:03 Stay the hell off Twitter is a good one.
1:11:07 When I was 18 years old and I came to Howard and I desperately wanted to be a writer,
1:11:11 there was a poet by the name of Ethel Burt Miller, who was all the way up his office,
1:11:14 all the way on the top floor of the library, and I would take my really bad poetry up
1:11:19 to him and he would critique it and like I could never get anything through that was
1:11:20 good, right?
1:11:21 Or maybe like one out of 10.
1:11:23 And it’s so frustrating.
1:11:28 You know, you’re 18 man.
1:11:29 You just need to live.
1:11:31 You need to go join the Peace Corps or something.
1:11:32 You need to live.
1:11:34 You don’t add a body of life experience.
1:11:37 And what he was saying was you need to go walk the world.
1:11:40 Like you have to go out and see some things and experience some things that actually have
1:11:43 things to write about.
1:11:48 And I think that’s so important for writers, period.
1:11:53 You know, like, you know, there’s a critique in that in the book of those of us who just
1:11:58 kind of sit in one place and read articles and read other people’s books and never go
1:12:00 and walk the world for ourselves.
1:12:07 You’ll never have the interactions of allowing these original sites at least to us to filter
1:12:12 through our memory, you know, through our sense and our aesthetics, so that we can develop
1:12:14 our own words and our own language.
1:12:16 I think writing is simple.
1:12:22 You know, you write, read, revise, you know, walk.
1:12:26 And that’s about it.
1:12:28 Once again, the book is called The Message.
1:12:32 Ta-Nehisi Coates, a privilege and a pleasure to have you on.
1:12:33 Thank you for doing it.
1:12:34 Thanks, Sean.
1:12:34 Thank you so much.
1:12:47 Alright, I hope you appreciated this episode.
1:12:49 I definitely did.
1:12:52 It was obviously a very difficult conversation.
1:13:01 This is a topic I don’t feel like I understand very well, and I try not to weigh in on things
1:13:04 I don’t understand very well.
1:13:08 But it was important to talk about this, and I didn’t want to let not understanding
1:13:15 it perfectly be a justification for ignoring it altogether.
1:13:20 So I dove in, and I did my best, and I felt like I learned something.
1:13:26 I appreciate what Ta-Nehisi is doing in this book, and I appreciate his openness and his
1:13:28 honesty with me.
1:13:32 And I don’t know.
1:13:38 I’m going to think a little bit longer and harder about his suggestion to me that maybe
1:13:43 I go over to Israel and Palestine and see what’s happening for myself.
1:14:02 I can’t make any promises, but I am going to think about it.
1:14:07 As always, we really want to know what you think of this episode.
1:14:12 Drop us a line at thegrayarea@box.com, and once you’re finished with that, please do
1:14:16 rate and review the pod, and subscribe to the show.
1:14:20 This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey and Travis Larchek.
1:14:26 Today’s episode was engineered by Christian Ayala, backchecked by Anouk Dussot, edited
1:14:31 by Jorge Just, and Alex O’Brington wrote arty music.
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1:16:01 [Music]
1:16:04 (gentle music)
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