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Ta-Nehisi Coates

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77

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2020-06-08

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2020-06-08

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1

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1. “I like that people read the work I do. I like that a lot of people read. I'm very happy about that. I'm happy that the ideas are getting out there. I am... Know by say, um, Like when I got the call from McAwton, I became a McArthur Fellows It's called a”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yeah, because I think I came in the city paper with a particular ability to write in the first person really well. But that was not enough to hold a job there. You had to learn how to report and thus had to learn how to tell other people's stories. That's what saved me from being a pure memoirist or just straight up essayist or critic or whatever. And I'm so happy that happened. It deepened me, it broadened me. The last real essay in the book before the apologue, my president was Black. I wouldn't have been able to do that piece had I not worked for David Carr. I just wouldn't have known how to interview a bunch of people and sew it together into something.”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Yeah, Jake used to work there. Jake was on staff there. We had a lot of fun. No, there were a number of really, really talented people.”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “No, he wasn't. And saying Yeah, but having said that, I was certainly not the best journalist there. There were a number of people who had at the time, actually. Jake Tapper was there.”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Because it was just, I mean, I didn't know what I had in my hands. I didn't understand the opportunity. I didn't realize this was not normal for somebody to be 20 years old and somebody say, go write. 8,000 words on local, hyper-local government in Washington, D.C., but make it really interesting. I mean, I just, I had no. Clue, like what you know, I was walking into, but I liked it. I did like it a lot. And I got incredible training. I just did. Huge expectations put on me, you know, I mean, somebody tells you, you know, here's in New York, you should write like that. Of course you're not at 20 years old, but somebody that kind of authority tells you that you think, okay, maybe I can.”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “New York Time newsroom. He was an incredible reporter, dogged as hell, ambitious, a great dude. But as an editor, I mean, he was a tremendous teacher. I mean, it was worth more than any other J school. He would bring in articles from The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fan. He said, listen, this is the level you should be trying to perform. I expect this out of you. And that was a period in time that's very different in the media environment that came after it. We had a lot of pages, so you could write at length, you were free to explore, you were encouraged to explore, you encourage to tell these huge, beautiful stories. Boy, if I was like I was now, had the kind of opportunities I had then, I could have been a terror.”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Well, he wasn't who he became at that point. He had. I guess recently just been off drugs and he introduced himself as a recovering crack addict. He always talked about it as public. It was not a dark secret. And he was hard. I mean, he just, Jesus, he was brutal. He was an absolutely brutal addition. I don't know anybody's ever seen page one that documentary about the New York Times Well, I mean, as brutal as he is in that documentary, as brutal as he is in that scene with those guys from Vite, that's how he was all the time.”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “I didn't. I was writing and there was an internship at an alternative paper in DC, the Washington City paper. It was actually owned by the Chicago Reader at the time. I was writing like poetry at the time, and I had done some things for the school newspaper, and I kind of liked that. And I sent it over to them, and they said, all right, here's an internship. And I went in actually with Jelani Cobb, who's a staff writer to New Yorker now. We entering together that summer. We were like, all right, go find some stories. I was like, really? That's the whole job? Like, I just sit here and figure out what's interesting. And then I got to report back to you, and right? That's it? Nothing else? I couldn't believe people paid you to do that.”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I had a hard time sitting in class Watching people talk for like an hour. It's very hard for me to do that. It's hard for me now to do that. I just, it wasn't a learning process that was interesting to me. I started in journalism. I mean, as you well know, journalism is so entrepreneurial. Go find your story. It's up to you. Go do it. You figure out who you got to talk to. Why'd you decide, by the way?”

