Yo New York: Ta-Nehisi Live

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
So I'll be doing some public stuff this week. First I'll be at McNally Robinson in Soho, on Tuesday, reading from my new memoir The Beautiful Struggle. The reading starts at 7:00. Click here to see the trailer and publicity.

Second I'll be chatting it up on Wednesday with a some very distinguished folks about the state of Black/Jewish relations. Personally, I think it all goes back to an anecdote in Nicholas Lehmann's book The Promised Land. Lehmann talks about how during the Civil Rights Movement, SNCC had a lot of Jewish cats in its ranks doing great work down South. Of course spending so much time around each other inevitably led to relationships, a lot of which apparently were Jewish women and black dudes. This pissed off a lot of the sisters in the organization, and a few years later SNCC rebranded itself as radically black nationalist and told all the whites--many of whom were Jewish--to take a hike.

So you see, like so much of what's wrong in America, the black/Jewish schism is really the fault of black women. Anyway, if you think that theory is particularly brilliant come out on Wednesday. I guarantee that I'll be armed with other such penetrating insights. Seriously though, come out if you can. It should be really engaging.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/05/yo-new-york-ta-nehisi-live/5149/