Briahna Joy Gray reviews We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (and more and more and more and more and more and more). Concepcion de Leon on Ta-Nehisi Coates and the making of a public intellectual (and more). Is atheism the reason for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ pessimism on race relations? Thomas Chatterton Williams on how Ta-Nehisi Coates gives whiteness power. Cornel West on how Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle. Cornel West seems to believe Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing from the sidelines, but sidelines don’t exist for black people. Something happened to Cornel West: Whenever a black academic starts getting love from the public, West shows up to knock them down.
