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The New York Times reported Tuesday on Marvel’s decision to name Ta-Nehisi Coates its “Black Panther” scribe. What it didn’t mention is how Mr. Coates wants American taxpayers to cough up reparations cash to black Americans. (Congratulations: If you immigrated here in the last three decades, then you probably still qualify! Because colonialism … or something.)
First the announcement, via the Times:
Ta-Nehisi Coates can be identified in many ways: as a national correspondent for The Atlantic, as an author and, as of this month, as a nominee for the National Book Award’s nonfiction prize. But Mr. Coates also has a not-so-secret identity, as evidenced by some of his Atlantic blog posts and his Twitter feed: Marvel Comics superfan.
So it seems only natural that Marvel has asked Mr. Coates to take on a new Black Panther series set to begin next spring. Writing for that comics publisher is a childhood dream that, despite the seeming incongruity, came about thanks to his day job.
Do you know how else Mr. Coates can be identified, Marvel? Again, he’s a guy who wants American taxpayers to give black Americans reparations for slavery and other injustices.
Mr. Coates talked to Bill Moyers of PBS in May, 2014 about the need to taxpayers to make up for public policy “practical damage” perpetrated upon black Americans.
“The most obvious example of is the wealth gap. When you have a family that has 20 times the wealth — a white family has 20 times the wealth of black families. And then you can really trace this to actual policy. You see it. Again, you know, when we look at incarceration rates, we still see it. I mean, the gap is so, so huge. It’s not a mere minor discrepancy.”
Let us for a moment agree with Mr. Coates’ assertion that “policy” is to blame for the plight of urban black Americans. If that is the case, then why do these black Americans — who have lived in Democrat-controlled strongholds for decades — continue to vote for liberal politicians again…and again…and again?
Liberal public policy destroyed the black family unit over the course of decades (i.e., 75 percent of births occur out-of-wedlock).
Liberal public policy encourages black women to abort their children in numbers that can only be described as genocide.
Liberal public policy is what has driven cities like Detroit into an economic death spiral.
But yet, for some odd reason, men like Mr. Coates never really want to get into those discussions. How convenient.
I’ve said this before in the comments section, but I’ll say it again: My wife immigrated to the U.S. at a young age without knowing how to speak English. Her parents did not have “wealth” — but over time they created enough of it so their daughter could one day become a doctor.
How is it possible for a family from China — one that speaks no English and has no money — to produce a family doctor within a single generation, but yet the good citizens of Detroit are economically paralyzed in 2015?
If the government hands a man a check for $1 million dollars and that person does not possess the kind of virtues found in successful people, then that person will lose his fortune.
Money is not the same as wealth. As long as activists like Mr. Coates focus on giving people money instead of encouraging them adopt and hold tight to invaluable principles, then these sorts of debates will continue.
Call me when Marvel hires an openly conservative comic fan who worked at a major conservative organization. Until then, I doubt I will be checking out “Black Panther.”
Editor’s Note: I am currently learning how to speak Mandarin. That is one of the reasons why I have not been blogging as much. I can say with confidence that if someone transplanted me inside China tomorrow and gave me 20 years to become a doctor…it probably would not happen. Heh.
Douglas Ernst Blog 
“Call me when Marvel hires an openly conservative comic fan who worked at a major conservative organization.”
Nathan Edmondson.
Openly conservative? I haven’t checked out his Twitter feed recently or many interviews, but I was under the impression he is pretty muted when it comes to discussing his personal politics.
Somehow I doubt Edmondson could be as politically outspoken on the right as Ta-Nehisi Coates is on the left and still have a job. Maybe I’m wrong…but it’s highly unlikely.
Strange. He doesn’t mention any political work he’s done on his official website. If he worked for The Atlantic like Ta-Nehisi Coates, then I’m betting he would have felt more comfortable with such a decision.
Edmonson is the one whom the SJW mobs is trying to have removed from writing the Native American superhero Red Wolf.
I notice Xmenxpert didn’t reply to my statement about Edmonson being tight-lipped about his personal politics. Interesting. 🙂
The only stuff I really found on Edmonson after a bit of Googling is that he got in trouble as a teenager (shocker) for using a credit card that was left in a nightclub, and that he briefly worked for the Leadership Institute. Other than that…there’s basically nothing.
