The man who recorded this week-old video appears to have been getting some gas when he noticed a parade honoring the confederate flag motoring down the road. At 1:07, right after the cameraman seems to be at his saddest, saying, “I don’t know what the fuck going on” in response to this gratuitous display of an oppressive symbol, the parade comes to an abrupt halt.
I first saw this delicious bit of schadenfreude on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Twitter feed, which has been excellent as of late. He’s funny, academic, and sometimes snarky, and he doesn’t hesitate to respond to haters and fans alike. I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of a recent argument he made, one that always knocks me down a peg when I laugh too hard hard at idiots parading around in honor of the confederate flag, say, or when I focus on the monstrosity of certain acts rather than the systems that perpetuate those acts.
Good (though not great) way to answer the question, “Would have I owned slaves?” is to ask something like “Do I use fossil fuel?”
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) June 24, 2015
The back-and-forth on that one is real good.
He also writes a lot about Star Trek.
