← On with Kara Swisher
On with Kara Swisher
Ta-Nehisi Coates On Trump, Palestine and Journalism as a “Contact Sport”
01:04:59
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- [00:01]
Kara Swisher
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- [00:41]
Cara
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- [01:15]
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- [01:49]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Am I pronouncing your name right?
- [01:51]
Kara Swisher
Kara? It's fine Kara. You can call me anything you want.
- [01:53]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Kara. Having had gone through like misinformation and everything, I'm sensitive him about it.
- [01:58]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, my wife last night was Ta Nehisi. I was like I got it, got it. I can do it. Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Ryder and the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English Department at Howard University, Ta Nehisi Coates. Coates is considered to be one of the leading thinkers and writers of our time, especially on race. I've read Coates Forever, obviously many of his books. He's just a beautiful writer just on its face of it. He's taught me a lot of things and has a unique voice in American literature and writing in general. During the Obama administration. He was a blogger and a major columnist at the Atlantic documenting the nation's first black president and the question of whether we were truly a post racial society. Spoiler alert, we weren't. His writing is a combination of personal experience and detailed reporting through a historical lens. If you haven't read any of his work, you've probably heard about his 2014 essay, The Case for Reparations, in which he makes the argument for paying back black Americans for the economic impact of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and policies like redlining that have contributed to the black white wealth gap. It was one of the reasons he won a MacArthur Fellowship, which is also known as the Genius grant. So, you know, no, I have not gotten one of those yet, though I fully deserve it. That essay and Coates memoir, a book long Letter to his son about being black in America, between the world and Me, which I also made my white sons read and they love, have also put him in the political crosshairs. That book has been banned or attempted to be banned in a number of states. And his latest work, the Message, has also fueled debate, even though it's not at least foremost about race. It's a travel log of trips to South Carolina, Senegal and Israel, Palestine. And it's the last one that's put coats in the spotlight this time, calling out the oppression of Palestinians in Israel and the role that the US Plays in the Middle east conflict. But more than anything, this is a book for his students at Howard about the impact and importance of writing. And it is beautiful writing once again. And we waited till after the election specifically because we wanted to hear his thoughts. As Trump 2.0 begins.
- [04:33]
Ta Nehisi Coates
It is on.
- [04:35]
Kara Swisher
Ta Nehisi, thanks for being on on. I appreciate you being here as a listener.
- [04:40]
Ta Nehisi Coates
It is a pleasure to be here.
- [04:42]
Kara Swisher
Good. Well, we try to have substantive conversations. I know that's hard these days. We're gonna talk about the new book, the message, of course, but obviously I have to ask you about the election. So talk a little about your thoughts about the outcome of the election right now. How do you feel it in the context of the things you're interested in?
- [04:58]
Ta Nehisi Coates
You know, I don't know. I don't know. I have to be straight with you. Kind of tuned out from the news.
- [05:05]
Kara Swisher
Oh, yeah. A lot of people did.
- [05:07]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I think we know what's gonna happen. We might not know the details of what is gonna happen, but I think, you know, Trump has never been a guy, at least in terms of this office, to say what he was gonna do and not do it or at least not try to do it. So I think I'm pretty clear on what to expect. So I am processing my own thoughts about the campaign. I guess one of the reasons why I've tuned out is I am kind of in an internal debate about what information is good information and what is bad, and I'm not clear. And I thought this even before the election, that up to the minute updates of, you know, whatever machinations are happening or appointments might be or might not be, I wonder, like, how much worth that has for me, ultimately.
- [06:01]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, for you or many people. I mean, there's a lot. There's like 24 minutes of news and 24 hours of information.
- [06:07]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Right, Exactly.
- [06:08]
Kara Swisher
There's a lot of information, but not a lot of facts. Right. I just had that discussion with Yuval Harari about that is the information has overwhelmed us like a flood, when before it was a desert and kept very closely by, you know, the elite, whatever you want to consider the elites. And now it's everywhere.
- [06:26]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I'm gonna steal that, by the way.
- [06:28]
Kara Swisher
Please do.
- [06:28]
Ta Nehisi Coates
That's great.
- [06:29]
Kara Swisher
Please do. Please steal everything. I'm a shoplifter myself. But you went to Howard University. You've been teaching there. It's also Kamala Harris alma mater and the place where she was going to have a victory celebration on Tuesday. You sort of start off the book dedicated to the people you're teaching, the young people. How do you talk to them after this?
- [06:50]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I did, actually. Weirdly enough. I'm teaching a virtual course right now because it's in the middle of book tour, so I couldn't teach, teach, but I really wanted to have my hands there. So I'm teaching. So I had to talk to them, like, Wednesday night, like, so the next day I had to talk to them. And, you know, what I told them was, I know you're feeling not great right now, and, you know, there's depression and all of that, but this really is your moment. The message is steeped in, you know, a notion of black writing. And that is not merely writing by people with a certain chromosome count or DNA. It really is about an experience. And that experience has been one of unremitting oppression, repression, extremely challenging circumstances. And out of that has come just this profound body of literature and writing and journalism as it would with any other group of people and as it does with other groups of people who find themselves under such circumstances. And what I really wanted to emphasize to them is that this is their time. The time is now. This is the tradition that they're in. And this is not the worst moment in that tradition, even if it is a particularly challenging one. And so, as depressed as they may be, as people, as writers, weirdly enough, they should be excited.
- [08:12]
Kara Swisher
Right? Because it gives them a challenge. I mean, you talked about that a lot in the book. We're going to get to the book in a minute. But I was particularly touched by your father when he wasn't paid that day or when he had a union job moving salt. Is that correct?
- [08:24]
Ta Nehisi Coates
That's exactly right.
- [08:26]
Kara Swisher
And, you know, I thought that moment when he comes home and you said, daddy reads all the time. Daddy reads to learn, was sort of what you might want to say to the students.
- [08:34]
Kyle
Right.
- [08:35]
Kara Swisher
That the unfairness or fairness isn't really the point. It's how you react to it.
- [08:40]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah, yeah. It's the thing that's out of your control. You know, we all wish that we had a just world, in which people, you know, regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender, class, et cetera, were respected, where they were not made the targets and the butts of other people's cruelty and jokes, where they were not scapegoated for the problems of the world. We all wish we lived in that place, but we don't. And so part of our job, and I recognize everybody does not share this point of view, but it is my point of view and why I even became a journalist in the first place. But part of our job is to bring that world into existence, and we don't do that by covering our heads and, you know, burying them in the.