But hey, LI is a nonprofit that is friendly towards conservatives so, in the mind of Xmenxpert, Edmonson will forever be screaming from the rooftops about how awesome it is to be conservative. Strange.
Ah yes, Ta-Nehisi. His quote is actually a good one if you were to look at it through a black conservative’s eyes. That moral debt and practical damage has a whole lot to do with welfare policies that helped to drive away black fathers and destroy the family unit. Then there is the cultural perception we have created where black children often grow up believing they are victims of racism, rather than fully functioning human beings, accountable for themselves and capable of making their way in the world.
Mr. Coates seems like a very intelligent man. He does raise some interesting points, but he also has ideological blinders on. He uses his intelligence to absolve black Americans of any culpability as it pertains to their economic conditions in 2015. As Eidolon pointed out, Indians and other minorities come to the U.S. and do just fine.
Perhaps there a specific shade of brown “the system” was set up to keep down…because other minorities (including those from Africa!) keep coming to America and thriving — in droves.
To me, he’s just your typical race hustler. I don’t doubt he’s intelligent, but to me he comes across as Al Sharpton, Jr. He fails to understand that no one alive has anything to do with slavery, so paying reparations would be stupid. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m of Norwegian and Swedish descent, and my ancestors were in Norway or Sweden during the slavery era. They didn’t come to the U.S. until the 1890s. So what exactly do they have to do with slavery again? Nothing.
As for his Black Panther comic, I bet we will see a lot of rants about fictitious “white privilege,” Black Panther beating up cops, continuing to repeat the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie, and other SJW storylines. AS Hube noted, it’ll probably be even worse than the never-aired Black Panther cartoon from a few years ago.
Thought you might get a post out of this. It’s pretty funny, I know a woman who has almost exactly the same story as your wife’s. She and her folks came here from China when she was around 12. Her folks opened a few restaurants and she eventually got a medical PHd.
Of course we don’t have to rely on anecdotes. Immigrants from certain Asian countries outperform native white people in many areas. If Coates’ absurd “the system keeps black people down” were true (i.e. that external societal forces are responsible for how well various racial groups perform in society), that would mean whites discriminated against other whites in favor of Asians. Many people from India even have skin a similar color to American blacks’ — apparently we’re supposed to believe that Americans are prejudiced enough to hate blacks for their skin color but not foreigners with the same skin color.
As you pointed out, though, the problem isn’t that certain groups don’t have money, it’s that they’re not able to create wealth. A graduate from MIT or Harvard Law probably has less than no money, but that’s not a societal problem because they do have the ability to earn money in the future. On the other hand, even if we gave every single black person $1 million, things would be back to where they are now in 1-2 generations.
This story jumped out at me because if I were going to make a sarcastic joke about the next move they could make after making Spider-Man black, Captain America black, Thor a woman, and the Hulk Asian, it would be “yeah, next they should hire that idiot from the Atlantic who’s always going on and on about how oppressed black people are to write a book.” That’s the next most ridiculous thing I could think of and they beat me to it.
What always amazes me is — if America is so horrible, why don’t you just leave? Why spend a whole career carping about it? There are plenty of people of all races who emigrate every year for various reasons. If a system run by white people is so horrible, why not go to a place run by black people? Surely that would be a paradise, wouldn’t it?
“Of course we don’t have to rely on anecdotes. Immigrants from certain Asian countries outperform native white people in many areas. If Coates’ absurd “the system keeps black people down” were true (i.e. that external societal forces are responsible for how well various racial groups perform in society), that would mean whites discriminated against other whites in favor of Asians. Many people from India even have skin a similar color to American blacks’ — apparently we’re supposed to believe that Americans are prejudiced enough to hate blacks for their skin color but not foreigners with the same skin color.”
Exactly. I read years ago that U.S. Asians outperform white Americans on basically every single standardized test for professionals, whether it’s to become a cop, a doctor, a teacher, or anything else. Did white people set up a “racist” system that inadvertently benefits Asians? Of course not. There are cultural differences. And God bless American Asians who understand how to properly pursue happiness. I don’t begrudge them for it one bit.
What always amazes me is — if America is so horrible, why don’t you just leave? Why spend a whole career carping about it? There are plenty of people of all races who emigrate every year for various reasons.
