Jeffrey Goldberg (2:28)

So, I mean, I think what you're saying is that you're gonna have to find something good to say about America in this process.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (2:34)

It's not hard to say something good about America. I love America. Great food, great culture, cool people. You know, just cause I don't like the politics doesn't mean I don't like the country.

Jeffrey Goldberg (2:43)

That's the new American motto. Great food, cool people.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (2:47)

Sure, some cool people. Cool people, nobody.

Jeffrey Goldberg (2:51)

You're gonna have to step outside yourself and act.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (2:52)

No, it's more than saying something good. It's like to believe in America as an ideal and as a great ideal. Do you know what I mean? And like to be loyal to that.

Jeffrey Goldberg (3:03)

I know, but I'm asking if you.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:04)

Know, do I know myself?

Jeffrey Goldberg (3:06)

Yeah. Can you. Can you. Can you bring yourself to do that? You're embarking on this process.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:10)

Yeah, I'm looking forward to doing that.

Jeffrey Goldberg (3:11)

Okay.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:11)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't like, write. I mean, you notice, like when you go to profile somebody, you don't go to profile them to simply vent your own beliefs. You really want to know why they tick. And when you go to sit down to write, the task is to translate that as fairly and accurately as you can while still having maybe your share of criticism. So I look forward to trying to inhabit the character of somebody that really believes that.

Jeffrey Goldberg (3:39)

Let's discuss.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:40)

I wrote Black Panther and I. Oh, I didn't know. I don't want to be king of Wakanda. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So I was able to do that. You know what I mean?

Jeffrey Goldberg (3:48)

How many people come up to you and go, wakanda forever now?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:51)

Stewardess did that.

Jeffrey Goldberg (3:52)

Stewardess did that on the plane.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:54)

Flight attendant. Excuse me. That's not the polite term. It was great. I love that. It's so cool. Anybody can do that to me anytime. I'm really okay with that. I'm good with that.

Jeffrey Goldberg (4:03)

It's not awkward at all.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (4:04)

No, I love it.

Jeffrey Goldberg (4:05)

It's pretty cool. Well, let's talk about Black Panther for a minute. And I want you to contextualize Black Panther in this moment. Obviously, it's a huge success. People could have predicted a certain level of success, but not this level of success. So is that success based in part on the moment in American history we're in?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (4:22)

Yeah, I mean, I think the first reason why it's so successful is it was created by a great filmmaker and someone who in Ryan Coogler, who's on his way to becoming, as far as I'm concerned, you know, one of the preeminent artists of his generation. He has made three very different movies at this point. All of them really, really, really well done. I say that because I think, as you know, I'm about to. We talk about the content with the meaning of the movie, but if the movie sucks, none of this matters. In addition to that, I think what he was able to do is to reach into a conflict that is not often tapped in in terms of movies on that level, on the level of Marvel Comics or a Disney movie. And that is the very fraught, very beautiful and very tense relationship between black people across the diaspora. And there is so much room for mythology and storytelling, you know, in that relationship. If you look at the cast, man, I mean, you got black folks from Oakland, you know, black folks from South Carolina, black folks from Trinidad Tobago, London, Zimbabwe, Kenya. We've never seen anything like that.

Jeffrey Goldberg (5:39)

To place it in the context of American politics in the moment.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (5:43)

Yeah. I think it's not a mistake that when you have, like, say, a president who refers to Haiti as a shithole, talks disparagingly of, you know, Nigerians who became president for his commentary, you know, across the board, his negative commentary across the board towards people of color, that when you have a film like that, that says what it says about black people, that presents them as a literal royalty, that folks glamour that. And folks want to say, look, I think if Barack Obama was president, that film still would have been successful. I want to be, like, really, really clear about that. But do I feel like there was a need right now, specifically in the larger country? Yeah. Yeah, I do. And I also think there was a need, again, regardless of who was president among black people, to see their experience presented with all the glamour, you know, mythology and legend that white people get all the time. Somebody told me a story about how somebody was walking. You know, they heard somebody walking out of the Black Panther premiere at 125th in Harlem, and a dude comes out and he's high, and he says to his buddy, so this is what white people feel like every day, because those stories are presented like that every day. If you think about it across the board, I mean, Black Panther there. I don't know how many Black Panthers are gonna be produced over the next year, you know, starring a predominantly white cast. And so I think, like, the novelty of that and the fact that it was done by one of the talent, most talented directors in Hollywood right now is just huge.

Jeffrey Goldberg (7:14)

I wanted to get your assessment of how the quote, unquote, mainstream media, of which we're both part, is doing this argument about objectivity, the discomfort a lot of people in our industry still have about using the term racist to describe the sitting president of the United States. Just give me your, Give me your feelings. Feelings about that and the role that we're playing right now.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (7:36)

I am oddly optimistic.

