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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

Why are you people here?

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jan 23 2009, 12:18 PM ET Comment

I was just informed by some very important people that I have to write a mission statement for this blog by the end of business, today. I'll be honest--I haven't the slightest fucking idea what that would be. But you guys might, because, well, you kill a considerable amount of time and, let's be honest, brain-cells, scrolling through here. Why would you do such a thing? What do you get out of it? My hope is to pull something out of what you guys say here. Sorta like crowd-sourcing. But only for my benefit.

UPDATE: Closed comments. You guys were making a black man blush--no mean feat. Besides, Romulus wins:

"This blog aims to leverage cultural synergies, while moving rapidly to confront the exigencies of life in modern America in a provocative, streetwise and transcendantly classical manner. A core element of our cultural strategy is an open-ended, but engaged, dialogue with commentaters and critics, resulting a free and creative explication of the dynamics of an arguably post-racial America. Crucial aspects of the cultural experience on which this blog is predicated include: the place of sport in the modern consumer experience, hip-hop music reconsidered, the online RPG as social bonding device, the new tribalism, and literature: obsolescent construct or primal signifier"


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