← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Foreign.
- [00:13]
Tim Miller
Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A little change from Bill Kristol. Mondays today you can get your crystal fix in written form. His newsletter is out this morning. Arguing that we're not alarmed enough about what Trump is doing in la, but instead we got a special guest today, author and journalist. As between the World and Me will be released in paperback next week in observation of the 10th anniversary of its publication. It's ta. Nehisi Coates. How you doing, man?
- [00:38]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I'm good, I'm good. A little sick, but I'm okay. I'll be all right.
- [00:41]
Tim Miller
What a strange world it is for you to be the stand in for Bill Kristol, you know.
- [00:44]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah, we're practically indistinguishable.
- [00:46]
Tim Miller
Who the hell knows how the world will turn. But I want to get into the book stuff and some other bigger picture stuff, but obviously we had some news over the weekend I want to pick your brain about. With the National Guard being deployed to Los Angeles in reaction to the anti ice protests, I guess just open ended. First I want to hear what you make of what we're seeing out there.
- [01:10]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah, I think it's tough because I think there are people who probably trying to be strategic and understand politics, who probably don't love this and don't love the visuals that they're seeing. And I think it is certainly true that Trump wants to bait a confrontation. He certainly did that in 2020 with George Floyd and everything. And so it's pretty clear that he's trying to create a spectacle that helps him. And I know that there probably is again a tendency or maybe a knee jerk reaction to dismiss what looks like the disorder of protests, to deal with the very real thing of having to convince people of your position and not feeling like these visuals are the best. The problem is I think there are a number of us who have been watching ineffective and probably, maybe more importantly than ineffective, feeble resistance and down to outright cowardice. And so it's like when people come into your community and they're snatching folks out of graduations or they're snatching folks when they're going to report and follow the letter of the law. When you have a situation in which people are being taken out of this country and thrown into gulags and folks are laughing about it and laughing about defying judges. And some of our politicians say, well, we shouldn't talk about this. You know what I mean? Or some people who I guess are political opponents say, well, you shouldn't focus on this, that the guy who was actually his senator, Van Hollen, who represents him, should not advocate for him. People feel the very human need to do something. You can't just come into people's community and inflict violence and expect that there will be no reaction. These are human beings. These are human beings. And so these questions that necessarily arise, and I understand them, of strategy and tactics, et cetera, it's very hard to ask people to not be human beings, to not have human reactions.
- [03:28]
Tim Miller
Yeah. On the kind of instigation side of it, it's funny. Of all places, the Wall Street Journal editorial board this morning read this sentence which is, I think, half insightful about the situation. They wrote, it's fanciful to think that raiding restaurants to snatch busboys or Home Depots to grab stock clerks won't inspire a backlash. The correct part was the second half of the sentence. They're correct that that would inspire a backlash. I think maybe their incorrect part was that there are people around Trump that desire for that not to be the case. I think that's actually the point of what they're doing. And if even the. The folks sitting over there at News Corp, you know, can see that this is a natural human reaction, like, I hear you, it is hard to begrudge that reaction. Like, on the other hand, you know, like burning up way mos and waving Mexican flags, like, I don't understand what really, what that is achieving either. Right. And so, like, it's. It's tough to kind of navigate how to balance those.
- [04:31]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I don't know that it's strategic, though. You know what I mean? I don't know that it is the fact that some group of people sat back and said, this is going to get us to this place in this period. We're going to do this, we're going to do that. One of the things people don't talk about is enough with the civil rights movement, they look at the nonviolence and they look at what appears to be the discipline of it and the suits and the, you know, the hats. And, you know, he said, well, why can't we do that? But if you read the history, first of all, what they were doing was tremendously inhuman in the sense of they were training themselves to not defend themselves. This is not, again, a very, very natural human reaction. You know, somebody hits you, you try to stop them from hitting you. That's a pretty natural thing. And so they were disciplining themselves to a. Not do that. And then they were constantly dealing with people who, you know, what I mean, didn't feel like that was how they wanted to live, that somehow that assaulted their. Their dignity, that assaulted the sanctity of their body. This was a constant, constant, constant, constant tension right up to the point where Martin Luther King gets killed and we end up with riots. And is it the case that you could make maybe more political progress if folks dressed in suits and all waved American flags and carried copies of cars? I mean, possibly, possibly. You know what I mean? I will say that not necessarily. I don't know that. That we're given where we are. Right. But I understand the argument for it, but I just think we have to build into our politics a tolerance for the idea that people will have human reactions, and then we have to calculate accordingly. You know what I mean? That doesn't mean that folks don't try to strategize, but kind of looking at these people and saying, why don't you do X, Y and Z? Because this always happens. You know what I mean? It always happens. I think it would happen with any community.
- [06:25]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [06:25]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You know, Well, I guess.
- [06:26]
Tim Miller
I mean, obviously there's some limits to any parallel, particularly civil rights parallel. But maybe the missing ingredient here is to your point about kind of the limp resistance coming from the more. Whatever you want to call it, establishment, normal, sect. If that is missing, then like the void that there's a void that is filled. You know what I mean? Like, you needed. This is really reductive. But you needed Malcolm and Martin, like, you know what I mean? Like you needed.
- [06:55]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah. And I think what that means is when you have this kind of limp resistance, it's like the established channels completely lose legitimacy. So what am I left with? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just let these people just come in here and do this to my community and not do anything? And I don't think that's a position anybody would want to be in.
- [07:13]
Tim Miller
What is your sense of alarm? Just as far as. And I think it seems like things had died down a little bit overnight, but just how. How quick to the trigger. These guys were in the Trump administration with a National Guard deployment. They put out a press release. Five hundred Marines from the 2nd Battalion in 29 Palms, California, are prepared to deploy. It does feel like they want to do that.
- [07:35]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Oh, they definitely do. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't surprised. Again, if you go back and look at 2020, maybe they were a little slower in 2020 because they had this visual of George Floyd to contend with, but, I mean, they were sending people with masks and with the badges covered up, you know, and this was not ice. This was not matter of people who weren't citizens. This was deployed in general against citizens. And so I'm not surprised by that. They want to portray an image of this country kind of being at war and Trump as the defender of order while he loots the country, by the way.
- [08:13]
Tim Miller
Yeah. I mean, to me, the difference between 2020, it's obviously not Trump because his impulse is the same, but it's like instead of having Mark Esper or whatever in charge of the military, you know, some guy who's not perfect, has got his own flaws, but, like, you know, doesn't want to be, you know, doesn't want his kids to see him as the guy in the history book that sent the military in after, you know, Black Lives Matter, protesters in the streets. He's got a weekend talk show host running the military now.
- [08:41]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Right.
- [08:41]
Tim Miller
And so I got, to me, I think that is what makes. That's what makes my concern level higher now than about. About the potential for state violence, than maybe looking back, I don't know if you feel the same way.
- [08:55]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I think you're right. I totally agree. I thought this when Trump won, though. I mean, I just like, it's. Anything could happen. Anything could happen.
- [09:05]
Tim Miller
One more thing on the Trump or on this part of it. So this is happening now in la, the specter of. We're coming up this weekend, we've got our birthday parade. The birthday boy gets a tank parade through the city in dc. So you spent some time there, went to Howard. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that visual, the inverse visual, I guess, from the Waymos on Fire.
- [09:26]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
It's bad, it's bad. I do think it's one of these things that we have to reckon with, which is someday Trump will not be president. But I think.
- [09:41]
Tim Miller
Are you sure?
- [09:42]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah, I am sure that. I'm not sure that how that's going to happen, but at some point it will. You know what I mean?
