Can a President Be Moral? with Ta-Nehisi Coates

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Episode Title

Can a President Be Moral?
Podcast: Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know
Host: Hasan Minhaj (186k Films)
Guest: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Date: August 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This candid, deeply reflective episode features writer and public intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Hasan Minhaj. The discussion centers around the morality of the presidency, the contradiction inherent in Black political ascendancy within an imperial nation, and Coates’s recent writing, particularly his Vanity Fair essay "The Next Black President." Interwoven throughout are questions of moral clarity, American foreign policy, the nature of power, identity, and the challenge of sustaining empathy and wisdom in public life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Contradiction of Power and the Black Presidency

• Theme: The paradox that Black leadership inherits – striving for power in a system founded on violence.
  • "A black presidency is a contradiction. It owes its power to a movement against racial state violence at home, but seeks an office which has always practiced racist state violence abroad." (28:30, Coates)
  • Kamala Harris as an example: invoking civil rights icons while excluding Palestinian-American voices.

2. On Sincerity, Wisdom, and Moral Clarity

• Sincerity in Voice: Coates emphasizes living according to one's conscience and not being distracted by external perceptions.
  • "Because I wake up with myself and I go to bed with myself every night, my experience is my own conscience, my community, my wife, my kids, my friends." (10:13, Coates)
  • Relishes personal connections and intimate, private moments over public/media reaction.
• Intellect vs. Wisdom: Coates cautions that intellect is overrated; the importance is in lived experience and the application of wisdom, not just analytical smarts.
  • "There is no quality in American intellectual life that is more overrated than intellect itself." (04:09, Coates)
  • "We overrate intellect and underrate wisdom." (15:42, Coates)
  • Everyday morality often breaks through where intricate justifications and intellectual frameworks obscure.

3. The Moral Limits of Statehood

• States as Amoral Entities:
  • "States are designed to protect the interests of, in the best case, the majority of people that the state alleges to represent... but the construction of a state is amoral." (25:44, Coates)
  • States, like businesses, are structured for self-perpetuation and power, not morality.
  • The rhetoric of state "rights" (e.g., "right to exist") is a post-hoc justification for power, not rooted in justice.

4. Empire, Violence, and American Exceptionalism

• America’s Scope for Violence:
  • "We have infinite power to inflict violence at virtually anywhere, at any point, and we kind of do it. And I don't think that's great." (01:31, 35:40 Coates)
  • Liberal self-justifications about “good intentions” are called out as unconvincing, especially to those under American foreign policy’s boot.
• Trump, Truth, and Hypocrisy:
  • Discussion of Trump’s bluntness about U.S. killing, and how liberal reactions betray a deeply held national myth of innocence.

5. Can a President Be Moral?

• Obama and Foreign Policy:
  • Coates critiques Obama’s choices (e.g., Libya, Yemen), challenging claims that certain forms of violence are inevitable.
  • "He absolutely could have pursued a more moral foreign policy." (29:07, Coates)
  • The question is not whether dirty hands are inescapable, but whether we excuse them as a fact of life rather than struggle against them.

6. The Price and Practice of Protest

• Movement Messiness & Moral Action:
  • Change is always disorderly; uncomfortable, inconvenient activism (like antiwar critiques in the civil rights era) is necessary for moral progress.
  • "Protest is really just historically... messy. People say things that are inconvenient." (53:11, Coates)
  • The shift in U.S. discourse on Israel/Palestine is attributed directly to protest, not to polite consensus.

7. Voting, Power, and Pragmatism

• Voting as Civic Hygiene:
  • Abstention isn’t effective punishment—politicians rarely feel it, only the vulnerable do.
  • Voting is a tool, not a badge of tribal loyalty.
  • "They're [politicians] tools. And your job is to figure out what tool in this particular moment reduces the most harm." (57:47, Coates)
  • Folk wisdom: “You can be a voter, but you don’t have to be a fan.” (45:29)

8. Black Struggle, Universal Humanity, and Refusing Narrow Success

• Integration vs. Transformation:
  • Don’t merely become part of the system ("integrate into the machine"), change it.
  • "If you want to say that the endpoint of our dream of our struggle is simply to get us in positions of power, to integrate us into the machine, and to not change the machine, then don’t talk about Fannie Lou Hamer. Don’t talk about Dr. Martin Luther King. That wasn’t what their lives were about." (03:48, 43:46, Coates)
  • Solidarity: The best of Black activism is always connected to a broader, global struggle for justice.

9. Celebrity, Attention, and Private Life

• On Fame:
  • Coates experiences challenges with fame, preferring a quieter, more grounded creative existence.
  • "What celebrity gives you—the ability to command tremendous amounts of attention. And we probably wish that people's morality was commensurate to the amount of attention they commanded, but that's ... deeply unnatural." (62:00, Coates)

10. Openness, Empathy, and Human Connection

• Sustaining Openness:
  • Coates explains how honest curiosity and the richness of cross-cultural experiences keep him engaged and hopeful.
  • "I’m genuinely curious about people. My baseline is as a journalist and I got into journalism because I was curious about people." (67:06, Coates)
  • Reflection on experiencing global Blackness and the nuances of American privilege abroad: finding beauty, connection, and meaning even amid struggle.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On integrating into the system:
  • Coates: "If you want to say that the endpoint of our dream of our struggle... is simply to... integrate us into the machine and to not... change the machine, then don't talk about Fannie Lou Hamer. Don't talk about Dr. Martin Luther King. That wasn't what their lives were about." (03:48)
• On morality and state violence:
  • Coates: "I won't accept that ... there's no other way except, you know, every now and then, somebody's wedding party gets bombed. I don't accept that. I don't accept that. I don't want to live in that world. I don't want to be part of that project." (30:06)
• On protest and discomfort:
  • Coates: "Protest is really just historically... messy. People say things that are inconvenient and do things that people... wish they had not." (53:11)
• On the role of the writer:
  • Coates: "My job is not to make your [the president's] job easier. My job is not to ... endorse your moral failings. Even if I understand how they happened or why they happened... I'm just kind of an operative for the state. Like, I'm not writing anymore at that point." (30:32)
• On wisdom vs. intellect:
  • Coates: “We overrate intellect and underrate wisdom.” (15:42)
• On American exceptionalism and violence:
  • Coates: “We have infinite power to inflict violence at virtually anywhere, at any point, and we kind of do it. And I don't think that's great.” (01:31, 35:40)
• On empathy and solidarity:
  • Coates: “The best of us have always, always been concerned beyond ourselves.” (43:46)
• On celebrity:
  • Coates: “If you are happy in your life... don't ever become famous. Ever, ever. Because it’s a tremendously disruptive experience.” (62:00)
• On why protest matters:
  • Coates: “I actually think the fact that this [Palestine] is central right now in the Democratic Party's politics, I don't think you can separate it from the protest movement.” (51:44)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------| | 01:31–02:45 | On the scope and inherent violence of U.S. empire | | 03:48–04:09 | Why invoking King/Hamer without system change is hollow| | 09:13–13:17 | The emotional/communal impact of Coates's recent book | | 14:25–15:42 | “Walking the land,” intellect vs. wisdom | | 19:21–20:39 | On American “good intentions” abroad | | 21:07–22:41 | Trump’s truth-telling, American innocence | | 25:07–26:22 | States’ rights/existence and force vs. morality | | 28:30–32:51 | Can a president be moral? Obama, structural limitations| | 35:40–39:31 | Definition of empire, American military reach | | 42:27–44:32 | What is the Black American dream? Struggle for more | | 45:21–47:47 | On asking marginalized Americans to prioritize politics over suffering elsewhere | | 53:06–54:42 | Movement messiness, lessons from antiwar activism | | 56:25–61:33 | Voter apathy, pragmatism, and the dangers of tribalism| | 62:00–64:39 | On fame, celebrity, and authenticity as a writer | | 67:06–72:19 | Curiosity, empathy, and global Black identity |

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

The episode is incisive, searching, and rich with moral seriousness—colored by both Coates’s lived experience and Minhaj’s humor and candor. The conversation blends sharp social analysis with a sincere exploration of conscience, community, and a refusal to treat violence or injustice as natural. Coates urges listeners—and the country—not to settle for survival, careerist advancement, or narrow group loyalty, but to remain open, self-critical, and oriented toward justice beyond one’s own tribe.

