Bomani Jones conducted the Playboy Interview from Paris with Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the aftermath of the writer experiencing unexpected, large-scale success from his meditations on American racial injustice, a subject that often seems to plunge the country into mass amnesia. In one passage, the author is questioned about the difference between white and black Americans spewing nonsense theories, touching on, among others, political scientist Charles Murray, who thinks it’s somehow possible to be truly and deeply in love with both meritocracy and Sarah Palin.

An excerpt:

Question:

Is there anything related to race that you once believed and now look back on and say, “What was I thinking?”

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Yeah, there are crazy things that I believed. That whole iceman thing was total bullshit.

Question:

I take it you’re talking about Michael Bradley’s book The Iceman Inheritance, which attributes white racism to, among other things, sexual maladaptation in Caucasians.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

See, these motherfuckers believe shit now and argue on it. I’ve had these fights with Andrew Sullivan about IQ. That’s his iceman. There’s no science behind this shit. But see, you’ve got institutions and guns behind it, right? You’ve got a whole power structure behind it that allows them to stand on the crazy shit I could not go out on. When I went to Howard they were like, “Ain’t no way you’re going to leave here talking that shit.” These motherfuckers get to go to Harvard and come out talking that shit. Charles Murray did this bubble study. Did you see that shit?

Question:

I did not.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

How to determine whether you live in a bubble or not. It’s totally based on white people. No black person would take that study and have it tell them anything about their life. This motherfucker got the backing of Washington. These motherfuckers just get to spout crazy. This cat Marty Peretz, who used to run The New Republic, was an active racist and bigot spouting the worst poison in the world. This guy is in high reaches of society, getting degrees from Harvard. My pops said this shit to me one time: “The African’s right to be wrong is sacred.” When we’re wrong, it’s craziness, but when they’re wrong, it’s…Harvard.

Question:

In your back-and-forths with Sullivan and Jonathan Chait, they seemed to be wondering what was wrong with you. What was your thought when people said you seemed down, when you believed you were dealing in facts?

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

That’s what they say when they can’t fight you. They abandon the whole thought of any sort of empirical, historical, evidence-based argument, and they say, “Well, I don’t like where you’re coming from.” It’s like if I tell you I have empirical evidence that the world is going to end in five days and you’re like, “I don’t like how that sounds. Why are you bumming me out?” That’s something people apply to the dialogue around racism but they don’t apply to other shit. Kathryn Schulz won a Pulitzer Prize for this incredible piece that basically says the Pacific Northwest is going to get hit by a huge tsunami that will kill a lot of people. It’s the most pessimistic, dire shit you’d ever want to read. What if they said to Schulz, “You could sing us a song”? When people can’t fight you, they say, “Why are you so pessimistic?” It’s a different question than “Are you correct?”•