- [09:48]
Tim Miller
I don't know. The AI is happening really fast. Is it possible they could put, like, what, they could put Futurama. They could put his brain in a thing like Richard Nixon and make him permanent president?
- [09:57]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. But barring some grand AI innovation, I think what is happening is there is significant damage being done to expectations, norms, legitimacy. I actually think that damage started when people, well, when we as a country began to believe our own hype, which is to say, if we say the Senate is the greatest deliberative body in the world, then it must be. And we don't have to do anything to kind of make that true, make that the case when folks really began to believe that this wasn't a country run by fallible human beings, that there were ghosts in the machines that could guide it, and thus the institutions did not have to be protected. It didn't have to be an amount of caretaking done there that really left it vulnerable. And what is happening now is the next guy, whoever that is after Trump, can say, I want a military parade, too. I can loot the country, too. I can have my own crypto coins and crypto business, too, because that's what it is now. And so I think as frightening as Trump is and as frightening as he is right now, I mean, I think he probably will go down, certainly is this case so far, as the most impactful president of my lifetime. And that is scary.
- [11:25]
Tim Miller
Yeah. It's an interesting question, right? Like this. How. How much of this is irreparable? I think that's another thing that kind of goes back to stuff that you've written about in the past. I mean, we've had dark times that then, you know, things got a little better and then backslid. And, you know, we could go through all the historical examples of that. But, you know, there's certain things that, you know, something changes, the country makes a choice, they go down a path and, like, the other path is, then becomes closed. Right. Like, there's certain things that are not fixable. Like, you know, Trump won't always be president. You know, maybe we can. The next president can come in and put in some reforms to prevent future presidents from having cryptographs, like we did after Watergate or whatever.
- [12:08]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
But, Tim, how does that happen, though? Like, how does that. Like, how do those reforms happen, given what the Senate is, given what the political parties are like? Like, how does that even happen?
- [12:18]
Tim Miller
I'm going to answer the question with a question which is I don't. Like, what do you think? I don't know. It's hard. It's hard. I guess that's. That was the point of me bringing it up, is that I just. It's hard to see along some of these vectors, things getting better, at least in the short to medium term, you know, because of putting them back in again. Right. I do think it was potentially reparable, at least some of the damage from the first term. But now it is hard to kind of envision a way back to a politics that looks more like what it was like before him. But then I guess there's a question of, like, is that. Do you want that? Right? Like, maybe something else emerges out of it. I don't know.
- [12:59]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah, I will hope something else emerges out, because I don't. I don't think. Again, I don't think Trump just magically appears. You know, I think there were current and I think there were things that were already happening that, you know, made him possible, you know, and so that. That probably has to be, you know, dealt with to begin with. I also think, you know, and I don't know where you. Where you are in this, because I know you, you know, maybe even at this very moment, going through your own political evolution as all good citizens and thinking people should be, by the way.
- [13:31]
Tim Miller
Yeah. You know, nothing wrong changing your mind, man. That's what I always say. People never change their mind. That I'm much more suspect of. Like, I always said to people, I was like, if. If. If the stupidest game show host in the country got, like a racist buffoon who has no redeemable qualities gets made the president. And your reaction to that was, you know, my views on everything, the nature of the country pretty much same or unchanged. Then I was like, then we were. We had a different view of the country. You know what I mean?
- [14:00]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
So anyway, and so I just say that to say that I do think people have to have some positive vision of the state. Like, that has to happen at some point. People will have to feel like the state itself, the government, not America as an abstract concept, but the government is itself good for something. And it would be helpful if that something was not just violence. So, for instance, if it was not just the cops or the military, there has to be some positive articulation of the state. And I think that that is important because when you are asking people to go out to vote for something, when you're asking people to go out and support something, or, you know, when you're in a situation like we are right now, where something is being taken apart, you know, like I've heard a number of people say, look, most Americans don't care about, you know, what happens to usaid. Like, most people don't care about, you know, this. Well, that's our failing, that they don't care. Right. Like, that's not just a fait accompli. You know, the fact of the matter is, you know, there have been certain political decisions to talk about the state in a certain way, to talk about the government in a certain way, to portray it in a certain way, and it has made it easier, you know, to believe that taking, you know, taking it apart can somehow be a good thing or a positive thing. What I'm trying to say is there are narratives that happen before this, you know, great action happens that we all, you know, deploy. And so I think, you know, if we are trying to get either back to something or, you know, probably in my preference, forward to something, there has to be some sort of positive articulation of what you're defending. Because if your position is just, I am just slightly less skeptical at a state than this guy, I don't think that that works. You know, And I guess this gets.
- [15:52]
Tim Miller
To a conundrum that the Democrats have in particular in the Trump era, which is that at some level, a positive articulation of the state is a defense of the status quo. Right. It doesn't have to be a full throated defense of it, but it has to be a defense of, like, what is good about America. Right. Whether it be the institutions or liberal democracy or pluralism. Right. Like, it has to be the rule of law. Right. Like, okay, these are things that America has done that is good. But Democrats find themselves being defenders of a status quo that people don't like. And that takes us back to the first thing you mentioned, which is you end up kind of having a limp pushback. So how would you navigate that? If somebody called you and said that they want to be the standard bearer of this and they want you to help them find some words for it, what would you even say?
- [16:46]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
So let me just say up front that I'm somewhat intentioned with the advice I'm about to give, and this is why I'm not in electoral politics. There is a long history of African American leaders both asserting, I can't believe I'm gonna say this, both asserting the greatness of America and, like, the flaws at the same time. You know what I mean? So when Martin Luther King goes to the Martial White, he says, I'm just. The check has come back. You said X, Y and Z is true. I think that's great. I think those things you were standing for are great. You're not doing them.
- [17:22]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [17:22]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You know what I mean? And so it doubles as kind of a defense of the country, you know what I mean? Or as a statement, you know, a positive affirmation of the idea of what it should be, and then at the same time, a real articulation of what is actually happening. If you sense me grimacing at that idea a little bit.
- [17:42]
Tim Miller
I do.
- [17:42]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
It's probably because as I have Myself changed over the past five to 10 years. Particularly, my politics are probably becoming a little bit more international. And so I am now always just concerned about making sure this country is just in terms of its treatment of its citizens, but that it really is a just actor on the world stage. Maybe you're getting this from me, but I feel that oftentimes we are not.
- [18:11]
Tim Miller
And maybe, I don't know, maybe there is somewhat of an answer in that, to this, you know, political conundrum that the Democrats have themselves in. Like, maybe there is a way to talk about, like, the flaws and the mistakes and the things that we need to change while, like, uplifting maybe not the state, but the people, the nature of the American. You know, the nature of the American people and the experiment. Or maybe that's.
- [18:42]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
See, I'm scouting.
- [18:42]
Tim Miller
Maybe that's bullshit.
- [18:44]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Cause it's like. I think that's how we get here, though. I think that's exactly how we get here. Because, like, I don't want to, like, personalize this, but the thing I think about all the time, like, I think about I wrote a piece on Barack Obama at the end of his presidency, right? And he, granted, he's very kind and granted me, you know, a lot of time to interview and talk with him. And I wrote this, so it's not like I'm breaking any news. But the thing I remember him saying most out of that interview, out of, you know, everything he said and all articulate things he said was, Trump can't win. And he can't win because there just isn't a history in this country of. I guess what he actually said was, normally, with a couple of exceptions, the American people respond to people with a positive vision and not a negative vision. And he was. That wasn't a line, you know what I mean? He really did, at that point in time, believe that. He may not now, but he really did believe that. And I think about that a lot because I think it is a manifestation of, like, how some of this conversation about the experiment and about the people deludes us, allows us to ignore the fact that we are still human beings and we are still subject to, you know, all of, you know, the flaws and all of the impulses and all of the darkness and all of the things that are in the soul of human beings. And so it is certainly possible to build, as Trump has proven, a political movement off of the darkest parts of us. And that is unfortunate. You know what I mean? But I think if we can face that, my worry is that we feel that There is something in us, in our bones, that makes us invulnerable to this sort of rhetoric. And I think we would do well to dispense with that.