Jeffrey Goldberg (7:38)

That is extremely odd if you've known him.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (7:40)

No, no, no, actually. Cause I think, like, people are actually becoming more comfortable with, you know, like, after the shithole comment, you know what I mean? I think a lot, I see a lot less hesitancy about Trump than I've seen in the past. Folks are doing a really, really good job. Like, I, in this era, we judge by what we read. And I read newspapers, I read a lot of investigative. I read magazines, and I think a lot of that really bang up. So I have an oddly optimistic. I think media's actually performing pretty well right now.

Jeffrey Goldberg (8:10)

Let me ask you, this has to.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (8:12)

Do with, oh, I could read less of these profiles that seek to go into, quote, unquote, Trump country and ask people, are they sorry yet for voting for him?

Jeffrey Goldberg (8:24)

Why? Why?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (8:26)

Because the premise is like, that these folks did not know what they were doing, and they did. And that's what they always find out when they go. Like, people are not sorry because they knew it, they would do it. And I don't say that in any sort of, in fact, I don't say that in any sort of condescending or disparaging way. I say that in fact, out of incredible respect for their intelligence. They did know what they were doing.

Jeffrey Goldberg (8:47)

But less respect for their racism.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (8:49)

No respect for their racism at all.

Jeffrey Goldberg (8:50)

No, because, I mean, what you're saying implicitly is that these reporters are going out naively thinking that. Oh, now you've seen that.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (8:57)

Yeah. Now you realize.

Jeffrey Goldberg (8:58)

No, actually race was central to the decision making process.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (9:02)

Yes. Of. And they say it to the reporters when they go out there. And the reporters are shocked that that's what they're hearing. You know, it's as though they think like they misheard Trump or they didn't quite get what Trump was saying. That when, you know, he said about the judge, he's a Mexican, that somehow, like, that didn't mean it's a compliment. No, it wasn't. Right, right, right. It's great. Yeah, he's a Mexican. That's awesome. No, I mean, I think people vote for people for all sorts of reasons, you know, and sometimes those reasons are not reasons that we like.

Jeffrey Goldberg (9:34)

Let me come back to journalism one second. There's a big continuing controversy around the New York Times opinion page. There are a lot of people in America who want to make sure that their reading experience is pure in a kind of way.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (9:52)

I think I have to say. It's so weird to say this to you. I think I have to say, in all fairness, I can't answer that question. And I can't answer that question because the editor of the editorial page is James Bennett, who is responsible for my career.

Jeffrey Goldberg (10:07)

He's one of our best friends.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (10:09)

One of my best. Yes, exactly. Who I just had dinner with. I have gone through the experience of having my friends or people who I thought were my friends commenting on my life. It's not fun. And that doesn't mean that people shouldn't have their opinions about the Times editorial page. I'm just saying that my relationship with James.

Jeffrey Goldberg (10:28)

Let me push on this and maybe broaden it out.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (10:30)

Okay.

Jeffrey Goldberg (10:30)

I mean, is there a problem in the media? We've had this discussion before at the Atlantic. You know, it's like looking for people who are pro Trump in some way to write for us. There's a specific problem in that for us. And I'm not saying this in a condescending or snarky way, but anything that appears in our magazine has to pass a basic fact checking test. And so it's very hard. No, no, no, I don't. I'm really. I'm.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (10:54)

It's literally true.

Jeffrey Goldberg (10:54)

Yeah, it's literally true. Like, you can make the argument for Trump. You have to use a set of facts to make that argument. Nevertheless. Well, yeah, I know it's a sad state of affairs when people are applauding for the idea that we should do true things. Right. But here we are. But the question is, I mean, are you either in the resistance or not in the resistance? Well, let me put it this way. Are you in the Resistance?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (11:17)

No, I'm a journalist. I'm a writer. I'm a writer. No, I would never identify myself that way. I'm a writer. I think my opinions and my politics are very, very clear. One can be in sympathy with the aims of activists. For instance, I'm in deep sympathy, obviously, with Black Lives Matter. I would not identify myself as part. And by the way, Black Lives Matter has not asked out of me, by the way. So I'm not. You know what I mean? It's not been an exchange that we've had, you know, from the leadership. But I just, like, my job is different. Like, it's often the people who you are most in sympathy with that you require the most distance from, because they're the people who you love, they're the people who you want to win. They're the people who, you know, in your Private moments you're cheering on. And when you're called to write, even though you have your opinions, there has to be a kind of basic fairness, which, by which I do not mean objectivity and lack of opinion, but you have to have, you know, as you said, a kind of loyalty to facts. You know what I mean? That, you know, you construct your opinions out of the job. Activist is different. The job of the activist is to get people to do something.

Jeffrey Goldberg (12:22)

So you opened a door and I have to walk in. Cornel west, right?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (12:26)

I think you opened that door.

