That's Entertainment.

I wonder ... why do I keep reading?
Answer: He makes me laugh.

Like a newly enlightened freshman who simply can't keep quiet during the lecture, and must share what he's learned with all others, his newfound truth is just busting out all over in our shared identity-politicking days...

"Taken together, the slave system was, itself, a Leviathan--a force with deep roots in the economic, social and political system of this country. From the black perspective it was the nation-state mobilized for more than two and half centuries as a war-machine against that which so many regard as the foundation of humanity, itself--the family. And I do not merely mean the biological nuclear family: The slave system subjected family, in all its permutations--adoptive, same-sex, parent-less, child-less--to consistent, if capricious, violence.

If there is such a thing as an African-American people--and I believe there is--then it must be said that that for 250 years, that people lived in a state of war. The period between 1860 and 1865 are but the final years of that war...

It is a privilege to view the Civil War merely as four violent years, as opposed to the final liberating act in a two and half century-long saga of horrific violence, a privilege that black people have never enjoyed, and truthfully that no one in this country should indulge. These are my truths.
...
Slavery was an actual thing. All else is garnish."

Another comments:

There's an insight here that's being wasted because you're resorting to this English-major mode of expression that (for many, I'm sure) is lovely and full of sonorous pith, but communicates almost nothing coherent.

At least he's concluded the war is over though.

I wonder if the easy temptations of this navel-gazing, identity-knowledge path account for the lack of proportial numbers of black scientists, doctors and numbers professionals in American society. (Maybe it's a legacy of the Civil War too, "phantom" shackles holding back slave descendants while black immigrants seize opportunities and overcome already.) Imagine what Michelle Obama might have become had she not gone that route at Princeton, and perhaps worked on a hard sciences degree instead of the infamous "Black Like Me" dissertation.

I have a sister who's an engineer*, and I can tell you, the sky is the limit pretty much for women on that career path. Not that being a First Lady is such a bad thing, but sometimes you get the impression she too is stagnating in the role, and probably wants more for her own daughters.

I hope they get it.

-----------------

* a brother too.



ADDED: I wonder if Ta-Nehisi needs an intervention, akin to the Matt Damon character in Good Will Hunting... "It's not your fault. Listen to me, son: It's not your fault." (rinse and repeat, as needed)

It's my observation that the farther away from strife and struggle one actually is, the greater the dramatic telling, one-sided sympathy, and outrageous indignation. People who truly have "overcome" generally don't waste their time, make their bank living in the past, from what I've seen.

My gosh, old times certainly are starting all over again...

Not a bit! There aren't any old times. When times are gone they aren't old - they're dead. There aren't any times but new times!

Watch that movie. (or read the book)
It'll change your life.
;-)