- [20:39]
Tim Miller
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- [23:42]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I mean, but that's the political tradition, right? Like, I mean like I say this all the time, but African Americans in this country as a community have been enslaved in this country longer than they have been free. So what that means is that. Or you know, on these shores, I guess, if you predated before the country over. But what that means is that to the extent that people cared about human rights or anything like that, like the idea that people's children shouldn't be sold off because of the color of their skin, that people shouldn't be worked to death because of the color of their skin, that women should not be subjects to industrialized rape and sexual assault for most, we were just kind of like, eh, you know, I don't love it, but eh, you know what I mean? Like many, obviously so many of our founding fathers was, you know, like they owed their existence to that. And it took a war that killed 20% of the military age white male population in the south to get rid of it. I mean that's a high price. That's a really, really high price. And so what that means is not that, you know, America is, you know, as a state or as a country is somehow worse than all other countries or states in the world. What it means is that we have just as much capacity for looking away from evil as everybody else. And yet if you look at the political tradition that comes out of that, it's not really a despairing tradition. You know what I mean? These are people who are kind of facing the worst of it in terms of America, I think, for complicated reasons, sometimes good, sometimes bad, the answer rarely is, this thing is totally and completely corrupt. We need to abandon it sometimes. That's the answer. And some of that, you know, I very much identify with. But certainly the mainstream position of the politics is not that, you know what I mean? And so I think on one level, the black tradition really does grapple with, you know, the dark heart of humanity that is here and is very much present, you know, in America and has always been, you know, present while at the same time trying to advance it. And again, I don't think that's because there's anything bone deep about black people in this country. It's just the nature of our experience here. And what we've had to despair isn't really an option, you know what I mean? Because it's like despair is like, they sold my son from Virginia down to Mississippi, and so am I going to completely abandon all efforts to find him? That's what despair is. So I can't betray him by doing that. Right. Like, we have people at stake, you know what I mean? It's very intimate with us. And so to despair is to, like, you know, abandon people, you know, which I think is a bit much for us.
- [26:30]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And this is the thing that kind of pisses me off sometimes when thinking about the conversation around Trump voters, thinking about how to process all this is like there's a lot of this excuse making, right? It's like there's economic pain, there's resentment, like the factory towns got hollowed out and, you know, the Appalachian, you know, there was fentanyl and there's some truth to all that. You hear all that and you think, well, okay, but I mean, black folks went through way worse than all of this in the last generations. One of the things I was reading from you recently, I forget which article it was in, was where you're like, if anybody should be angered about the devastation wrecked by the financial sector and a government that declined to prosecute the perpetrators, it's the African Americans. The housing crisis was one of the primary drivers in the past 20 years of the wealth gap. See this radicalization, right? Like at a community level. Right. Individual level, but like, at a community level, you didn't see this, okay? What we really need to do is put in charge our most comically evil, you know, standard bearer and punish the perpetrators. But that's has been what you've seen from, you know, a lot of folks on the mega side. And I just don't like, okay, so what is the lesson there? Sometimes it takes you to a bad place when you think about that. The lesson is that they were successful and putting Donald Trump in.
- [27:52]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I think it is hard to accept that culture is an extremely important part of politics, that there's not going to be a politics that doesn't have a cultural component to it. You know, there just isn't, you know, I was talking to somebody a couple of months ago, you know, who I, you know, actually was, you know, think, you know, further to the left and they were making the point, you know, I think, you know, it was an astute political point that, hey, you know, I don't, you know, I won't go out and talk about, you know, say, you know, trans rights or immigrant rights, you know, to this person over here. I will focus on the things that we have in common economically, you know what I mean, and try to build the coalition there. It's not that I'm, you know, anti trans or anti immigrant, but, you know, I'm trying to build a coalition and coalitions have to be built on the things that are shared. And I said, yeah, that makes sense. But what happens, like, when your opposition starts attacking those people? Right? Like, that really is, you know, I get it. Hey, you don't want to highlight it and talk about it. You know, I understand that, you know, I mean, that's not the, you know, the point of, you know, how you get elected. But when people decide that they want to talk about it, you know, what do you do then? You know, and I probably am one that feels that it's immoral to see bullying and to look away from it. And not to mention, as some people are now pitching, jump in on it. And it's tough, man, to accept that a group of people or that someone would turn over the entire state because somewhere in the country there's a high school track athlete who is transitioning and maybe won first place. Like that. That would be enough. I mean, that's scary. Like, that, that, that's really scary.
- [29:55]
Tim Miller
You know, I also struggle with the premise of the argument because, like, the economics of the Trump voter is better than most people throughout the world. You know, like, the French haven't turned to a Trump. The, like, we did better than the European. You know, it doesn't work for me as a unifying theory that it's just the economics, like the cultural part, the cultural battle is a much clearer to me rationale for him.
- [30:22]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Let me also just advance that a little bit too. I mean, there are people I think whose politics I probably share in terms of what they want to see in terms of what the social safety net should be in this country. But when you look to Europe where the social safety net is a lot stronger and you talk to black people over there, and you talk to Arabs, Arab people over there, they do not feel that the social safety net has necessarily been an anti racist endeavor. In other words, it is not expunged those feelings, you know what I mean? It really hasn't, which is to say that you can deal with all of that economic stuff in the way that a lot of people suggest they should be dealt with. And yet.
- [31:02]
Tim Miller
Not a ton of liberalization. In Qatar, in the uae, there's like a lot of economic prosperity that's passed along. That's true.
- [31:10]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I mean, that is exactly right. That is exactly right. I mean, in our own country, post war period, I mean, you have this boom and you know, in terms of, you know, like we see that as the golden age. I don't think anybody would describe, you know, post war America, you know, as a particularly tolerant, you know, not racist place.
- [31:31]
Tim Miller
I want to get into a couple more of the elements from your book we've been touched on. But first, there's this other book out there that has people kind of aflame Abundance. I'm sure you've been hearing the chatter about this. Ezra wrote this. Ezra wrote this yesterday about the theory of power. And I was like, man, I have to get Danasi's reaction to this because I don't really know where you'll take it. But he wrote this because I guess just set this up. Someone on the left had been criticizing him, saying that the book does not have a clear view of power and that the right way for the left to gain power is to create enemies, particularly in the billionaires and the corporate leaders. And this was his pushback to that. N view of power is more classically liberal. In his book Liberalism the Life of an Idea, Edmund Fawcett describes it neatly. Human power was implacable. It could never be relied on to behave well, whether political, economic or social. Superior power of some people over others tended inevitably to arbitrariness and domination. Unless resisted and checked. To take this view means power will be ill used by your friends as well as your enemies, by your opponents as well as by your neighbors. From this perspective, there are no safe reservoir of power. Corporations sometimes serve the national interest, sometimes betray it. The same is true of governments, unions, churches, et cetera. What do you make of that?
- [32:41]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I mean, it seems right to Me, I mean, I quote, there's some people.
- [32:45]
Tim Miller
That are very mad about that. No, that are like. No, that's not, that's not accurate, actually. That and it's a false equivalence between, you know, these groups.
- [32:54]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I haven't read the column, so maybe it's like something.
- [32:57]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I'm throwing it on you that I'm missing.