For listeners and readers alike, this episode is a clarifying call: to see clearly, care widely, and refuse the easy or cynical answers about power, identity, and what is possible in our collective social and political life.

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Transcript

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Lemonade.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Donald Trump asked RFK Jr. Recently why he wasn't doing more to prove a link between vaccines and autism. Trump apparently wants to reduce the overall number of shots recommended for children. Now I just think once you're in the Epstein files, you don't get to decide what's best for kids. But that's just me. I read about this story on Ground News, our podcast's favorite independent news platform. Ground News shows you all of the publications reporting on a specific story, including breakdowns on the political leanings, typical factuality, and ownings of each news source. It's not about completely eliminating bias, but it does help you be a more informed consumer of the news, factoring in potential biases with your analysis. With this story, I noticed that the right leaning publications emphasize that autism is on the rise. Subscribe to Ground News today. Use the link in the description or head to groundnews.com hasan to subscribe and get 40% off the unlimited Access Vantage plan, the same one that we use here at HMDK. That's groundnews.com Hussan to keep media trans transparent, support comes from wise the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe Fed up with losing out to hidden fees when you send money abroad with your everyday bank? Choose the smart way Wise. You can count on the exchange rate you'd usually get on Google. No unwelcome surprises. Plus, ditch that where's my money feeling. Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart, Get WISE. Visit wise.com, ts and Cs apply.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

We have infinite power to inflict violence at virtually anywhere, at any point, and we kind of do it. And I don't think that's great.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Ladies and gentlemen, Ta Nehisi Coates is a public intellectual, which is different than a pundit. Public intellectuals are like organic farmers, improving the seeds, tilling the soil season after season until they finally harvest that perfect, perfect batch of tomatoes and take it to market. Pundits are Benihana chefs. They're chopping up the same fried rice every day for families of five, doing that dumb onion choo choo train trick over and over again, throwing shit in their hat. It's a volume business. That's why when Ta Nehisi releases a new book or new article, I pay attention, because it means he has something new to say. This is someone who took big, heady concepts like structural racism and race as a political construction and made it accessible to a broad audience. He moved the culture. And whenever I read his work, I learn something new. So when his most recent article dropped, titled the Next Black President for Vanity Fair, I wanted to get him on the show to talk about it. Essentially, it's about the contradiction of a black presidency, which, in his words, owes its power to a movement against racist state violence at home, but seeks an office which has always practiced racist state violence abroad. And he uses the 2024 DNC as a perfect distillation of this. Kamala Harris and the party supporting her were invoking the names of female civil rights icons like Fannie Lou Hamer and Coretta Scott King, while preventing even a single Palestinian American from having their voice heard at the convention. But ironically, 60 years earlier, both of those women were being ostracized by Democrats for speaking out against another case of American sponsored violence overseas, talking about the Vietnam War. Now, at that time, on the eve of the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act, speaking out on Vietnam was not popular in the movement. It made Fannie Lou Hamer an enemy of Lyndon B. Johnson, and it got Coretta Scott King in trouble with her husband's own organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But they did it and spoke out anyway, because they saw justice as a single connected struggle and rejected a survivalist democracy that asks you to protect one group at home while destroying another abroad. So I sat down with Ta Nehisi Coates to talk about the thesis of his latest piece.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

If you want to say that the endpoint of our dream of our struggle, you know, is simply to, you know, get us in, you know, positions of power, to integrate us into the machine and to not, you know, change the machine. Then don't talk about Fannie Lou Hamer. Don't talk about Dr. Martin Luther King. That wasn't what their lives were about.

[Osama Al Sharif]

The difference between intelligence and wisdom.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

There is no quality in American intellectual life that is more overrated than intellect itself.

[Osama Al Sharif]

And we talked about the inherent violence of empire and whether Americans can shift their country in a different direction.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

How long are we gonna go on with this, man? Like, is this gonna be every presidency after every presidency, and then each one makes some sort of excuse for why we have to do this. I just. I don't wanna be part of that project.

[Osama Al Sharif]

To be clear, I was on my best behavior for this interview. I didn't go on a single tangent about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Cowabunga. It was hard, but I managed.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

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[Osama Al Sharif]

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[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

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[Osama Al Sharif]

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[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

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[Osama Al Sharif]

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[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

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[Osama Al Sharif]

Explore the full Defender lineup@land roverusa.com parent In 2015, you released between the World and Me. And I'm gonna say this. You don't have to say this. I think you became a rock star in intellectual circles. Again, this is me saying it.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I'll take it.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Okay. But people, and specifically people in liberal circles, loved you for your moral clarity. Fast forward approximately nine years. In 2024, you write the book, the message. How did you make sense of the reactions to. In 2015, you articulate a pretty clear domestic moral clarity. And in 2024, you articulated a foreign policy moral clarity. But how did you make sense of these disparate reactions?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

It's tough for me to answer that, and I'll tell you why. I have given up on trying to understand other people's reaction to me and my work. And I don't say that, like, out of anger or out of disgust or anything like that. It's just impossible for me to see. It's very hard when you're in it, to understand, like, what is going on around you, especially, frankly, given the level of reaction both to between the World and me and to the message. It's very, very difficult because my experience of those books are almost certainly different than what it looks like to somebody watching the experience. I mean, I can start with the message. Right. Most people's experience of that book probably begins with my interview on cbs. Right. I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the COVID off the book, the publishing house goes away. The content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. Yeah, that was a contentious interview, but I expected it to be contentious. There's no way in the world I was gonna say what I was gonna say and then not Be contentious. But what I remember about that is not so much the media. I remember that in every city we went to, almost, we tried to, we would have these very, very private meetings with the Palestinian American community in those cities. And that is what I remember. And my experience at that is people cooking. You know what I mean? Like the food, hospitality. To be that person. No, no, no.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Hospitality.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

The incredible food.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yes, yes. Yeah.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

You know, God, there is this upside down chicken dish that Palestinians do with the rice. And I know the name of it, but I don't want to mispronounce it, so I'm not gonna say it's incredible, you know, but, like, that's my memory. Like, people and like having these deep conversations because Gaza is happening, you know, and being in these intimate spaces that people welcome me into.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yes.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

And so, like, when I think about the message and I think about, like, the reception to, like, I have this incredible warmth. Like, I actually don't have a contentious memory of it, which is weird.

[Osama Al Sharif]

What you're describing is the warmth that you feel from people.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yes.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Outside of this. This kind of like, oh, my God, media kind of whirlwind that's happening.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah. Like, I. Like, you have to understand, like, there's a thing that happens at distance that people see. Right?

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yes.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

But then there's like your everyday experience. And my everyday experience was one of tremendous, overwhelming gratitude for that book. Like, that's what I think about. I don't, you know, like, I know the fights happened. Right. And I know the reviews happened. But like me, in terms of what I saw and what I felt was a lot of. Oh, my God. Thank you.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Can I tell you what many people in the Muslim community specifically felt?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, please.

[Osama Al Sharif]

We were talking off camera about this. My father was born 1950, but he's. He very much is a byproduct of what happened in the world post 1948.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Right.

