Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent appearance on CBS News has ignited yet another round of controversy. This time, the firestorm surrounded the network’s Tony Dokoupil, who dared to ask Coates challenging, if obvious, questions. Those who treat Coates as a modern-day prophet claimed that the anchor’s behavior crossed the line into insensitivity, and even racism.
What followed was ritual humiliation. CBS subjected Dokoupil to what can only be described as a struggle session, bringing in DEI consultants to “educate” him on the acceptable bounds of discourse and the proper body language to maintain when talking to an exalted minority guest. This is the state of modern journalism: the slightest challenge to the progressive narrative results in swift reeducation efforts.
A review of the substance of the underlying exchange, and the baffling explanation Coates offered in defense of his unfairness toward Israel, illuminates why there has been such a rush to reframe his CBS appearance as a hostile confrontation.
Dokoupil’s first comments and question challenged the broadside against Israel contained in Coates’s new book, The Message. “The content of that section” on Israel, noted Dokoupil, “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” “Why does Ta-Nehisi Coates . . . a very talented, smart guy, leave out so much?” Dokoupil asked. In a book largely about Israel’s security practices and their supposed excesses, the anchor pressed, “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?” These are crucial questions that Coates must have anticipated receiving from even a friendly interlocutor. Dokoupil offers one more natural follow-up for the author, who cannot find the slightest justification for Israel’s security measures: “Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?”
Coates’s response was puzzling, but revelatory:
I would say the perspective that you just outlined—there is no shortage of that perspective in American media. . . . I am most concerned, always, with those who don’t have a voice, with those who don’t have the ability to talk. I have asked repeatedly, in my interviews, whether there is a single network [or] mainstream organization in America with a Palestinian-American bureau chief or correspondent who actually has a voice to articulate their part of the world. . . . The reporters of those who believe more sympathetically about Israel and its right to exist don’t have a problem getting their voice out. But what I saw in Palestine . . . those were the stories that I have not heard.
In these few lines, Coates channels rhetoric that he has employed throughout his career—a nebulous invocation of marginalized peoples (here, Palestinians) and a claim that their members are denied a platform in the American public sphere. Notably, he refers to those groups’ “perspectives,” regardless of the validity of those perspectives. It is as though the very presence of eliminationist groups blowing up Israeli buses and cafes—which prompted many of the security measures Coates decries—were a matter of opinion.
It gets worse as one drills down on the specifics. First, in what sense do Palestinians not “have a voice”? Unlike the Kurds, Copts, Uyghurs, and any number of other ethnic and religious minority groups, Palestinians have a chorus of vocal advocates in the United States, especially within elite media and academic circles. Figures like Representatives Rashida Tlaib (of Palestinian descent), Jamaal Bowman, and Ilhan Omar have made anti-Israel extremism central to their political platforms. Entire academic departments exist to demonize Israel and to justify Palestinian violence against the Jewish state. The United Nations condemns Israel while coddling dictators; its subsidiary, UNRWA, has special rules that treat Palestinians more favorably than any other group under the UN’s care (and openly collaborates with Hamas).
Coates’s claim that Palestinians’ “stories” are not “heard” is equally remarkable. Media outlets routinely publish coverage so sympathetic to the Palestinians that it borders on parody, from uncritically citing the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health’s unverifiable casualty figures to rushing to report claims that Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital killing hundreds, when, in fact, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket had landed in the parking lot. A woman with alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—a terrorist group—was nominated for an Emmy this year. The Palestinian cause might be the most over-represented foreign movement in American cultural history.
What of Coates’s assertion that too few Palestinians occupy powerful positions in Western media? It is almost too obvious to state, but one does not need to be a member of a group to advocate on that group’s behalf. Only die-hard adherents of “standpoint epistemology”—the idea that only members of oppressed groups can truly understand those groups’ oppression—would believe otherwise. Coates, who wrote a book about the Palestinians despite not being a Palestinian himself, certainly does not.
The deeper issue with Coates’s response, however, is not the inaccuracy of his claims but his implication that championing a supposedly marginalized group justifies presenting a one-sided narrative. His answer, which indicates that he has heard Israel’s perspective and now wants to provide an opposing one, does not deny that his account of what he saw in Israel and the Palestinian territories is biased. Instead of attempting to show that his assessment of the conflict is accurate, he argues that it is morally justified. But that merely amounts to suggesting that the ends justify the means: giving a voice to those whom he presupposes are oppressed excuses presenting misleading histories and half-baked analyses.
If Dokoupil erred at all, it was in not pressing Coates to answer two questions. First, what good is it to lend your voice to a group, when you use your voice to advance a dishonest account? And second, why do you think that advancing the interests of Palestinians requires you to lie by omission about the context of the situation?
Indeed, for his own sake, Coates should recognize that those who claim to champion the voiceless must do so responsibly. The role he has assumed for himself might best be analogized to that of a lawyer who zealously advocates for his client. But even the most dedicated counsel will be sanctioned for wantonly withholding key evidence. What Coates is doing is not advancing justice—it’s not even advancing the Palestinian cause. Instead, he’s just rehashing the same shopworn, misguided themes that he has peddled for years now.
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