- [32:59]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You know what I mean? Let me, let me just say that. But. And while I followed the debate, I haven't had the chance to read Ezra's book. You know, I actually am still a little confused, you know, in terms of what the lines of the debate actually are, to be, to be frank with you.
- [33:12]
Tim Miller
Well, here's why I asked you about it. I'm sorry to put you on the spot. I asked you about it because I saw the Ezra tweet when I was reading an Atlantic article you wrote about Tony Jude.
- [33:21]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah, Tony Schott.
- [33:21]
Tim Miller
There was a bit in that where you were talking about power and you were writing about how there's this view that like there's this arc of, you know, moral arc of history that was bending towards justice, the Obama view. And Jute was, was basically saying no, that like, no, people do not pay the price for their, you know, ills and that the only way to make things better is to gain power. And so anyway, that's why I was curious kind of whether you had thought through that kind of question about the right way, you know, the right way to view gaining power.
- [33:58]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah, I love that quote. That's actually from his book Post War. And one of the things that that book is very, very clear eyed about is the means by which what we call Europe today was established. Our rosy eyed view of how the west greeted the survivors of the Holocaust and dealt with the implications of the Holocaust and the implications of World War II. And what he's talking about at that point is actually ethnic cleansing and how like there's some, you know, journalists who believing in, you know, the divine justice of the world believes that people will pay, you know, for that. And Tony is just like, no, there's no evidence that anybody ever paid. You know, sometimes the bad guys just get away with it. I read that. So I think between the World and Me was published in 15 because we're 10 years, so it would have been 115, but really between the world and me coming out of case for reparations. And so I read that in 13 before I went into the case for reparations actually. And one of the things that conditioned me for was just a view of the world and a view of history, because I do think certainly within the African American tradition, and I think this is because of perhaps our relationship with Christianity and the force with which Christianity has exerted itself in our politics and among our greatest leaders, in fact, that there is some sort of. At the end of the day, you know, this will work out, you know, the arc of universal, but bends towards justice. And I guess Tony was probably one of the first people I read that was like, no, the arc is bent. People have to bend. It does not bend. There's no gravity. There's no anything. And, you know, in fact, to the contrary, if anything, the inertia is on the side of evil, not good. And so that was just a revelatory moment. And probably all of my writing proceeds from that.
- [36:03]
Tim Miller
Let's take it between the world and me. Then you mentions earlier that I think you said something like, in the five, 10 years since, your views on it have evolved in some ways. And how so?
- [36:16]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Well, I mean. I mean, a big one is, you know, and I've talked about this quite a bit. It's probably case for reparations. So I should explain the relationship between those two things.
- [36:23]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [36:23]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I was at the Atlantic for 10 years, and somewhere around 2012, 2013, you know, I was, I mean, at grades. That job was so cool, man. And the coolest thing was like, I, you know, I was blogging, and I would write like, maybe twice a year or once a year, like these big pieces for the magazine. And what that meant was I just had so much time to read, you know what I mean? I just had just tons of time to just read and absorb. And because of what the blogosphere was then I would often write about what I was reading. And then I would have this feedback with the people that were commenting, and they would say, well, you should read this. You should check out that. And I would go check out that. And so I was like, in this, I think just this hyper period of growth, and I don't know that I knew it then, but much of my political journey at that point was really just to answer the question of why was it that in every single socioeconomic indicator you looked at, black people were typically somewhere at the bottom? And I only say somewhere to include indigenous Americans in that calculus. Why was that so consistent? And at the time, you still hear this sometimes, but less so now, there was a huge argument for culture, et cetera, which never passed my smell test.
- [37:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, right. Baggy jeans.
- [37:38]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yes, yes, yes. Baggy jeans. Pull off your pants.
- [37:41]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Pull off your pants and that'll solve it.
- [37:44]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You know, I mean, you should pull up your hands. But I don't think that's why.
- [37:49]
Tim Miller
I don't know. I was at World Tribe this past weekend. People seemed to be doing well economically, had their pants down.
- [37:54]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
It was fine. It was fine. As it turns out, I feel like I started to get answers to that question, you know, and that really led me to a case for reparations. And the real breakthrough for me was that I was able to articulate it for my editors in such a way that they understood it and not just understood it, got excited about it and backed it and did everything. And so that was a remarkable thing for me. And between the world and me came out of a need to express emotionally, which really. An empirical case in case for reparations. And so those two things happened, and two really big things came out of that. The first was that I don't even feel comfortable articulating this, but a level of fame accrued to me that I did not expect. It was not George Clooney fame, but it was make Ta Nehisi uncomfortable fame, which maybe doesn't take much.
- [38:44]
Tim Miller
People are looking at you at the airport.
- [38:46]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah.
- [38:46]
Tim Miller
And you're just trying.
- [38:47]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yeah. Like yesterday. I just got off a plane from Denver yesterday. And you would think I'd be happy about this. I mean, I guess I should be, but the stewardess is like, man, you know, I knew I recognized you, and then I saw your name. And I love seeing you on Democracy now and I love your books. Thank you. Da, da da, da da. And while I appreciate her, I really, really do, there's a part of you that just kind of wants to put on sunglasses and go like this. Right. And go on, you know, not that she did anything wrong, but I'm saying that I was uncomfortable with the amount of that. And what it did was it meant that a number of critiques, you know, began to come in, you know, which is fair and what should happen. And part of that is linked to, you know, the second thing, which is that one of those critiques was the case for reparations. And you know, how I wrote about Israeli reparations and that, and it was said to me in a way that forced me to take it seriously. And I spent some time taking it seriously. And my book that just came out, the message that came out of that, in some ways is an attempt to reconcile myself to Palestinians to the impact of my work on that community, to Israel, to Zionism. But I have to tell you it is also one of those moments where I guess I realized, even I like, how naive I was about the country I lived in and what it had its fingerprints on and what we did. And so that goes beyond Israel. Then you start looking at everything. Kim Burns has this documentary which he put out years ago on the Vietnam War, but I just happened to watch it recently. And you see things. It's a great documentary, but you see things like that and you say, well, okay, if this was true of us in this moment, what is our basic nature then? Like, what else have we done? What else have I missed? What else am I not seeing? You know? And so that's kind of the path I've been on.
- [40:44]
Tim Miller
I didn't know where you're going to take that. And I think that the personal reflection is important. Obviously, it's something I've been going through. I'm curious about the external, though, you know, like, this whole sort of world evolves, not out of your book alone, per se, but kind of out of a lot of things that are happening around that time, particularly kind of with Black Lives Matter and racial justice. And when I was rereading the book last night, one thing that struck me is, like, a couple of times you write critically about, like, accepting the invention of racecraft in the book. And, like, you write about this sort of. And there's this tension, right, between making racial identity and, like, the racial prioritization, like a prime focus versus like, rejecting the false construct a bit. And, you know, again, it was 10 years ago, so I didn't really rereading it. Now. That struck me because, like, a lot of the folks, you know, in the ensuing decade have leaned in way more to, like, the kind of racial hierarchy argument side of this, which obviously is there in your work as well.
- [41:51]
C
And so, I don't know, I just.
- [41:52]
Tim Miller
I'm wondering, did you watch all of that with any. Did it evolve your view at all? Or did you think that was cool? Or, I don't know, like, what did you make of kind of all of the conversation that around that in the ensuing decade?
- [42:06]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
So that's a great question. And I'll say two things. The first thing is there's a very subtle shift that's being made, and it's present in between the world. And I really had to do it when I was doing Case for Reparations because the argument in Case for Reparations is not that black people should get reparations. It is that victims of enslavement, Jim Crow should get reparations. There's a very subtle difference there. The point is not the color of your skin. The point is I can prove that somebody injured you.
- [42:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, right.
