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The Troublesome Dream Of A Black Israel

The terrible price of reaching the promised land.

Steve QJ
Curated Newsletters
5 min readDec 27, 2024

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Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

In her review of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, The Message, Helen Andrews offered a controversial explanation for Coates’ objections to the discrimination he saw in Israel and the West Bank:

the real reason Israel bothers Coates so much […] is that it shames him. How can it be that the Jews carved their Israel out of the desert, and yet no place in Africa, least of all Liberia, remotely resembles Wakanda? […]

All the excuses for why his father’s black paradise remained a fantasy applied equally to the Jews, but they overcame the hostility of the world to succeed where [Marcus] Garvey & Co. failed. That, and not any resemblance to Jim Crow, is the reason Coates hates Israel so bitterly.

There’s a lot you could say about this eighty-eight-word indictment of Coates’ motivations.

You might notice the almost Freudian reframing of advocacy for the humanity of Palestinians as “bitter hatred” of Israel.

You might find it odd that Andrews believes Coates is jealous of a society he likens to the Jim Crow South. Or that she describes being handed someone else’s home as “carving Israel out of the desert.”

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Steve QJ
Steve QJ

Written by Steve QJ

Race. Politics. Culture. Sometimes other things. Almost always polite. Find more at https://steveqj.substack.com

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