- [09:23]
Kara Swisher
Sand or being an irritant. You know. Being an irritant. No, no, no, no.
- [09:27]
Ta Nehisi Coates
And I. And Kyle, I actually think that's a great point, though, like what you just said about being an irritant, because I think that there is a certain kind of person who has decided that somehow that's what the world needs, you know, you know, tweeting out or, you know, unloading your particular thoughts at the moment, you know, of what you think, as opposed to maybe taking some quiet time, you know?
- [09:51]
Kara Swisher
Right. No, absolutely. So one of the things I always say when I was talking, talk about tech people, which I deal with almost all the time, was that they confuse a meritocracy with a meritocracy. So they feel like they got there on their own two feet and when, in fact, it was through a series of special pushes up the ladder that they got all the way through. And they always seem confused when I say that.
- [10:14]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Can I ask you a question about that?
- [10:15]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, sure.
- [10:16]
Ta Nehisi Coates
And I want to. And I'm sorry. I know I'm the one being in this case.
- [10:19]
Kara Swisher
No, please, go right ahead.
- [10:20]
Ta Nehisi Coates
You're a journalist, but you have so much expertise on this. And, you know, one thing I've thought about a lot is why are they so opposed to the idea of any sort of moderation? Like, where does this theory come from that everybody should be able to say whatever they want in any place they want?
- [10:37]
Kara Swisher
Because the people who designed the systems never felt unsafe a day in their life. Jesus, think about that. You know, I had an interesting experience when we were living in Shaw. One of my sons is 6:5. The other is big. You know, he's a big guy. And we were walking down the street and it was dark. And so as a woman does, I looked around like. You know what I mean? Like, I'm always like, oh, look at that alley. Look at women. Just do that naturally. You can ask any woman. And my sons, we're both like, what are you doing? And I'm like, oh, doesn't occur to you, does it? You know, as a man, as a white man and stuff like that. So it was really interesting. I think that's what it is. They never felt unsafe. And when they do, what they consider unsafe is the feedback of normal criticism. And then you're attacking them, and then everything changes. And ultimately they don't really care. Ta Nehisi. They don't care.
- [11:26]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Do they have, like, a vision of a better world or, like.
- [11:30]
Kara Swisher
Well, I think when they're. When their mottos are move fast and break things, that tells you a lot, doesn't it?
- [11:36]
Ta Nehisi Coates
It tells you a lot. Yes, it does.
- [11:37]
Kara Swisher
It doesn't say move fast and change things or move fast and improve things or move fast and adapt. It says break. I think they like to break the world. And so although I think a lot of some of them are very scared, especially who bought Kamala Harris. So let's talk just a tiny bit more about this. I know everyone is trying to figure out what happened. All the hot takes are exhausting me at this point. Yes, I certainly got it wrong. One of the things we heard a lot of the echoes of something you wrote in 20 After Trump won the first time, and you wrote, the collective verdict holds that the Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned everyday economic issues like job creation for the softer fare of social justice. I think it's good to remember that that was the consensus, and you push back against that. You basically said it was a racist backlash to Barack Obama. How do you look at this one? Is it still the economic issues versus. Because Kamala Harris, as many have pointed out, really did talk like a Republican. She wasn't really leaning into social justice except for abortion. She certainly leaned in on abortion, but that's a different thing.
- [12:37]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I think I have heard that there's been this whole thing about, you know, she was too woke or, you know, trans folk or, you know, like, maybe that's why. And I just think I'm like, well, first of all, she didn't run on any of that. That's the first thing.
- [12:53]
Kara Swisher
She was hanging out with Liz Cheney. But go ahead.
- [12:54]
Ta Nehisi Coates
She was. She was. I mean, the Biden administration was not really. I mean, they did all of the economic policy stuff that I think, you know, a lot of people have been clamoring for. They actually tried to do it and did, you know, quite a bit of it. And they still. I think this is a thing that people say for two reasons on, you know, and I wanna speak to a general, and then I wanna speak to something very specific. I think, in general, it is very uncomfortable to think that perhaps policy is not the thing that people are always responding to in our elections. That is disturbing, you know, and it's especially disturbing when you think that maybe it's, you know, something like race or gender or racism. And, you know, I can remember the studies that, you know, the political scientist Michael Tesla did, you know, on Obama where, you know, race affected everything down to, like, what people thought about this man's dog, you know, and so, like, taking that picture of the American people is disturbing. It's not what we like to think about ourselves. And then I think there's something very specific happening with trans people in this country because, and this is bothersome to me, I didn't see much talk, you know, about trans rights or anything like that. You know, I wouldn't say the Democratic Party really distinguished itself, you know, in advance of that.
- [14:14]
Kara Swisher
She certainly didn't.
- [14:15]
Ta Nehisi Coates
She certainly didn't. And she certainly did. She certainly did. And so what you're left with is, do you want these people to disappear? Like, do you object to their presence on the planet Earth? Do you want them to die? Like, do you see them, as a friend of mine once said, as redundant, as, like, people who should have no public face whatsoever? Is that what we're talking about? You know, because, I mean, I didn't see it in the campaign, which says to me, maybe you object to it being in the air. So maybe you object to them, which is dark and disturbing.
- [14:51]
Kara Swisher
Right. I would say that you're correct about That I think, go away or be quiet. Be quiet, I think is more that, you know, which sort of, you know, feeds into the protests that went the other way, which was silence equals death, essentially.
- [15:03]
Ta Nehisi Coates
But Carol, you know, the thing about that is even the be quiet part of it, it's like, okay, so they say nothing, but Trump is actually the one that's doing the highlight.
- [15:10]
Kara Swisher
That's correct. That's correct.
- [15:11]
Ta Nehisi Coates
So then it becomes they're just existing, you know what I mean? And the fact of them existing is now a problem.
