When David Brooks Knows He May Not Know Whereof He Speaks

David Brooks’ letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates is making the rounds. What I was most struck by is how nervous, how preemptively defensive and apologetic, Brooks is. For once, this preternaturally self-confident pundit has been forced to confront the possibility that he may not know whereof he speaks.

Listen to this:

I suppose the first obligation is to sit with it, to make sure the testimony is respected and sinks in. But I have to ask, Am I displaying my privilege if I disagree? Is my job just to respect your experience and accept your conclusions? Does a white person have standing to respond?

Or this:

If I do have standing, I find the….” [That if I have standing!]

Or this:

Maybe you will find my reactions irksome. Maybe the right white response is just silence for a change.

What to make of it? Unsuccessful attempts to disarm his critics? Maybe.

Or maybe we should pay more attention to that tone of  aggrieved and bitchy petulance which accompanies these qualifiers: “I suppose…Is my job just…is just silence…” That “just” gives the game away.

In the face of a black man reasoning his way to freedom, Brooks is rendered powerless, struck dumb (even by Brooks’ literary standards, his critique sounds incredibly flat, dispirited; he knows he’s against Coates, but he just can’t summon the necessary rhetorical fire to oppose him).

Not unlike that Guatemalan archbishop who complained about leftist land reformers in 1954 that they sent local peasants “gifted with facility with words” to the capital, where they were given opportunities “to speak in public.”