[Osama Al Sharif]

One of the things my dad has told me repeatedly and when he read your book is he just couldn't believe, number one, that you cared, and number two, that someone as prominent as you, the Ta Nehisi Coates, is basically taking this, what was normally almost like a fringe issue that is talked about inside of mosques across America and the world, and you made it a top 40 mainstream record. Do you understand what I'm saying? That you centered this conversation that was for the longest time basically relegated to the fringes and the. The corners of masjids across the country essentially is.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I mean, in that outpouring of love is. It was. It was an Articulation of. So you saw this, you're seeing this and you're validating.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah. And from my perspective, if you believe that I was sincere in what I wrote, in between the World and Me, if you believe that the output of my work was sincere, it necessarily had to lead to this, you know, now I get it. People write things all the time and may or may not be, you know, sincere, but for me, this was like pretty obvious. Like, it was like where I was supposed to go, where I had to go. And after I saw what I saw, what I had to write was pretty clear. I get that. And that's the reaction I've gotten. And again, like, because I, you know, I wake up with myself and I go to bed with myself every night, you know, my wife too, but you know what I mean, I live with myself. What I'm saying is my experience, my day to day experience is like my own conscience, my community, my wife, my kids, my friends. And like, there are certain morals and certain ethics that exist in this private world. And anybody who could see that would say, of course he did that. Of course. Of course any of us would. Yeah, you know, like, that would like, this is what you. This is what is demanded of you. This is what has to happen. And so again, I mean, I think where you started off is actually, you know, quite correct because from the perspective of, if you take the metaphor of the rock star, it obscures that person's private life. It obscures that person's private existence. They become a symbol of something. But there's a person inside of that, right? Yeah.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Outside of that Avatar.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yes, of that Avatar. Celebrity. Exactly. And so that person, you know, is. Is me. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, the message is what, you know, just what had to happen. I enjoyed the reception to the message much more than I enjoyed the reception to between the World and Me.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Really?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Oh, yeah, yeah, I did, I did, I did. Because between the World and Me was a surprise. Like, I didn't. Like, I had like, people reaching out to me and trying to get in touch with me and people upset about the book in ways that I just did not predict. But with the message, I kind of was like, okay, I know what this is in American life. The reaction is gonna be crazy and I kinda don't care. Like, I really, really didn't. What I cared about was those small, intimate, personal, human moments. Yes. I mean, so much happened, man. It's like, and I guess I can say this now, I had at my house, maybe November of 23, I was still working on a book. And, you know, we had a group of Palestinian Americans and black journalists that came together, you know what I mean, in a very, very private space. It's my house. And just had this conversation about what was happening, what was coming, what was going to be. That's what mattered. Like those moments that never, I mean, they necessarily have to be away from camera. But I think a large part of what's wrong with our discourse right now is there is something that is being modeled as experience, as a human experience that involves a lot of people yelling at each other, a lot of conflict.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

But there are things that happen beneath the surface that if you're living a certain way, like that becomes your experience. It's a lot easier to live that way. Yeah, it's a lot easier.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I think one of the things I just wanted to piggyback off of what you're saying. This passage that you wrote in the Message has resonated with me. The moment I read it, it stayed with me. And I've gone back and revisited it repeatedly. And I think it doesn't just apply Palestine or current political discourse in America, but is this idea of walking the land. You're bridging two ideas here. You obviously talk about going to Dakar, but also going to the occupied territories. But if you don't mind, I'd like to read this passage to you and we could unpack it.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

My guest, please.

[Osama Al Sharif]

You talk about walking the land. You say you have to walk the land. You have to see the elevation for yourself, the color of the soil. You have to discover that the ravine is really a valley and that the stream is in fact a river winding south from a glacier in the mountains. You can't know any of this beforehand, logic your way through it, or retreat to your innate genius. A belief in genius is a large part of what plagues us. And I have found that people widely praised for the power of their intellect are as likely to illuminate as they are to confound. Genius may or may not help a writer whose job is above all else to clarify.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, I found that out the hard way.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Have you seen this up close with your quote unquote, intelligent friends trying to logic their way through arguments? Because I feel like what you wrote here is kind of, for lack of a better term, a low key diss at 99.9% of American discourse? I mean, really.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, no, it is. I have a number of. Frankly, I don't have any friends like that, which is fortunate.

[Osama Al Sharif]

That's great.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I certainly have had colleagues like that, and I certainly have had, you know, people who are kind of. I guess certainly there are people in media like that. Let me put it like that. Let me say it. The best of my colleagues weren't like that, but certainly in media. Yes. I mean, I think there is no quality in American intellectual life that is more overrated than intellect itself, or what we consider intellect or what we say intellect is.

[Osama Al Sharif]

What do you mean by that?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

People are in love with, like, the idea of being able to process things really fast, which is great. Like, that's a good thing, you know, It's a good thing. Right. But being able to sit back with things, being able to consider things, being able to take some time to reach some conclusions. I think we overrate intellect and we underrate wisdom.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Why do people confuse intellect with wisdom?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I don't know. I don't know, actually. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. But there's a lot of talk about, you know, genius, right? And, like, look, I've told this story before, but I mean, for me, like, Palestine is like the great exhibit of this. I was a kid and I've tried to think back on what would have been happening, but, you know, like, my parents would watch at that point, like, the nightly news, right? And we watch the local news and the nightly news every night. And I can remember in my house there was this discourse which vaguely hinted at the notion that. Or not hinted at, but articulated that. But to our eyes, the Israelis were white and the Palestinians were black. I don't mean literally. I mean, like in, like, how we arranged our systems of justice. Who was oppressed, who was not, who was oppressed, or just power structures. Power structures, yes. And race was power for us. Race is power, you know what I mean? So that's not literally black and not literally white, but as power.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Right.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

And I went out into the world and, like, I pretty much rejected that as a way of looking at the world. That's too simple. You know what I mean? That's not. You know what I mean? That's not sophisticated.

[Osama Al Sharif]

The world is a complex place.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

The world's a complex place.

[Osama Al Sharif]

It's a complicated.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yes. And I grew up around people who, you know, like myself, were not particularly well traveled, you know what I mean? Had not seen much of the world. And what I found was that, in fact, they were well traveled, actually, which is to say they had faced a complexity of humanity, that people who, quote, unquote, were more well traveled, who were more intellectual, as we recognize it in standard Forms who were smarter as we recognize them in standard forms. But their intellect was ultimately a cover for really, really awful things. And what I eventually discovered was, in fact, the basic morality that I had grown up with and the basic wisdom that I had grown up with actually probably had more to say about the world. You know what I mean?

[Osama Al Sharif]

What do you mean by that? You mean. Just that, the fact that you're saying I'm coming at this issue with an open heart and with a level of human. I'm not trying to intellectualize or justify this. I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, exactly. I think you can use your intellect to illuminate, and I think you can use your intellect to cover. I think you can make people think, you know what I mean, that they don't understand certain things. You can talk really fast, you know, you can breeze over things. You can overcomplicate stuff. You know, I've said this. And I said this to you, you know, when we were talking, I could have dropped anybody from the neighborhood that I grew up in, in West Baltimore, on the west bank, and in two days they would have understood the lack of justice. Like, they don't need to do, you know, all of this sort of, you know, let me. Do I, you know, do I have a Ph.D. as I've said in Middle East. They didn't need any of that. They didn't need any of that.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I mean, you've talked about this many times before, but this idea of, and I hear it in both media circles, but academic circles, quote, it's complicated. But you've said this. Just, you've hit it with that punchline.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I mean, look, there are aspects that are complicated, but not the aspects that they tell you are complicated. Like, the basic morality of it is not complicated and rarely is what you do is often complicated. But the basic morality of what is right and what is wrong, no, I don't think is. You know, I have found it rarely to be complicated. Solutions are. You know what I mean? And I don't. You know what I mean? I don't mean to reduce that, but is it right to do X, Y and Z or not? I don't find that to be particularly complicated.

[Osama Al Sharif]

We hear this argument oftentimes where, sure, America does bad things in the world, but fundamentally America has good intentions. How do you make sense of that?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I used to kind of think that.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Really?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, kind of. I mean, I think I had a vague belief that when bad things happen, it's usually by accident or whatever in the World. When America does bad things in the world, it's usually by accident or. Which is bad enough.

[Osama Al Sharif]

But how did you. You felt that way even growing up as a. Like, just as a black dude in Baltimore, you felt that way?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I kind of, like, had a vague, like, sense of that. Yeah, yeah. Because even as, you know, you're growing up with your politics, they're like, you don't really know the world. And the projection of American power is so strong. And again, like, I think part of it was as I was becoming a writer again, I'm like, well, you know what I mean? There's an innate skepticism that I think all black people have of how America acts in the world, but what the hell, you know, you've never been to Iraq. What do you know? You know what I mean? Like, that's how you kind of feel about it. And then you get out in the world and you see, like. Well, actually, the na. Skepticism was correct. No, we do, with great intention, very bad things around the world and have historically. And I probably could not have told you that with that kind of confidence, you know, until, you know, the past, you know, I don't know, two or three years. Not with the level of confidence and force that I feel it now.