- [15:19]
Kara Swisher
Well, cause they did stick their head above the parapet, right? They did for a moment. And you know, more than quiet, they wanna take away trans kids rights in schools. And sports. They're obsessed with sports. They started with bathrooms and then that didn't work as well. But then sports was the. There's always an entry point to this kind of stuff. You mentioned President Obama during the campaign. He called out black men and said they were coming up with excuses not to vote for a woman. You were super critical of that message. According to CNN exit polls, one in five black men voted for Trump. Listen, voter turnout for Dems was down compared to 2020. Do you think Obama was right? Was misogyny a part of it at all? White women certainly voted for Trump. I mean, people of color generally were very supportive of Harris in comparison. And you were critical, by the way, of Obama's respectability politics during his tenure.
- [16:12]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I was. And I was critical of that statement too. There's just no way in the world that misogyny and sexism did not play a role for men. And for black men, you know, I don't think that that is really debatable. I will point out, as the numbers stand right now, there really wasn't much change in terms of the support of black men for Biden and for her. Having said that, having said that, I don't think it's ever wrong to challenge any privileged group, you know, about their attitudes or their status. I do think though, when you're in a campaign and like what you're trying to do is get that group to go out and support a candidate. I'm not sure why that is the message, the lecture. Right. Like, we really wouldn't accept that or expect that for anybody else. You know, we would not say that Kamala Harris or whoever should go out and say, lecture white working class people on their racism when she's trying to get their vote.
- [17:13]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [17:13]
Ta Nehisi Coates
You know what I mean? Like, I would advise that, you know, I wouldn't advise that at all. You Know, and so I don't know too many black men that support Trump, but it's hard for me to believe that they would hear that and say, oh, yeah, okay, that's gonna get me off of my. Off of the chair and go vote for Kamala.
- [17:28]
Kara Swisher
Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
- [17:29]
Ta Nehisi Coates
You know, it was such an unusual. Right, you suck. You suck. Go vote.
- [17:33]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. You know, it's kind of an Obama trade.
- [17:36]
Ta Nehisi Coates
It is. But if it's not. If that's not, like, normal campaign, like, what are you doing then?
- [17:42]
Kara Swisher
Right?
- [17:43]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Like, what exactly are you doing now?
- [17:45]
Kara Swisher
But one of the things that Trump did as a hustler supreme or the greatest troll in history was using ads and social media campaigns to pit groups against each other. Us versus Empire. This is not a new thing. Do you think that resonated more than the Democratic's always big umbrella or rainbow coalition message? I think Charles Burrell wrote in the Times that it was the end of the rainbow coalition was freedom to abstract. Do you think there is the end of the rainbow coalition?
- [18:12]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I mean, I don't know. I mean, not for me. You know, I mean, in terms of my politics. I mean, to me, what that means is a belief in a world in which, you know, people from different, you know, backgrounds, all are united on a similar idea. And that idea is that, you know, people should be equally respected, you know, and enjoy the benefits of a democracy and the bounty of this world equally. And so I do think. I do think that sometimes we assume that because people are suffering or under some sort of condition of material deprivation or have experienced material deprivation, that they will therefore be sympathetic to other people who are experiencing deprivation or oppression or whatever. That is not true. That is not true. And so I think that's the thing that has to be grappled with in left politics, period, you know, across the board, you know, and maybe is not, you know, always. I also think the dynamics, the political dynamics of the African American community are not like other communities. And what I mean by that is we are a community that has been here, obviously, you know, for over 400 years, but most of that time, we were enslaved. And when you are enslaved, it's not that you don't have politics. You do, but you're constantly choosing between awful choices. You know what I mean? Like, it's, you know, I want to run away because my master's abusing me, but if I run away because my master is abusing me, he will then abuse my mother. So what do I do? That dynamic was basically true for us even after we were emancipated election after election. I mean, you're trapped between people who either, you know, outright despise you or people who don't want to be seen in public with you. And so what that means is our way of voting and considering candidates is very different than people who, you know, have come to this country and really do believe in the American dream, you know, as it's, you know, often proffered and are not, you know, into seeing presidential elections as this is the best we can make of it.
- [20:19]
Kara Swisher
Right, right. And also, not everybody's the same. Of course, not everybody's the same. One of the things that you talked about, cuz Harris sort of tried to go around that in a lot of ways and bad choices is what you said about Harris in Iowa right before the election. Because of the Biden administration's support of Israel, it seems like she lost a large of Arab American voters in Dearborn. Some sat it out a lot sat it out, and some went for Trump, but sitting it out seemed to be the trend more than anything. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is thrilled for Trump, which doesn't bode well for the Palestinians. How much a role do you think the war played in the election itself?
- [20:55]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I think quite a bit, but maybe not in the way people think.
- [20:58]
Kara Swisher
How so?
- [20:58]
Ta Nehisi Coates
From what I can tell, the vote count is not large enough to have made a material difference in that sort of way. I do think, though, like, I was at the DNC and I watched them run on all of these sort of, you know, quote unquote, Rainbow Coalition values. And, you know, they had Fannie Lou Hamer up there, you know, who had been excluded, you know, from the Democratic Party honor Shirley Chisholm, honored Jesse Jackson, who actually was the last person to push for an Arab American to address the dnc, honored the Central Park Five, all of these people who had been left out while they were in the act of leaving people out. And I think, like, that creates a kind of identity schism or a messaging. Not even. No, not messaging. An incoherence in your actual beliefs. It's not just messaging. It's an incoherence in your actual beliefs. So here we are saying that we oppose American apartheid, but we are supporting the exporting of bombs and planes to be dropped on a group of people in support of an apartheid regime. And I don't use that term lightly. I know it's a controversial term, but I don't use it lightly. I use it having seen it myself. I use it having done quite a bit of reading and reports from human rights organizations. And frankly, I use it because the former prime ministers, from Ehud Omar to Ehud Barak use it in their description of the country and its possibilities or dark possibilities for it. So we have to ask ourselves a question, like, if Ehud Omar says this country is headed towards apartheid, right, and we're against American apartheid, what does it mean to say we will always support them? Like, what do we. You know, like there's an incoherence in it.
- [22:58]
Kara Swisher
Incoherence is actually a better word. I mean, what you were talking about for people who don't understand is the Palestinians were not allowed on stage at the Democratic National Convention.
- [23:05]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yes. I'm so sorry. Forgive me.
- [23:06]
Kara Swisher
That's okay. I was there myself. They, of course, had all kinds of ways to communicate, but this was a big deal. And the Harris people met with them off stage and things like that. But this is what you mean by leaving people out and not wanting to attract the controversy, I think, is what they were doing. There was a lot of not risk when on Trump's side, there was a lot of risk taking.
