Comfort Without Interrogation

Yesterday’s Atlantic piece about Chris Mathew’s “I forgot he was black tonight for an hour” gaffe had me adding Ta-Nehisi Coates to my blog roll and sent me tweeting all day long. I admit, as someone who is neither black nor much of a cable news watcher, I initially thought the controversy was something of a tempest in a tea pot. I had chalked it up to the usual outrage machine that rules much of cable TV and the blogosphere. For emotion junkies, righteous indignation is the cheapest high you can get.

But Coates’ piece is simply brilliant and shows exactly why the Mathew’s gaffe is both important and worthy of discussion. A great column can take an individual incident and reveal the layers of culture that combined to create it. I’ll quote a bit of the piece here, but you really need to go read the whole thing. And even better one makes you see that situation in an entirely new light. Coates’ piece did both. I’ll quote a bit here, but you really need to go read the whole thing.

I think it's worth noting that Chris Matthews wasn't trying to take a shot at anybody. I also think it's worth noting that he was attempting to compliment Obama and say something positive about what he's done for race relations.

[snip]

Ditto for Chris Matthews. The "I forgot Obama was black" sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance--you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don't know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn't forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.

[snip]
This is why Obama will never be postracial--he can't make white people face the lie of their ignorance, anymore than Jimmy Baldwin could make black people face the lie of our homophobia. It's white people's responsibility to make themselves postracial, not the president's. Whatever my disagreements with him, the fact is that he is brilliant. That he is black and brilliant is pleasant but unsurprising to me. I've known very brilliant, very black people all my life.