[Osama Al Sharif]

So the reason why I love your work so much, and I think the reason why it's. It's created at times these deep discussions between people is there's. There's a level of sincerity and honesty that I think people feel in your work, which is really beautiful. But there's this clip that I revisit all the time that is from one of America's great liars telling the truth. Will I get along with them?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I have no idea. Putin's a killer.

[Osama Al Sharif]

A lot of killers get of.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

A lot, lot of killers.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Why you think our country's so innocent? How do you make sense of this clip?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

You know, Trump, he's vulgar, right? And I mean in the completest sense of the word. Like, I mean, in the most complete sense of the word, he.

[Osama Al Sharif]

But the media made a hullabaloo about, how dare he say this? How dare he make this false equivalency.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Well, I think it goes back to the question you were just asking, right? Like, that notion, we have good intentions, but sometimes we make mistakes. That is the narrative that we generally have told ourselves. I mean, both about domestic history and our history abroad also. And I think that's what the story has been. And Trump has just dispensed with it. He's just completely, completely dispensed with it. His actions abroad are not necessarily so different. Necessarily. This is not the first dumb war, you know, Certainly not, you know, Iraq was certainly, you know, another one. But the lack of a need to dress it, you know, in this kind of, hey, we actually are the good guys here. Yeah, that's like, you know, like, occasionally he'll do it, but he has no commitment to it at all. Like, none.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Right. So you believe we can go in and take the oil?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

We should have taken the oil. They have among the largest oil reserves in the world.

[Osama Al Sharif]

If it were up to me, I'd take the oil, I'd keep the oil,

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

and we'd make plenty of money, you know, and.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yes, but don't you think the media's reaction to it, and specifically, even liberal

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

media, they believe it. How could he say that? Yeah, they believe it. Like, I mean, and look, you know, I. I think most of us sincerely believe it, too. I don't even know that folks are lying. You know, I think there is a way in which you can tell yourself or have a certain kind of vocabulary. And I've seen it now, and you say it over and over and over and over again, and you just come to believe it, or the things you just accept about the world, you know what I mean? And you just come particularly, you know, if, you know, certain things about your life become dependent on those ideas, you know, and you just kind of accept them. And so the idea that somebody would just sort of, you know, say things, I also don't think we understand even now, like, less so maybe now than it was 20 years ago, but how much constraint there is around what is said and what is not said, you know, and so that can very, very easily become your world, you know.

[Osama Al Sharif]

What do you mean by that?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Well, I'll take it out of my own experience. When Barack Obama first started running for president, there were very, very few black journalists actually writing about him at major publications. And if you look at how he was talked about at the time, you can see, like, you can tell it. Like I recall, for instance, people were confused by the fact that he had a white mother and he would so forcefully call himself black. You know what I mean? Like, they didn't understand why anybody had done that. And you could tell that these were people who had no experience with how biraciality actually works in the black community. It was evident that that was the case, you know what I mean? And a friend of mine, Nicole Hannah Jones, who was writing about this, said very clearly she's biracial and she Refers to herself in YCC would never call herself biracial because what she would tell you is, look, I have two choices in this world about how I can identify even though my mom is white, I can be black or I can be biracial, I can never be white. These things are not equal. These things are not equal. And the folks writing about Barack, that had never occurred to them. You understand what I'm saying?

[Osama Al Sharif]

That is a very real lived reality. Punchline.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

That is exactly it. And you have to have had conversations, you know, in your community about that.

[Osama Al Sharif]

There is no option C here.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Right, right, right. And you have had to have reflected about that. Right. Our writing. And that sort of observation is not so different than until very recently because I think this is changing a little bit what the conversation around Israel, Palestine is. And thus probably, I would argue, what our conversation about the world is, period.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Well, well, so let's talk about that moment you had in the CBS interview. Just that idea of do states have a right to exist?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I think the question is central and key. If Israel has a right to exist. And if your answer is no, then I guess the question becomes why do the Palestinians have a right to exist? Why do 20 different Muslim countries have a right to. My answer is that no country in this world establishes its ability to exist through rights. Countries establish their ability to exist through force, as America did.

[Osama Al Sharif]

We talk about good guys and bad guys, good states and bad stakes.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Ta Nehisi, I just wanted to ask you because I've struggled with this. Can a state behave morally?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Well, let me back up a little bit and say they are probably not good states. And probably the construction of a state is amoral. You know, certainly you probably can maybe assemble enough moral force among a group of people that a state is constructed to protect, to make the state act morally. Sometimes. But I think it's hard. I think it's hard. I think states are designed to protect the interests of, in the best case, the majority of people that the state alleges to represent. Sometimes that's not even true. Oftentimes that's not even true.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I mean, the closest analogy that I found was and, and I'm wrong. The. It's not mapping perfectly, which is for me, I found states are almost like a business.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah. I mean, I think that's about right.

[Osama Al Sharif]

You know, and a business can be ran by some great owners.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Right.

[Osama Al Sharif]

You know, you can have a great manager that's well intentioned and wants to, you know, give you a pay bump and.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

But the business is designed to make profit.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Exactly.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

That's the structure. Yeah, that's the structure. And so, like, I think that's actually a great example because I think enough times, like, if you and I sit in this room and we say to each other over and over again, israel has the right to exist. Israel has the right to defend itself, and whatever other, you know, talking points there would be around that. And we never consider questions outside this room. We can actually convince ourselves that that is the universe of questions and possibilities. Not to mention, if we have a group of people in and that is the dialogue that they have with themselves, and they never step outside the room where questions like, why are we concerned about the rights of states and not the rights of people exist? You never ask that question because you're in the room. Right. And I will tell you the best thing about going over there is that it was a whole universe of other questions to be asked, you know, and so when I came back and, you know, I, you know, was in that interview, it was. I had great difficulty for that question because I was like, why? This is totally irrelevant to me. Like, I am not concerned with states. You know what I mean? I'm concerned with people. And to the extent that states can protect, can ensure the health, can ensure the welfare of people, yes, I'm in favor. To the extent that they can ensure the equal treatment of people's, yes, I'm in favor of. To the extent that they cannot, I don't care. The state is a tool and that's it. People and life is what matters to me, you know? You know, and I feel like that about all states, you know, like, it's not a particular thing, but I just think, like, the world of journalism is probably more closed than I thought it was, and I did not know that. That's been a revelation for me, you know, from over the past four or five years or so.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I want to talk about your latest Vanity Fair piece. It's called the Next Black President. One of the things you grapple with is the paradox of the presidency. I really love this quote. Let's take a look at it. A black presidency is a contradiction. It owes its power to a movement against racial state violence at home, but seeks an office which has always practiced racist state violence abroad. Do you feel like Barack Obama could have pursued a more moral foreign policy as president, or was he too constrained by what the quote, unquote duty of what the American presidency is?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I think absolutely. He absolutely could have pursued a more moral foreign policy. I mean, he says this himself. Libya, you Know what I mean? Like, that's. That's the obvious one.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah. You know, or Yemen for me. I was like, did he have to.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, that's what I was like.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Did he have to use cluster bombs?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's. Look, I just. I don't. I don't. There are people in this world who will tell you, look, there is no version of this in which we don't do this kind of violence to people. If there's a difference between who I was around the time of. Between the world and me and who I am now, I just don't extend that level of trust to people when they say those things anymore. It's not that I can sit here and tell you why that's not true, but I guess I just feel like they aren't necessarily to be believed.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Is it because you feel the paradox of power in institutions of, like. I know you're saying that, but it's

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

because I've just talked to too many people that live under the weight of it. I have much more contact now than I did before with people who live under the weight of it. And I just. I cannot accept that. There's no other way. I can't accept it. There's no other way except, you know, every now and then, somebody's wedding party gets bombed. I don't accept that. I don't accept that. I don't wanna live in that world. I don't wanna be part of. I don't wanna be a writer who accepts that. I don't wanna be a writer who goes around justifying that.

[Osama Al Sharif]

You mean a writer that accepts America's collateral damage. You're like, I don't wanna.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I won't accept that. I won't accept that. And it's not my job as a writer to accept that. Now, it may be true that on some level, if you aspire to be president of the United States, you have to accept some of that. That might theoretically be true, but my job is not to make your job easier. Like, my job is not to. You know what I mean, endorse your moral failings. Even if I understand how they happened or why they happened. Like, what good am I then? I'm just kind of an operative for the state for the state. Like, I'm not writing anymore at that point. There are plenty. There are enough people who are going to do that. That's not my job.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Are you basically saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're almost saying, look, there is a group of people within that power structure that will always co sign. Hey, it has to be this way or, hey, our hands are gonna get dirty every once in a while.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Let me make it easier too. Let me make sure I'm being as rigorous as I possibly can on this. There are people who, in 1830, very intelligent people would have said, we cannot abolish slavery. If we abolish slavery, this country will collapse, there will be chaos. God knows what will happen. Logically, like, there's an argument for what they're saying. Yeah, I would never argue that. I would never argue that. Because what I would argue is slavery is so immoral that you just can't sit here like, you just. There's just no option to pursue this path. You know, it's just so. It's that wrong. And I guess, like, when you highlight Yemen as you just did, what I think about is not just Barack Obama. I think about that for what, 75 years? Like, how long are we gonna make war in the Middle East? How long are we gonna do this? Like, how long? I think about, like, you know, Iran all the time. It's like, I don't think, and I don't mean this in any sort of disrespectful way because people have lives and they have things they have to do, but I don't think people understand, like, between Iraq and Iran, like, how much war making we've done over there, like how violent our presence has been over there and how in, you know, in certain cases, how anti Democratic our presence has actually been. How long are we gonna go on with this man? Like, is this gonna be every presidency after every presidency, and then each one makes some sort of excuse for why we have to do this. I just, I don't wanna be part of that project.

[Osama Al Sharif]

You articulate that frustration in this next quote. You say for reasons moral, pragmatic, and perhaps mostly ancestral, the next black presidency will have to think bigger. To its list of adversaries, which include a renewed white supremacy, a rapacious billionaire class, and energetic Christian nationalism, it must add another, perhaps more formidable than them all, empire.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, and I guess, and maybe I'm being presumptuous here, I don't want my struggle and my people, and that's the ancestral part, is I don't want them tied to this. And I guess one of the things that motivated me writing that piece was not just necessarily what I saw at the DNC with Kamala Harris, but it is the fact that we had Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama, Susan Rice, and then Kamala Harris, Linda Thomas Greenfield. What you're seeing is a list of. Of African Americans who actually only exist in those spaces because of the black freedom struggle itself. That's the whole reason they're there. Right? None of them would be there if not for the sacrifices of Martin Luther King, if not for the sacrifices of Coretta Scott King, if not for the sacrifices of Fannie Lou Hamer. What did they say we were supposed to do? Who did they imagine us being once we got into those roles? And I don't think they imagined us. In fact, I know, because they said it as people that would justify dropping bombs on people who are weaker than us. Like, that just, to me, is a very, very clear thing. And I guess I feel like. Because it's all. Honestly, I struggled with this. I struggled with, like, where we started this interview, this idea that as a writer I would have a certain status. And then I got to a point of acceptance where I realized, okay, well, this is not up to me, you know, so if I have the mic, if this is what it's going to be, as loudly as I possibly can say, I want to say that we are not down with this, that you do not represent all of us. Yes, you represent some of us. You know what I mean? But you do not represent all of us. And you certainly don't represent the best of us. And we need you to represent the best of us. I want you to represent the best of us. I don't believe that a struggle with its roots against human enslavement ends like this.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Right.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Like, I just can't. Maybe it does. Maybe I'm wrong. Like, maybe it does. But I don't. I don't. I won't. I won't personally accept that. I won't.

[Osama Al Sharif]

When we talk about Empire. And I don't want to do it the way people talk about it on the Internet. I'm not talking about Star Wars, Empire, Dune, Empire, Empire on Fox. What is your definition of what this word capital E empire means?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

To me, it means the fact that we have. And I don't have the number on me right now, but we have X number. I don't know if it's 400, 500 military bases around the world. And I think if you combine the forward military bases outside of the United States, of every other country, you would probably not get above, like, 20. Yeah. We have infinite power to inflict violence at virtually anywhere, at any point, and we kind of do it. And I don't think that's great. You know, we find reasons to do it. You know, we tell ourselves we're being thoughtful about it, but I just. I just. I don't think that's great.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I felt the same way. I recently had Senator Mark Kelly on the show. Former astronaut, Navy pilot. But he talked about this idea of America's positioning in the world. There was a moment in the interview that stuck with me. I haven't been able to articulate how exactly I feel about it, but I'd love to share it with you.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Sure.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Because it's very similar to what you're talking about right now. Let's take a look. Since World War II, so for 80 years, we have been very fortunate that we get to set a lot of the conditions. And I strongly believe that we have done a lot of positive things in the world. We've supported other countries. We stopped famine. Look what George W. Bush did with pepfar. We've saved people's lives. One of the benefits we also get from being the leader of the free world, NATO, our Asian allies, allies in the Gulf, is we have benefited economically from having that as the conditions. Why would you want to give that up?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

So there's a great film soundtrack to a coup d' etat by a Belgian filmmaker that everybody should see. It's about the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. And it is one thing to watch that film, which is incredible. It's about America's complicity and to a certain extent, how it used black American artists to conceal that. It is one thing to watch that film and be horrified. It is another thing to meet people for whom Patrice Lumumba is not a symbol. It was, you know, their parents elected leader, and he was overthrown, killed in the worst possible way. It is one thing to theoretically hear about how bad war in Iraq was. It is another thing to actually know people. And so, like, That's a nice story. You know, that's a nice story. But can I actually tell that story to the people who have lived under our weight? Right. Can I tell that story to the people that lived under Pinochet? Yeah. Can I tell that story to the people that are being choked off in Cuba right now? Can I say that

[Osama Al Sharif]

the part that stuck with me that was a bit chilling was we have been very fortunate that we get to set a lot of those conditions. But I think a key part of that sentence that was missing was as a byproduct of violence or the threat of violence.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

That's right. There's no nonviolent way that that happens. There's no nonviolent way to die. A lot of people die. A lot of people get killed, you know, and we don't even. It's so much so that, like, it escapes us. And I just. I don't want to stand up here and feel like I'm preaching to people. It has escaped me, you know, I have not always been, you know, cognizant of just, you know, the extent to which, you know, just going, like, the hard thing about writing that article on common lines, like, there's a section in there where, you know, I go through, like, all of the 20th century violence that we've done.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

And, like, boiling it down was actually hard. It's actually extremely, extremely difficult just to

[Osama Al Sharif]

meet the word count.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Like, you're like, man, there's so much.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Right, right, right.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I mean, just in the 20th century, I mean, you just start from Eisenhower to. It is so much. From Eisenhower just to Obama. It is so much.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Well, how did you feel when Kamala Harris was on stage at the DNC and she said, we have the most lethal fighting force in the world? As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

fighting force in the world. Not great. Not great. And let me. Let me give the other side of that before I give my. The other side of that is this is a black woman who is carrying all the weight that black women carry in this country, aspiring to lead the country with all the doubts and all the skepticism and all the racism and all of the misogyny. So I understand how you end up having to make that statement or feeling like you have to make that statement. I get it. And yet. And still, when she said that, I was actually outside, and I was outside with a group of uncommitted delegates who at that moment were in the midst of a sit in because they had been denied the right to speak and address the convention. There had not been an Arab American speaker since 1988. And so, like, the people I was with, like, the question you have to ask is, lethal military or lethal armed forces? Who's on the other side of that? Right. Because it's not just lethal. And then just held here. Right. Who historically has been on the other side of that? And so here I am outside with people, you know what I mean, whose families are at that very moment on the other side of it, by the way, you know, and so I didn't feel great. I don't. And I have to, like, really be at pains to say this, Right. Because I think now that I think I know Kamala Harris represents The fruition, the hopes and dreams, you know, of a lot of black women, you know, who have struggled mightily in this country. And I really, really want to be maybe even more than, you know, respectful of Kamala Harris herself. I want to be respectful of the struggle that made her possible. I don't want to be disrespectful of her, but I'm saying I have just tremendous respect and admiration for the struggle and yet. And for the weight, you know what I mean, that was put on her. And yet, look, I get it. It's heavy. It's heavy. But why are we here, you know, are we here to just act like white men have acted every time before?

