LaVar Hosting Jeopardy July 26-30 Stan Account 👁

I think TNC gave substance and evidence to what a lot of white ppl took on faith, and I think that only caused their faith to grow. And he always comes with just enough substance and evidence to justify greater and greater faith from the whites who want to believe him anyway.

And the reason they want to believe him anyway is that wokeness makes socializing in a diverse group way easier. TNC is a white-readable, white-publication-approved provider of just enough wokeness to sting but rarely enough to lacerate.

But here's the thing: I don't think that's a bad thing. For one, I like his writing. His work is increasingly overwritten and frankly I live for it. His set of cultural references is not my set but I recognize how it is amalgamated from white stuff and black stuff, like we do.

But for serious: giving white people just enough anti-racism to make them less racist, to shift their perspective towards black folks', but not so much that the whites become bitter is a delicate but important game.

And it is essentially THE game of 'integrated negroes.' Assimilation is a strategy, but we get it backwards and think assimilators are the avant-garde venturing into whiteness to open its doors for the rest of the negroes.

NOPE. Integration exists a) to increase resources for real liberatory struggle, and b) as a rear-guard action to ensure we don't lose the gains those who actually work for liberation got us. Bc they are more precarious than you think.

TNC is the literary equivalent of the 'cool' black friend who took his white friend to his mom's house in the hood like twice. The point of that is that the hood becomes an actual place where people live to this white person, not a big scary abstraction.

It's like a prophylactic against white racism. It doesn't make you less racist. But when the republican tries to terrify you into voting for MORE racist policies, you go. "But... I've been to the hood. The people there seemed like people to me, idk."

'You' in this case being white friend. Anyway, the social good of TNC's white audience is rarely that they become workers for any meaningful liberation for black folks (although their kids might, bc they don't have so far to travel).

It is that they become, quite literally, the "resistance" to people who want to go backwards. And you can even feel that from his work---there's a skepticism towards progress and a kind of obsession with backsliding. Which is in line with being a privileged Negro.