You just answered your own question. 🙂 These guys make a career out of complaining. They go around the country giving speeches and doing PBS interviews about how rotten America is. It’s always fun when a cable news show goes from a segment on how rotten the country is towards minorities to another one how millions of minorities are risking life and limb to get here.
If a system run by white people is so horrible, why not go to a place run by black people? Surely that would be a paradise, wouldn’t it?
That place was created: Liberia. I’m not an expert on the country, but I don’t think it worked out very well…
Wait until you all get a load of this:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/09/23/a-very-special-nick-fury-story-published-today-spoilers/
I’m done with comics, I got driven out.
Wow, that is something special. They’re obviously done with the white male demographic, seeing as they clearly hate us. I wish them well in trying to get enough women and minorities to read comics to replace them. I’m sure that’ll go great.
Why does Disney allow this again? Is the comic business just so small that they don’t care how badly it’s mismanaged?
Disney puts out alot of the propaganda on television and the movies, so I see this happening as a way to bring Marvel in on that.
These people love a good assassination fantasy, don’t they? They fantasize about GWB getting assassinated, and now they fantasize about Obama getting killed. Of all the narcissistic BS, if a guy wanted to change the country and had the power to go back in time, why would he bother with Obama of all people? Change the country before that and a talentless hack like him would never have had a chance to get elected anyway.
Wouldn’t some hateful guy want to assassinate MLK Jr. or somebody who actually made a major change? “My master plan involving time travel and assassination is complete! Now in 40+ years, we’ll have Hillary Clinton as president instead of Obama! All the country’s problems are now solved!”
Yeesh. These writers are idiots if they think the “Hands up, don’t shoot” meme is real. It isn’t. It was proven to be a lie, but then again progressives never let facts get in the way of their “America is racist” narrative.
They made it Obama to try and say that people who criticize Obama do so because he is Black. Notice how the guy going back in time to do it is an analogue of Dylann Roof.
You’d think at some point someone would realize that the people who whine like jet engines about these things are not very numerous and really aren’t that likely to even buy their products; they just want to know that those evil white males don’t get to enjoy them. On the other hand, it’s very likely the higher-ups are all SJWs themselves.
It reminds me of a quote from a recent book: “One might call it the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence; no man can serve two masters and no institution can effectively serve two different functions. The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.”
Remember when John Byrne had that argument with Dan Slott? There was something Byrne posted in which he said that when he was around, the comic creators and fans were well adjusted people and that he would see these strange people at conventions who would want all these out of place things put into the comics. He expressed concern about it to some fellow creators and they told him that the majority of the fans are not like that. But he says if you look at comics in the 90’s, he says that the fans he was cautious of were the ones that took over the industry and that’s why comics are the way they are now. You can tell by the way these people act that they are far from well adjusted.
I love the Marvel and DC characters to death, but I cannot support blatant propaganda.
“But he says if you look at comics in the 90’s, he says that the fans he was cautious of were the ones that took over the industry and that’s why comics are the way they are now.”
It’s incredibly sad how that happened. Instead of the writer first saying, “Okay, what is the next great adventure [insert character here] can have, he or she now says, “Okay, what is the political agenda I can push next with [insert character here].”
Wow… I just… I can’t even…
Thanks for this. Reaction here: http://colossus.mu.nu/archives/359238.php
Part 2 of today, DC Comics using Affirmative Action:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/09/22/dc-comics-editors-strongly-urged-to-positive-discriminate-when-hiring-writers-and-artists/
Ugh. Is Image this bad? Is Kirkman a huge jerk like these people are? I’d really like to keep enjoying Walking Dead and Invincible in peace. So far I at least haven’t read about this kind of garbage over there, but I also haven’t looked into it.
Haha. Just a tad Orwellian, right? I wonder why they changed it. 🙂
Most of the companies and institutions that might bear some retroactive legal responsibility for slavery (e.g. various plantations) haven’t existed for over a century. Those plantations are long gone. Now they’re housing-developments, factories, parks, historical sites. Who’s supposed to pay these reparations, the middle-school that now occupies the place where a planatation once stood? It is illegal to fine someone who hasn’t been proven guilty of a crime. You can’t even establish legal corporate accountability. The U.S. has already been paying billions in unending reparations through in-kind programs (AFDC payments, Head Start) for decades. People should just stop buying Marvel stuff until the company is purged of all these Trotskyites. At least don’t buy these racist BP rag.