[Osama Al Sharif]

So. So.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

And if so, like, what am I. I don't know what I'm doing.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Well. Well, I've struggled with this as well, because I'm a child of immigrants. You're a black American. Your. Your. Your history, your roots is this country. I get asked this all the time, and I don't know what the answer is. What is our American dream? But what is that moment with Kamala Harris on stage? She represents the confluence of the struggle at the highest echelon. What is the black American dream? What is it?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I'm not the person to ask that anymore. I don't. I can tell you what the struggle means to me.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Sure.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

And the struggle means to me. Not just that we would get the boot off an hour next, but that we would destroy the boot, that this would not happen to other people. And I don't think I'm out on a limb on that. Like, I think that's always been the content of our struggle, has always been that it's been bigger than us. That's been the fact of it. It is not the case that the civil rights movement just benefited black Americans themselves. It is not the case that Dr. Martin Luther King, when he saw what was going on in Vietnam, said, well, I just need to shut up and just make sure my people were okay. It is not the case that Fannie Lou Hamer was only concerned about Mississippi. It's not the case that W.E.B. du Bois was not concerned about the world. It is not the case that James Baldwin went over to Israel and was like, well, I can't talk about this because I'm only concerned about my people. What I'm trying to say is the best of us have always, always been concerned beyond ourselves. And so I don't really know how to be any different. And to the extent that I say that, that is the weight that she has to carry. If you want to say that the endpoint of our dream, of our struggle is simply to get us in positions of power, to integrate us into the machine and to not change the machine, then don't talk about Fannie Lou Hamer. Don't talk about Dr. Martin Luther King, you know, because that wasn't what their lives were about. You know what I mean? If this is just mere pragmatic interest group struggle and that's it, if it's a narrow kind of nationalism, if that's all we're concerned about, then you know what I mean? Those are the struggles and the peoples that we should model ourselves after. But that's not my struggle. That's not my fight.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I've always had, man, I've always had deep empathy for people, specifically in immigrant communities, because you spend your whole life, you see your. Your parents, family members, aunties, uncles, just playing survival ball. Not to jump metaphors, make it about sports, but you know how when you're just on defense, it's just survival. We're just trying to get to the end of the game. So the very idea of thinking about systems, changing systems and changing systems abroad is a fantasy.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, it's.

[Osama Al Sharif]

It's inconceivable. That's the only way I've been able to make sense of all of the. Talk about Kamala Harris's shortcomings in regards to this.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah. And I think that's true. Look, I think that's true. I mean, I.

[Osama Al Sharif]

For a lot of black voters, people that I'm friends of mine.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yes.

[Osama Al Sharif]

That are disregarding the Gaza issue.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

That's right.

[Osama Al Sharif]

They see so much of. Do you understand, for decades we were playing survival ball, and now you want her to completely change the game.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Right? Yes. Yes, I do. Yes. And yes, I do. I do. And I'll say two things. One thing, there is one issue which is your vote. Right. Like, that's one issue. Okay. But whether you vote for her and whether you supported her to become president, that is not, therefore, a license to just join the cheering section and to never, you know, have to engage with, like, the politics of the world and the politics of what the presidency does itself. In other words, you can be a voter, but you don't have to be a fan. You know what I mean? And even as a fan, you know what I mean, you don't have to cheerlead everything that happens after that. I feel that one of the unfortunate things that happens because of maybe the nature of elections and the way media coverage works is we think that Politics is strictly a matter of, of who you cast your vote for. And I just reject that. You know what I mean? So you can have a political strategy. And I guess this was my argument myself, was that, look, the world's a worse place with Trump as president. And I felt that and I believed that at the time. You know what I mean? But I don't accept that because I believe that and think that and that my vote will reflect that. That means that I have to co sign everything that the person I'm voting for does and that I can't loudly say this is wrong.

[Osama Al Sharif]

How did you make sense? And what do you. Of the people that blame those undecided voters or those voters who decided to not vote for Harris because of Gaza, there you hear they get blamed for the outcome of the election.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Listen, again, like, I think, like, I'm just going back to something that, you know, we have said in this interview, like, if you are someone who can go before a family who has to take calls to hear about their aunts, their cousins, their grandmothers bombed and buried under rubble and killed and tell them you now have to vote for a member of the administration that is making that possible, that is literally killing your family, then that's you. That's not me, and that's not who I want to be. And what I would submit to you is that at the moment that you are asking people who are actively enduring a genocide to support a member of the administration that is making that genocide possible, you're telling them that it all depends on them. And you can't promise them that when that person comes in that that person is going to stop killing their family. If that's what your struggle hinged on, then I question the nature of, and I question the justice of your entire project. Because the moment we are addressing people like that, you've lost something. Like, I feel like you kind of have lost the plot. And I get it. You get so deep into things that you can't see. But one of the things we forget, and I'm sorry I get animated about this. But you see, people have done that to us before and we didn't like it. This is not new to us. Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes in, wants to have a new deal that's gonna build the American middle class. You know, it's going to have all of these great programs. But what is the cost? The cost is that for those of us who live in northern cities, our brothers and sisters who are in the south are going to be excluded. They're going to be excluded from Social Security, going to be excluded from unemployment. Us, ourselves, we will not be able to take advantage of those housing programs. Were we down with that? Were we like, oh, well, I guess we'll just have to pay the price? No, we weren't. And I know because I wrote about it and I know what people said it down. We were not with that. We were not. Oh, well, I guess, you know, it's for the greater good and we'll get ours. No, we. He loudly opposed that. And so that we would then turn around and tell a group of people that are being wiped out, whose families are being wiped out, that they have to support it when we ourselves didn't do it. You know what I'm saying? Like Frederick Douglass loudly, loudly opposed Abraham Lincoln. You know what I mean? He loudly, loudly opposed. He pushed the whole time. And so there's an element. I don't want to say hypocrisy, because I understand how it happens. I don't think it's that deliberate. I don't think it's that opportunistic. I think people really are suffering, and I think that's a very, very real thing. And I understand it. But look, me as a guy that wrote the case for reparations, right, As a guy that actually lived in that, as a guy who talked to people who suffered under that new deal and were excluded from it and paid for it and suffered the consequence. The lesson for me is that if we get access to any sort of power, we can't do what was done to us. We need to notice. We need to notice. I just.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I don't know why that's such a revolutionary idea. The idea that one person's collateral damage can be someone else's red line. Yeah, this is my red line. This is affecting people that I know. This is affecting family members. I can't just.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I think it's. Cause the stakes were so high. And you know, like my sympathetic part of it is, yeah, I get it. Like when they. When, look, when Kamala Harris and all of them are saying, look, you are countenancing the end of democracy. I mean, it's not like I thought they were exaggerating. You know what I mean? I don't like the stakes. Really. What it stakes. It is bad. It's very, very bad. And so I get how that disrupts your ability to think about, to think beyond that.

[Osama Al Sharif]

But the thing that I can't shake is that within three very short years, the Overton window on this issue has changed. So this idea Ta Nehisi that you're talking about, I see it in your writing, and it's what I love about your writing. And it's why, to me, you're beyond a writer. You're also an artist. And the role of the artist is to question, hey, does it have to be this way? That's what's in great music. It's whether it's great film or art. It's just, hey, do I have to. Is this gravity? Do I have to accept this as gravity? And my only pushback to that is you have now seen something like AIPAC become, which was a normal thing to be accepted within the Democratic Party. It is now as divisive as the nra. And that's only a byproduct of people saying, wait a second, does it have to be this way?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Right, right. I think that's right. But when people do that, it is largely inconvenient. I met with a group of people who had, you know, they weren't part of the protests at Columbia, but they were, I should say, advisors, elder advisors. And they were so beat down and disappointed by some of the stuff that happened. And I was. And, you know, they were like, look, we failed. Our movement failed. And I was like, I'm not sure it did. You know, like, if the judgment of the movement is how many universities can we get to, you know, divest of the state that's practicing apartheid? Well, yeah, yeah. But I actually think the fact that this is central right now in the Democratic Party's politics, I don't think you can separate it from the protest movement. I don't think it would be there if not for that. I don't know that Zoro Mandani would even be mayor if not for that. And so I get it was painful. I get it was inconvenient. I get that some folks said some things that they should not have said and put things in ways that we wish they had not. But again, a lot of this is because people have this kind of halcyon, overly romantic view of what the civil rights movement was like. It wasn't messy. People didn't say and do crazy things then. Protest is really just historically.

