TEDIOUS, BUT WELL-COMPENSATED:

I don’t know about Ta-Nehisi Coates, but I suspect that Coates does see himself as an artist — as a literary genius of some sort. Certainly Coates hears himself spoken of that way, and his prose style — to my eye — reflects that self-image. Coates has made race his template, his brutally repetitive message. His artistic freedom has moved him to continually say that black people are not free. He’s really not free to say anything else, is he? So he must say it about other artists, even as those other artists claim their freedom to say whatever they want too. Coates can only describe a prison. He can’t put anyone else in it. He can only invite them to perceive the prison and themselves inside it.

And his role, as I’ve noted before, is to serve as the intellectual jailer for other blacks, on behalf of the leftist political apparat. “Brutally” repetitive indeed.