Ta-Nehisi Coates deletes his Twitter account after argument with Cornel West
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates has deleted his Twitter account after a dispute with philosopher and social critic Cornel West.
“Peace, y’all. I’m out,” Coates wrote Tuesday on his now-defunct account, according to the AP. “I didn’t get in it for this.”
West recently criticized Coates in an essay published in The Guardian, slamming him for not being critical enough of former President Obama and writing that he “fetishizes white supremacy.”
In the piece, West accuses Coates, who has emerged as one of the country’s leading black intellectuals, of having a “preoccupation with white acceptance” and an “allegiance to Obama.”
“It is clear that [Coates’s] narrow racial tribalism and myopic political neoliberalism has no place for keeping track of Wall Street greed, US imperial crimes or black elite indifference to poverty,” he writes.
{mosads}According to the AP, Coates and West engaged in a “contentious exchange” on Twitter, prompting Coates to delete his account.
Coates, who won a 2015 National Book Award for his nonfiction book chronicling his experience with racism in America, recently published “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy,” a series of essays reflecting on the historical and cultural transition from Obama to President Trump.
Coates often used his Twitter account for political commentary. Earlier this year, his 31-tweet thread criticizing chief of staff John Kelly’s controversial comments about the Civil War being started by a “lack of compromise” went viral.
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