[Osama Al Sharif]

What do you mean by messy? What do you mean specifically by that the wins and losses aren't clean or.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Oh, that people say things that are inconvenient and do things that are inconvenient and do things that people. I mean, honestly, it's in that essay when Martin Scott King comes out against the Vietnam War in 1964. 65. I think Lyndon B. Johnson at that moment is in the process of being a revolutionary president. From the perspective of civil rights, which he did, was extremely inconvenient. And some would even argue, like, impractical, tactically unwise, not smart, radical. Well, actually, like, I would be even, like, radical is a complimentary way. Oh, you be like, I'm saying, like, look, from a pragmatist perspective, but what the fuck are you doing? Like, you're hurting us. Like you are actually injuring our struggle right now. Do you know how long we have been fighting to get equal rights among the, you know, under the law for all of us. We can deal with this afterwards. Karaskar King said, nah, nah, nah. And so what I'm trying to say is people weren't happy about that. That was extremely divisive. You know what I mean? When King does it, you know, in 68, it is extremely, extremely. People are mad at him for doing that. And I think what happens is now, you know, we sit back and we look at that and we say, wow, that was. That was great. You know, courage. As though it was not messy at the time, right? You know, as though it was somehow popular at the time, even within the movement. You know, it was ACT that was actively participating.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I mean, I think we are living through a messy moment. But do you feel after those wins in the New York primary by the candidates who spoke out on Gaza, do you think that that changes the Democratic Party's calculation in the future at all?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, it has to. I mean, it just has to. It doesn't mean that it's the end. It doesn't mean, you know, that there's not still a fight to be waged. But, yeah, it is. I mean, I am of the time. I remember it wasn't that long ago that you just didn't even talk about this. It just didn't come up. I mean, it kind of didn't come up in 24, except among the delegates.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Right.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

You know, so, no, I think it's an incalculable change. And I think the problem is actually the simplicity of it. Look, it's a very, very easy question. Do you think your tax dollars. Let's include everything that happened on October 7, right? Let's include all of it. Let's include how horrified all of us were. You know what I mean by the war crimes and everything. Do you think that means that your tax dollars should go to being. To bombs being dropped? Yes or no? Yes or no? Do you think that your tax dollars should go to enforcing a System in which just taking the west bank and Gaza, you were talking about the longest occupation that we've endured. Do you think that's okay? Do you think it's okay for Palestinians on the west bank to go through one justice system and Israeli settlers there to go through another? Is that okay? Yes or no? Yes or no? Because that is the fact of it. And the problem, I think, and not an unsolvable problem for those who think, yes, it's fine, is like, you have to muddy the issue. Like, you have to, like, throw all. But when the issue is clarified, it becomes extremely difficult to defend, man. It's really, really. It's actually really, really hard to defend. It doesn't mean it won't be defended, but it's not. It's not easy.

[Osama Al Sharif]

As we enter the midterms, these four things are going to get brought up specifically in minority communities in the black community and let's call it the Democratic Party, larger establishment. But I'd love your analysis on this. So, you know, when all the ICE stuff was happening, I would hear stuff like, oh, ICE is detaining people. They're grabbing people like the Gestapo, right? Some people are even dying, right? That's their issue. It's not my issue, right? That's one bucket, right? The other bucket, you hear, and this will come up is, hey, look, neither party has done anything for me, right? Therefore, I'm going to stay my ass home, right? And number four, by staying my ass home and abstaining from voting, that is my way of punishing them. I've never found a clean way to answer all of that, but I've seen family members, friends, you know what I'm saying? Some version of this has always existed in the ether. I understand where it's coming from. As someone who acknowledges both the shittiness of the system, but the power of the individual, what would you say to those people?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Well, first of all, the idea that it's not your problem is a fallacy. You're dead wrong. When those Black Hawk helicopters on the south side of Chicago brought ICE folks into those buildings and they separated people by race, suddenly it was your problem. It was your problem. It is not the case that imperial violence remains imperial. That's just not. I hate even using those terms because it makes it sound like abstract. What I'm saying is when you normalize violence against people, it becomes easier to do violence against people, particularly against people that you've always done violence to. So that's the first thing. The second thing is there's not historically Been. I'm just speaking practically because of the way race works in America. Black immigrant communities have not, over generations, had the ability to separate themselves from black people. What I'm trying to say is you think you won't get mistaken for somebody who's Somali American? You really feel that's safe? No, I don't think any black person actually does. I think we know how this works. And so you think the kind of racist caricatures that Donald Trump and his administrations are making about that black community, you think it's not going to spread to you? You think it's a mistake that they focus so much on that? You think that has nothing to do with you? I actually know very few black people who would say, no, it doesn't. I think people get that. I don't think I'm lecturing anybody about that. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, look, this idea of both parties have screwed me over. They're not your friends. They're not even. I mean, even allies takes it too far, you know what I mean? They're tools. The tools. And your job is to figure out what tool in this particular moment reduces the most harm against me and my fellow citizens. That's it. That's the only question. That's the question. You know what I mean? And I think that's a much easier question to answer when you accept that your politics is not just your vote. Your vote is a tool. You know what I mean? Voting is, you know, it's civic hygiene. It's brushing your teeth. You know what I mean? It's not enough. You know what I mean? You don't just brush your teeth. I'm done for the day. I brush my teeth. I'm good. I don't have to do anything else. I took out the trash. I don't have to do anything else. Well, yeah, you gotta brush your teeth. You gotta take out trash. It's not sufficient.

[Osama Al Sharif]

It's the baseline.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

It's the baseline. Yeah, it's the baseline. It's the baseline. But we, like. I don't know, man, we think of these elections like it's the Civil bowl or something. It's not. It's not. It's a singular tool, you know what I mean, that you need to use. And you're a fool if you. If you don't.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah, you're right. It's more pragmatic DMV vibes than it is DMV vibe than it is. Like, you know, get over yourself. I got you.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Like, go vote and Then go do something else. You know what I mean? Like, get over yourself. So that. That's the second thing, you know, I would say. And the notion that you're punishing people, I mean, probably not. You know, probably not. You know, these people who are running for office, they're gonna, you know, be momentarily unhappy, but they're gonna collect their speaking fees and they're gonna be fine. You know, the people that are gonna suffer are gonna be people around you. And if you can divorce yourself from the notion that your voting is necessarily like a tribal statement, like that your voting is like whether you like Beyonce or not. You know what I mean? Or whether you like, you know what I mean? Or whether you're rooting for a football team, like, whether you like the giants or the 49ers. It's not that. It's not. These people are not your friends. They're not your friends. You're not gonna hang out with them.

[Osama Al Sharif]

What is your relationship and analysis with America's relationship with celebrity? That Jay will solve it. Will Smith will solve it. My favorite soccer player. Can do. Do you know what I mean? This. This.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah.

[Osama Al Sharif]

I mean, I think LeBron didn't do this. You know, why didn't he? You know, And. And it. It falls under this bucket of the power of celebrity, but also its impotence. How do you make sense of it?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I think these people command tremendous amounts of attention. I think, I guess what celebrity gives you gives you the ability to, you know, command tremendous amounts of attention. And. And we probably wish that people's morality was commensurate to the amount of attention that they commanded, but that's, I think, will probably never happen. It's deeply unnatural, as a friend of mine once said, to have that many people looking at you and analyzing your every move. Look, I don't know how any of those folks feel, but I'll tell you, I am 0.000001% as famous as any of the people you named. And I don't love it. I don't love it at all. You know, it is a deeply unnatural thing. If you are happy in your life relatively, if you like your family, if you like your friends, if you like, you know, just being a human being existing in the world, don't ever become famous. Right? Ever, ever. Because it's a tremendously, you know, disruptive, you know, experience. And I spent a lot of time where that was, like. That was, like, really upsetting to me, like, around. Between the world and me. It was just.