- [23:28]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I think Trump went to Dearborn. I think he went to Dearborn.
- [23:30]
Kara Swisher
Well, or Elon giving away a million dollars. It was a lot of risk taking. And she is risk averse. That is, you know, having known her since she was a da, She's a risk averse person. So they were always being. They were always modulating, I think, in a lot of ways. Let me just get to one thing. We're gonna talk about that part in the book, by the way. Every episode we get a question from an outside expert. This week, the question comes from Wajahat Ali, author of the Left Hook substack and co host of of the Democracy Ish podcast.
- [23:56]
Wajahat Ali
Ta Nehisi. In your book and in your recent speeches, you have said that as a black man, you cannot sit by and stay silent. After witnessing the apartheid conditions and occupation of Palestinians, there is a need for intersection and solidarity. Many black and POC voters feel the same way. However, they also feel a sense of massive betrayal by some pro Palestinian activists and groups, Muslims and Arabs, who decided not to vote for Harris to punish her and either sit out, vote for Stein or Trump. And I'm sure you've seen the videos where they say, we're done. We gave it everything. We knew the assignment. You failed the assignment. What do you say to those black and POC Americans who are tapping out of the movement and how do you heal these rifts?
- [24:41]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I haven't seen those videos, actually. I Literally have not seen them. And again, this goes back to, I think, honestly, Carol, where we started our conversation. Like, I can't tell you how much of people yelling about this on social media really represents a feeling among, for instance, the black electorate. I don't like. I don't know. So I'm always hesitant to give it too much credence. You know, it could be that this is 5 or 10 or 50 really, really loud people. And, you know, like, there were a number of black men, black male celebrities who came out and said they were gonna vote for Trump. But those of us who are familiar with those figures know that those people probably don't vote anywhere. And so there's a way in which people's volume can be confused with what's actually going on. Having said that, I can give you my perspective on this, which is pretty simple. Look, as I said earlier, we have always been lesser of two evil voters. That's just what it is. And I do think there is some wisdom in not overly fetishizing presidential elections. And so voting for Kamala Harris, I don't think necessarily means that you think genocide is a great idea. You might vote for her and feel like that's the person who you feel you can best pressure and organize against. That was my feeling. Having said that, it is far, far beyond my capacity and my capability to talk to people as I did, who say to me, one sixth of my family is dead, who say the bombs are being dropped on my family right now and say to them, you must support the person who has made no promises not to keep killing your family and may well keep killing your family. It's cruel. It's cruel for me to say, you have to support that person. I don't have that envy. You know, I have my own political calculus that I make. And I'm sure there are plenty of Palestinian American activists and Muslim and Arab American activists who would disagree with that and, you know, say that I am, you know, ultimately supporting, you know, genocide. I will carry that. I'll take that. You know, but for my part, I get it. I get it. I can't say that I would if I was in their shoes. What would I do? I don't know. I'd be really angry. I would be really, really, really angry.
- [27:12]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [27:26]
Kyle
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Kara Swisher
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Kyle
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- [28:36]
Cara
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- [29:50]
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- [31:07]
Kara Swisher
Well, let's talk about those conversations, some of them in your book the Message. It's really about how stories and reporting shape our realities and you talk a lot about storytelling and distortions. So I want to talk a little bit about the importance of journals, especially for the next four years in just a bit. But the Message encompasses essays about trips you took to South Carolina, Senegal and Palestine. Jon Stewart said, you're grappling in this book. I would agree. You talk about these trips for people who haven't been there and read the book and what you felt you were grappling with specifically on your trip to the West Bank. Talk very quickly about these trips and why you structured it this way. It's the journey of you as you try to figure it out. Correct. I mean, which is what any journalist does.
- [31:49]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah. I mean, so the first thing is they are addressed to the writing students. They are at Howard Wright. And so part of that was a lesson I was trying to impart on them. And that is that writing is not just sitting down at a desk or a table and receiving inspiration. You have to go places, you have to see things, you have to talk to people, you have to be willing to feel one way when you get one place and be surprised and feel another way and go through the whole full range of emotions and you bring that back and you write it. And so these were three places that I ended up going and also three places where story is obviously very, very important. Certainly in Dakar, Senegal and in Africa as a whole, which is the origin point for the narratives that power, racism and white supremacy. You were uncivilized, you didn't write or read, you were illiterate. You've never done anything, you didn't build anything. So therefore you were fit for enslavement. That's like the rough version of that argument. And African Americans have themselves tried to push back. And certainly a tradition that I was raised in, how I got my name, was to prove to folks that we had and to claim certain things. And one of the things I am trying to confront in that chapter is whether that story at all is important. In other words, whether human rights derive at all from the quote, unquote accomplishments of a people. And obviously, I conclude that they do not. The second portion of that is in South Carolina, which has since the Civil War just been a site of how the American story is told. And in that case, you know, it pulled me in with between the World and Me and the attempt to ban that and to, you know, push out this brave teacher who was teaching the book in a writing class, no less. And Carrie, this is what I mean about, like, needing to go places because I went down there to a school board meeting to see, you know, what was gonna happen to this teacher in relation to my book. And I went down there ready for war, expecting to see the worst possible things. And I'm not saying the worst possible things aren't happening down there. But instead, what I found was a community that believed that part of having a worldly and educated child was having them exposed to different works of literature and writing and understanding it, you know, it wasn't, you know, necessarily, you know, a group of people that shared all of my politics or all the things, you know, that I believed. And nor should that be the case, but people that believed you should read different things and know things that, you know, you shouldn't, you know, go out in the world and say, I didn't read that because my school banned it, you know, that that was a bad idea.
- [34:30]
Kara Swisher
Well, one of the questions, how writing create allyship is a central takeaway from your essay on your trip to South Carolina. And in a lot of ways, when I was reading it, it reminded me of a thing I say all the time, which is believe what you see, don't see what you believe. Right. It's really hard as a reporter. It's really hard.
- [34:47]
Ta Nehisi Coates
It is.