Jeffrey Goldberg (12:28)

Huh? The door was open. I just walked through. I'm walking through. No, because Cornell, part of the critique of Cornell, west of you, is that you're not opining or you're not leading the charge on the left for income equality or structural change in capitalism or a whole set of other things that he wants you to do. And your response has been, that's not my job. But maybe you can contextualize this one sided argument because we've noticed that you haven't really argued back at him. But talk about what's going on in that controversy a little bit and it might be the answer that I'm a writer and I'll do whatever I want.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (13:07)

And people, I mean, that's the answer.

Jeffrey Goldberg (13:11)

I was hoping for more though.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (13:12)

Um, I don't know, man. I haven't talked to Cornel West. I don't know. You know what, where that came from. I'll say first of all that there is a construction, I think, or there has been a construction, and I grew up with this in the 90s of what people call public intellectuals and what I'm sometimes called, and I hate that title, wherein you have somebody who is perceived as brilliant, intelligent, all these sort of adjectives when you want to make Arthur genius that they put on you. Right? And that therefore means that you can be brilliant, smart, intelligent on anything. The notion is that it's here, you have a certain facility within your brain that does not necessarily require you to be particularly deep red on a subject. I get activists all the time who come and I meet with and I meet with them mostly because I usually learn something by meeting with them about whatever subject that they're working or who I might be in sympathy with, love what they're doing, who want me to say, well, you're so brilliant on this and you have this fiery sense of justice on this. Clearly that means you can come over here and do. And I can't. I tell them it's not that easy. I can't just turn it on. And if I did what you wanted, it would ultimately embarrass your cause, because the minute I had to stand up next to somebody who knew something about that, who was on the opposing side, I would be embarrassed. They would humiliate me. They would destroy me in any sort of debate, you know, and so I just. I have to, you know, like, I think about it as fighting. You know what I mean? When you throwing a punch, you know, your feet have got to be set, you know, and my feet are set in the thing that I have read, researched, and thought about. Just one quick thing in addition to that, too. I think also there's no intellectual fight like a sectarian fight. It's often when you have two quote, unquote, thinkers, writers, whatever, who agree on 95%, who viciously denounce each other on that 5%. I don't want to embarrass anybody, but I just, you know, just to make this really, really specific, at the same time that, you know, that sort of attack was coming in from, you know, towards me from Cornel west and other people, he was touring the country with a gentleman by the name of Robert George, who's a professor up at Harvard who thinks, for instance, that LGBT people shouldn't have the right to be married. They were appearing together. You know what I mean? They were in debate, but they were friendly with each other. They were, you know what I mean? And that was okay. And it's just, you know, sort of wild to see, you know, when you have, you know, someone who, you know, is so obviously opposed on, you know, basic rights, but somehow you guys can find common ground. But, you know, we who are much more closely aligned, we can't. Like, we, you know, have to do this, you know, vicious denunciation back and forth. I.

Jeffrey Goldberg (16:07)

Is that in part because there doesn't seem to be enough room in the public discourse for many black intellectuals, public, sorry to use the expression, republic intellectuals.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (16:17)

I don't know. I don't know. I hate all this. I hate all this, man.

Jeffrey Goldberg (16:25)

I love it. But you make an interesting point going back to this New York Times point that you also won't answer. No, it's interesting. Like, there's sometimes the anger on the left toward the New York Times seems hotter than the anger on the left toward Fox News, in a way, because Fox News is just Fox News.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (16:41)

Perhaps because you think the New York Times should know better. Perhaps that anger comes out of. Maybe that's the same thing with me. Maybe that's the answer to the Question I just gave. Right. The fact is that you feel like the people who are closer to you actually really, really should know better. And you've almost kind of dismissed the folks that are over here, like, just complain. You have no real respect for them anyway. So it's okay. It doesn't make you as angry.

Jeffrey Goldberg (17:02)

Right. One of the critiques is on some parts of the laughter is that you weren't tough enough on Barack Obama. I know somebody who believes that not to be true, and that's Barack Obama. He believes that you're tough enough or too tough. Obama is kind of the appearance of Obama, and the success of Obama is the animating force behind so many of the pieces that you did in the Atlantic over the last nine years. And of course, the book. I don't know where you want to start on that. It's a big question, but it's fascinating to people.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (17:35)

Yeah. I mean, as you said, it's tied to the question I won't answer. I write in my new book, we were eight years in Power, on sale now.

Jeffrey Goldberg (17:44)

Oh, my God, everybody's selling.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (17:49)

I came to the Atlantic through a piece that I wrote on Bill Cosby, but that was overshadowed by the fact that it looked like our first African American nominee for president. And it was a life changing event for me. The fact of Barack Obama, I think for journalists across the board, not just me, writers across the board, it created an appetite, a curiosity about certain things. I had been practicing for 12 years at that point, and at no point was anybody as interested, you know, in what I was writing or, you know, this area that I was, that I had been interested in as when Barack Obama became president. It just, you know, opened an entire, I don't know, room up, you know, for journalists that weren't there before. What was that relationship like? So we don't blog anymore. I think that's a huge part of it. Right. But I blogged, you know what I mean, all the time. And one of the more challenging aspects I felt of my task was to reflect the very real joy that the community that I was a part of, that I lived in, felt and at the same time, you know, to express my own, you know, very, very specific opinions. You know, some of the things that, you know, I found deeply disappointing. The Morehouse speech, obviously, is one of the things we immediately. That immediately comes to mind. You know, his embrace of respectability, politics, the basic notion that of colorblind policy, you know, which Barack Obama embraced and basically every, you know, Democratic president before him embraced that. The best way to help black people who had been inj by policy that was not, in fact, colorblind, was through, you know, some sort of colorblind remediation, class based policies, as we call them. It was a huge, huge area, you know, of disagreement, you know, and I, you know, criticized him, you know, all the way through for it. At the same time, you know, you know, there were people who felt that he was just a symbol. And that always, you know, drew me up. Right. Because it's like, again, I guess it's the flip side of that question about, you know, all of these sort of, you know, reporters who go out in the Trump country and say, are you sorry yet? I concluded just talking to black folks, just watching the black folks, just watching black folks, yeah, he is a symbol, but maybe that symbol's like really, really important. Maybe we underrate and, you know, the Confederate flag is also a symbol. All those monuments that we're pulling down, these are also just symbols. These do not in and of themselves create the wealth gap. But maybe symbols actually have some sort of power. Maybe they make some sort of statement about your ambition. Movies. I mean, Black Panther in and of itself is not a piece of policy. It's not reparations. It's not going to, you know what I mean, in and of itself do anything about any of the social indicators. But we have always said that before Barack Obama, you know, the fact that every single president was a white male had some sort of import. We knew that it could not be that the simple symbol of Barack Obama had no import. And so there's always this conflict between, you know, expressing, you know, your disappointment in him in terms of, you know, how he addressed black folks in a very, how shall we say, cautious way. You know, he dealt with, you know, racism, you know, in this country and the fact that the actual people who you were talking to, you know, I mean, I don't know that there was a more popular person in black America than Barack Obama. Did that mean black people had been brainwashed? Had they been fooled? Did they somehow they been hoodwinked? You know, and as you know, as I said again, as you know, you know, I would make the same case, you know, for folks in Trump country. I just don't. That's not my approach to the electorate. I think folks know what they're doing, you know, and it's much more interesting to me to try to figure out the why of what they're doing.

Jeffrey Goldberg (22:01)

Could Trump have become president without Barack Obama before him? Any chance at all?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (22:07)

Trump could not have become President without the response to Barack Obama. And it's important to state it that way, because I don't think there's anything Barack Obama did except be a human being who happened to check African American on his census form.

Jeffrey Goldberg (22:23)

You think that was so provocative?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (22:24)

Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg (22:25)

Donald Trump. That in itself, yes.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (22:27)

Yes. And it makes sense. It makes sense if you believe that racism and white supremacy is a central thread in American politics. It makes sense that a black president would be a shock to the system. It makes sense. It makes sense that on one side, we like to celebrate that response to folks like, say, in Millennium park when Barack Obama was elected in 2008. But what we don't see is that other folks might have had a response to that, too. And, in fact, if you look closely through those whole eight years, it's actually there. I mean, consistently during those eight years, anywhere from half to a narrow majority of the Republican Party believe that the president of the United States was illegitimate because he was not born in this country. I mean, that's an incredible statement. And, you know, Trump, obviously, you know, this was how he, you know, began his presidential run, you know, by embracing that idea. And it was an idea that was much, much more powerful than anybody, including Barack Obama, by the way, understood. Powerful enough to make him president of the United States.

Jeffrey Goldberg (23:36)

You are famous for, among other things, arguing that there is not necessarily a moral arc of the universe that bends toward justice. You've written that there might be an arc, but it bends toward chaos.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (23:48)

Right.

Jeffrey Goldberg (23:49)

So the question is, are we in a temporary phase right now, or are we back to the mean? In other words, we have this experiment where we picked a black guy to be president, but that was nice. And now we're back to something. We're back to the norm. Do you see this as the last withdrawing roar, to borrow from Matthew Arndt, the last withdrawing roar of American white supremacist thinking?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (24:15)

Or.

Jeffrey Goldberg (24:16)

Or are we just back to way it's always been?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (24:19)

It's probably not the last. I wouldn't say either of those. I mean, how old was Dylann Roof? 20, 21? I mean, he's a kid. It wasn't like the people marching on Charlottesville were 65 years old. There's a lot of young people marching on Charlottesville. And so I think it's naive to think that this force that has been so powerful in American history and politics is just gonna age out. So I wouldn't say that I don't know where this goes, but I have to believe that given the power of the White House to have somebody in office who is as ignorant as Trump is that that has long term effects. You know, that even if you, you.

Jeffrey Goldberg (25:07)

Know, go beyond race relations and go beyond everything.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (25:10)

Well, I think like anything else, you know, the one, the way white supremacy works in this country is it first screws folks over in its narrow area and then it spills out into everything else. So I don't think Trump exists without birtherism, but birtherism is not the end of the harm in which he'll cause. And I think that'll. Whether Trump is reelected or not, I think we'll be grappling with that for a while.

Jeffrey Goldberg (25:38)

A question a lot of journalists get. I get this a lot is, okay, so you guys in the mainstream media, you're doing pretty well now because people are reading you, people are subscribing in solidarity with the idea of the free press. But how are you going to reach, let's say, the hardcore 30, 35, maybe even 40% of America that doesn't accept the basic enlightenment values that there's some such a thing as observable truth? Right. The question I have for you is how do you. What is the answer to that question? Because I don't think anybody's come up with a really good one yet. How do you, as a journalist, go to people who still support Trump and still believe that he's going to deliver on the things that he promises and say to them? Well, actually, here are a set of facts and you should be swayed by these facts. In other words, how do you, as a journalist, recommend. Recommend we try to convince people to come back into the fold of observable reality.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (26:38)

I don't feel like it's my job.

Jeffrey Goldberg (26:40)

It is your job, though, in a kind of way. You gotta go out and try to tell people that here's truth and here's falsehood. No.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (26:47)

Yeah, but you can't. I think buried in your question is the notion that it's your job to. Well, first my Brayden, is that if you present, you know, a set of facts that have been verified, that they somehow will say, oh, those are facts. I'm convinced. Oftentimes there are another set of facts that people are operating on that maybe can't be repeated in polite company. Well, that sometimes are actually repeated in polite company, as it turns out, as we're learning. But I guess I'm skeptical of that because that to me again, is actually more the job of activists. Activists have to figure out how to phrase X, Y and z so that people are convinced because they're actually trying to move people the job. You need somebody who has the ability to say the things that may not be digestible. Like if we all start writing, like Senate aides, If we all start writing in such a way that. And I guess on top of that, it has long been the way for black journalists and black writers to soften their words, to soften their blows so that white people will hear them. And to me, that just takes all the fun out of writing. Why write? Why write? Go lead a bunch of diversity seminars somewhere. I mean, what, like, why? The beautiful thing about writing is, you know, when you sit down at that computer, man, it's you and the white page. It's just you and that page. You know what I mean? And in this, you know, narrow.

Jeffrey Goldberg (28:11)

That's the horrible thing about writing.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (28:13)

That is the horrible thing, too. Yes. It's both horrible and beautiful. You know, you can do whatever you want. You also can do nothing. Like, that's. You know what I mean? Both of those things can happen, you know?

Jeffrey Goldberg (28:22)

So I'm gonna stipulate that there are many white people in America who don't like you. But are you ever surprised by the. He has Gallup polling this question on a daily basis, actually. Are you surprised? I mean, look at this audience. Are you surprised that there are so many white people who do actually agree with your understanding of where we're at? And does that give you any hope? Dare I use that word?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (28:47)

I am, but I shouldn't be. There are hundreds of millions of white people in this country. There are a lot of white people in this. And so that's room enough for a lot of white people to not like me into a much, much smaller group of white people to like me and still have a room like this. So I should be less surprised. I'm working on being less surprised. Less surprised that a relatively small group of white people like me.

Jeffrey Goldberg (29:11)

Why would you be surprised?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (29:12)

Why would I be surprised? Yeah.

Jeffrey Goldberg (29:13)

Yeah.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (29:14)

I think because I write the way I just stated. I think, like, there's a notion that somehow if we explain things that in a certain way to white people, if we hold their hands like kindergartners and walk them through Racism 101, they'll get it. And one of my motivating features for writing was I was talking to a writer, this person at the Atlantic, and I was telling him the other day, the best thing, what I love about how he writes is he writes angry. He writes the way an athlete should play angry. This guy writes angry. I told him, I said, I'm reading this piece right now, man, and you're not writing angry. And when I write, I'm not trying to hold hands. I'm trying to write angry. Anger gets a bad rap, you know what I mean? Anger is a very, very human emotion that can be good for something, you know, And I try to write with all of that force and all of that tenacity and, you know, all of that heart, you know, that I have. And I just. I think what a lot of us were trained to believe was, if you do that, you know, black folks will hear you and. And nobody else will. And so I think what I told myself was, okay, that's fine. If only black folks hear me, I'm good. I'm okay with that. And then, you know, you look up and lo and behold, it turns out to be more than that.

Jeffrey Goldberg (30:27)

I'm going to go to some of these questions that we're getting, a lot of good questions here. If you could ask the 45th president, I don't know why they didn't write the name. I wonder who that is. Only one question. What would it be?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (30:43)

I mean, this is horrible for a journalist to say, I don't feel like I have questions for Trump.

Jeffrey Goldberg (30:48)

No, no, no, no, no, no. You must. You're a profiler. I mean, among other things.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (30:52)

But he's so blatant. Like, it's so. Like, there's nothing. There's no dissembling. Like, he says it like, he fired the FBI director. Why'd you fire the FBI director? He said, I thought this Russia thing was bad, so I fired him. Like, there's no second level. It's clear. It's clear.

Jeffrey Goldberg (31:15)

Isn't that refreshing in a kind of.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (31:17)

I mean, it is kind of refreshing, but it's like, you know, problem solved. You know, Donald Trump. Why don't you like Judge Curio? He's a Mexican. He said, it's clear. He's a Mexican. Why can't we have people from Haiti? Haiti's a shithole country. I mean, okay, I know what you think now. I know what you think. But the.

Jeffrey Goldberg (31:35)

But why, though? Why, like, don't you ever want to. I mean, I happen to be expressing my own personal fantasy that Ta Nehisi Coates goes to the Oval Office and spend two hours at Donald Trump.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (31:43)

What's there to say, though? Like, what's there to talk about?

Jeffrey Goldberg (31:45)

That would be a comic book. That would be a hell of a comic book. What's there to say is, like, tell me your first experience with African Americans. Why you know, like, what was it like in Queens when you're growing up? I mean, just to.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (31:56)

Why would that be interesting?

Jeffrey Goldberg (31:57)

I find. I think that would be fascinating. I would like to hear him explicate. I mean, you're. I'm assuming a level. Again, I'm not trying to sound condescending here. I'm assuming that there can be a level of thoughtfulness in the interchange that would allow him to reflect a little bit on his early experiences with people from other groups.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (32:13)

There is nothing about Donald Trump that strikes me as reflective.

Jeffrey Goldberg (32:16)

No, I was.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (32:19)

I mean that. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Jeffrey Goldberg (32:21)

I'm talking about Earth 2. I'm talking about Earth 2 right now. I got that. But I would think that would be an interesting thing for a reporter to try to do. That's all I'm saying. Huh? No, I guess that's not gonna be. You're not gonna be reading that in the Atlantic anytime soon.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (32:34)

Obviously, there are other, like, you know, conservative. Who I actually would. You know, I think I actually would enjoy, you know, talking to. I mean, anybody else. Paul Ryan, you know, I mean, I have some questions for Paul Ryan.

Jeffrey Goldberg (32:47)

What would be your question to Paul Ryan?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (32:48)

Do you really, really believe in this tax. Do you really, really believe this is. I mean, do you really? Because, like, Paul Ryan. Like, there's some cover, right? Like, there's actually some. You know what I mean? Like, it actually is sub, you know? You know what I mean? Like, and I'm sure somewhere in there is some belief and somewhere in there's a little hustle, you know what I mean? And so as a journalist, you go and try to figure out which is which, you know? But with Trump, it's just. It's what it is, man. It's what it is all made you very rich, you know what I mean? Like, it's a straight. You know, down the line, I could shoot somebody out in the middle of Fifth Avenue, you know what I mean? Like, it's just a straight. Okay. All right. Well, that's what you think. Got it. Got it.

Jeffrey Goldberg (33:22)

I'm working that Paul Ryan thing. Here's a question. You wrote an entire book about your son and his relationship to. To being black in the US what would the ideal superhero look like to your son?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (33:32)

Oh, man, I don't know. I feel unqualified to answer that. I don't know. I have no idea. I have not. Because, I mean, would you want me to? Like. Like, when I was a kid, my superheroes were Spider man. And I don't, like, regret that. You know, Spider Man's awesome. You know what I mean? Great power, great responsibility. I know about that. You know what I mean? Like, that's a beautiful, you know, sort of message. So I don't know, whoever he'd be interested in.

Jeffrey Goldberg (34:01)

Next year we're gonna have. We both have sons the same age. We were actually gonna. We were thinking about sending them out here instead of us. See how long that would go. We talk about comic books. Here's a question that I ask with some hesitation because you might bag it on the grounds that it's more of an activist question. But what would incentivize the privileged to understand and actively work to reverse the injustices that not only built America, but still plague America to date?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (34:28)

