[lbo-talk] Coates on music

[shag]

i'll have to scan Coates' article on Cosby in The Atlantic Monthly, "This 
is how we lost to the White Man." In it, Coates takes Cosby to task for his 
unrelenting self-help conservatism and yet notes that Cosby, when pressed 
as to who he supports, said he was for Kucinich, and won't say now b/c, 
like a lot of black folks, he finds the question impertinent. As in, "how 
dare it be assumed that I'd support Obama out of racial solidarity. How 
dare I be boxed in like that!"

Coates also mentions that, when he ripped Cosby a new one, denoucing Cosby 
as an "elitist" in an article Coates wrote shortly after the infamous 
"poundcake speech," his former Panther father "upbraided" him "for 
attacking what he saw as a message of black empowerment. Cosby's argument 
had resonated with the black mainstream for just that reason.

ISTR, Doug, that you read Lawrence Otis Graham's _Our Kind of People_. 
Well, that makes a lot of this crystal clear, I think.

I'm not ragging terribly much on Coates here because I think he's 
accurately describing a phenom -- something akin to a discussion we had 
years ago about feminism and recognizing progress.

At 05:03 PM 5/8/2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
>[Radiohead!!]
>
><http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1093705,00.html>

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