   2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “No, they thought I was smart, though. They did. They thought I was smart and they could not figure out why. I wouldn't do the work. Like, why wouldn't I go through on what was obviously to them at least, you know, a degree of intelligence that was abnormal”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “I did. I had two great parents. I had two. My mom, my mom was a teacher. My mom taught me to read when I was very, very young. I was four years old. Wrote my first essays for my mom. Both of my parents encouraged reading. They were very, very on top of it and on top of kids. I'm one of seven. All of my brothers and sisters graduated from college except me.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yeah, going out to Howard University and realizing how much bigger the world actually was. And then later in life, once I got, you know, as I talk about in this book, a little bit of economic security at the Atlantic. Really understand how big the world was. It was a great relief.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “I think they're one in the same. You know, I think those two things, they're one in the same. You just, it's like your world shrinks. I would say starting at about, like for me, probably about nine, about somewhere about eight or nine, it began to happen. And then by the time I got to middle school, it was like, okay. You know, I mean, honestly, one of the great things First, about going to Howard was realizing how much bigger the world actually was”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “No, no, and kids don't everywhere in America. That's not like how the rest of the country is. And I never got this far. But, you know, on top of that, kids get to what am I carrying? Know what I mean? What am I doing? But they all emerge out of this. Thing of how do I protect myself? If I can remember things, if I carry my book bag with two streets, does that connote the idea that I'm a nerd and thus weak? You know what I mean? Just a suite of choices that you end up asking yourself. So that the last thing you're thinking about is homework. What the teach”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Way I explain it. Is as follows. I was a child, when I was about 12 years old, say I was in seventh grade, when I got ready for the day in the morning to go to school. Always say about a third of my brain was occupied with my safety. And that ran the gamut of questions that I had to answer. What was I wearing that day? How was I going to wear it? How was I going to cock my hat? How was I going to wear my coat? How was I going to carry my book bag? One or two straps, who was I walking with, how many of them was it? Where were they from? Once I got to school in class, this dude, you know, was he trying to, you know, has he got a thing with me? Is he angling on me in a particular way at lunch? Who am I sitting with? Or am I going to avoid the lunchroom entirely and go sit in the library so I don't have to deal with any of these dudes after school? Am I going straight home? Am I cutting through the woods? Am I cutting up towards Liberty Heights? Again, who am I walking with? How many of them?”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “I don't know. Like, why would you think so much about it if it's just the aspect of your life and everyone you know knows like and obviously I had some consciousness that in the larger world it was not I knew that I knew that and I wondered why but there was another part of me that also just sort of okay accepted this is the way it is this is how it is and I think a lot in my work now It's one of the reasons why I have a lot of trouble accepting some of the praise I get Because I think about how many kids Just accepted that reality. It just became a reality for them.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “To comport yourself a certain way to ward off violence. And I learned that. It wasn't natural for me. It wasn't something I wanted to be. It wasn't somebody I wanted to be. But I certainly learned to carry myself eventually after getting pounded on a few times a certain way. I learned to accept violence. You know, there's stories that I tell now that sound horrible. You know, one of them in particular in the book that did not feel so horrible at the time because it happened to everybody I was around. You know, it was just the normal day-to-day of living in that particular neighborhood and going to those schools.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “One of the saddest aspects, there was, I think, a view of the street or view of kids who grow up like that, that sort of monochrome, in large part because of the face the kids put on. But within that, they're a great variety of personalities. In other environments would be doing completely different things. But the streets socialize you.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “And I couldn't understand why in a way that satisfied my curiosity. People had explanations. You know, people were around saying, oh, the white man, you know, that sort of thing, because the white man did it. But what does that mean? I heard that. But what specifically does that mean? You know what I mean? And is that even true? I was constantly reading. You know what I mean? Like constantly searching.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “He was a publisher of books. He owned a bookstore first and then he became a publisher. And books were very important. Books were tools of liberation. This is what I was told. And I needed to hear that because the same thing that was happening at that time was Crack Era Baltimore or Crack Era America, I guess, was basically at its height. And with it, you know, a rise in violence, gun violence particularly. Just I talked in a previous book, between the world and me. A ton of fear in the African community that I grew up in.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Adoration, I guess, is the best word. Almost beautification, I would say, of Malcolm X, which played a huge role in my life. But the second piece was my dad had always been a reader, and it was in the Black Panther Party that he first found a community of other people who were reading other things and were interested in having conversations about political theory. And so that informed my own childhood quite a bit. Malcolm X as this figure of defiance, this notion that just because the world says we're going one way doesn't mean you necessarily have to. The notion that you as an African American may not be as tied to the larger American populace in a way that the world claims to be. And in fact, history offers an argument for something else. And that one should be politically aware. One should be politically literate. One should read books about black.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “And that became painfully clear to my dad. He went into Vietnam, he said, visions of being John Wayne. He'd been raised on war movies and he was excited. He was going off on a big adventure. And what he became very clear on was how aided people in the army regarded him, how disposable he was. And I think a very keen awareness that he was being sent over to Kill Pacify, how are you going to put it? You know, other people of color It's one thing to know that theoretically, but to see it. You know what I mean? To actually be confronted with it has some effects, you know, and it had effects on my dad. And so he came back radicalized. I think that's correct, you know, looking for any sort of political movement, the one he found was the Black Panther Party in Baltimore, Maryland. Things came out of that that are very, very important. My dad's”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Different connotations. I actually think that's the right word. Military service has historically had this effect on people from time to time. It's a phenomenon, you know, going all the way back to George Washington, honestly. I think when you're on the front lines in my dad's case, You see that you're willing to give your life for something. And when you're black, you're forced to measure. That against, you know, that particular social commitment, that part of a social contract with the other end of it.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “In the military in Vietnam. He became politically conscious while in Vietnam, came home and wanted to be politically active and was looking for any sort of organization that was allowed would allow him to do that.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Yeah, so my particular black story begins in The Shadow of the Civil Rights Movement. I guess born in 1975 at a period that people are probably beginning to realize that things did not go as far as they had wanted. My father was from a particular wing of that movement. Black power socialist, Marxist Wink. He was in the Black Panther Party.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Maybe not so much now. Oh, this is in the black story. And I just completely disagree with that because I think it minimizes the range of what black stories actually are. There are quite a few. Malcolm X's story is way, way, way different than Martin Luther King's story. Malcolm X had encounters with white people, went to school with white people. Martin Luther King, raised, ensconced in a middle-class black community in Atlanta.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “That's a great question. I want to say something. I just want to start out with a basic premise or just a foundation, and that is that it has always been true that within the African-American experience there have been different stories. Frederick Douglass was privileged in a way that, say, Harry Jacobs was not. He had a different story. His father was white and likely, you know, one of somebody with particular powers on the plantation. That meant something different for him, for how he interacted, kind of privileges he enjoyed. And you can run this across the board. I say that to say because I think one of the things that's happened with Obama at least early on, and I talk about this in the book.”

    2020-06-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Ta-Nehisi Coates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source