- [34:47]
Kara Swisher
And when they accuse us of that, I'm like, you know, you're right, it's very hard to believe what you see over the other one. But you compare ISRA to the Jim Crow south and lay out a number of ways you saw that Palestinians were being treated like second class citizens it reminded me of an interview I did with Isabel Wilkerson about her wonderful cast. You talk about the settlements encroaching on the land. You talk about domination by resources like water, the domination by time with bureaucracy. Talk about what you experienced there and how these issues played a role.
- [35:19]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Oh, man. I wonder when I'm gonna get asked about this, and I won't be emotional about it. I wonder when that's gonna happen.
- [35:25]
Kara Swisher
Never. That's good.
- [35:28]
Ta Nehisi Coates
This was one of the most important trips I took in my life, if not the most important, in some ways, even more important than going to Senegal and going to Africa for the first time. And it was important because you hear all these stories when you're growing up of what segregation was and what Jim Crow was. And then you see it, and you see it in this place that could not practice it without the dollars coming from the country that you are a citizen of. And so, you know, to make this absolutely explicit, I spent time on the west bank, where there are license plates for Israeli citizens and then there are license plates for, quote, unquote, stateless Palestinians. I drove on, or I rode on roads that were demarcated. I just remembered something, actually. The other day, I was talking to somebody that was on a trip with me, and I had totally forgotten about this, and it didn't even make it into the book. A really poignant part of the book is in the old city of Hebron, where I went, which was probably the most explicitly segregated. As in, people who were born there, whose grandparents had lived there, are not allowed to walk down certain streets. That was the place where, for instance, I was stopped from walking down the street and asked to profess about my religion and only allowed if I gave the right answer. So this was clearly a segregated place, as I understood the word to be. This was on top of talking to people who laid out the bureaucracy of what it means, for instance, to build, to expand on the land because the land is so regulated. And the fact that one group of people can get permits to build, another group cannot. So we leave there at the end of the day, and we're on this road, and we drove at this part of the trip, we drove along the, quote, unquote, Palestinian roads. And I had to pee. And I was like, I don't know if we can stop. Like, I don't. Like. I don't know if we actually, like, are allowed. Like, where is the rest stop that we can actually go? And I had that. This long conversation with my friend Eve Ewing, like, I really gotta go. To the bathroom. Can this bus actually stop? Or we were on our way to Haifa, or do I have to hold this all the way to Haifa? You know, and fortunately, bus driver navigated it, and we could. But this was a constant thing if you were black in the south. Like, the bathrooms were a constant thing. You had to negotiate, you know, and so, I mean, just in so many ways, it just reminded me of a past that, you know, it echoes.
- [38:02]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, yeah, they all have echoes of each other now. To be clear, you took the trip before the October 7 Hamas attack for the war in Gaza.
- [38:08]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I did.
- [38:08]
Kara Swisher
Did that change your perception of what you saw and what's happening there? There?
- [38:12]
Ta Nehisi Coates
No, no, not in the least bit.
- [38:14]
Kara Swisher
Why is that? It did for a lot of people, as you know.
- [38:17]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah. No, not even a little bit. So the first thing is, I don't know how to describe this, but in the 10 days I was there, it felt like there was this low hum of violence always, even when, like, I didn't, you know, see too much direct violence. But it. It just. It just felt like. Like, I literally said to somebody at one point, this. This does not look like it has a nonviolent solution. Like, I'm just being frank. I'm not wishing for that, but I'm saying, like, this does not feel like it's headed anywhere good. The second part is something that I've said repeatedly, and I will continue to say. I have core beliefs, and those core beliefs are not dependent on what other people do. I do not believe in apartheid. I'm against it. It offends something core in me that goes through my ancestry. There is nothing that any group of people can do that would make me say that they're worthy of apartheid. Nothing. Nothing. The example I've often used is the death penalty. I'm against the death penalty. It's just a core belief. I'm just against it, you know, and there is nothing any human being will ever do.
- [39:20]
Kara Swisher
If they said to you, oh, they killed my daughter and.
- [39:23]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah, no.
- [39:24]
Kara Swisher
Even terrorism.
- [39:25]
Ta Nehisi Coates
No, no, no.
- [39:26]
Kara Swisher
Do you get why people are disturbed by how it shifts people?
- [39:30]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I do. I mean, I understand the emotional response. I do. I do. And I understand even more. So, listen, I was with a group of people who. Who were Israeli vets who had turned against the occupation and, you know, campaigned very loudly against the occupation. And members of that group were killed on October 7th, you know, and so I watch them grapple with that and return to their principles, even as members of their own organization were killed. And so, like, if they can do that. You know what I mean? Like they who are on the ground then, you know, surely I can. But yes, I do. I mean, I don't want to sound, you know, cold. I don't want to sound like I don't get it, but like we. And I mean when I say we, I mean we as Americans, right? Because we are supplying all of the planes, we're supplying the bombs. You know, we are underwriting this. We are the ones who claim to have a special relationship with Israel. I don't want to hear from people who want to speak out about the massacres Hamas perpetrated but have nothing to say about the blockade on the enclosure, on turning Gaza into an open air prison. Because I think you don't value human.
- [40:42]
Kara Swisher
Life equally then not consistent.
- [40:44]
Ta Nehisi Coates
You're not like, you're not consistent.
- [40:46]
Kara Swisher
So one of the things that you got, we got a lot of pushback for that. And critics have said you don't have foreign policy experience to write on this subject. You've said in response, and I'm paraphrasing here, I don't need a PhD to call out apartheid when I see it. Do you see their point a bit. That these issues should be called out by Israelis or Palestinians? And why do you think so many critics go to foreign policy expertise when they criticize your essay? I mean, no one's criticizing Elon Musk for being in a Ukraine call, though he has zero expertise. Less than zero. But you know, he's rich, so he must know, right? How do you push back on that? Because it's such a fraught thing when you're saying I'm going to stick with my principles, even though I know you're hurting and I know you think this is anti Semitism or whatever. How do you, you do that and how do you push back against the idea? You have said that essentially, you know what you're seeing.
