HBO's Confederate

I have just gotten done reading Ta'nahesi Coates August 4th article, in the Atlantic, about HBO's "proposed" new TV show, Confederate. And I must say I am absolutely disgusted. Not at Coates, hell no. At HBO. I literally cannot even believe that something such as this show would even so much as "shine" for a second on a platform that is as mainstream and as popular as that. I honestly cannot even believe that the idea behind the show --- "what if the white South had won the Civil War and slavery never ended?" --- could even pass, at all, for the idea of what the next hit show might be on this popular channel. But then, I remind myself, I am in the great nation of Fools, so why am I really that surprised? These people in the USA, it seems, are like the people you meet in bad dreams that just never end: they just love pouring SALT on old wounds. They cannot , it would seem, do anything else.

Of course, I already know all of the cries that the defenders of the Confederate show will come out with, because a little red bird tells me that they will sound very similar to the cries people make when black folks shoot out complaints about, well, anything: "Don't they ever stop complaining?" one imagines them saying, "Can't they ever just, like, be happy? And accept things? No...they always must complain!" Well, yes ,in fact, when it comes to something like this -- to white folks fantasizing about what if the South had won and slavery never ended -- one imagines that black people will complain. One should not blame them for complaining, either. And yet I can't help but wonder if, even with the lament of Ta'nahesi Coates, who is literally the biggest African-American intellectual currently around in the States, if these complaints will be heard. Or if they will, instead, just be shrugged off, ignored, and degraded, with that usual smug and arrogant air of "listen ,just let us whit folks do our thing, and the blacks will eventually come around to seeing it made sense in the end...it was better in the end...yuh know?"

No I do not know, and I am very sick of trying to know. I am sick of this idea that white people seem to think it's OK to collectively shrug off the complaints of, literally, the entire black population, no matter what it is you're talking about. For this "shrugging off" is also the same exact thing that tends to happen when one discusses conservative politics, and the Republican party, with white Americans as well. For example, I can still remember a few years ago, when I first got into politics, and it came to my attention that literally next to no blacks vote Republican, and haven't for a "hundred years".

Right away, I knew something was horrifically wrong with the party: How on earth could it even be that they have lost the entire black vote? How could it be that they are that despised by blacks? Certainly, I said to myself, there's something wrong here -- and it is not with black people, but with the Republicans! Friends of mine of course, who sympathize wth the Republicans, and of course old miserable uncles, quickly explained it to me, whenever it was brought up: "Well the blacks just don't get it, you see? They don't understand. We Republicans want to help them, and we will. They just have to wait and see. They complain too much, you see? They just complain. And their complaints have no basis, you know? But they're...." They're ...what? Ah, they are too stupid, is it? To understand what the holy white man Republican wants for them.... so on and so forth. "They'll come around. They need to stop complaining." Nah. I don't think so, Jack. What I think is the Republicans need to lend their ear to what the blacks are saying. That's what I think. I think it's the case that, as Louis CK highlights in some joke he does, if someone calls you an asshole, or a whole room of people calls you an asshole, you don't get to just shrug that off and say "well, they're wrong." No. You have to take that into acount. You are an asshole if a whole room of people says you are. You don't get to say you are not. In fact, saying that and denying that...makes you even more of an asshole...!

And so this, you see, is the exact case with this putrid, disgusting show Confederate: White folk want to experiment artistically, it seems, and they want the license to do that. They want to play around with "risque ideas" and "offensive art". Ah, that is wonderful. But guess what? Do it with your own white shit. Don't involve blacks in your little experiment. For, it would seem to me, they do not want to be involved, and Ta'nahesi Coates is asking nicely enough--don't you think? And don't forget: He is the main Afro-American intellectual currently around. His opinion is to be fucking heeded. Unless, of course, you're an asshole.