- [42:37]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
And you should be paid for that. Just like if you're walking down the street and the cops jump on you and beat the hell out of you and you sue the city, the city should, you know what I mean, repair you. You know, it is connected deeply to the injury, not to, you know, your skin color. And that's a subtle thing, you know what I mean? And so what you're talking about, that is present in between the world and me also. And it's present whenever I think the line in between the world and me is race is the child of racism, not the father. In other words, it's the racism that's real. It's a thing. Somebody wants to do something to you, they call you the thing, and then you become the thing in their eyes. Now you have a decision about whether you accept that or not. You know what I'm saying? And so it was always important to me not to accept it. I think the problem comes in. In the second part. So that's a very nuanced thing that I have to go through and complicated to go through. I think during that same period, some of us. Some of us decided that social media was an effective place to convey nuanced ideas. I think that was a mistake.
- [43:39]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [43:40]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I actually think that was the mistake.
- [43:42]
Tim Miller
In what way?
- [43:43]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
When I write, I am ridiculously careful. I don't just throw things out. I don't just lob things, because I recognize that many of the things that I am saying are things that people are not really going to want to hear. Even people who are sympathetic to me. You know, like there's a part in the room is like, really, ta, Nehisi, you're going to make me, you know, question this again? And so it's really, really important that I be as thorough as I possibly can. I'd be as nuanced as I possibly can, and I'll be as direct and articulate as I possibly can. You know, there's a phrase in that book, the people who think themselves white, that I actually adopted from James Baldwin that I repeat over and over again. And I'm not being sarcastic when I say that. I am saying that this is an invention, that we really aren't different. Like, there really is no bone. There's nothing bonding, genetic. There's nothing. There's nothing. You know what I mean? There is a fiction and a narrative and things that have come out of that that have made us different, but it's not a real thing. It took forever for me to figure out how to say that in a way that I felt true to me, you know what I mean? It took multiple drafts and going and looking over sentences again and again. And somebody who is trying to take that level of care, because I believe that's the level of care that we have to take if we want people to take our ideas seriously, that person probably should not have the ability to immediately try to articulate that, press a button and send it out to a million people. Like those two things are in tension with each other. I would argue they're actually contrary to each other. And so I know that there are. Well, I'll just speak for me. It takes so much work and so much effort to say the thing in a way that is true to what I actually feel. And I'm seeing and I am not capable of doing that in a tweet, Instagram, blue sky, whatever, it's just not. The medium is not suited for that. And so what happens is then there are either people who fair mindedly, you know what I mean, don't get the nuance of what you're saying, and so that becomes a problem. And there are other people who are completely unfair, you know what I mean? And acknowledging them, and then they use this butchered version of you, you know what I mean? And that becomes who you are. I think when you're coming with narratives and ideas and themes and theories that are outside of what people are used to and what the mainstream is, you gotta be patient. You gotta be patient with yourself and you gotta be patient with them. That doesn't mean that you gotta be less radical or not aggressive or not say what you think, but you need to make damn sure that you're saying what you think in the best way you possibly can.
- [46:24]
Tim Miller
It's interesting to put social media on that because like. And there clearly has been a backlash. I don't like what you ascribe it to and how much of it was already there versus how much is backlash. Right. But at some level, the Trump movement and other, this sort of rise of more explicitly racist young folks like the gripers and stuff like this, that's not as if those people did not exist in 1996. They just weren't talking about it in quite as an upfront way. Right. So it's something. There's some backlash that. And so to point that social media is the. Is that what you're saying? That you think that just the nature of the discourse that the social media was the driver of that, do you think? Or was there going to be a necessary backlash? No matter what, Anytime there was more.
- [47:11]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
There'S going to be a backlash. I mean, there's never been a moment, look, when Obama got. We should have known. I mean, look, you know, like, there have never been moments of racial progress in this country where there was no backlash. So that was going to happen. I guess the thing I'm more referring to is probably some of the writers and maybe even activists who are of accord with me in terms of my politics, in terms of where I would like to see the world, who I think maybe articulated themselves too much over social media, like it became their main way. And actually what they were saying was quite complicated and important and significant. But I don't know that a tweet is the best way to do it.
- [47:51]
Tim Miller
I guess one more thought about that kind of evolution over the last 10 years, because I look at it and I want you to go ahead and tell me that this is moderate Tim, being misguided about the nature of these things. Please feel free to say that. But I look back at the 10 years and look, my daughter's back. I have an adopted daughter. And one of the coolest things about.
- [48:11]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
This, we hold this.
- [48:12]
Tim Miller
She's seven.
- [48:14]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Congratulations. Yeah, you've made it seven years.
- [48:17]
Tim Miller
Yeah, she's amazing. And we have made it seven years. And here's the cool thing about it that she grew up in this moment is that, you know, my parents, you know, and my husband's parents who are from the suburbs and from rural America, respectively, and have, you know, like a combined eight black people in the counties where they lived. Right. Growing up. Like, they now, I think, in a large part to the change that we've seen over the last 10 years, can go buy her kids books that have little black girls as the main character and, you know, dolls. Like, it's easy. It's easy for them. Right. Like, rather than having to go out and do it and they kind of get why it's important in a way that they, I don't think maybe would have 20 years ago. Right. Like, so there's been progress in this kind of area of. Of recognition and platforming or whatever identity that has been positive. And then there's been this other element that's like, well, we're going to have at schools now, we're going to re separate people and have groups of black kids and white kids in different classes, or we're going to have these things where we rank the intersectionality and the different levels of oppression. If you're this and that group combined versus that and that group combined. And to me, it kind of feels like there was some really positive elements and then there were some elements that lended itself to a more potent backlash. And I don't know if you look at that at the period and feel that at all, or think I'm totally off base about it.
- [49:46]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
No, I don't think you're totally off base. I think all movements had their excesses, and I think all movements have their fools who are part of those movements. And sometimes those fools have power, and sometimes those excessive people have power, and they do things that are not smart and are not in service of the ideals that they claim to be serving. I think that the difference is. So I'm of two minds about this. You know, on the one hand, I feel like, again, like, what I was saying before is that when you are the person that's seeking to revolutionize something, when you are telling a group of people you want to go in front of a group of people and say everything, you have all of your material progress in the world and all your mother's material progress, grandmother, all gender is rooted in the destruction of somebody else's stuff and the theft of that. You have to understand that's gonna be hard for people to take.
- [50:44]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [50:47]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You say, yeah, that's true. You know what I mean? And so what that means is, again, I really have to stress this. It doesn't mean that you don't say it though, right? But you just have to remember how difficult that would be for you to hear, you know what I mean? And then you have to a say it in the most truthful way you can. You know what I mean? And weirdly enough, I believe this, even though I write hard and write aggressive, you actually have to say it in the most compassionate way. You can say it, too. Now, compassion to me means something different probably than it does to a lot of other people. For some people, compassion means you talk soft to people and you rub their back. And for me, it means that you address them like adults. You address them respectfully, but you're very direct with them about what is what. And I think all political movements don't exist under that burden, though. Yeah, certainly MAGA doesn't, You know what I mean? Like, they can say excesses are the point for them, you know what I mean? Like, you know, going over the. Like, that's the whole point. I mean, you know, to do that yet for us and for people, you know, who, you know, really seek this kind of, you know, bone deep change in the country, that's just not a luxury we have. Yeah, you know, that's not a luxury that we have had. And so are there people out there, you know what I mean, who said and did certain things, you know what I mean, and articulated themselves in certain ways. And if there's a level of vagary that's coming into my language right now, it's because I was never able to measure, like what was what and how much, you know, was, you know, like what portion of this was actually true. In other words, what portion this was real and what portion of it was being genned up. I'm not saying no portion of it was real, but it was always sure. Because I'll be honest, a lot of the people who I was hearing that from were not people who I would.