- [41:37]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Well, I would say three things. The first thing is that chapter of the message is not just based on what I saw. It's based on all of the reading that I did. It's based on the reporting. It's based on talking to Palestinians themselves. It's based on, as I mentioned before, talking to IDF veterans who had turned against the occupation. So there's a lot going on in that chapter that undergirds my belief. But even if I had done none of that, we are in a dangerous place where we need foreign policy expertise to say apartheid is wrong. There's a kind of academicizing, if that's a word that goes on, you know, where people think like you need college degrees to determine, like whether you should slap a kid or not, you know, it's absurd. It's absolutely, absolutely absurd. And I think what happens is people who know they have lost the moral case, you know, try to retreat between behind a kind of false knowledge or a kind of patina of intellectualism that is not real. And the third thing I would say is, okay, I don't have expertise, I'm not a foreign policy person, but I can name you off the top of my head, numerous Palestinians who could be in my chair, who you could be talking to. Not you literally, Karen, but you know what I mean. But people who think that, fine, don't talk to me, don't talk to me, go talk to them, you know, if.
- [43:04]
Kara Swisher
You don't believe me. But putting aside every critique, what should people there and Jews do and what should they have done to make sure they were safe after the Holocaust? Obviously Zionism predates the Holocaust and what should they do now? Do you have any solutions for that?
- [43:21]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I do, I do, I do. I have one. And people don't like to hit us, but it doesn't matter. They should go to war against the knowledge blockade that prevents Palestinians from narrating their own history and their own experience in popular spaces. It's just completely unacceptable to say we are looking for a solution to this problem, but we're not going to hear from a broad swath of people who are experiencing the brunt of the problem. Like, like that to me is like, it's like a big, big missing piece. It's a huge, gigantic missing piece. And I think people want to leap past that to get to two state, one state, binational state. But like, I mean, there are just so many, you know, smart and intelligent people that I know, I talk to that could really, really hold forth on what this world should be. And so I don't know how you get to a solution to apartheid without talking to the people living under apartheid, without giving them the same. You know, it's like I did that interview on cbs, you know, all kinds.
- [44:30]
Kara Swisher
Of, I mean, God, yeah, what interview was that? I didn't hear about.
- [44:33]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Right, right, right, right. Like, you know, all kinds of people saw that.
- [44:36]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [44:37]
Ta Nehisi Coates
And I would just ask, when was the last time a Palestinian writer, journalist, you know, thinker, intellectual, got an interview like that, that, that many people would see? You know, and so I just think without that, you know, like this conversation about, you know, solutions. Well, start by talking to people. Start by letting the people Talk, you know.
- [45:01]
Kara Swisher
We'Ll be back in a minute.
- [45:15]
Cara
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Ian Mitchell
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Anthropic
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Ian Mitchell
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- [49:12]
Kara Swisher
The first chapter of the message is called Journalism is not a Luxury. I want to finish up on that idea. Between the World and Me is a letter to your son. As you said in this book you're writing to your students at Howard, the introduction you tell them it's never enough for the reader of your words to be convinced the goal is to haunt. I love that. I thought that was fantastic. I was thinking about a movie I saw recently and I said to my wife, the movie's haunting me and it was weird. Before I read your book, I can't stop thinking about it. It is. It's like over there. Oh look, it's sitting there in that chair and looking at me. Talk to me about what you mean by haunting. I think it's a perfect way to describe what is effective. But what does that mean for you as a journalist?
- [49:52]
Ta Nehisi Coates
So one of my favorite writers is Jennifer Egan.
- [49:56]
Kara Swisher
No, I love Jennifer Egan. Oh, I interviewed her. She's amazing.
- [49:59]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Oh man, she's incredible.
- [50:01]
Kara Swisher
That last book was even better than the first one.
- [50:04]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah. Oof. Boy, oh boy, oh boy.
- [50:06]
Kara Swisher
Would you download your mind?
- [50:09]
Ta Nehisi Coates
No, I would not download my mind.
- [50:10]
Kara Swisher
I don't Wanna remember that?
- [50:12]
Ta Nehisi Coates
No, no, I would not. I would not. That book was so. I mean, we don't get that, but it was. I loved what she was doing.
- [50:17]
Kara Swisher
That fucked me up. That book fucked me up. But when you're saying journalism, luxury, is that what you're trying to do, haunt people?
- [50:23]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yes, yes, yes. And. Cause I think if you can do that, like you just asked this question, you asked, would I download my mind? So there's all sorts of things going on in the candy house, right? But there are core political questions that are being raised in there. You know what I mean? Like, it's not just a treatise on, you know, the singularity or, you know, AI or, you know, these sorts of things, you know, but the reason why, you know, we're having this conversation about it now, it's not because of. Just because of the politics or the politics important. It's because she's a beautiful writer. It's because the writing is haunting. And so one of the things, this idea of journalism not being a luxury, which I borrowed from Audre Lorde, is the notion that your ability to haunt is directly tied to the fate of the world. That the power of your writing, it is not enough to just write in such a way so that people finish it and put it down and say, oh, that seems correct. You know, you need them to do what you just did, which is to say, would you download your mind? You know what I mean? Like, that means it's sticking with you. Like somewhere in the back. Yeah. This idea, this notion that she was trying to raise has stuck with you. And I try to get, you know, my writers that I'm teaching to write in that way. You know what I mean? Like, that's the goal. I know. That's always my goal.
- [51:39]
Kara Swisher
No, it's true. And you say your quote task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world. We've been witnessing the splintering of the media landscape for a while. I've been part of that, honestly. We've talked about its impact on the election. How do you think young journalists should best go about saving the world? And do you think traditional media companies are still reaching people? I, of course, went a different way 20 years ago. But should writers become, in order to haunt people, become social media influencers or whoever it is? How do you look at the act of journalism right now as you're teaching people to be writers? And there's difference between writers and. And journalists too, by the way.
- [52:17]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. I think that. I think social media is probably not good. And I think that maybe there are people in this world that need it and have no other tool for, you know, getting, you know, their words out and their voices out. So I don't. You know, I don't want to be an absolutist about this, but.
- [52:42]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, you don't want to be like old man on the lawn yelling at kids.
- [52:45]
Ta Nehisi Coates
No, No, I don't. But I do think you need to understand the tool you're engaging with. And, Cara, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding of this is something as follows, that these tools are tuned towards outrage because outrage produces the highest level of engagement.
- [52:59]
Kara Swisher
I always say enragement equals engagement.
- [53:02]
Ta Nehisi Coates
So if enragement equals engagement, you have to ask yourself what your project is. Is your project to enrage people? Mine is not. I tell you that. Mine is not. Even if people do get enraged, I am not trying to. I am definitely not trying to enrage people with my writing at, you know, now, it might be enraging in certain places, but that is not, like, a goal.