The belief that it was so central to their interests that they had that it just had to get done. We have examples of this all through history. At the onset of the American Civil War, no one on either side wanted black people fighting in that war. Frederick Douglass goes to. Abraham Lincoln says, listen, let me, you know, raise a regiment of black soldiers to fight. Abraham Lincoln does not want black folks fighting. Emancipation proclamation is what, 1862. And that's the first, you know, sort of, you know, presidential document says, you know, that you can raise black troops. Well, by then, you know, the Union's getting his butt kicked. And it's like we actually, you know what I mean? If we're going to win, we actually need black people to fight. You know, I'd rather they didn't. I wish they couldn't. You know what I mean? Because the whole notion of soldiers deeply caught up in this idea of citizenship, and it's quite clear that once folks start dying for their country, you have to, you know, start talking about rights for them. They held it off for as long as they could, you know, and it got so bad that by the point, you know, towards the end of the war, the Confederate army, having seen these black folks out there fight, listen, we need to start thinking about having some black people fight for us, right? You know, your interest gets so. Racism is a luxury. As long as you can afford it, you're going to afford it. It's in those moments where you can't afford it. Why does Robert F. Kennedy, you know, decide that, you know, something needs to be done about the Freedom Riders? Well, because the Soviet Union is, you know, using this as a kind of propaganda because it's this idea that the country needs to be represented. You know, there are larger interests at stake in the idea of seeing America as democracy, as a Democracy and as the leader of democracy, and when you see people getting bombed on a bus simply because they want to sit on a bus, that undercuts. It undercuts our interests now. So maybe we should actually do something about that. That doesn't mean that they're not.

Jeffrey Goldberg (36:17)

So what's the price? That. I'll just put it bluntly. What is the price that white America has to pay for in order to actually change these underlying structures?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (36:26)

A complete loss of whiteness and its suite of privileges. And I mean that in the most literal. If you want to make that not just, you know what I mean, an abstract thing in this country, when I did case for reparations, and it might be more or less right now, but you had a 20 to 1 wealth gap. For every dollar that black people had. I'm sorry, for every nickel that black people had, white families in this country had a dollar. Obviously, you would have to have the loss of some amount of wealth for the average white family in this country. Massive redistribution of wealth. But the money is just the beginning of it. I mean, you would have to come down here and live like we live, or we'd all have to be raised up to some sort of equal level. Trayvon Martin, you know, would no longer have to be just an abstraction to you. You know, it would have to be, you know, when Barack Obama said, my son, you know, if I had a son, he looked like Trayvon, that had to be true of white people, too. Like, they would have to actually say that and feel that in a way that black people, you know, feel it beyond that, bigger than that. I mean, if you think about, like, how status works in this country and maybe period, for all humans, I don't know, the way you define yourself as having some sort of place on the societal ladder is that there's this bottom that you can never sink to. And the promise of whiteness in America has always been that there are a class of people, no matter what happens to you, no matter how many jobs you lose, no matter how many times your wife or your husband leaves you, high school dropout, whatever, you will never be, excuse my language, a nigger. That will never happen to you. And I don't think you can undersell how much the loss of that, the idea that you actually could be on the bottom, that anybody could be on the bottom, the chaos that that represents, you know, for white people in this country, I don't think you should undersell how big that would be.

Jeffrey Goldberg (38:26)

Here's a really interesting question in reference to. In between the world and me. How might your message have been different or not if you were writing to a daughter?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (38:43)

I don't know. This is why I'm not a public intellectual. And I'll explain why. Because I think, like. I think of, like, as a public intellectual, I could sit here and say, well, I think, you know, black women face a different, you know, sort of suite of challenges and dangers. Obviously, I would be concerned about sexual violence. I would be concerned about, you know, having, you know, maintaining rights over, you know, her body and her reproductive rights. And, you know, I could go on at length like that. But that's bullshit. And why is that bullshit? Because I wrote between the World and Me out of a specific experience I had with Somari Coates. And that's what I know. That's why I didn't write it to a generic black male. I wrote it out of specific experiences that I had. I mean, it really goes back, you know, even further than that. It goes to, you know, my friend Prince Jones being killed. Prince Jones was an actual person. There's a work of journalism within that. He was a black male. And that then tied into the fact that the year he was killed, my son was, like, a month old, and I was holding him. And I was thinking about that. In other words, it comes from. And I don't mean to demean the person that asked a question, but it is not as if you sit up and say, huh, I'm gonna write a book, a letter to a young black male. That's not how that book started. It came out of specific, very real, personal, tangible experience. It wasn't theory. It wasn't an abstract familiarity. And so having not had that experience with a daughter, because I don't have one, having not had that sort of direct thing, you know, actually happen, it's tough to know. It's tough to know it would have came out of whatever those individual, very, very specific experiences. It's like asking me, you know, like, if I asked you, Jeff, how would you have written a story that you've never reported on? And you don't know, right, because you don't know where. What twists and turns might happen as you go out and report. It's tough to know in the absence of having actually done the work.

Jeffrey Goldberg (40:46)

Here's a question that's probably from Jack Dorsey. Will you ever come back to Twitter and. Or other social channels? It's actually from somebody else. Not Jack.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (40:55)

Okay. No.