“The U.S. has already been paying billions in unending reparations through in-kind programs (AFDC payments, Head Start) for decades.”
How many hundreds-of-billions of dollars of dollars have been spent since Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” began? It’s embarrassing that these guys are actually taken seriously.
Lyndon Johnson bragged that he would “have the n*gg*rs voting Democrat for a hundred years.”
Language aside, he was right.
That is what is even more frustrating — it is obvious that liberal politicians are like drug dealers who get people hooked on the “drug” of easy money.
There are second and third generations of Americans who essentially only know welfare programs as a means of subsistence. They basically have no hopes and dreams because their minds are clouded by the drug… But they still vote every four years.
One more, it looks like DC Comics is paying the price for listening and catering to SJW’s:
http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/133306-straight-from-the-didios-mouth-dc-comics-rumors-from-the-baltimore-diamond-retailer-summit.html#
Notice how it was said that the editors never read DC Comics and listened to what “the vocal internet” wanted…
This is the last one, I promise. I don’t mean to blow up the comments! 🙂
Black comic creators saying that Black people ignore them at conventions and don’t support their work:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/09/27/larry-stroman-on-when-black-fans-avoid-black-creators-at-comic-con/
SJW’s and Liberals say that White comic fans are racist, but when comics are made that cater to minorities, the minorities don’t even support them…
Hmmmmm….
You never have to apologize for sharing relevant links, Really Someone. 🙂 I always appreciate someone who can spark interesting discussions, and this story has the potential to do just that.
Mr. Stroman’s remarks are incredibly telling:
What is more likely: that black people are going out of their way to ignore him, or that they’re simply making time to find the creators who inspire them?
Did it ever occur to Mr. Stroman that the kind of black reader who is inclined to go to a comic convention might not be the kind of black person who identifies himself primarily by the color of their skin? This guy looks at black people and ascribes motivations to them that, in all likelihood, they do not have. My guess is that Mr. Stroman would be livid if a white person did that to him. It’s sadly ironic.
Comics are often read as a form of escapism; it makes sense that many black readers would not want to open a comic book and be beaten over the head with racial politics.
To me, it seems like the people arguing for this stuff don’t understand how the comic industry works. The big name characters are popular because they sell, period. Remember how many Spider-man and Batman and Superman and Wolverine books there were in the 90’s? All of them weren’t good, but they sure did sell though because people supported the characters through good and bad stories, and that and that alone determines what comes out. Marvel and DC these days aren’t character oriented anymore, so it’s an uphill battle for ANY character to become popular because there are no long runs anymore. I say that and that makes perfect sense, but look at this research this person did to see how far deep the SJW’s are in comics:
Now I can understand why all of this is happening after reading that….When and how did the SJW’s get in like this?
Okay, I got something here. I haven’t finalized everything but here are some quick thoughts, I have to read more before I post anything else.
It looks like some of these SJW’s were already working at Marvel and DC, and they were having problems with people that were/are working there and they think that comic book readers are bad as well. These people have dirt on Marvel and DC and these companies are being blackmailed into writing all this SJW junk and some of the people that are working for these companies have hopped on the SJW bandwagon. Marvel and DC are going back and forth with them on things. Think about this:
– Dan Slott (hi Dan!) writing Peter Parker the way he does, and the Twitter rant he had in which he said Peter Parker should be Black.
– The comments that Bendis made (hi Brian!) in his interview for the new Miles Morales Spider-man series and him making Iceman a homosexual out of the blue.
– The comments that Mark Waid made about the “All New, All Different” Avengers line up.
– Axel Alonzo saying that Hercules is heterosexual when everyone says that he should be bisexual.
– The SJW’s that are trying to get Nathan Edmonson kicked out of writing Red Wolf.
– Comic professionals going on Twitter and saying that certain people in the industry are abusers and harrassers and when the claims are investigated, there is no evidence.
– Ta-Nehisi Coates being given the job of writing Black Panther by Marvel after doing some interview about diversity.
– Marvel making Hip Hop variant covers but making them super expensive for retailers to order.