- [53:20]
Kara Swisher
Well, what are you trying to do, then?
- [53:22]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I'm trying to haunt them.
- [53:24]
Kara Swisher
I'm a ghost, for fuck's sake.
- [53:26]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Right? I'm trying to haunt them. I'm a zombie.
- [53:28]
Kara Swisher
I'm a ghost. I'm a ghost, not a zombie.
- [53:30]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yes. I'm trying to make it stick with them, and I'm trying to. And to haunt them. For what I think is a deeper part of your question and what I am seeking is the thing that I find in great writing and is that is enlightenment. That to understand the world in a way that I did not understand it before, you know, to see things differently. And I have deep questions over whether our social media tools, as they are currently constructed, particularly Twitter, are capable of doing that. So people who care about making a better world, you really have to ask yourself, do you think you're gonna enrage.
- [54:01]
Kara Swisher
Yourself into a better world?
- [54:03]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Into a better world? Yes.
- [54:04]
Kara Swisher
Sue. Does the medium need to find a. You know, there's a famous quote. The medium is the message. Does the message need to find a new medium to new audiences?
- [54:13]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Honestly, I think some of our oldest ones are great. I think books are incredible. You know, I think paper magazines are like. I have this whole thing about paper magazines.
- [54:22]
Kara Swisher
You do? You do.
- [54:23]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I love them. I love them, and I know that they aren't. You know, maybe we need to find, you know, a way to keep them in business, but I don't know that our media, particularly, are bad. Like, literally the tools are bad now, they might not make a profit. And that could be like, we might have a business problem.
- [54:38]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [54:39]
Ta Nehisi Coates
But I don't think we actually have a technology problem.
- [54:41]
Kara Swisher
Actually, you've said that there are not enough Palestinian American journalists reporting on the Middle east conflict. There were some efforts to increase diversity in newsrooms during the Obama years, not just to Palestinian Americans, but others. And again in 2020, but it's unclear if there were actually more people of color hired more different people. And then they've been, you know, a lot of the efforts, the DEI efforts, have been rolled back. The term has been weaponized. Where does this go? How do you think we're going to see that change again? And what will be the impact of any kind of critical reporting you're calling for?
- [55:16]
Ta Nehisi Coates
I don't know. I don't know. And frankly, one of the things I have to do is I am not satisfied with me accusing other people of not doing right. So I have to find some way, once this book tour is done, once everything is, I have to find some way to help alleve the problem that I am so moved by. It's not enough for me to go and wag my finger at big media organizations and say, where are the Palestinians? I have to ask myself, is there any role for me to play in terms of making that true, something behind it? Because I don't want to be Palestine guy, you know what I mean? I have no desire to speak for another group of people, Palestine guy, you know what I mean? That's not what I want. What I want is Palestine guys and Palestine girls, you know what I mean? To speak for themselves, you know? And so I have to ask the question of what I can do to make that possible.
- [56:10]
Kara Swisher
At the same time, Donald Trump has said he's gonna seek retribution, which is an unusual word. I didn't know he knew such an interesting word. And he's not been shy about targeting journalists. In the past, we've talked here about newspaper owners like Jeff Bezos obeying in advance. Boy, I know, right? I'm not surprised in any way, but everyone else is. I always am. Like, you assume these people are good people. I don't know why you would assume that. Some of them are. Some of them aren't. So are you concerned about those threat?
- [56:37]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yes, I'm very concerned about it. I'm really concerned about it.
- [56:40]
Kara Swisher
Tell me why.
- [56:43]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Well, I think again, there are people who think, or thought maybe they don't anymore, that Donald Trump was ridiculous, that it's bluster and you shouldn't really pay attention to anything he's saying. And I'm not one of those people. I never was one of those people. I think you should pay attention, and I think you should be afraid. And I think you should. Should plan how you're going to continue to do your work under threat. I will say one of the things that gives me comfort is again, we started here out of the tradition that I come out of. Journalism was never supposed to be safe. It only became, at some point, this kind of Ivy League profession. You go to the right schools and you end up at the New York Times and you live a relatively comfortable life. It wasn't supposed to be that, you know, and I. And I guess I should be fair, you know, there are plenty of journalists at the New York Times who it's not. Who that is not true of. Yeah, you know, I don't want to slight, you know, folks on foreign desk, et cetera. You know, I don't want to do that.
- [57:40]
Kara Swisher
But I get your point.
- [57:42]
Ta Nehisi Coates
It's not supposed to be safe. It's not supposed to be safe. You know, you're supposed to be challenging people. You know, it's supposed to be a contact sport. And I'm sorry it's that way. And I'm sorry it looks like it's going to be more that way. Yeah, but it is.
- [57:54]
Kara Swisher
That's what it is. I agree with you. So I was joking with someone that I'm going to share a cell with, Mark Cub. Because Elon Musk hates me. Anyway, I don't care. Whatever. Good luck. Come and get me. I shouldn't say that. He probably will. You talked about your trip to South Carolina, which is not the only place we're seeing book bans. You write in the essay much of the current hoopla about book bans and censorship, get it wrong. This is not about me or any writer of the moment. It's about writers to come. Explain what you mean by that. What's next on this front?
- [58:23]
Ta Nehisi Coates
You know, I owe my love of literature to the public library system. Not just to it, but, you know, to my parents, but very much to the. In the sense that, you know, things outside of my home to the public library system. Baltimore has a wonderful public library system, the Enoch Pratt Public Library, which I spent a lot of time with and a lot of time in. And libraries, you know, be they in schools or outside of schools, are just under assault right now. And so more than I fear retribution from the state, I fear for the librarians and I fear for the libraries, and I fear for like the young children who would have found libraries as retreats, you know, it's kind of assault on libraries and on books that concerns me much more than my individual book being banned.
- [59:17]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [59:17]
Ta Nehisi Coates
That worries me a lot more about.
- [59:19]
Kara Swisher
Where it's going, where people have access to.
- [59:21]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yes.