Jeffrey Goldberg (40:57)

What do you mean, no? No, no.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (40:59)

Never.

Jeffrey Goldberg (41:01)

Never say never.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (41:02)

No, I'm saying never.

Jeffrey Goldberg (41:04)

Really?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (41:04)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Goldberg (41:05)

I Mean, this is on the record.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (41:06)

Yeah. I'll never. I'll never do that again.

Jeffrey Goldberg (41:08)

No. Why talk about it?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (41:12)

I think it goes back to what we were talking about before, like, this idea of. First of all, I had fun on Twitter. It's very fun. It's a lot of fun. I really, really enjoyed it, and I miss it. I wish I could beat it. I really do. But I think part of maturity is understanding what is good for you and what is not good for you. And I don't think it was good for me. I am not making a declaration about Twitter that I think holds true for all other Twitter users. I'm talking about me. I'm a person that's sort of slow, as I said, that likes the nuance of things, that likes books, that likes the space and the time to think, that enjoys slowing things down a little bit, that writes things that I think or tries to write things.

Jeffrey Goldberg (42:10)

Think Twitter is bad for you or bad for society or both.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (42:14)

I'm hesitant to say it's bad for society. I think it's bad for me, and I suspect that it's bad for writers like me. In other words, writers who do what I do. I think it's probably not good for them. It's not good. Like one of the. It's not good to be able to have an opinion for someone like me. Someone like me who already has a voice, who already has a platform. It's not good for me to be able to just immediately vent whatever opinion I had while I was drinking coffee that morning with my wife. That's not good. What do I know? Have I thought about it? Have I batted around back and forth? Have I read about it?

Jeffrey Goldberg (42:56)

But you're a guy who, when you were much less famous, you were blogging. And your method of blogging was to take people inside your mind and say, this is what I'm thinking about right now. I don't know the answers. That. That doesn't have any appeal anymore.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (43:10)

Yeah. But I had a really controlled check on that. And that was my comment section, which was a really curated group of people who could push back and forth and go all different ways. And sometimes I could highlight their opinions and say, I thought this yesterday, but X, Y, and Z person said this. In Twitter, you're in a situation where not only can you not see the person, you don't have any established relationship with the person. Communication, I think. I think, again, you know, I'm hesitant to make Rambo announcements, but I think it's really, really based on. There has to be some shared something. You know, I think anonymity is probably bad in terms of the things people will say to each other. I think that's the first thing. And then I think, you know, even within anonymity, there can be, you know, some sort of relationship, the lack of real relationship. I think the things, you know, sometimes people say that they would not say if they were sitting next to each other. That's tough. I mean, whatever I write in my articles, you know what I mean, I have no problem saying to people, you know what I mean? I wrote something about President Obama when he was in office, and I had to go into a room, and I had no problem talking to her. I had no problem repeating it at all. You know, a little nervous about it, but I could do it. You know, I could do it. You know what I mean? When you start, like, singing things, you know, about people calling in a way that, you know, if y' all was sitting next to each other, you just wouldn't do it. Just wouldn't do it. I don't know. And I think maybe the platform lends itself to people doing that now. Maybe there are people with better control, you know, X, Y, and Z. Somebody like me shouldn't be. I shouldn't be there. I shouldn't be in that room.

Jeffrey Goldberg (44:58)

I'm gonna come back to comics just for a final question. What are the political pressures of the Marvel universe? Presumably, it's partly old school, comic bookish, partly current. How do you synthesize all that? And then a very happy thanks. I like that. It's very polite. You're welcome.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (45:16)

That's a great question. I think in this way, the comics connect to the nonfiction work. Because when you're doing comics at a place like Marvel, you start with a story that's already in motion. It's already ongoing. And so in order to write that story, much like writing a story for the Atlantic, you actually have to do all this historical research. You have to read all these other comic books. You know what I mean? And you have to base whatever you're writing. At least I do. Other people don't, you know, they retcon or do whatever, but for myself, I try to base it on what happened before. So, like, any formulation I have of Captain America is usually based on will be based on whatever happened before, you know, and the research of that. I love that stuff. I think it's really, really cool. You know, I love, you know, being part of, you know, some sort of, you know, bigger, you know, arc and bigger story. It's a lot of fun for me.

Jeffrey Goldberg (46:11)

So, ladies and gentlemen, next year at this time, it will be Ta Nehisi and Paul Ryan in this chair. I hope you're all back for that. Ta Nehi, thank you very much. Thank you very much. And everybody, thank you. The Atlantic interview is produced by Diana Douglas and Kevin Townsend, with production help from Kim Lau. Special thanks this week to the south by Southwest video team. My entire conversation with Ta Nehisi Coates, unedited, is on the south by Southwest YouTube channel. Don't forget to subscribe and rate us if you like this podcast. I'm Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, and I'll see you soon.