– Jane Foster taking Mjollnir and his name from Thor, she is called Thor now and he is just called Odinson, also the heavy handed way that that fight with Titania and Crusher Creel was written by Jason Aaron.
Is there some kind of war going on in comics?
I used to read ComicsAlliance, BA Digest and Kotaku. Even for someone who’s always been on the right, the creeping realization I had (separately) with each of these sites over time really surprised me: they hate me. They despise people like me. Really and truly. They aren’t kidding, they aren’t messing around. They really want to force me out of things that I enjoy. They don’t want there to be any place for me there, and they’re actively working to make that happen.
It’s depressing to see Sims get a job at Marvel; he’s basically just a comics version of MovieBob. If I understand correctly he’s been behind the X-Men ’92 that’s already been going on. Did anyone think that the X-Men from 1992 would’ve been improved by adding one of the most obnoxious and asinine villains ever conceived, Cassandra Nova? Good job there Chris. An X-Men ’92 series is a good idea (which is another way of saying that the X-Men are far less interesting than they were under Claremont in the 90’s), but if that’s the best idea they could come up with for a mini, it should never have gone to a full series. I guess Marvel’s new thing is taking bad modern ideas and forcing them into the past.
The (excellent) researcher whose work you posted may as well not worry about a Feminist Frequency-style attack on comics; that’s not even necessary anymore. Clearly they’ve learned their lesson: don’t involve the consumers at all. They may make choices you don’t like, or may even disagree with your absurd leftist BS! So the smart move is just put it in there without any discussion. Screw the audience! They’ll either eat the slop you feed them, or you didn’t want people like them anyway!
I never thought any of those websites were anything special. Comics Alliance in particular is a joke. So-called “experts” on comics who routinely get their facts wrong, and make snarky (they confuse sarcasm for intelligence) comments about conservatives and whine about “privilege”or whatever buzzword the SJWs are using this week.
I too think it’s pathetic that Sims got to write X-Men ’92. What are his qualifications? He ran a rather forgettable blog called the Invincible Super-Blog for several years and then was hired by CA. He’s been pegged as this big-time expert on comics but a cursory look at this articles show he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If I pitched an idea to Marvel out of the blue, they’d laugh me out of the room and say that I didn’t have enough experience.
Also, former CA editor Andy Khouri was hired as an editor for DC Comics’ Omega Men reboot. Seriously. The same guy who called people who objected to the Muslim Batman of Paris as “racist” and basically called anyone he disagreed with as “racist.”
There was an interesting article I read a while back about what happens when a business like a magazine or a web site is going under because their leftism is putting off the audience. Once that starts to happen, they have one of two choices.
First, they can become less leftist, alienate the audience less, and hopefully retrieve some of their lost readership. This is a little risky but makes the most business sense. However this is personally more risky for the writers because leftists in the industry may lose respect for them, seeing them as having “compromised their principles” of shoving leftist BS in people’s faces.
Alternately, they can double down on leftism. This nearly guarantees death for the host company, but saves leftist credibility for the writers, who can take advantage of the incestuous nature of these industries to land another job. This is actually less risky for the writers themselves. You can see this pattern at Joystiq and it seems like it’s happening at Gawker in general.
Marvel and DC may come to this point in the future. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Disney lets Marvel play for a while and then basically tells them “We’re a big company and you’re not profitable enough. You’re cancelling everything except Spider-Man, Wolverine and whatever movie properties we’re still interested in. Also you’re targeting children now because that’s who buys comics. Anyone who disagrees is fired.”
You are not imagining things. The essence of Progressivism is war — evolutionary war. That’s the Marxist template: it’s the oppressed proletariat vs the oppressing bourgeois, it’s the oppressed blacks vs the oppressing whites, it’s the oppressed women vs the oppressing men, it’s the oppressed East vs. the oppressing West. The oppressors are standing in the way of social evolution (an atheist, classless, property-less society), and the progs are trying to force their arbitrary definition of social evolution forward to utopia, through the use of violence and propaganda. The end justify the means, because the end is a genderless, religionless, borderless utopia. What you’re seeing is this war mentality playing out through the stupid men and women who currently control DC and Marvel.
One more thing, let’s not forget Rich Johnson of Bleeding Cool. He is always posting about these people and he says that he has a secret about Ike Perlmutter that he claims could destroy the comic book industry but he won’t release it….