Not my problem?

Last week Krista Tippet interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates on her radio show "On Being." As a long time follower of Coates and Tippet, I found it a fascinating conversation. Sometimes in his writing Coates can sound rather hopeless about racial equality in this country and hopeless that white American will understand racial oppression. I suspected that Tippet was slightly intimidated by Coates, but she pressed Coates in ways that helped us all better understand this country's problems.

Coates made many interesting remarks, but below is one I particularly liked. He was explaining why the argument that one has nothing to do with racial inequality and so on just doesn't work.

...what people will tell you is, “Well, I didn’t have any slaves. I wasn’t alive when this happened. My ancestors just got here.” And what became clear to me, reading that, is: OK, but you cook out on the Fourth of July. Your ancestors weren’t here. They played no role in that. They had nothing to do with it. You take off for President’s Day, but you had no part in that. Your ancestors weren’t here. There are a number of patriotic rituals that folks have no problem participating in, as long as they can get credit for it.

But they don’t want the debits, see: “I want the paycheck; I don’t want to have to write a check, though.” And that is a kind of — in the piece, I think I talk about it as à la carte patriotism. It’s like sometimes-friendship: I’m there when I can get some, but when it gets tough, man, I’m out. “I wasn’t there. I had nothing to do with that.”

But it’s like, either you’re in or you’re out. Either you’re part of it, or you’re not. I was not alive during the Korean War. I had nothing to do with it. But my taxes go to pay pensions for folks, to this day. It would not have been my choice to invade Iraq, but my tax dollars went to it. That’s the way a state works. And so I think what people want is, they want to be a part of the state as long as it gives them something that they like.

Listen to the entire interview here.