- [52:31]
Tim Miller
Say you have a lot of respect for their point of view.
- [52:34]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I would not consider them, you know what I mean? Now, some things I did, I was like, this is truly some dumb shit, you know what I mean? And I would have no problem with that. But no, I don't think you're wrong, man. I don't think that is incorrect. I think, I mean, here's. Okay, so here's an example. I think, well, let me make this. Maybe I can make this a little bit more tangible, right? Folks got really upset about defunding the police, right? Like that was. And that became a political flashpoint. Like it became a thing that people said, this person wants to defund the police. How many actual people running for office in Congress and Senate would have said, I want to defund the police? I don't think many said it. You know what I mean? It was an activist crime.
- [53:24]
Tim Miller
Some mayors and prosecutors.
- [53:25]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Some mayors and prosecutors. Did they use that language? I mean, and you could tell me they did. I mean, I'm just curious, did they say, I'm running on defunding the police?
- [53:31]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I guess I'd have to go back to the archives. I mean, like there were some functionally, you know, that they were with that crowd, you know, I guess with that crowd.
- [53:42]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
See, that's what I mean though, right? Like I could be with that crowd, you know what I mean? Like, oh, yeah, I see. I sympathize with what you're saying, but maybe I would say it differently, you know what I mean? But see, actually, even I'm not trying to go squishy on this. In fact, I think, like, what you're saying makes the point. Right. Like, you have to worry about what crowd you're with, but your opposition really doesn't.
- [54:00]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [54:01]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You know what I mean? Walk around with open races. Who cares? You know what I mean? It really doesn't matter.
- [54:06]
C
You know what I mean?
- [54:07]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
And so that's like, there's a weight you labor under to be on point. Correct. You know what I mean? At all times, I feel like, as a writer, this serves me because it actually forces me to reinterrogate everything I write. It forces me out of certain mediums. You know, again, there's certain places I just don't go to talk, and I just don't because they don't serve that. And so it really concentrates me. But I do understand that, you know, I don't know. I guess I go back to where we started at the beginning here. You know, people are human. Yeah, people are human, you know, and sometimes they're unwise in how they articulate things and think about things and say things, and they say things that maybe get them an applause and not necessarily about the work that they claim to be.
- [54:52]
Tim Miller
Two other little items from the book. When I read it last night, I was like, I thought about it differently than I would have in 2015. Dr. Mabel Jones, my favorite character, God love her, lost her son. LSU grad. I should shout that out. She's unbelievable. You said when you were talking to her, compared America to Rome. Glory days long ago passed and those were sullied. And we can't get the message. We don't understand that we're embracing our deaths. This was you to your son later in the book you wrote, I do not believe that we can stop them being the kind of American power structure, because they just will ultimately stop themselves. Both of those things seem a lot more acute than maybe they did in 2015.
- [55:31]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jesus.
- [55:35]
Tim Miller
Was that not in your spirit of compassionate writing?
- [55:38]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
No, it wasn't my spirit of compassion in writing. Because I think, like, your compassion begins with honesty.
- [55:43]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [55:43]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You know, I think actually people can feel that. I think people can feel when you're trying to hurt them, when you're, you know, trying to be, you know, straight with them. Yeah. I mean, again, you know, I think what echoed in the back of that writing was, you know, I said earlier that, like, I started with case for reparations. I had done at that point, I did so much research for that work that what became clear was that the standard, you know, sort of liberal articulation of this, of America as a fundamentally good country, fundamentally in its Bones, good. That just made some mistakes, some significant ones, but some mistakes. Was false. Was false. Those things that are dismissed as mistakes are actually core to what the country is. And if you take them out, you actually don't have a country. So that can't help but reformulate how you feel. And so that I can be completely, maybe a little clearer about what I mean when I say that, I think when I was writing Case for Reparations, I was writing to a reader who probably believed that slavery was a thing that happened in this country alongside everything else. In other words, if slavery didn't happen, you could still have an America. And what became clear is, fundamentally, that is not true. Like, fundamentally. You know what I mean? Like, you look at your institutions that date back from their period. It was tough in 1850 to assemble a large amount of money and not have your fingerprints somewhere on slavery. It was that big of a thing. You know what I mean? And then that followed through into. And this was the heart of the essay, the GI Bill and all of the reforms then, which were only possible by excluding African Americans. They wouldn't have passed. You just wouldn't have had them. And so when you start accepting that about the country and say, oh, this is who. If you just think about it as a person, and now you're getting an accurate biography of who that person is, and you say, oh, so where is that person probably going in 10 years? You know? And so, like, for that book, it just. It fundamentally caused me to fundamentally reassess what was possible, what was likely possible. You know what I mean, in terms of what the country could do. That was before Trump, too. I wrote that before.
- [58:08]
Tim Miller
Yeah, right. That's what I'm saying. It's so stark now, right? This element of stopping themselves. It probably felt a little overwrought, honestly, in 2015, the idea. You know what I mean?
- [58:19]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
That's what everybody told me. That's what everybody told me. That was the critique of it. They were like, it's. This dude is hopeless. He's overjoyed.
- [58:25]
Tim Miller
This feels kind of like modest now. This is like a Median Bulwark article.
- [58:31]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
No, no, man.
- [58:32]
Tim Miller
That was.
- [58:33]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
People were like, nah, that's.
- [58:34]
C
Dude.
- [58:34]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
This dude's gone way too far. What is wrong with him?
- [58:36]
Tim Miller
Two things real quick. Our culture editor, Sonny Bunch, demanded that I asked you if the black Superman movie is dead. I know nothing about this world. I guess you have. You have a whole other life where you do comic books and movies and stuff, and this is not my world. I don't. I Don't care about what happens in magical creatures, but. But other people do. So I have to ask.
- [58:55]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
He should care. You should. I guess that the answer I can give is that it's still in development. Other people have said that. So. With more power than me. So I don't think I'm going beyond what's been publicly said.
- [59:07]
Tim Miller
I don't even know what the weight of that question is, to be honest. Literally, I was like, no, no, I just want to ask. I was like, is there anything I should ask him? So he's like, you have to ask him about the black Superman movie. So anyway, I'm for a black Superman. I don't know. You know, we saw a lot of backlash to that Lesbian kiss and Buzz Lightyear, though, and the Black Little Mermaid. So you never know what the ramific implications of that might be. So the book is framed right as to your son, right, Samori? It's written to him. Was it advice to your son, would you say, or more of a explanation for your son of your perspective rereading it, you're like, obviously, your backstory could not be more different than mine, and your experience could not be more different than mine. So I found myself throughout thinking about it as a father has been like, there's just a lot of history and life experience that I just do not bring to this job that you did. Right. And so I guess my question for you is if you have any advice for me or for my child.
- [60:05]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
No. You know what? I think you're both right and you're wrong. You're right in the point of. Obviously, just on its face, our backgrounds are very different. Having said that, I do believe that anybody who's had to live a significant portion of their life, or their entire life outside of what the dominant culture and politics articulates itself as the ideal, as the archetype, probably has some level of insight into that culture that people who have not don't. And so that was all between the world and me was right. It was like, okay, there's this umbrella of humanity and human rights. I am from a group of people that, for their history, have in general been outside of that. What are my insights on it?
- [60:59]
Tim Miller
Well, you can give me advice without. You don't have to attack me.
- [61:01]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
No, I'm not. I'm not, though.
- [61:03]
Tim Miller
No, I know you're not. You don't have to be like, yeah, bro, you're right. You don't know anything. I appreciate that. I know some things. I didn't think I knew nothing.