- [59:21]
Kara Swisher
So in that regard, how do you, how do you, when you think about your own writing? You start off with a blog at the Atlantic. You wrote long political essays. Then these memoirs. And the first Trump frenzy shifted gears. You republished your essays in We Were Eight Years in Power. You wrote comics from Marvel's Black Panther and Captain America. You wrote a novel, Water Dancer. There seemed to be like a conscious shift away from politics. When you're saying, I've got to think about this after this book tour, what are you working on right now? A lot of other cultural critics, like historians Heather Cockrich and Timothy Snyder, are growing followings on mediums like substack. Where do you see your next thing?
- [59:59]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Well, I signed a two book deal after Water Dancer, so I got another book I gotta write relatively soon at some point. You know, I would say that it's not so much that I shifted out of politics, it's that as a writer, the Trump administration was so obvious that it almost felt like the kind of writing I was doing was not like it just like I was just gonna be yelling what everybody already knew. That's what it felt like.
- [60:26]
Kara Swisher
Well, you're a better yeller than others, though. You're a better.
- [60:28]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
- [60:29]
Kara Swisher
You're better. Some writers are better than others. That's the thing.
- [60:31]
Ta Nehisi Coates
But, you know, with like Obama, I didn't. Even though I disagreed with him over a lot of things, I didn't feel like that. You know, I felt like there was a very complicated thing going on that I was actually trying to understand myself, you know, and that's where journalism is most powerful for me when I'm trying to. Actually, I really do have a question that I'm trying to understand. And I just didn't feel that same pull with the Trump administration. So I, you know, I took the politics went in other directions. It's in the comic books, believe me, it's in the novel.
- [61:00]
Kara Swisher
So what do you imagine you're interested in right now? Like, what's your next book about?
- [61:05]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Wow, that is a great question. I'll tell you what I'm interested in. I'm interested in how it feels like sports is being. Becoming a casino. Oh, it is, yeah. Yeah. Are you into sports?
- [61:17]
Kara Swisher
No. I'm the only lesbian In America who doesn't care about sports? I really. People are like always getting carried into the game. I'm like, what game? I don't know what you're talking, but I'm aware of. I do know a lot about the gaming that's going on and all the Internet betting and things like that. I find it fascinating but also troubling.
- [61:33]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Obviously, I think it's long term destructive because it creates. Well, I just think if there's this much money sloshing around and you are creating incentives for all kinds of people, you know, first of all, let me begin in my, in my world, like to cut on shows that used to be, maybe they aren't anymore, but outlets for journalists and to hit them, you know, talking about gambling and gambling lines and bets and obscure bets that, you know, that they're taking on. Whether somebody's going to rush for X number of yards or this person is going to do this is, I think, dangerous. I think it's dangerous because, you know, gambling is obviously a public health problem. Like, I just think this can't be good.
- [62:16]
Kara Swisher
Well, the presidential election was a betting. They made him into betting. And down to like, what group in Dearborn will vote this?
- [62:22]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yes, yes. I just don't. And so, like, I have deeper questions about what that says about capitalism itself. Like what it says about the worth of making things.
- [62:34]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [62:34]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Or what we think about as the worth of making things, you know, versus trying to find, you know, some sort of shortcut or, you know, randomizing of stuff to get the result that you want. I think the players themselves, I think it's probably bad for them long term to have that much money, you know, sloshing around in what is a public health disaster. I just. There is a retreat not just at a state, but of like institutions from their values. I remember, you know, ESPN being an actual sports journalism, not, you know, like it's really what they did, you know, and not that it wasn't, you know, complicated or that they didn't have conflicts, you know, anything, but that seems to have gone away. And many of the podcasts, I mean podcasts that I listen to are basically underwritten by gambling money. This just feels like not good long term and I don't completely understand it.
- [63:27]
Kara Swisher
That's a great topic for both. Yeah, it does say a lot about our. We're not making things. We're. We're betting on things that are made, I guess.
- [63:34]
Ta Nehisi Coates
And car you the point you just made about the elections, which is to say that it's beyond sports that Sports might be a microsom of it, but it actually is beyond that.
- [63:43]
Kara Swisher
Oh, they can bet on anything.
- [63:44]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah.
- [63:45]
Kara Swisher
So, last question. In your Daily show interview with Jon Stewart, you said something that was a lot of people picked up on, including me. We have to guard against the temptation to accept that history is necessarily the limit of who we are as human beings. What does that mean for you right now in this political moment? I've been thinking about that for a bit. When you said that it means that.
- [64:05]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Just because certain things have never appeared in the world, that the world you want, like, you don't really have historical precedent for it. I don't think that that's evidence that that world can't be.
- [64:16]
Kara Swisher
That's kind of like, should become the change we see in the world, because some people are sort of. There's nothing new under the sun.
- [64:22]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yeah, I don't. I know that's not true. At some point, there was something new. At some point, it was new. You know, at some point, somebody had to come up. Somebody had to come up with feminism. Somebody had to, you know, say, this is a good idea. You know what I mean? And it changed the world. It changed the world. It didn't make Deliver Utopia. No idea does, but it changed the world. And so, like, I just. I think that sometimes, like, you know, not to take this back here, but people, you know, look at, you know, what's going on in Israel and Palestine, say, oh, these people have been fighting for thousands of years. Not quite. Not quite. That's actually not true. You know what I mean? And, you know, this notion that, oh, you know, they're gonna keep fighting. There's nothing to like. It's a way in which people who don't want to do hard and don't want to think about hard things and don't want to do organizing get around it by saying, oh, there's nothing new. Just because there's no precedent for this. Mm. I don't know. I don't know.
- [65:10]
Kara Swisher
Well, what you're basically doing is imagining a better world.
- [65:13]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Yes. And I think that's a writer's job. I think that's a huge part of it, actually.
- [65:17]
Kara Swisher
It doesn't have to be like this.
- [65:18]
Ta Nehisi Coates
It doesn't. And I don't accept that it does.
- [65:21]
Kara Swisher
All right, let's end on that. Ta. Nehisi Coates. Thank you, Amanda. I did it. I didn't have a problem with it. Anyway, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. What a wonderful conversation.
- [65:32]
Ta Nehisi Coates
Car. Thank you. This was excellent.
- [65:40]
Kara Swisher
On with Kara Swisher. Is produced by Christian Castro, Michelle Kateri Yocum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Claire Hyman and Sheena Ozaki. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is By Tracking Academics. If you're already following the show, you now know how to pronounce Ta Nehisi Coates. He actually talks about it in the book. If not, remember, journalism is not a luxury, it's a contact sport. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.