[Osama Al Sharif]

What part was it was upsetting for you?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Oh, man, it was everything. I mean, everything except a lot of people reading the books, you know, everything else was. There was a lot of debate around, like, what my role was and whether I was good or bad. And a lot of, you know, white people listen to Ta Nehisi and like. Ta Nehisi and what does that mean? And I just. And then, you know, internally, you know, like, you know, certainly among a community of black authors, there was like, okay, well, Ta Nehisi is getting this amount of attention, you know, is that obscuring other black authors? Just all of this shit, man. And I was like, you know, I just want to fucking write. Like, I just came here to do a job. Like, all of this other stuff, I can't. Like, I don't really have control over, you know, and Cultural zeitgeist.

[Osama Al Sharif]

What this means, what it doesn't mean.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I don't know if this is happening. Like, I didn't, you know, and I don't want to say I don't want it to happen because I did want the books to go. I wanted people to read. Everybody wants that. You know, I want people to read. But, you know, everything that came out that was larger than that, I did not particularly enjoy. And. But at a certain point, and I don't know how I got here, maybe it's just, you know, years happen. I just, you know, accepted that shit ain't up to me. It's kind of none of my business, you know, like, it really is none of my business.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah, I mean, that takes a lot of. I don't even. Self discipline, man. I don't know how you're able to be.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I don't have it.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Be in your own body and then also be out of your body.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

It's a complete. It's a practice. And. And I am, particularly when I'm under stress, like, I fail it, you know, but it is a constant discipline. The best thing about the message is that probably was the most disciplined. I was like, I had no real idea of what was happening outside, you know, when that book was coming out. You know, I had some sense of it afterwards, but I was really good, particularly during the book tour about preserving that space. And it was the happiest I ever was, you know, as a writer, you know, with some, you know, sort of public profile and.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah, that's beautiful to hear.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

That's really good. That's great. But you know what was interesting? I think the sheer level of the struggle, because I knew, like, how out there, the Palestine chapter was going to be. And I knew how ferocious the reaction was going to be to it. I was like, there's no possible way I can listen to this. It's going to destroy my mental health. I did a show and one of the reviews was actively read to me and I had not seen a review. Compaq magazine published a review with the incendiary title why Ta Nehisi Coates Hates Israel. Helen Andrews writes in part, the problem with Israel is that it shames him. How can it be that the Jews carved their Israel out of the desert and yet no place in Africa, least of all Liberia, remotely resembles Wakanda? Andrews goes on to say, jewish people, quote, overcame the hostility of the world to succeed where Garvey and co failed. That and not any resemblance to Jim Crow is the reason Coats hates Israel so bitterly. With me now to discuss all of this and more is Ta Nehisi Coates, author of the Message so. Wow, that was really racist. It was good to not know, right? Like, it was like, you should. I think, like there. One of the things I figured out is that all information is not information. You know, like, it's some things you shouldn't know.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah. Noise versus signal.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what people think of you is probably a good thing for you not to know.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah. Stay off Reddit. Stay off Reddit.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Right.

[Osama Al Sharif]

How have you maintained your level of. This is our first time meeting, but even when we were chatting off camera, what I'm surmising and what I'm feeling from you is you have still maintained your openness to the world. How have you maintained that and not closed yourself?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I don't know. I mean, I'm genuinely curious about people. You know, my baseline is as a journalist and I got into journalism because I was curious about people. I like hearing about people, you know, I liked hearing about, you know what I mean, your wife and your father in law. I liked, you know, hearing about, you know, what it means, you know, to be from a Muslim family, you know, in India, given what's happening with India. Right. Like that. That is interesting to me. It's actually quite fascinating to me. And I guess perhaps, you know, it is even more fascinating to me as I, you know, go through my own journey and understand myself as part of a broader. A broader thing in the world. Like, I'm literally interested in it, man. But look like it's not fake. It's not even.

[Osama Al Sharif]

But that's what I'm saying. But so, for example, that moment, and I know you have felt this, as a black person in this country, hey, he's not ready for the convo. So don't have the convo.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Right.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Do you understand what I'm saying?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah, no, I'm with the shit.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Like, he's not ready for the combo. So I don't have the combo. Or you teach it as one. That it's cool.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah.

[Osama Al Sharif]

How you doing, man? Do you see what I'm saying?

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I do.

[Osama Al Sharif]

You separate those two things. You don't want to do the combo, so we don't have to have the combo.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Yeah.

[Osama Al Sharif]

And the fact that you've kept yourself that open to all those convos is a really beautiful thing, man, and inspiring to me. So I just want to say thank you.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

You know what it is, though? I think part of it is in America here, because of what the force of anti blackness is here in America, you understand yourself as someone who is carrying a weight that nobody else in this country can understand. And that's true on some level. But what I have been forced with going out in the world is that a. My Americaness gives me certain privileges. And there are places in the world where that weight with a weight of anti blackness and the privilege are not just. Not equal. The privilege actually outranks it. There are places in the world like that. And that's a crazy thing to say. I did not. At the same time as I say that, you know, anti blackness is a global force. You know, we talked about, like. Like living in Paris. And I'll tell you, like, one of the most incredible things about being there is the city that people see on tv. And the city I see and the city I see is the capital of the blackest country in Europe, the most Jewish country in Europe, and the most Muslim country in Europe. And to interact with people that live under the weighted act, to interact with people who live with the complexity of that and understand my privilege as an American, because that's what they see when I walk down the street. Right. Like, I'm not seen as part of that.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Right, right.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

You know what I mean? But to, like, have my friends, to be able to talk to them about, like, the World cup and how the World cup plays into their, you know, like, their politics. Like, to be exposed to that, like, is. I don't. I don't. I mean, it's gonna sound, like, melodramatic, but I don't know how to live without that. Like, I don't. And what I mean by that is, I got a friend. And I hope this is still, like, within the context of the interview, I have a friend, sure. Her family's from Cote d' Ivoire, and. But she's French. Parisian. Mabula, if you're watching this, this is your story. But she. She recently had a birthday party, right? And the birthday party was at our house, and I went and went with my wife, and they were singing her Happy Birthday. And they sung Happy Birthday in French. They sung Happy Birthday in Joola, which is, you know, a language spoken in Cote d'. Ivoire. They sung Happy Birthday in the Creole, but the Creole of the Antilles, of the, you know, the French islands. And I want to say they sung Happy Birthday in Lingala. That's my recollection. They sung Happy Birthday and I sat there with my black American wife, and we were like, holy shit. Can you believe, like, what we're seeing?

[Osama Al Sharif]

Yeah.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Like, here we are in this room of, like, black people, you know, and they're doing something that, like. I mean, it's hard to put in words what that moment was like. Like, when you're from West Baltimore, when you're from Chicago, and you go and you see something like that. And so, like, to have those experiences like that, that is what my life is. You understand what I'm saying? Like, that is a huge, huge part of my life. And so, like, when you ask me, like, how do I not become closed? I don't want to be separate from that. I don't want to not have those experiences. As much horrible things as I saw when I was on the west bank, as bad as it was, you know, walking through Jerusalem, man, you go into heaven, and afterwards they serve you that. I don't want to mispronounce it, but they flip the thing with the chicken and the rice. You know what I mean? You're like, oh, my God. And it's the hosting of it, right? And so now you're interacting with who they are as human beings, because they are not just people who are, you know, the IDF is putting, you know, a foot on their neck. They got traditions, they have history, they have culture, and you're with them. Like, that's a. That's. That. That is like, a beautiful part of my job. It's a beautiful part of my life, you know? So sorry. I know that kind of went everywhere.

[Osama Al Sharif]

No, that was beautiful. And, hey, listen, man, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for seeing everybody's humanity. Thank you for your work. And this is beautiful, man.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Osama Al Sharif]

Thank you, Thomas.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Thank you, Osama. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

[Osama Al Sharif]

The clap comes revealing.

[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

Sorry, that story at the end kind of went all over the place. I see you Avatar. Fire and Ash is Now streaming on

[Osama Al Sharif]

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[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

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[Osama Al Sharif]

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[Ta-Nehisi Coates]

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