- [61:11]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
No, no, but what I'm saying is.
- [61:11]
Tim Miller
I'm just saying, you know, maybe there's some. There's also some part that's black, that's dark to me. Right. That I just is just not. It's not in my field of vision, and I'm learning about it.
- [61:21]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You probably know more than you think. You know what I mean? That's the first thing I would say. And then, like, you have to remember, like, most of my insights actually come from taking a much harder, more skeptical look at a story that I already knew. You know what I mean? Or thought I knew. It did not come. For instance, I'm going to go spend some time on some reservations. And, you know, that would have been a worthwhile endeavor, but it did not come from that. You know, I mean, it actually came from, you know, it was a deeply internal mission that allowed me to externalize, man, I guess. Why am I resisting this question? I don't enjoy the idea that people write books that other people perceive as insightful. Like, you just wrote the book. Like, you just wrote a book, and you were insightful in that moment. You know, it doesn't mean that you're insightful about life. And not only that.
- [62:11]
Tim Miller
That's fair. I hear that.
- [62:13]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Not only that. Not only that, there are people who can't write books or don't write books or haven't yet who have their own stories and their own experiences, and then there's insight that is drawn from that, too, and that's equal. You know what I mean? And sometimes more. And just because you wrote the book doesn't mean that you have it more like, I began my professional career as a journalist, and part of being a journalist is you sit down and you listen to people and you make yourself stupid, you know, and oftentimes they have insights into life that just would never occur to you. And so I really do go back to what I was saying. I'm just saying, I think, like, how do you have a conversation with your daughter explaining how different the world is that she's growing up in, in terms of how it looks at LGBT people and how it looked at you? Like, I imagine that's going to be a little abstract to her.
- [63:09]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [63:09]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You know, and yet there are there. I imagine there are also lessons and experiences, you know, from that, from having lived through that, that are probably also important. Does that make sense?
- [63:21]
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure.
- [63:22]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I don't want to assume too much.
- [63:24]
Tim Miller
No, no, no.
- [63:25]
C
I'm not.
- [63:26]
Tim Miller
I was the one. It's all good. I hear that, man. We're all on a journey and just trying to navigate through it, you know, and. And I. I feel lucky that I have been able to. I go through different kinds of things and experiences that opened my perspective onto different, you know, items that maybe I wouldn't have. Right. Had I just been straight or had I just had, like, a family that's monoracial, whatever. But, like, with that comes, like, challenges and awakenings and all that. And so anyway.
- [63:59]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Oh, I do have one piece of advice. This is my only piece of advice.
- [64:01]
Tim Miller
Y. Okay, great. Perfect. We can leave it on that if.
- [64:04]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
You have the ability and the power at any point to live for some period of time outside the country, and with that, to raise a kid who is not monolingual and maybe already on that. I don't know. That's a great thing. It's a great thing. The best thing I ever did for my kid.
- [64:22]
Tim Miller
Best thing, best thing outside the country. Okay, that is good advice. And who knows? I might be thrust out of the country anytime now, so that might make it easy on me. Man, I really appreciate you. This is so fun. It's good to meet you, and let's do it again sometime. All right.
- [64:38]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
All right. Thanks, brother.
- [64:40]
Tim Miller
All right. Thanks so much to Ta Nehisi Coates. I really appreciate him coming on the pod. I want to have a bonus segment for you guys. On Friday, we did a live show and fundraiser, Free Andree in support of Immigrant Defenders was the legal effort helping the Venezuelans that have been disappeared to that hellhole in El Salvador. And we had a little bit of fun. If you want to go watch the whole show, which included some pretty raunchy gay jokes, some annoyingly funny material from Sarah, who I think was just adamant that she was going to outshine me and Lovett, who think we're the jokesters. So if you want to go see all that, the comedy, go to the YouTube page and you can check it all out there. But for podcast listeners, I wanted to share with you the serious parts of the show. I interviewed Lindsay Toslowski, who's the lawyer representing Andree and a handful of other of the Venezuelans, and boy, she's just amazing. And we appreciate her work so much. It was great to finally meet her in person. We've been dming for a while now, so I've got that segment. And then at the very end of the show, I took off my jokester hat and gave a rant about why this specific case has upset me so much and why we want to do everything that we can to continue to draw attention to it in the hopes that we can eventually prevent these men from being disappeared for no reason except the cruelty of the folks in this White House. So I hope you enjoy both of those segments as much as possible. If I make you cry, sorry. And we will see you all back here tomorrow with our usual Bill Crystal Monday, but on Tuesday. So stick around and we'll see you all back here soon. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [66:31]
C
Okay, introduce yourself. Tell everybody who we're talking to.
- [66:34]
D
Hi, everybody. I'm Lindsey Teslowski. I'm the president and CEO of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
- [66:42]
C
Thank you. It's so great to see you in person finally after all of our Twitter DMs.
- [66:50]
Tim Miller
It's unfortunate we had to use Elon's.
- [66:51]
C
Platform to talk, but, you know, it's nice that he brought us together.
- [66:54]
D
I'm glad he brought us together.
- [66:56]
C
I'm just so appreciative of all the work that you're doing, and I'm so grateful that we were able to support your guys work with this event tonight.
- [67:05]
Tim Miller
I should say.
- [67:05]
C
I got a text from Congressman Richie Torres, folks. They donated $1,000 to your group as well, since he could couldn't be here tonight. So we're doing the best we can. But I thought that. Why don't you start by just telling us about Andri and how you got to know him and how you got to represent him.
- [67:20]
D
Sure. So Andriy is an asylum seeker from Venezuela. He came to the US Last year when he was in Venezuela as a gay man. He faced incredible discrimination. He also was politically persecuted. He was physically hurt. He was followed home by police officers. So he made the incredibly difficult decision to come to the US but he had a really rich life there. He's been in a theater troupe since he was seven years old. He actually worked on the Miss Venezuela pageant. He was in pageants himself as a contestant.
- [67:58]
C
Now, is that common in Venezuela for trendroragua men to be working on the Miss Venezuela pageant?
- [68:04]
D
You know, I don't think that's been a cover I've seen before. Yeah, not common. He also worked professionally as a makeup artist. He, you know, had this really rich life. He's close to his mom. So for him to flee and come to the United States, things were really bad and it was really difficult for him to live authentically there. So he came to the US and he did everything that we were asking people to do. He made an appointment. He waited in Tijuana for that appointment. He got into the US he was kept in an ICE prison in San Diego. From the moment he arrived here, he's never stepped free in the United States at all. During that time he passed his credible fear interview, which means he was on his way to getting asylum. We started representing him in December of last year. We were in the process of waiting for of years, a couple court hearing for him and he was disappeared by the Trump administration on March 15.
- [69:01]
C
And so since you had started, you had been talking to him at that time, did you kind of expect that or what was the situation between kind of December and March?
- [69:09]
D
Yeah, so we were getting ready to move forward with his asylum case. We had a hearing on March 13. He was really suffering in an ICE detention center, which is one of the reasons that we were so much about what it's like for him now in a torture prison in El Salvador, suffering how suffering. He was sexually harassed. He had actually made complaints in. This is a detention center in San Diego. But he also was doing other things while he was there, including at one point he gave us a. It was sort of like a business plan, a 19 page business plan that he had created for a nonprofit that he wanted to start. And it was to help kids who were homeless and to help other gay kids. And he was planning to do that once he got out. And he wanted to know if we could show it to the judge to show that he had good intentions here.
- [70:02]
Tim Miller
In the US now you do a lot of these cases. Bring him back.
