Ezra Klein doesn’t get it, because he doesn’t have to. And that doesn’t make him a bad person; it simply means he lives a different life, shaped by different experiences. His experience tells him not only that he is doing the right thing, but the righteous thing. He doesn’t grasp why Charlie Kirk was dangerous, because Kirk’s words never carried the power to truly harm him. What Klein sees first is a brother, and that is what he has been taught to see, not the danger of what that “brother” represents.
I was Ezra Klein on day one of the shooting, because in my heart that position felt like the Christian, human thing to do, or at least that is what I had been taught. White grief matters and I must acknowledge it, right or wrong.
Ta-Nehisi Coates approached this moment like a friend speaking to a friend, and I understand the “why” behind that. I also understand why Klein clings so firmly to his position. He believes he has the right to it. And that is the defining difference we see between these two men in this exchange.
Coates is willing to temper his stance, not because he lacks intellectual capacity, we all know he has it, but because in his mind, he must, even if he really doesn’t have to, he will be gentle and forgiving and tempered. What I mean is this: Black Americans have been conditioned for generations not to offend white people. That conditioning lingers. Our ancestors could be destroyed over the mere semblance of disrespect, and our inherited survival apparatus built in those times still lives within us, often subconsciously.
Meanwhile, Klein does what white men have always had the privilege to do. He holds firmly to his position, without significant concern for the kind of pain that cannot be explained, only felt. Pain that is real, without current physical reason or justification, yet deeply embedded. He is stuck in his stance simply because he can be, and he knows it.
And that is exactly what makes the rhetoric Kirk championed so dangerous. Kirk made well meaning white Christians believe that they had a right to hateful ideology. And that’s what is being revealed in this nuanced exchange between Coates and Klein, where the imbalance plays out in real time, even as neither man fully recognizes it. This is not just a conversation. It is a live social experiment, one neither man realizes he is participating in.
They see the world differently because they have been told different things about it, they feel different things about it innately, and now, with all their knowledge and understanding, they cannot imagine why.
Both men are well intentioned, please don’t misunderstand me. But Klein just won’t get it because he refuses to allow his lived experience to not shape his position, and Coates even within a friendly conversation has reverted to that survival instinct and can’t fully be present enough to explain to Klein why he’s missing the mark here.
Here is what I know for sure: when we cannot turn off ourselves and turn on empathy we mistakenly vote for people like Trump. Or we mistakenly start believing that minorities are replacing the white majority. When we cannot turn off our deeply lived experiences long enough to use empathy we become stuck even with the best intentions. I’m only 28 minutes in and likely won’t finish, but I had to pause to write this.
@Ezra Klein #TaNehisiCoates
Check out the conversation here: