Ta-Nehisi Coates

I have never been present when two Black Americans debated the best way to cope with racism.  My view of the debate between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubose is too distant to qualify me as a reader, and now I read that a related debate is going on between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornell West. 

To simplify, this is a debate between pessimism and hope, two valid positions. 

I don't know, of course, who is right in this debate, which is between Black Americans who believe in ending racism through struggle and Black Americans who believe racism is permanent and advocate withdrawal as a solution.  This debate has been going on since the Civil War. In my youth it was between Malcolm X and MLK. Or so it seemed. All of this must be much more complicated than a simple dichotomy.

Coates is a fascinating writer and the current intellectual force behind what has come to be called Afro-pessimism, the belief that no one "is coming to save us." The withdrawal message Coates presents would certainly please the KKK, if they could read. But that's not the test. The problem may be that Coates is right. Yet he writes about this in major publications, which isn't withdrawal. 

I am not a pessimist, but suppose Coates is right. Suppose racism is incurable.  Humans have many failings that we struggle against and never conquer. But does pessimism require us to quit? Did Booker T. Washington or Malcolm X actually withdraw?  I think of people like Coates as pessimists who refuse to quit. I'd like to see a longer list of such people: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Joan Didion, Albert Camus, Samuel Becket?