- [70:06]
C
Bring him fucking back. It's ridiculous. You know, the Andri case has just taken up so much of. It's good. It's gotten attention, taken so much of my brain power. But I know you represent other folks as well. Are there any other stories you want to tell us about the people that you represent that are in El Salvador?
- [70:25]
D
So we represent eight other men who are also at the same Secot prison in El Salvador that Andri is. One of them is Arturo Suarez. He's a professional singer. He actually had a baby born since he's been there who he's never met. Another is Miguel Rojas Mendoza. He was picked up in Louisiana while working as a horse trainer and rancher. He actually had tps, so he had protected status here in the United States. He has two children and his children's names were the tattoos that he had that likely landed him there. And there are so many other stories, so many other entries that could be part of the more than 235 men who were sent on those US government planes to El Salvador.
- [71:12]
C
How do you not become just consumed by rage, murderous rage?
- [71:16]
Tim Miller
That's a personal question. I'm looking for advice.
- [71:19]
D
You know, I think that every single day that I'm here, I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. And I think all of the other. And I think all of the other. We have a huge team that's working on Anthri's case, other immigrant defenders, other colleagues. We have a case that is actually the JGG versus Trump case. It's happening here right now. We got a positive decision this week, so we are keeping hope alive. I believe. I know in my heart that we will get him back, and we're not going to stop fighting until we do. And so I think, you know, to answer your question about rage, we're channeling our rage for good at this moment, because what the hell else are we going to do?
- [72:07]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [72:10]
C
I'm just going to play that back to myself from time to time to try to use your wisdom to help me out.
- [72:15]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [72:15]
C
We had a little news today with the Kilma Abrego Garcia case.
- [72:19]
Tim Miller
I guess, kind of.
- [72:20]
C
I mean, it's good, but also, fuck these people. Just from the legal perspective, what does that development say to you about all these other cases?
- [72:30]
D
So the news that we got in Kilmar's case is that he's on his way back to the United States. What that says to me is they need to stop lying, that it's impossible, and if they can bring him back, they can bring Anthony back.
- [72:45]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [72:47]
C
And this is the thing about all these cases. Like, the reason why they're bringing Kilmar back is because they want to make it about the details of Kilmar's life, which I don't know about one way or the other, but that's the fucking point here, right? Like, you can't kidnap 250 people, send them to a foreign gulag, and then just be like, well, whatever, we'll see what happens. Some of them are bad guys, some of them. Right. Like that is the issue here. And so how do you think about framing that for people so we don't get bogged down in the details of individual cases?
- [73:14]
D
Right. In many ways, what happened? I mean, there's lots of legal things I could tell you about the Alien Enemies act and all these things, and I won't.
- [73:21]
Tim Miller
Thank you.
- [73:22]
D
Welcome. What I would say is that his case is fundamentally about due process. And due process is most important when the government is accusing you of A crime or alleging you are a gang member. The only thing that stands between any of us ending up in a prison in El Salvador, just, just like on three, is the fact that we have due process. We have constitutional rights when those are trampled. When you are, like on three, whisked away without getting to speak to your lawyer, without knowing where you are going, without being given an opportunity to refute what the government is saying about you, your day in court, this is what happens. And if it can happen to him, it could happen to any one of us. And that's why this case is not just a about Andri. It's not just about the 240 men. It's about the future of our democracy and whether or not we're going to fight for it.
- [74:16]
C
All right, last thing.
- [74:16]
Tim Miller
What can.
- [74:17]
C
Obviously folks here care about this. They showed up tonight. We really appreciate all of you. What else can people do?
- [74:22]
D
Well, we're so grateful for this. You know, donating to organizations like Immigrant Defenders Law center and our partner organizations is so important, but because it helps us to do this work, all of our work is done for free for the clients. And so being here is really important. But we're asking people to continue to shine a light on this case, continue to lift up his story, lift up the stories of all these men. You can go to freeandry.org and you will see toolkits so you can reach out to your elected representatives. But really, the U.S. government here, the Trump administration, they are trying to erase his existence. And so what we need people to do is keep his story alive. Don't let them erase him. And most importantly, talk to your family and friends, those that live in Republican districts. Make sure that they are going to town halls, that they are asking the questions about when Andre is coming back and when he's gonna get his day in court. That is the best thing that people can do.
- [75:19]
C
I admire you so much.
- [75:20]
Tim Miller
Thank you so much for everything you're doing.
- [75:22]
C
That's Lindsey. Appreciate her. Thank you, everybody.
- [75:24]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [75:24]
C
Stand up. I'm about to be sad for a little bit, so I'm sorry that I have to end you on something sad. But the reason that we're doing this is because of Andre. And I think there are two reasons why this has affected me so much. One is, is because kind of what Levitt was saying, I came out of this tradition of, like, being pro life and being pro freedom and thinking that that was what was animating my political work. And Jeb used to say something about how we wanted to make sure everybody had a chance to live a life of purpose and meaning. And I believed that and thought it wasn't bs. And so the idea that we are doing that, Republicans, that Donald Trump, that our country is taking away somebody's life, their purpose and their meaning, really pisses me off. And so that's one reason. And the other reason is just because, I guess just because both me and Andre are gay, I guess I can just imagine it. And I just want. I'm sorry to do this, but I just want everybody to imagine this with me for a second. He flees Venezuela. He flees communism. He takes a horrible journey across Central America, through Mexico, goes through unimaginable shit. Has to deal with cartels, has to find food and shelter just to get to America because he wants. Because he thinks here he can live a life of purpose and meaning. He thinks he can be free. And he gets to the border and he does what he's supposed to do. He signs up for the stupid CBP1 app and explains why he had to flee a communist his country. And then we let him in. And he sits in a cell and he's sexually harassed in the cell. And he is abused and attacked. And he is hoping that it's worth it. Because at the end, there's this thing, there's this, like, freedom in this country that he can get. And instead of that, one day he's in the cell and people come in there and they shackle him, and they shackle his legs and his hands, and they take him with other veterans, Venezuelans, to a plane. And he's thinking, this is horrible, but at least I'm going home to Venezuela, right? At least I get to see my mother and my best friend. And instead of sending him to Venezuela, we send him to a fucking hell in El Salvador. And he gets off the plane and they beat him up, and they shave his head and he screams out for his freedom. And he says, I'm gay. I'm not a gang banger. I like. I want just. You have the wrong person. And there's nothing he can do. And they put him in a fucking hole. And he's living a nightmare that, like, you can't imagine. Like, it is just an unimaginable nightmare. And the reason that he's living it is our country, is that we did it to him like the US did it to him. And so it's up to us to get him the fuck out of this nightmare.
- [78:35]
E
Well, you better listen, my sisters and brothers. Cause if you do, you can hear there Are voices still calling across the.
- [78:46]
Tim Miller
Years.
- [78:49]
E
And they're all crying, calling the ocean and they're crying across the land and they will too we all come to understand none of us are free none of us are free none of us are free One of us has changed none of us are free.
- [79:16]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
And.
- [79:16]
E
They appear People still in darkness and they just can't see the light if you don't say it's wrong then that says it's right we got to try to feel for each other Let our brothers know that we care Got to get the message Send it out loud and clear.
- [79:42]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
None of us are free.
- [79:46]
E
None of us are free none of us are free One of us are chained none of us are free.
- [79:55]
Tim Miller
It's.
- [79:56]
E
A single truth we all need just to hear and to see none of us are free none of us none of us are free Now I swear you sound fiction isn't too hard to find none of us can find it on our own we got to join together in spirit, heart and mind so that every soul who's suffering will know that we're not alone none of us.
- [80:40]
Tim Miller
Are free.
- [80:43]
E
None of us are free, y' all none of us are free none of us are chained none of us are free.
- [80:57]
Tim Miller
The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.