But it would not be a stretch to say that if a poll were taken among the elites of academia, the media, etc., they would name Ta-Nehisi Coates as one of our leading public intellectuals, perhaps topping the list. Coates tends to think about race in the same way as white nationalist Richard Spencer does, according to a convincing NYT op-ed.
Put another way, Coates tends to think about whites the way Jeong tweeted. The difference is that Coates is a much better prose stylist and has far more space than the limits Twitter imposes.
However expressed, such views are of a piece with the progressive view that America is simply a manifestation of white supremacy—a claim occasionally extended to the Enlightenment in general. They are also of a piece with a Democratic Party that spent a decade strategizing around the theory of an “emerging Democratic majority” that would eventually dominate American politics because old white people would eventually die.
